Chinatown Storytelling Centre Opens the Learning Lab on its Fifth Anniversary

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The new immersive space welcomes visitors to time travel through Chinatown, where the past speaks and the future listens

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Chinatown Storytelling Centre marks its fifth anniversary with the opening of the Learning Lab, a vibrant new 4,000-square-foot space that brings the history of Vancouver’s Chinatown to life through historic facades, immersive environments, and cutting-edge digital displays.

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The space features a presentation theatre, a media studio, and workshop space that support hands-on learning. It will serve as a dynamic hub for educational programs, tours, and community gatherings.

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When the Chinatown Storytelling Centre opened its main floor five years ago, it told the story of how Chinese migrants came to British Columbia: the journeys, the sacrifices, and challenges they endured. The Learning Lab carries those stories forward.

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“The Chinatown Storytelling Centre and Learning Lab are a bridge connecting generations to inspire hope in the community,” says Carol Lee, Chair of the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation. “These spaces showcase how Chinese Canadians built community after overcoming the many barriers they faced, offering a powerful reminder of what Chinatown can become again.”

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By recreating Chinatown storefronts, artifacts, photos, and interactive digital experiences, the Learning Lab reveals a community that established businesses, created institutions, and forged a vibrant urban neighbourhood against significant odds. This was a community that built a neighbourhood on its own terms.

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An Immersive Experience

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The Learning Lab offers an engaging, sensory experience that makes Chinatown’s history feel immediate and personal. Visitors step into a vivid Chinatown streetscape that brings to life the neighbourhood’s heyday in the 1950s to the 1980s – its restaurants and nightclubs, herbal shops and general stores, newspapers and community organizations.

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Visitors can discover a cutting-edge digital wall filled with stories where they can interact with a full-wall screen to explore individual objects and their significance in Chinese Canadian history. Everyday objects are given new meaning, becoming unexpected storytellers that bring Chinatown’s past into vivid focus. Additionally, Stories Within, a reimagined herbal apothecary cabinet, shares personal stories of migration and settlement. Visitors can open drawers to discover objects revealing how immigrants built new lives by founding transpacific businesses, driving taxis, and opening restaurants. The cabinet also traces how the next generation forged identities that carry both their parents’ heritage and a sense of belonging in Canada.

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Five Years of Growing Impact

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Now celebrating its fifth anniversary, the Chinatown Storytelling Centre has welcomed thousands of visitors, preserved over 200 community stories, and engaged more than 1,000 students annually through its education programs. Its permanent collection of over 10,000 artefacts continues to safeguard the living history of Chinatown. Guided by its mission: “Honouring Our Past, Shaping Our Future,” the Learning Lab opens new space for creativity, dialogue, and community storytelling.