Kaixin is a Cantonese designer. She believes that any good work is based on a thorough understanding of life, society, and the world. In the process of learning to be a designer, she has also learned about herself and the relationship between her and the world. During this process, she found that cultural identity was one of the most important aspects of her creativity. Thus, focusing on her cultural background. She wants her designs to enhance the cultural identity of younger generations in Guangdong.
Soap Memo is a soap branding project that targets the Gen-Z Cantonese family in Guangdong who are forgetting their own mother language. Since the 21st century—the promotion of Mandarin and the standardization of language use in China—dialects are getting removed from all official locations, including schools. The result is the erasure of the Cantonese language for the Gen-Z. Learning and speaking Mandarin in schools has caused this generation to speak more Madarin than their mother tongue—Cantonese. However, language is the carrier of its culture. Therefore, promoting Cantonese among the younger generation of Cantonese is an urgent task.
Kaixin found that the unwillingness of speaking Cantonese among Cantonese youngsters is affected by the non confidence, unfamiliarity, and absence-in-daily-life of their language. As a result, Soap Memo aims to build an experience around the home to promote the Cantonese language and cultural identity. Since the home is the last place where the Cantonese language can still survive, she designed a home necessity—soap—to increase Cantonese youngsters’ awareness, familiarity, and confidence in their mother tongue. Just like we always need a bar of soap at home, we always remember to speak our mother tongue at home.
