Contesting British Chinese Culture

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Introduction: Contesting British Chinese Culture

   • Ashley Thorpe, Diana Yeh

   Pages 1-29

3. The Cultural Politics of In/Visibility: Contesting ‘British Chineseness’ in the Arts

   • Diana Yeh

   Pages 31-59

4. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Dancing in the Margins/on the Border of Oblivion

   • Erika Tan

   Pages 61-66

5. “A History Written by Our Bodies”: Artistic Activism and the Agonistic Chinese Voice of Mad For Real’s Performances at the End of the Twentieth Century

   • Katie Hill

   Pages 67-83

6. Testing, Contesting

   • susan pui san lok

   Pages 85-100

7. Manchester’s Chinese Arts Centre: A Case Study in Strategic Cultural Intervention

   • Felicia Chan, Andy Willis

   Pages 101-116

8. From South China to South London: A Journey in Search of Home Through Fine Art Practice

   • Anthony Key

   Pages 117-135

9. The Artist-Photographer and Performances of Identity: The Camera as Catalyst

   • Grace Lau

   Pages 137-150

10. British Chinese Cinema and the Struggle for Recognition, Even on the Margins

    • Felicia Chan, Andy Willis

    Pages 151-167

11. Cinema of Displaced Identity

    • Rosa Fong

    Pages 169-193

12. The Arts Britain Utterly Ignored: Or, Arts Council Revenue Funding and State Intervention in British East Asian Theatre in the Late 1990s and Early 2000s

    • Ashley Thorpe

    Pages 195-222

13. FACE: Autobiographical Theatre and Cross-Cultural Considerations

    • Veronica Needa

    Pages 223-240

14. British Chinese Performance in Minor Transnational Perspective

    • Amanda Rogers

    Pages 241-260

15. Back Matter

    Pages 261-273

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This is the first text to address British Chinese culture. It explores British Chinese cultural politics in terms of national and international debates on the Chinese diaspora, race, multiculture, identity and belonging, and transnational ‘Chineseness’. Collectively, the essays look at how notions of ‘British Chinese culture’ have been constructed and challenged in the visual arts, theatre and performance, and film, since the mid-1980s. They contest British Chinese invisibility, showing how practice is not only heterogeneous, but is forged through shifting historical and political contexts; continued racialization, the currency of Orientalist stereotypes and the possibility of their subversion; the policies of institutions and their funding strategies; and dynamic relationships with transnationalisms. The book brings a fresh perspective that makes both an empirical and theoretical contribution to the study of race and cultural production, whilst critically interrogating the very notion of British Chineseness.

• British Chinese
• transnational
• cultural politics
• Chinese diaspora
• migration
• multiculture
• identity
• British politics
• neoliberal

• Department of Drama and Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

  Ashley Thorpe

• Department of Sociology, City, University of London, London, UK

  Diana Yeh

Ashley Thorpe is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama, Theatre, and Dance, at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.



Diana Yeh is Lecturer in Sociology, Culture and the Creative Industries at City, University of London, UK. 

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