This photograph shows Rose Lee, a Vancouver resident, wearing a Chinese marriage suit for her wedding ceremony. Growing up a second-generation Chinese Canadian in the 1950s, Rose tried hard to embody her Canadian self by wearing only Western clothing inspired by British royal fashion. However, she chose this outfit for pouring tea for her mother, a typical wedding practice in China. At this time, Chinese labour is no longer required for Canadian development, but exclusion and segregation of the Chinese were engraved into the lives of second-generation Chinese Canadian women. Like Rose, mang young women developed strategies to negotiate their identities in the predominantly white society. Choosing the right clothes for each occasion and avoiding “ethnic” outfits became their survival strategy as well as their sense of self-protection. However, wearing traditional Chinese suits for one’s wedding is a way to show respect to elderly family members. It also affirms one’s desire to recover a lost cultural heritage that had been rejected in the process of Westernization and assimilation.