China Story editor Linda Jaivin interviews Louisa about her latest book — Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong, New York: Riverhead Books, 2022 — which looks at the durability and characteristics of Hong Kong identity from ancient times to the present and restores ‘Hong Kong voices’, in all their power and powerlessness, to the centre of the Hong Kong story.

Q1. The ‘King of Kowloon’ is a man who, convinced that his family owned Kowloon before the British stole it from them, devoted his life to graffiti-ing his genealogical claims to the territory on walls, electricity boxes and numerous other places across Hong Kong. He is a central figure in Indelible City. You even use his calligraphy in your chapter titles. What is it about this marginal yet iconic figure — poor, not well-educated, possibly mad — that makes him the perfect symbol for Hong Kong (so often seen as wealthy, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan)?  

I’ve been really interested in the ‘King of Kowloon’ because he is so fungible and flexible as a symbolic figure, and I think that’s why he’s also so attractive. He’s an almost prismatic figure. How you interpret his symbolism depends on the angle from which you’re looking at him. Very early on, people mainly talked about the fact that he was working-class, marginalised, an outsider, and there was very little discussion at all of his claim over the land, the idea of sovereignty. That was something that came up later as the situation changed in Hong Kong. People began to label him the first localist, but at the same time he was also becoming a brand that represented Hong Kong, a shorthand for Hong Kong. He was commoditised by actual brands, big and small, from the high-end fashion designer William Tang, all the way down to Goods of Desire, who reproduced his calligraphy on underwear and bags – you can buy cushion covers and everything. So he became a commodity as well. Later he was seen as an artist even though he never saw or called himself that. I think it was that potential for him to be viewed in different ways across time that attracted me. When I was doing the ABC podcast, the ‘King of Kowloon’, I talked to people like the legislator Ted Hui, now in exile in Australia and he described the King of Kowloon as ‘a prophet’. Other people called him a shaman. That whole change in the way people viewed him attracted me as a writer, as well as the idea of a mystery, a story that you could really unpack and explore – I’ve always been interested in stories that are hard to tell. I like the challenge and this to me was this sort of ultimate journalistic challenge.

Q2. Discussing Hong Kong’s multiple historical identities and frequently redrawn borders, you liken Hong Kong to a ‘shimmering chimera that was constantly changing shape depending on the angle of viewing.’ You grew up there, worked there as a journalist, have been a visitor and even protester. How has its shape changed in your view?

No place is static, but I think Hong Kong has really changed, and in so many different ways. Its shape has changed physically over the years since I grew up there. The harbour has grown smaller and smaller, and whole areas of the sea have been reclaimed, to make the airport of Chek Lap Kok, for example. So the actual physical shape of Hong Kong has changed, but also its height, as skyscrapers have become ever higher. There have been these physical changes, but there have been other changes as well: it’s a place in motion. But what we see now is an attempt by the Hong Kong government and China to pin down Hong Kong, to cement one version of it and one version of its history — the official narrative. How Hong Kongers have seen themselves and Hong Kong has also changed over the years. Early on it was much more of a sojourners’ place, where people went on the way to somewhere else. It was only in the sixties and seventies that that began to shift. These new cities were being built in the New Territories. You were getting more than one generation of families born in Hong Kong, and it became not just a social destination but a home. Now with these political changes, how the people view Hong Kong is changing yet again and for many Hong Kongers those changes are turning the city that has been home into something quite unrecognisable.

Q3. You write that the history of Eurasians in Hong Kong — a community you have been part of — is one of ‘disappearance’. On the one hand, they were often, as you say, ‘excluded from the clan lineage records that anchored Chinese identity’. On the other, they ‘erased themselves from sight.’ How did this happen, and what does the future look like for Eurasian and other non-Chinese Hong Kong people under the increasingly nationalist regime?

It’s a feature of the history of Eurasians that they have not just been excluded from versions of history, even family history, but that they have excluded and erased themselves. We see that from historical records in the nineteenth century when the very category of Eurasians disappeared, as noone was willing to identify as Eurasian, even though the actual number of Eurasians was increasing at the time. To me, that idea of self-erasure is really tragic.

Back then it was so difficult, almost impossible, to  function as someone who was both Chinese and Western. They would have to choose either to be Chinese, or to be Western, and very few Eurasians managed to navigate that successfully. The nationalism nowadays in Xi Jinping’s China and the Communist Party’s conflation of state and Party, its capture of the very notion of Chineseness is, I think, really alarming for Eurasians and non-Chinese Hong Kong people as well. It’s deliberately exclusionary, and that bodes ill not just for Eurasian people but for Hong Kong’s future as an international city.

Q4. One of the interesting aspects of your book is how, in contrast to so many histories of Hong Kong that begin with the Opium Wars, you examine its ancient histories and myths. One of your interviewees remarks that the King of Kowloon struck such a ‘deep chord’ in Hong Kong because ‘the Cantonese mindset is characterised by a subversive and revolutionary yearning for lost dynasties.’ What does this mean, and why have we not got that memo sooner?

According to Chinese history, Hong Kong was the place to which the last heirs to the Song dynasty fled, and that act of imperial flight left a profound mark on Hong Kong culture. The site of enthronement still exists — there’s even an MTR station named after it — and there’s also a popular feast dish of various delicacies layered in a large bowl — pun choi — that supposedly dates back to that time. My interviewee was also referring to Hong Kong’s physical and political distance from the imperial centre of power, and how that helped shape a rebellious, subversive mindset, which was then amplified by the use of a different language, Cantonese, from the imperial centre. I think that memo — as you put it — hasn’t been passed on because it has not been in the interests of Hong Kong’s successive colonial rulers to frame Hong Kong identity in those terms. Instead, both the British and the Chinese rulers of Hong Kong have hewn closely to the same message: that Hong Kongers have always been purely economic actors without much interest in politics. This has never been true, but it seems they hoped that if they repeated this fiction enough, even Hong Kongers would come to believe it. We can see from the events of the last ten years how wrong that turned out to be.

Q5. What is it about Cantonese, as spoken in Hong Kong, that is so central to Hong Kong identity — and what role has it played in the various protests?

Cantonese is central to Hong Kong identity, because it is the language of Hong Kong, and I use the word ‘language’ advisedly. Many scholars would argue that Cantonese is closer to Classical Chinese than Putonghua, or the standard Mandarin that is spoken on the mainland. In its written form, Cantonese uses ancient participles and fantizi, the traditional characters that are no longer used on the mainland. Cantonese is integral to the Hong Kong identity in many ways. One, because it is not the language of the mainland — until recently, even the Cantonese spoken across the border in Guangzhou was different from the Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong. Just learning it and speaking Cantonese can be an act of assertion of a separate identity. The nature of Cantonese is profane, it’s sweary, it’s a little bit subversive. The role it has played in the protests has been really interesting. It’s much more flexible than Mandarin. There is this linguistic inventiveness of a level not allowed on the mainland. Protesters were even creating new characters. The most famous example was the creation of a character for ‘freedom c**t’ — using a combination of the three characters that make up freedom 自由 and c**t 閪 (see illustration below) — a phrase that a policeman used against some protesters early on. The protest movement appropriated it and made all these posters and t-shirts using this new Chinese character ‘freedom c**t’, written in Roman letters as ‘freedom-hi’ after the Cantonese pronunciation. These new Chinese characters were unintelligible to mainlanders.

Q6. During the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement of 2014, one of the protest’s leaders, Benny Tai, told you that ‘Hong Kong laws provide the protection for us to have this kind of movement’. Were he and others like him naïve, or were they betrayed, and if so, by whom exactly? Was it possible to foresee the crackdown to come?

I don’t think it’s naive to believe in the rule of law, or to believe in a government that upholds the rule of law. It might have been naive to believe that a government ultimately loyal to the Communist Party of China would uphold a common law system in its jurisdiction, but that’s exactly what ‘One Country Two Systems’ pledged. When he was sentenced for the Umbrella Movement, Umbrella movement co-founder Chan Kin-man said, ‘In the verdict, the judge commented we are naive, believing that by having an Occupy movement we can attain democracy. But what is more naive than believing in One Country Two Systems?’

Hong Kongers have been betrayed at various points in their history by successive rulers in different ways, but this particular betrayal was so painful because Hong Kongers had believed they would be protected by the systems both British and Chinese promised would remain in place for fifty years after the return of sovereignty. There are those who argue that a crackdown was always inevitable, but the speed and scope of that crackdown has been brutal and shocking. I don’t think anyone foresaw how quickly Hong Kong’s institutions would be dismantled, or the huge exodus of Hong Kongers from their home.

Q7. Staying with 2014 for a moment, you describe a poster of the Umbrella Movement that read ‘This is NOT a revolution’ as having ‘said it all’. What is this ‘all’ that it said?

The message was that this was not a movement to overthrow or forcibly replace the government. The Umbrella Movement came after a series of actions  working within the constraints of the system to widen the democratic mandate in choosing a chief executive. The Basic Law had always promised universal suffrage but provided no timetable.  Methods for widening the mandate included running polls, which more than 790,000 people took part in, to find how the population wanted to nominate candidates for chief executive. The aim was to carry out democratic deliberations on reform through popular consultations. The act of civil disobedience that was Occupy Central was originally intended to be a one-day event. The failure of the government to compromise or give any ground during the Umbrella Movement stoked the dissatisfaction that then exploded during 2019.

Q8. You write that watching the protest movement of 2019, you’d had a feeling that people in Hong Kong had been ‘living in a kind of simulacrum, a political make-believe where our imaginations had been colonised for so long that we were desperate to believe whatever our rulers told us, no matter how much evidence there was to the contrary.’ Is there a danger that in the future – even the near future – that the people of Hong Kong will simply move from one simulacrum to another, this one designed by Beijing?

There is a danger that the people of Hong Kong are moving from one reality to another, but the evidence shows that they are far less willing to buy into Beijing’s political make-believe. In this case, the challenge is epistemological. It confronts Hong Kongers on a daily basis, whether it be through high-ranking officials telling outright lies or legal charges against activists and politicians that are blatantly concocted for political ends. The reality that Hong Kong’s rulers are building is not so much a simulacrum but something more akin to a political re-education territory, where actions and words must be policed at all times to avoid violating ill-defined laws that can be applied retroactively. Hong Kongers’ reaction to this can be seen through the large numbers leaving the territory.

Q9. In 2020 you spoke to the playwright Wong Kwok-kui about a series of historical plays he had created several years earlier about Hong Kong. You write that ‘The very existence of the national security legislation restricted our conversation like a corset.’ If open conversation on Hong Kong identity is now impossible, what are the implications for that identity itself?

The implications for Hong Kong identity are far-reaching. We are seeing a campaign against expressions of Hong Kong identity which is playing out across politics, society, education, and all other arenas. One area that is most concerning is the campaign of intimidation to silence academics who study or research Hong Kong identity itself. We’re seeing the same pattern recurring, which begins with attacks by the pro-Beijing state-run newspapers, and often ends with those academics having to leave their jobs and sometimes to flee Hong Kong. This purge of education has targeted people like the eminent sociologist Ching-Kwan Lee, the political scientist Brian Fong, and cultural studies scholars Law Wing-sang and Hui Po-keung. These attacks muzzle these scholars and try to discredit their work, with the long-term aim of rewriting Hong Kong’s history so that it conforms to the Communist Party of China’s official narrative. I remember in 2019 one of my sources told me that they feared that the phrase  ‘heunggongyan’ 香港人 or ‘Hong Konger’ would itself one day be illegal. At the time, I thought they were overreacting. Today I fear that day is approaching.

Q10. You make a convincing case that by August 2021, Hong Kong was no longer what it used to be — culturally and intellectually vibrant and as a haven for political and other non-conformists in the Chinese world. What then is ‘indelible’ about the ‘Indelible City’?

Hong Kong is such a layered place, as literally shown by the city’s walls with their layers of political graffiti. Layers may be covered over, but they often also resurface in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. Even if the outward manifestations of protest are covered up, those expressions of discontent have been written onto the brains of Hong Kongers over the years in a way that cannot be reformatted. I like the contrast this title makes with my last book, The People’s Republic of Amnesia, which refers to the way that the CCP managed to excise memories of the killings of 1989 and silence discussion, even by those who were witnesses. That same playbook will not work with Hong Kongers. Figures show that 140,000 people left the territory in the first three months of 2020 alone. I think that’s testament to the fact that Hong Kongers would rather leave their hometown forever than sacrifice their freedom of thought.

The post Ten Questions for Authors: Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong appeared first on The China Story.

Questions prepared by Ke Ren

Q1. Chiang Yee and His Circle was inspired by a pair of events in Oxford in the summer of 2019: the unveiling of an English Heritage Blue Plaque to commemorate Chiang Yee (only the third Chinese figure to be so honoured) and an accompanying symposium at the Ashmolean Museum to celebrate Chiang’s life and work. What is the significance of this public commemoration and renewed attention to Chiang Yee in the UK?

In the summer of 2019, a symposium was held to mark the years that writer and artist Chiang Yee 蔣彝 (1903-1977) spent in Oxford more than half a century before. The symposium was organised by Anne Witchard and took place at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, (at a time when Paul Bevan was working there as Christensen Fellow in Chinese Painting). The papers given were early versions of what would later become the basis for individual chapters of the book, Chiang Yee and His Circle. They were presented by Diana Yeh, Sarah Cheang, Frances Wood, Tessa Thorniley, Paul French and the three editors of the book. Later on, two additional contributors were invited to write chapters: Ke Ren, of the College of the Holy Cross in the US, and Craig Clunas, Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford. Craig had been a member of the audience at the conference and was involved in organising the erection of a commemorative Blue Plaque in Chiang Yee’s memory. Blue Plaques, erected by various organisations (in the case of Chiang Yee, the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board) can be seen all over the UK, put up to commemorate people of note at their former residences. To date, only three Chinese figures have Blue Plaques in their memory: novelist, Lao She 老舍 (1899-1966); ‘Father of Modern China’ Sun Yat-sen 孫中山 (1866-1925); and Chiang Yee, who lived at 28 Southmoor Road, Oxford from 1940 to 1955. It is hoped that more will follow. One possible candidate for this might be, Shih-I Hsiung 熊式一 (1902-1991), Chiang Yee’s associate and friend, who also became an Oxford resident in the 1940s. Chiang Yee’s biographer, Da Zheng, was a special guest at the unveiling of the plaque, as well as the keynote speaker at the symposium, having made his way to Oxford from Boston in the USA. Following the symposium, on one of the hottest days of the summer, a number of the audience made their way on foot to where the plaque was to be unveiled. In Southmoor Road, the current owners of the house opened their doors and offered their hospitality to the assembled crowd.

Even though Chiang Yee may not be a household name, there is a growing interest in his books amongst the general reading public and in academia worldwide. It is hoped that this collection will be read by those who are already familiar with his writings, as well as new readers attracted by the fascinating story of Chiang Yee and his circle in the UK.

Q2. This book tells the story of a group of Chinese writers and artists who gathered in the Hampstead neighbourhood in Northwest London in the 1930s. How did this area become such a central node of a diasporic cultural network, and how does this story revise our conventional images of Chinese life in Britain in the early to mid-twentieth century?

In the 1930s, the Borough of Hampstead was home to one of the most vibrant artistic communities in the UK. It was in this area of North London (now in the Borough of Camden), that Chiang Yee and Shih-I Hsiung lived, before they were forced to relocate to Oxford after the destruction of their homes in the London Blitz. While in Hampstead, their neighbours included other Chinese friends and colleagues, the historian Tsui Chi 崔驥 (1909-1950), and poets Wang Lixi 王禮錫 (1901-1939) and Lu Jingqing 陸晶清 (1907-1993), as well as countless other artists and writers, some well-known, others now forgotten. Close by to the homes of the Chinese intellectuals, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Ben Nicholson had their studios. This group of English artists was dubbed ‘A Gentle Nest of Artists’ by their friend, local resident, poet and art critic, Herbert Read.

Just around the corner from them, in Lawn Road, was the modernist block of flats now known as the ‘Isokon’. Built by Jack Pritchard and designed by Wells Coates, it was inspired by continental architectural movements. Members of the Bauhaus who had fled Germany due to persecution from the Nazi government, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, all lived for a time in or around the modernist block of flats, working on their own designs in London. Other artists made their homes close by, many of them also having fled Nazi persecution. From the point of view of sheer numbers, perhaps the most notable group of artists was the Artists’ International Association, the mostly left-wing members of which aligned themselves with the Socialist Realism of the Soviet Union.

The single figure who linked these diverse groups together was Herbert Read, a friend and neighbour of Chiang Yee. Read contributed prefaces for two of Chiang Yee’s books. In his publications of the time, Chiang Yee wrote about Read and other friends, the local streets of Belsize Park and Hampstead, and his daily walks on nearby Hampstead Heath.

The Chinese writers and artists have received far less attention than other artists who lived in the area. This book goes some way to revising the conventional view of what made Hampstead famous as a flourishing artistic area in London.

Q3. How did the writings and lectures by Chiang Yee and his cohort help transform British understandings of Chinese culture (including Chinese aesthetics and art in the 1930s) and challenge pre-existing stereotypes?

In the 1930s, the British public’s knowledge of China and ‘the Chinese’ was limited. Exposure to China through films and novels, more often than not, showed Chinese people in a less than complimentary light. Sax Rohmer’s evil genius, Fu Manchu, the murderous Mr. Wu, and Thomas Burke’s Limehouse Nights: Tales of Chinatown, all displayed highly exoticized versions of an imagined Orient that persuaded a British audience of the iniquities of China and the Chinese people. Chiang Yee and Shih-I Hsiung were amongst a growing number of people in the 1930s who were able to present another aspect of China to the British public. They did this partly through the broadcasts they made for BBC Radio on various aspects of Chinese culture, but also through their published writings. Even though Hsiung’s hit West End play Lady Precious Stream (1934) itself showed a watered down and somewhat distorted version of Chinese drama, he certainly had no intention of displaying China in a bad light, and it became highly popular at a time when a China craze had already taken hold in certain quarters of fashionable British society. It was at this time that Chiang Yee was able to carve out a niche for himself as a writer and artist, with the publication of a series of highly popular books that sold themselves on the notion of Britain seen through Chinese eyes. The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland, published in 1937, was the first of these. They helped to transform public opinion about Chinese people in Britain.

Q4. Chiang Yee is known for his persona of ‘the Silent Traveller’ in his widely-read Silent Travellers series. What new light does your book shed on the self-fashioning of cross-cultural identities by Chinese writers and other personalities in Britain?

In the early 1930s, right before his departure for London, Chiang Yee created a new name for himself: Zhongya 重啞, meaning completely mute or dumb. Disappointed by the rampant corruption he had witnessed within in the Kuomintang, the ruling party at the time, Chiang resigned from his post of county magistrate and vowed never again to be involved in politics. Not long after his arrival in London, he began to use the pen name Yaxingzhe 啞行者, that is, ‘the Silent Traveller’. It was a deliberate choice. The word ‘Silent’, or mute, expressed his sense of language inadequacy, uprootedness, and alienation as he strived to establish a new cultural identity in the West. Chiang used this pen name for the titles of his travel series, such as The Silent Traveller in Oxford and The Silent Traveller in New York. People soon realized that this persona — a Chinese man, always wearing a smile on his face, walking slowly and pensively — was in fact extraordinarily observant and wise. He drew people’s attention to things around them that had often been overlooked, and he would make interesting comments both refreshing and convincing. His writings, humorous and relatable, have won the hearts of thousands of readers throughout the world. Chiang’s self-fashioning in this case proved successful, and it was a strategy employed by his fellow writers and friends as well. For example, Wang Lixi, a passionate poet and political activist, adopted the English name ‘Shelley Wang’, after the Romantic poet Percy Shelley. The name underlined similarities between the two in their fiery revolutionary fervor and poetic energy. Clothing and bilingualism are some other examples. Chiang Yee and Shih-I Hsiung often dressed in traditional Chinese scholar gowns or cited Chinese classical poems in their work to remind the public of their cross-cultural identities.

Q5. A notable aspect of this collection of essays is that it touches on engagement by the Chinese in Britain with cultural production beyond writing and art to ballet and film, for example. How does this complicate our understandings of the different cultural spaces and genres open to Chinese artists in Britain at the time?

We think it fair to say that historians have generally overlooked Chinese engagement with cultural production in Britain during the early twentieth century. Histories of the Chinese diaspora are inclined to focus on the dockside communities of working men, with some acknowledgement of transient students, such as the poet Xu Zhimo 徐志摩 (1897-1931), who studied in the US and then Great Britain between 1918 and 1922, for example. Initially we focused just on Chiang Yee, who was equally artist and writer, and who combined these talents to great popular effect. Once we began delving into the histories of his cohort in this country, a highly educated group of men and women, we became aware of how diligently they worked to foster connections with London’s cultural elites. The modernist appreciation of a Chinese visual aesthetic, thanks to the efforts of art critics like Laurence Binyon and Roger Fry, paved the way for the acceptance of an ‘authentic Chinese’ voice in painterly circles. By the 1930s (often in the interests of political anti-fascism) sympathetic publishers, broadcasters, journal editors, theatre producers, composers, and choreographers actively sought out Chinese contributors and collaborators, widening the group’s access to creative work in a range of genres and so encouraging their artistic versatility.

Indeed, Chiang Yee and many other Chinese engaged with various aspects of cultural production, often experimenting and exploring new forms. Anne’s essay discusses Chiang Yee’s stage and costume design for the ballet The Birds. Likewise, Shih-I Hsiung attempted to make films, as Paul Bevan’s essay reveals. And some of these writers prepared scripts for the BBC and even broadcast on its radio programs. Chiang Yee was the first artist in the world to paint the giant panda, promoting its image in his artworks and children’s books.

Q6. As you note in the Introduction, the Chinese personalities featured in this book inhabited ‘a world of literary and artistic interconnectedness and wartime co-operation that is only now beginning to be explored in scholarship.’ How did both the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War Two in Europe condition the writings and public activities of Chiang Yee and his cohort and create new opportunities for other Chinese writers in Britain?

It was following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937 that a number of literary editors in Britain, particularly those politically inclined to the Left who viewed Japan’s invasion of China as an act of fascist aggression, began to seek out and publish short stories by contemporary Chinese writers. Among the publications they represented were: New Writing and its highly successful offshoot The Penguin New Writing, Left Review, The New Statesman & Nation, the Times Literary Supplement, The Listener, Life & Letters Today and Time & Tide.

As the brutality of the Japanese occupation of China began to be reported in the West, editors and publishers sympathetic to China’s cause concluded that literature had a vital role to play in bringing about China’s salvation. The writer Hsiao Ch’ien 蕭乾 (1910-1999) commented that the moment ‘China began to exist in the eyes of the British’ was 7 December 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. He noted that publishers, radio broadcasters and film studios increasingly approached him to work on cultural projects that might demystify China for the British. All at once, Hsiao found that he was no longer viewed as an ‘enemy alien’ but instead as a ‘member of the grand alliance’. China’s new ally status sparked a higher demand in Britain for books about contemporary China, such as those offered in the Penguin Specials series of short polemical works and many of Gollancz’s Left Book Club titles. Hsiao’s survey of contemporary Chinese literature, Etchings of a Tormented Age persuaded Eric Blair (better known by his pen name George Orwell), Head of the BBC’s Far Eastern Division, that a series on Chinese writers was overdue. World War Two then was a key moment when Chinese writers in Britain, supported by a network of editors and publishers, sought to enhance understanding of their country and their people through literature and other cultural expressions.

Q7. The circle of Chinese writers and artists explored in this volume also includes such figures as Shih-I and Dymia Hsiung, Wang Lixi and Lu Jingqing, Tsui Chi, Hsiao Ch’ien, Chun-chan Yeh, and Yang Xianyi. Did they always collaborate or were their friendships impacted by what one author calls ‘the economy of racial representation’ and if so, how?

The memoirs, biographies, and correspondence which document this period of their lives show that they shared not only their homes, family life and friendship, but also their professional networks. They were generous with their contacts and introductions. For example, Shih-I Hsiung introduced Chiang to his publisher at Methuen and later Chiang wrote Methuen a passionate letter of recommendation on behalf of Chun-chan Yeh 葉君健 (1914-1999). During the war, Chiang recommended Hsiao, Hsiung and later Yeh to the BBC as substitute speakers when he was not available, and he put forward Tsui in discussions over the publication of children’s books about Chinese history for Puffin Books. However, as Diana Yeh’s essay argues, although their association was characterised by collaboration and conviviality, their solidarity as writers and artists was also threatened by the political economy of racial representation. With only a limited number of Chinese artists or writers admitted to visibility, they were inevitably burdened with the expectation that they were representing their ‘culture’ or nation. Contestations over what kinds of ‘Chineseness’ should be represented became fraught with tension. Hsiung participated in this economy out of perceived necessity. His experiences in navigating the British cultural world had shown that he could best gain visibility by crafting an aura of exoticised Chineseness that appealed to a Western audience, hence the popularity of his play Lady Precious Stream. As migrants who were also artists they had a shared calling — that of contesting dominant perceptions of the Chinese circulating in Europe and the USA. Yet the way in which they carried the burden of representation tested their relationships. Not only Chiang and Hsiung, but also many other prominent diasporic Chinese figures in their circles at the time, came to confront each other as competitors, rather than allies.

Q8. One key shared experience among these Chinese writers and artists is that of exile, exacerbated by the Japanese invasion of their homeland. Yet Britain too was threatened with aerial attacks. They had to choose whether they would stay in Britain, return to China, or move elsewhere. How do themes of exile, displacement, belonging and community figure in their life, work, and legacy?

This is an important question. Indeed, the Japanese invasion in the 1930s affected these Chinese writers and artists stranded in Britain. While some went back to China to participate in the war of resistance, many stayed overseas. Among them were Chiang Yee, Shih-I Hsiung, Tsui Chi, Hsiao Ch’ien, and Yang Xianyi 楊憲益 (1915-2009). It was devastating since they were thousands of miles from their homeland, and they were constantly worried about the safety and whereabouts of their family members and friends. Then in September 1939, war broke out in Europe. London was no longer a safe haven, and they had to evacuate to neighbouring cities. Despite all this, they forged ahead courageously, promoting Chinese culture, educating the public about the significance of the Chinese resistance against Japanese invasion, and raising funds for aid to China. After the Chiang Kai-shek government fled to Taiwan in 1949, and the communists established the People’s Republic of China, many of these Chinese nationals faced a new round of difficult choices: returning to China, moving to Taiwan, or remaining overseas as stateless citizens. Chiang Yee, Shih-I Hsiung, Tsui Chi, Sye Ko Ho, Ling Shuhua, among others, decided to stay abroad. They faced serious challenges. To survive, they had to take up new jobs. For example, Sye Ko Ho and Kenneth Lo, both former diplomats, ended up in the restaurant business, and Hsiung accepted a poorly paid, short-term teaching appointment at Cambridge. For the next two decades, they could not visit mainland China because of the Cold War, nor could they communicate freely with their families there. Frances Wood’s essay, ‘Mahjong in Maida Vale’ vividly reconstructs the daily lives of the wives of Chinese exiles in London in the 1950s. These women gathered together, playing mahjong and cooking, as a way to empower themselves and support each other. It reminded us of Amy Tan’s popular novel The Joy Luck Club, which was set in the United States.

Q9. In recent years, there have been rising tensions in China’s relationship with Britain and the West. At the same time, we have also seen the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment and anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic that has severely affected Chinese diasporic communities around the world. How might the cross-cultural stories of Chiang Yee and his fellow artists and intellectuals help mitigate recurrent misunderstandings of overseas Chinese in our own time?

There has been frequent media coverage about anti-China sentiment and anti-Asian violence in the past few years. This is a very disturbing phenomenon. Nearly a century ago, when Chiang Yee arrived in Britain, he observed widespread discrimination, prejudice, and misunderstanding. Films, stage productions, and publications portrayed Chinese as ignorant, dirty, sinister, and backward.

Chiang Yee, Shih-I Hsiung, and other fellow Chinese often met young children on the street who chanted racial slurs at them. Sarah Cheang’s essay ‘Being Chiang Yee: Feeling, Difference, and Storytelling’ discusses Chiang’s responses to that. Chiang was conscious that some people would view him as inscrutable and odd simply because of his Asian features. Rather than feeling upset or reacting angrily, he used humor and diplomacy, turning those otherwise unpleasant experiences into opportunities to display his human side, make connections, and show commonalities between the East and West. Chiang Yee believed that all human beings, despite differences in language, religion, skin colour and cultural practices, share essential values. He explored those commonalities through travel and travel writing. Chiang Yee and his fellow Chinese writers saw an urgent need for mutual understanding and appreciation, and they dedicated themselves to introducing Chinese culture to the West. Today, as we are confronted with the politics of race and racism in our society, interpersonal communication and cultural exchanges are still an effective way to eradicate prejudices and misconceptions and to bring people together. In that sense, Chiang Yee and His Circle is a timely publication. It is not just a new interpretation of the historical past; it also offers an inspiring direction for moving forward.

Q10. How can interested readers access original writings and artworks by Chiang Yee and the other Chinese artists and authors? Are there reprints and translations that you could point us to?

There has been a growing interest in the cross-cultural contributions of earlier generations. Beginning in 2002, seven Silent Traveller titles have been reprinted in Britain and the United States. Since Chiang Yee’s books were mostly written in English, targeting the audience in the West, his books were not available in bookstores in China for half a century. Since 2005, eight Silent Traveller titles have been translated and published in Taiwan and China. Readers also welcomed Chinese translations of his novel The Men of the Burma Road, the memoir A Chinese Childhood, and the monograph Chinese Calligraphy. Likewise, many of the writings by Shih-I Hsiung, Hsiao Ch’ien, Wang Lixi, Yang Xianyi have been translated or published in Chinese and English. Chiang Yee and His Circle includes a bibliography, which lists a number of related publications and is a good source of broader information. It is our hope that the book will stimulate scholarly interest in the field and lead to more discussion and further discoveries about the Chinese in Britain during the twentieth century and beyond.

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