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The Tyee is powered by a committed community of such people who we call Tyee Builders. They support The Tyee by providing a monthly, annual or one-time donation in an amount that works for them. Often it’s in the range of the price of an afternoon treat for two friends. Tyee Builders keep The Tyee’s independent journalism freely accessible to everyone.

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Thanks for being part of our community. Please consider becoming a new friend of The Tyee by signing up as a Tyee Builder today.

— Jackie Wong, Senior Editor

Support The Tyee now

Support critical journalism for $15

One of the great joys of this work is connecting with the community around The Tyee. It’s a diverse, courageous and feisty bunch. The kind of people who step in when it counts, and who are unafraid to act on their values.

The Tyee is powered by a committed community of such people who we call Tyee Builders. They support The Tyee by providing a monthly, annual or one-time donation in an amount that works for them. Often it’s in the range of the price of an afternoon treat for two friends. Tyee Builders keep The Tyee’s independent journalism freely accessible to everyone.

Tyee Builders are why our pages are free of paywalls or walls of ads. Builders are special people whose contributions are powering an innovative, critically-minded news organization that swims against the current, speaks truth to power and sparks the careers of the next generation of journalists.

The Tyee is proudly reader-funded. And we’re always looking to expand our community. We need more people to sign up with monthly or annual commitments to help us sustain our work and plan for the future.

Thanks for being part of our community. Please consider becoming a new friend of The Tyee by signing up as a Tyee Builder today.

— Jackie Wong, Senior Editor

Support The Tyee now
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Contributors

Christopher Cheung

Christopher Cheung is a staff reporter at The Tyee.

He is interested in the power and politics behind urban change, and how Vancouver’s many diasporas strive to make a home in a city with colonial legacies.

Cheung has reported on the mystery of the street vendor "baklava man," the social life of local Chinese malls, the right to public washrooms, food security in the Downtown Eastside, the “translator kids” of migrant families and the invasion of the colonial Himalayan blackberry.

In 2021, he won the Jack Webster Award — B.C.’s top achievement in journalism — for his reporting on how COVID-19 has disproportionately affected working-class immigrant neighbourhoods.

Cheung also occasionally writes personal essays. He’s documented his time living in Vancouver’s most-diverse neighbourhood, his family’s annual "grave sweeping" and a year-long investigation on the Instagrammers who came to take profile pictures on the rooftop outside his downtown window. His essay "Blind Spots,” on the lack of true ethnic and cultural representation in Canada media, won the 2021 Dalton Camp Award for best essay.

Cheung has written for a number of newspapers and magazines, with columns in the Vancouver Courier and Metro, where readers will remember his community stories on Duffin’s Donuts, Kingsgate Mall and Asian immigrant seniors with backyard farms. He was born and raised in Vancouver and still lives there.

He graduated with a master’s in journalism from the University of British Columbia in 2016. Find him on Twitter and Instagram, or visit his website.

News, Articles & Commentary by Christopher Cheung