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| Breaking the stereotypes |
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| Community | |
| Thursday, 24 May 2007 | |
 Multi talented writer, singer and performer, Anna Chen hosted the recent ground breaking series about the British Chinese community on Radio 4. Dimsum caught up with her.Anna please can you tell us a bit about yourself? I'm a writer and performer born in the far east … of London, to a Chinese father and English mother. My one-woman show, Suzy Wrong – Human Cannon, in which I had fun skewering some of the stereotypes, premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the 1990s, followed by TV appearances including Stewart Lee's Fist of Fun. My work has always been informed, however obliquely, by my political beliefs. That political dimension manifested practically when I established and ran the national anti-war press office in the Blair war years when it might have been smarter to have been focusing on my career. I thought that responding to one lot of atrocities by bombing innocent civilians in their cities was as barbaric as anything taking place at the time. And don't get me started on Iraq … When the UK Chinese were accused in the national press of starting the Foot And Mouth Disease outbreak of 2000/2001, I organised the press campaign and, as a member of the committee that coalesced around the issue, helped to negotiate with the agriculture minister, Nick Brown. An avowed anti-racist, he acknowledged that the charge had no basis and apologised to us in front of the media. This was vital because some of the Establishment seemed to be gearing up for an anti-Chinese pogrom. It was a scary time but the solidarity we found in defending ourselves was an unexpected prize. As well as being politically involved, I was creating music and, as Gurlfiend, was the only Chinese performer on the first Peace Not War CD featuring artists such as Massive Attack, Coldcut, Alabama 3, Roots Manuva, Ms Dynamite, Ani Difranco and Public Enemy. How you became involved in the recent series on Radio 4? The producer, Mukti Jain Campion, had already interviewed me for her previous BBC Radio 4 series, Beyond The Takeaway, a snapshot of Chinese life in contemporary Britain, and we were chatting about how much more there was to the Chinese community than what was usually served up. The danger of having no representation in the culture means that you are a blank canvas on which anyone can daub their versions of you. Hearing people who should know better, including the Oxbridge editor of a political magazine who publicly declared us unworthy Johnny-Come-Latelies because, "you all came over in the 1950s and 60s", was exasperating and it was clear that these pundits needed educating and de-snotting. I told Mukti about my own father who came here as a seaman in the 1920s and she proposed the series to the BBC. The rest is history ... of the Chinese in Britain. How did you find making the series? It was important that the history was told as much as possible by the Chinese themselves. Mukti put out a general call for people willing to talk about their experience here, or that of their antecedents, and I came up with my own selection of people who could help narrate the story from their own perspective. Some wonderfully knowledgeable academics helped fill the gaps with their formidable research, such as Professor Greg Benton and Diana Yeh to name but two. What were the highs and lows? In the second show, dealing with the creation of the myth of Chinatown, I was able to lampoon some of the unpleasant stereotypes that had dogged my young life, such as the evil Fu Manchu crimelord and sordid goings on in Limehouse. I also got to say one of my favourite iconic movie lines, said to Jack Nicholoson's character after he's just seen his girlfriend's brains blown away by her corrupt father in Roman Polanski's acclaimed film: "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown". Episode three, From Ship To Shore, showed working-class Chinese in struggle and their heroic participation in the allied fight against fascism, manning the merchant ships. So much for the passive Chinese man! And meeting Leslie and Connie Ho, who were born in Limehouse just a few miles up the road from where I grew up, was a delight. Our interviewees were all brilliantly informative, teaching me new stuff I'd known nothing about: did you know that The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness was shot in Snowdonia doubling as China? Or that all those Chinese in the film were there as the result of a trawl of the UK? Or that a Chinese playwright took London by storm in the 1930s? I would have liked to have covered the Cultural Revolution and how it had an impact on the Chinese here, but it was difficult finding people other than myself with first hand experience of the period, and I didn't think it was a good idea to have me blethering on about it for an entire programme. But, who knows, maybe we can deal with that subject another time. Working on the series was a wonderful opportunity to learn about my own history. What sort of responses have you had? Fantastic: Joan Bakewell made her Pick of the Week. You can see some of the responses on the BBC website. It's been a bit like joining the dots with everyone sharing and realising we have so much in common, yet there's an infinite variety of experience. I think that, in ten programmes, we've only put down a marker and I hope there will be others who build on this. What is the importance of shows like this? In order to know who we are, every human being needs to know where they came from. The famed Chinese invisibility has only been partly of our own making – the cultural gatekeepers have always had a blind spot when it came to us. At one point, it seemed that the few Chinese movie characters were all being played by Christopher Lee and Peters Sellers and Ustinov. Someone once said that one of the worst things you can do to a person is defining them. Well, we've made that a bit more difficult. Label us buffoons if you want, but understand that a lot of us died very unbaffoon-like deaths in defending this country. The series redresses a lot of the issues that have rankled and shows that we too have an inner life. It definitely represents a progressive step by the mainstream. What projects do you have on next? I'm now enjoying honing my stand-up comedy and working on my new one-woman show, MyPlace.Hell. Is there anything else you would like to add? One of my favourite time wasting pursuits is making little movies which I then stick on YouTube. You can catch them at: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=MadamMiaow Check out The Grudge, tee,hee! Find out what Anna's up to here: http://www.annachen.co.uk/ |
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