Chinese-New Zealander talks about heritage, his Cantonese T-shirts and comics
New Zealand artist and illustrator Ant Sang is connecting with his Chinese heritage with a Cantonese-phrased Cantotees T-shirt collection
Auckland-based award-winning illustrator and comic artist Anthony Sang recently found a medium that helps him forge a stronger link with his Cantonese roots: T-shirts.
Better known as Ant Sang, the fifth-generation Chinese-New Zealander spent a chunk of his childhood and adolescence in Hong Kong, where his family relocated in 1977, before he headed back to New Zealand to study graphic design at what was then the Auckland Institute of Technology – now known as the Auckland University of Technology.
After nearly four decades, Sang found a personal way to bridge the cultural gap by creating his own line of culturally focused Cantotees.
Sang has extended his T-shirt designs – common Cantonese phrases referencing dim sum and yum cha – to mugs and tote bags for the global Cantonese community to proudly represent their culture.
“I always felt like I had some kind of loyalty to the Cantonese language rather than the Mandarin language,” Sang says.
“A lot of Cantonese people left China such a long time ago,” Sang tells the Post. “There are a lot of people like me who just feel disconnected from their roots and are looking for ways to keep it alive.”