Ginalina, a.k.a. Gina Lam, has enjoyed great success as a family folk entertainer.

The Vancouver musician has created five albums since 2012. Along the way, she's earned two Juno nominations along with a Parents' Choice Gold Honour Award and two Parents' Choice Silver Honour Awards.

But in a recent videotaped artist talk for this year's Vancouver TAIWANfest, Ginalina confesses that as she was growing up, it didn't cross her mind to become a professional singer-songwriter.

"I never had ambitions to become a musician in my life," she says. "It wasn't that I desired to be on a big stage, signing to thousands of people. I never thought about it. I just loved music as a way of sharing my feelings in quiet ways."

She became a full-time engineer and played music on the side.

Then, after her first Juno nomination in 2016, she began receiving so many invitations to perform that she decided to back away her other career.

It helps that she's trilingual, speaking French in addition to English and Mandarin. Ginalina has also offered many musical workshops to young people.

Passions include writing and bubble tea

Now a mother of four, Ginalina is working on a children's book called The Mighty River, which she describes as a narrative about falling in love with a river.

Writing isn't a new passion for her. In fact, she was quite compulsive about this in her childhood.

"At a young age, I just started writing," Ginalina reveals in the video above. "And when I was in elementary school, one of my teachers told me, 'Gina, you are filling up too many composition books. You have to please stop writing in my class. I can't keep up with you.' "

Her parents were Taiwanese immigrants. And while Mandarin is not her first language, Ginalina enjoys performing in Asia to share her Canadian approach to making music.

And like many people of Taiwanese ancestry, she has maintained a craving for bubble tea. In fact, after delivering her children, that was the first thing she asked for.

"I looked at my husband and said,'Now, can you please get me a bubble tea?' "