Cheng’s mother moved to Hong Kong in her 20s. Three decades later, Cheng unintentionally followed her mother's path. When Cheng was preparing for the move to Canada,  she asked her mum: “What was brought along when the move to Hong Kong took place?”

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Her mum’s reply was given casually, as if it bore little weight: “Nothing much — clothes, a duvet, some cash, documents, a few pieces of jewellery… just the necessities.”

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An entire journey had been carried within a single suitcase. From that moment, questions were left to linger:

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What was left behind?

What could not fit inside the suitcase?

What feelings arose when her daughter told her that she was going to move to Canada?

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And what was stirred in her heart when she helped her daughter pack the suitcases?

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These unanswered questions were described as the seed for two poems, which were later gathered into a zine entitled It Only Took a Suitcase. The zine was Riso printed with soy-based ink, an ink that never fully dries. When held in the hands, traces of ink remain on the fingertips, much like the faint stain of a newspaper, suggesting that fragments of stories remain with the reader, carried forward in the same way that memories travel across time and place.

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The “reading experience” has been described as a constant concern throughout Cheng’s curatorial process. On the cover of the zine, the words “Mum” and “Daughter” were hand-stitched in red thread, a tender gesture that bound the personal with the material. The zine format was chosen to allow greater flexibility as a medium, enabling experimentation with design, texture, and sequence so that the act of reading could be transformed into a tactile and intimate exchange.

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The Zine was designed as a mirror image: once the first half was completed, it was turned upside down to be read again from the opposite side. In this way, two narratives converged at the centre, reflecting and echoing one another, much like the journeys of mother and daughter.