From Street Sketches to a Cup of Coffee: How Cherry Yeung Hands “Seen and Loved” to Strangers

In Hong Kong this July, a tiny sunflower appeared on top of a cup of coffee.

It showed up inside Wooo Coffee in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. On the coaster were the words “You are Seen & Loved,” and along the wall sat pieces and keychains from local creative brand Cute Soulz, as if someone had quietly carved out a place to pause inside the city’s racing rhythm.

For Cherry Yeung (Yeung Ho-ching), this Cute Soulz coffee was never just another brand collaboration.

Long before it landed on a cafe table, Cute Soulz was a street sketch, a small gift she worked up the courage to hand a stranger, and a line she once badly needed someone to say to her.

Cute Soulz is a little like a sunflower, and a little like the easily overlooked inner child inside each of us. What it wants to remind people is simple: whatever you are going through, your worth does not change because of a grade, a job, other people’s opinions, or one moment when life did not go your way.

But before she could give that line to anyone else, Cherry once needed someone to say it to her too.

She once believed she was a failure

Five years ago, Cherry did not feel like she was walking toward a dream.

In Hong Kong’s public exam, the DSE, one subject slipped, and it kept her out of the university she wanted. The road ahead seemed to slam shut. She loved to draw, but in the eyes of reality and society, drawing was so often dismissed as a hobby, not a career, and certainly not a stable path through life.

Later, her family used their savings to send her to Australia to study architecture. She studied hard and worked hard to settle into a new life, but a deep sense of inferiority stayed with her. She could not find her own worth, and there were times she felt there was nothing about her that deserved to be loved.

Back then, it was as if she were watching herself from very far away.

She clearly existed, yet felt that no one truly saw her.

And it was precisely because she had once longed so badly to be seen that the small kindnesses from strangers, when they came, settled so deeply inside her.

A stranger’s kindness made her feel real again

Arriving in Australia alone, with no family or friends nearby, the loneliness of the low moments only magnified.

But certain small things slowly stayed with Cherry instead. A stranger’s “good morning,” someone holding a door for her, a brief smile. To other people they might be everyday courtesies, but to her, in that moment, they felt like a reminder.

There were still people in the world who saw that she was here.

It was not some enormous rescue, but it was enough to let a person full of self-doubt feel, again, that she still existed. She began to understand that being seen does not have to mean being praised, approved of, or liked by many. Sometimes it is simply that someone, for one moment, stops and acknowledges that you exist.

She had been caught by these small kindnesses, and so she began to think about giving that feeling back to others, in the way she knew best.

So she chose to draw.

Her first drawing took four hours to hand over

Before she handed a drawing to a stranger on the street for the first time, Cherry was, in truth, terrified.

That day she had drawn a flight attendant, then waited four hours before she finally worked up the courage to walk over. She was afraid the woman would find her strange, and afraid the gesture would not be received.

But it did not turn into the awkwardness she had imagined.

The flight attendant’s reaction to the drawing was warm. She even gave Cherry cabin snacks and a handwritten card in return, saying she did not know how to repay her, and encouraging her to keep going.

In that moment, Cherry finally understood that it was more than a piece of paper.

It was a gesture of being seen, and proof that one person was willing to draw close to another. After that, she began to believe that drawing was not only her own hobby, but could also become a way of letting people feel seen again.

She started looking for the people in the city who needed a little light

After that, Cherry kept drawing strangers on the street, in subway stations, near markets and restaurants.

She was especially drawn to people who worked on their feet, whose faces looked a little numb. Sometimes it was someone handing out flyers, sometimes a shop worker in the middle of a rush, sometimes a person with no smile left. They were not the most eye-catching people, but they were often the ones the city passed over most easily.

Once, in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, she drew an older woman handing out flyers. The woman looked rather stern, and from a distance, as she drew, Cherry was a little afraid too. But when she handed the drawing over, the woman’s eyes suddenly welled up, and she said gently, “Thank you, I really needed this warmth.”

That contrast shook Cherry.

It turned out that some people can look hard on the outside without it meaning they do not need comfort. Many people have simply gotten used to holding it together, used to a blank expression, used to being overlooked in daily life.

And a single drawing can, sometimes, make a person suddenly remember: I am not invisible.

It was through these encounters that Cherry slowly became sure of what she wanted to do. Not simply to draw something pretty, but to use her work to offer a moment of tenderness to a person at their most unguarded.

Cute Soulz does not only comfort others, it comforts her too

The message Cute Soulz has always carried, “You are Seen & Loved,” is really what Cherry wanted to say to herself five years ago.

She wanted to tell that version of herself, the one who felt like a failure, worthless, undeserving of love: you are seen. Your effort, your feelings, everything you gave, none of it was meaningless.

A street sketch happens in an instant. She hands the drawing over, the other person takes it, and then they each return to their own lives. That connection is short, but it is real. Later, Cherry began to hope the feeling could linger a little longer, that it could be taken home, and could remind someone, in their own low moment, not to forget themselves.

And so Cute Soulz slowly took shape.

In drawing for strangers, she was also healing herself. Every time someone smiled, every time a person felt understood because of her drawing, something in her heart lit up too. She describes the feeling as the little sunflower inside her glowing again.

It turned out that giving is not one-directional.

When she handed out warmth, that warmth came home with her too.

One little sunflower, standing for everyone’s inner child

Cute Soulz was born out of Cherry’s understanding of the inner child.

She had once taught herself psychology, and began to realize how much trauma, emotion, and the subconscious are tied to the inner child. To truly heal, you cannot only deal with the surface. You have to go back to a deeper place, and hold again the person who was once hurt and overlooked, yet has been there all along.

The sunflower, meanwhile, came from her mother’s favorite flower.

Yellow, bright, full of positive energy, like a point of light in the dark. So she brought the inner child together with this little sunflower and turned it into a symbol of healing.

Cute Soulz looks cute, but cuteness is not the point. What Cherry hopes for more is that when people see it, they remember there is a child inside them too, one that needs care. That child may have been hurt, may have felt not good enough, but it still deserves to be held.

From the street into a cafe, giving comfort a place to pause

This time, Cute Soulz stepped into Wooo Coffee in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong.

When Cherry first walked into the space, she felt how healing the environment was. People talked in low voices, there were pets, there were children, and the whole place carried a warm, lived-in feeling. Later, she got to talking with the owner, and it grew into this collaboration.

The cafe would launch a limited-time “Cute Soulz coffee.” The coffee comes with Cute Soulz latte art, the coaster carries the message “You are Seen & Loved,” and keychains and pieces sit along the wall.

Those details do not need to announce themselves loudly. They can be discovered slowly, while a customer drinks coffee, rests, sits alone, or chats with a friend.

For Cherry, this was not just another brand collaboration.

In the past, when she handed drawings to strangers on the street, she often left right after, without much chance to talk. That comfort was direct, and it was fleeting. This time, she hoped that through the space of the cafe, Cute Soulz could be more than a drawing that appears out of nowhere, and instead become an experience that can be felt, lingered in, even carried away.

From a street sketch to a cup of Cute Soulz coffee, the form changed, but the message did not.

She still wanted to leave a small place inside the city’s fast rhythm, one that reminds people they are still worth seeing.

Behind the tenderness, there is a hard part few people see

Cute Soulz looks tender, cute, and healing, but running a brand is not always healing in itself.

Cherry admits that starting a brand so young, without enough experience, meant she was sometimes underestimated, and there were times she was taken advantage of. As more and more people came to know Cute Soulz, outside opinions, social pressure, and business decisions made her wonder whether she could really carry that line, “You are Seen & Loved.”

It is not that she never worried about whether a gesture from the heart, once it became a product, a collaboration, a brand, might slowly be diluted by commercialization.

But precisely because she once needed that line so badly, she understands all the more that Cute Soulz cannot be only a cute product. What truly matters is whether the brand can hold on to the sincerity it started with.

As long as that love comes from the heart, she knows she is still headed in the right direction.

She wants to give the words she once needed to more people

Faith is also a crucial foundation that carried Cherry to where she is today.

At her lowest point in Australia, she once felt a very deep love at church, and a sudden stillness settled over her heart. That experience let her understand a person’s worth anew, not defined by social standards, credentials, grades, or achievements, but coming from something deeper within.

That belief later became the core of what Cute Soulz wants to convey.

In a city as fast as Hong Kong, so many people are rushing, studying, working, accounting for their lives, with little room to stop and ask themselves: am I actually tired? Have I taken good care of my own heart?

Cherry hopes Cute Soulz can be a small but real reminder.

You have already done enough.

Sometimes you can pause, hold yourself, and tell yourself you have worked hard.

Being the lead means believing you too deserve to be seen and loved

If she could say one thing to the version of herself just starting to draw strangers on the street, Cherry would say, “Do not doubt yourself.”

Because back then she may not have known that what she handed over was not just a drawing, but the very affirmation she had once needed most. She may not have known that those seemingly small kindnesses would slowly grow into a character, a brand, a cup of coffee, and become a reminder inside many people’s hearts.

For Cherry, becoming the lead of your own life is not about winning a lot of applause, nor about finally living up to what the world approves of. It is about being willing, at the moment you once felt undeserving of love, to see your own worth again. It is about choosing, at the moment you once doubted that drawing had any future, to hand tenderness to the world through your work.

She once badly needed someone to tell her: you are loved, and you are seen.

Later, she drew that line for strangers, wove it into Cute Soulz, and left it beside a cup of coffee. And all that tenderness she gave away slowly brought her back to herself.

This is not simply a story about giving warmth to others.

It is about a person slowly discovering that the very comfort she once needed most could also become the strength to catch someone else.

If someone out there is feeling unseen, feeling undeserving of love, Cherry wants to tell them, through Cute Soulz: your worth is not decided by the outside world. The kindness, courage, and strength you thought did not matter have been there all along.

Maybe you have just gone too long without turning back to look at yourself.

Maybe that little sunflower inside you never truly went out.