‘It comes from lived experience:’ Poet behind powerful ‘Eyes Open’ narration talks about writing video

He’s the voice behind a powerful anti-racism video that has made waves on social media.

Christopher Tse — a Chinese-Canadian spoken word artist and youth social worker — wrote and performed the poem that drives the “Eyes Open” public service announcement created for Asian Heritage Month.

“It really felt like this is a message I want to share and this is a message I hope can resonate with a lot of other Asian Canadians,” said Tse. “It comes from lived experience and it comes from concepts and questions and conflicts that I’ve wrestled with for years. A lot of the words seemed to just kind of be waiting in the wings, waiting for their moment.”

Set to fast-paced images and a driving score, Tse speaks: “As they burned our Chinatowns down and spit on our grandmas at bus stops we stayed quiet. As they laughed in our faces and told us to go back to where we came from — But they’ve mistaken our silence for compliance. Our meekness for weakness.”

The video was produced by an all-Asian, mostly female creative team. The 31-year-old Vancouver native says they reached out to him about a month ago with the vision for the piece and within a week, he submitted his part.

“I was fully expecting to have a couple of back and forths with feedback and rewrites and the like but they loved the first draft so what ends up in the video is what I sent them initially.”

“Eyes Open” is part of the larger “#FaceRace” campaign launched by the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice. The campaign urges Canadians to confront racism amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tse says he hopes his words will help others across the country know they are not alone.

“Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary – you have these large communities of support and that’s where most of the diaspora has gone to.”

“But if there’s that one Asian kid sitting in the classroom in northern Alberta or in the Northwest Territories who has been accustomed to being the lonely only and wonders ‘is my experience just my experience?’ hopefully this lets them know that they’re actually part of a strong and proud community that has been on Turtle Island since the 1700s.”