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Ashlyn Chak

At first sight, you probably would not guess that Jephina Lueche could speak Hakka, a Chinese language variety most widely spoken in China’s south, let alone that she teaches it to others.
But the content creator of Chinese and Guyanese descent has been giving short lessons on basic but useful everyday Hakka phrases on social media for over four years, wowing tens of thousands of followers along the way.
An Instagram video of her speaking Hakka while sharing Peking duck with her multicultural relatives has racked up more than 2 million views.
Other “Hakka 101” clips, in which she covers practical phrases like “good night”, “I like you” and “don’t speak”, have also generated much online interest and reaction, as have her culture-focused videos, earning her more than 90,000 followers.












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A post shared by Jephina ✨ParkedCarConversation (@jlueche)



The video that really kicked things off for her was posted in February 2021. It was one of her first Instagram videos detailing her family and features footage of her late Chinese grandmother playing with Lueche’s now seven-year-old son.
In 2024, she travelled to southern China to visit her grandparents’ home and discover her roots. She spent most of the trip in Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, and in December that year published a 41-minute video of the trip on YouTube that has more than 464,000 views.
Lueche wants these videos to highlight that Hakka is still very much a living language. She says there are more than 44 million Hakka speakers around the world, citing 2023 figures from the Ethnologue online database, and that the urban villages she visited in Shenzhen in 2024 – enclaves within the city created by rapid urban expansion – were fully Hakka.
“I think when they say [Hakka is] ‘dying’, it’s in relation to the 1.4 billion population in China, where everyone speaks Mandarin and Cantonese, and Hakka is not taught in schools,” she says. “But 44 million people? That’s more than Canada’s population.”


Lueche was born in Toronto, Canada. Her father is from Guyana, in South America, and her ethnically Chinese mother was born in Jamaica. She was primarily raised by her maternal grandparents, who were from Shenzhen and spoke to her in Hakka only.
Despite being partially Chinese, her darker complexion has often been a source of confusion to strangers.
“I look different,” the 31-year-old says. “I obviously don’t ‘present’ East Asian, but I don’t look full black either. Growing up, I got a lot of stares, and people would always ask my po po [maternal grandmother] and gung gung [maternal grandfather] who I was.
“But my grandparents were like my parents, and I was really attached to them. I grew up very culturally aware of everything I was, even when other people didn’t understand it. It was cool for me. I was proud to explain how we’re Chinese but [also] Jamaican.”

Life was not always easy for her and her elder sister growing up in Toronto. Every Saturday for four years, they suffered through a weekend Chinese school where they not only did not speak Cantonese well like the other pupils, but also did not look like them.
“I hated it. We were the runts of the class, and the teachers weren’t taking any extra time for us … they would never really explain to us what was going on,” Lueche says.
“One time, in the class photo, they put me and my sister on the side and left a gap between us and the others. My grandfather got so mad that he went to the school, and eventually took us out of the class.”
Despite the discrimination she faced, she was taught by her family to have pride in her heritage.
Lueche’s grandparents were from two Hakka villages in southern Guangdong, but migrated to Jamaica in the 1950s in search of a better life. They lived and ran a small shop selling garment materials in Lionel Town, in the Clarendon parish.

In 1974, the family left Jamaica for Canada after the then Jamaican prime minister, Michael Manley, had begun speaking of concepts such as communism, militarism and nationalism.
“These things were [why] my grandparents had left China … so they were really afraid,” Lueche says. “It was the journey of many Chinese-Jamaicans, who left Jamaica in a huge rush within that period.”
Her grandparents eventually became full-time carers of their grandchildren, particularly doting on Lueche, the youngest grandchild, who moved in with them as a two-day-old baby.
“Ironically, my sister and I, the two black grandkids, were the closest to my Chinese grandparents, living in the house with them as my mum was always working,” she says.


She says her mother has never been to China but caught a glimpse of her roots through Lueche’s video footage of the 2024 Shenzhen trip.
“When I came back and showed her her mum’s village home, my mum sat there watching my laptop and just cried,” Lueche says.
“She said that even if she doesn’t get to go, she’s content knowing that I went. In a sense, I was closer to her parents than she was, so she’s really proud and knows that the honour is there. She’s like, ‘I know your grandparents would have loved to know.’
“Looking at those roots is educational and allows me to honour my family’s history and my grandparents, who did so much for me. I am going to preserve this. Being a Hakka mui [girl] is such a huge and integral part of who I am and my identity.
“Now that they’re gone, I never want to forget that.”


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How Instagram influencer who speaks Hakka Chinese honours her unique family roots

Toronto-based content creator Jephina Lueche has a Chinese-Jamaican mother who has never been to China. Lueche now makes videos teaching Hakka on Instagram. Photo: Jephina Lueche

Toronto-based content creator Jephina Lueche, who has a Chinese-Jamaican mother and Guyanese father, was primarily raised by her Chinese grandparents, who came from southern China and spoke to her in Hakka. Photo: Jephina Lueche

Lueche with her maternal grandmother, Lue-Lee Chew Lenn, in 2008. Photo: Jephina Lueche

Lueche (fourth left) with her sister, cousins and grandparents in the early 1990s in Toronto. Photo: Jephina Lueche

Lueche with her maternal grandfather, Lue Shue Shin, in 2008. Photo: Jephina Lueche

A Christmas family photo with Lueche (front, centre) and her cousins, aunts, uncle and maternal grandparents in the early 1990s. Photo: Jephina Lueche

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Family & Relationships

Of Chinese and Guyanese descent, Jephina Lueche posts Instagram videos focusing on Hakka culture and her multicultural family background


Of Chinese and Guyanese descent, Jephina Lueche posts Instagram videos focusing on Hakka culture and her multicultural family background.


Asian diaspora

Social media

Shenzhen

How Instagram influencer who speaks Hakka Chinese honours her unique family roots

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Of Chinese and Guyanese descent, Jephina Lueche posts Instagram videos focusing on Hakka culture and her multicultural family background

Of Chinese and Guyanese descent, Jephina Lueche posts Instagram videos focusing on Hakka culture and her multicultural family background