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There are currently 72 Profiles and growing.
Most recent update: 06 August, 2008.
Visible Chinese is a guide to individuals at the forefront of the UK's Chinese Culture.
Profiled individuals are included simply because they have contributed to the UK's Chinese Culture.
Visible Chinese aims to become an Authoritative Independent Listing of Achievers within the UK's Chinese Culture.
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Profiled individuals are included simply because they have contributed to the UK's Chinese Culture.
Visible Chinese aims to become an Authoritative Independent Listing of Achievers within the UK's Chinese Culture.
Read more...
Gigi Wong
Documentary Director & Editor
Culture. Entertainment. Film, TV & Radio.
Gigi has produced and directed three European Chinese documentary series for The Chinese Channel (TVBS-E) which featured Christine Lee, David Tse Ka-Shing and many other distinguished European Chinese who are in various industries. The series explores the multi-cultural identities of European Chinese and how their experiences enlighten the next generation.
Gigi is an international producer/editor specialising in documentary film making. Recent projects include 'The Biggest Chinese Restaurant In the World' (BBC - UK) which has been shortlisted in Toronto International Film Festival. 'I Wanna Be Boss' (VPRO - NL) a series on pressures of senior high school students in China. 'Beyond The Game', a documentary about internet gaming in China (VPRO - NL).
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Photo by Kate Shortt
Nancy Lam
Celebrity ChefCuisine. Film, TV & Radio.
Nancy Lam is a celebrity chef famous for her Oriental food and television appearances.
She was born in Singapore in 1948, the next to youngest as one of 10 children, to an Indonesian Mother and a Chinese Father. Her cooking skills were first nurtured as the result of her Grandmother’s teaching. This proved an excellent foundation as Nancy learned the basics of oriental cooking, a regular chore being the peeling of onions and pounding chillies.
Singapore is a multi-cultural society and Nancy used this to good effect, experimenting with Thai, Indian and other types of cuisine. Her Father owned a prawn cracker manufacturing business. He has the distinction of being the first person to have introduced polystyrene bags to Singapore.
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Liu Hong 刘宏
Professor of Chinese StudiesCulture. Education.
Chair of Chinese Studies and Professor of East Asian Studies; Director of Centre for Chinese Studies and Confucius Institute, University of Manchester.
Born in Fujian, Hong Liu was educated in Xiamen and Fudan Universities. He was a lecturer at Xiamen University for two years before he went to the Netherlands and the USA to do research and Ph.D. studies. Upon completing his Ph.D. he was offered a position as an assistant professor at the Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore, where he taught between 1995 and 2006. He was awarded tenure in 2000 and served as the Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Convener of the University’s China Studies Minor Program. He also served as a visiting fellow at Kyoto, Harvard, and Stockholm Universities for a cumulative period of about two years.
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Ma Jian
WriterLiterature.
Ma Jian was born in Qingdao, China, in 1953. After working as a photojournalist for a state-run magazine, he left China for Hong Kong in 1987 after a clampdown in which some his works were banned, but continued to return to China, notably to support the pro-democracy activist in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In 1997, he moved to Germany, and in 1999 he again moved to England.
He is the author of Red Dust, winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; The Noodle Maker, a novel; and Stick Out Your Tongue, stories about Tibet that prompted the Chinese government to ban Ma Jian’s work, and that set him on the road to exile. He is also the author of Beijing Coma, released in 2008.
He now lives in London with his partner and translator, Flora Drew.
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Edmond Yeo
CouncillorCommunity. Politics.
Councillor Edmond Yeo is the current Chairperson of the Chinese information and Advice Centre, a post he has held since September 2004. During his time in office, he has initiated a number of new projects; including a capital appeal to raise funds for the purchase of the centres own office premises.
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Gregor Benton 班国瑞
Professor of Chinese HistoryEducation. Literature.
Gregor Benton, who graduated in Oriental Studies from Cambridge in 1968, is Professor of Chinese History at Cardiff. Before that, he was Associate Professor in the Centre for Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Amsterdam (1979-89) and Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds (1989-99).
He has published books on Marxism, political humour, the history of the Chinese Communist Party, Red guerrillas in China in the 1930s, the Sino-Japanese War, dissent in China, Chinese Trotskyism, Hong Kong, the theory of moral economy, and overseas Chinese.
His Mountain Fires: The Red Army’s Three-Year War in South China, 1934-1938 (Berkeley 1992) won several awards, including the Association of Asian Studies’ prize for the best book on modern China.
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Zoë Baxter
DJ/Radio presenterArts. Culture. Film, TV & Radio. Music.
Zoë started Djing at parties in 2000 and progressed to Internet radio and then community radio. She has always had a keen interest in East Asian cinema and cuisine and this lead her to investigate East Asian music. Now she is a collector of vinyl with a specialist interest in 1960’s ‘Asia Beat’.
In 2005 Zoë presented and produced Ni Hao Chinatown parts 1 & 2 for the London community arts radio station Resonance FM focusing on the Save Chinatown Campaign and the history of Chinese immigration in London.
Following on from this Zoë presented and produced a weekly one hour radio show for Resonance FM from October 2005 - June 2006 called Lucky Cat. With a focus on Chinese and East Asian culture the magazine style programme featured guests, music, film and art reviews and topical issues (e.g. the Takeaway Racism Campaign).
The series included 2 programmes on the Chinese contribution to Reggae music and also a programme featuring a live performance by Korean punk band Crying Nut.
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Leonard Ng
Solicitor and MusicianLaw. Music.
Leonard Ng was born and raised in Singapore. He studied law at the National University of Singapore and qualified as a lawyer in Singapore in 1996. He then obtained a LL.M degree at the University of Chicago Law School in the United States in 1997. Leonard went on to join the London office of Sidley Austin LLP and is currently a partner in the International Finance Group of the firm in London. Sidley Austin is one of the world’s largest law firms, with over 1,800 lawyers practising in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. Leonard specialises in UK and EU financial services regulation and structured finance. He advises banks, investment firms, hedge funds and other entities on a wide range of regulatory issues. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences on regulation and structured finance.
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Eve Lee
Creative DirectorArts. Culture. Fashion. Design. Media.
Eve Lee is a Malaysian born graphic designer and art director who has lived and worked in London for the last seven years.
Following her studies in Malaysia and the US, Eve worked for five years as an art director at advertising agency TBWA in Kuala Lumpur, before coming to London in 2000 to work as a freelance designer and follow the MA design course at Central Saint Martins College.
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Anna Chen
Writer, performer and broadcasterArts. Community. Film, TV & Radio. Media. Politics.
Born and raised in Hackney, east London, Anna had her first poetry published at 14 and remained unbeaten at Chess in tournaments with the boys' school. Cut to 1994 when she took her groundbreaking one-woman comedy show, Suzy Wrong - Human Cannon, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, making her the first British-born Chinese comedienne to do so. This was followed by her other solo shows, I, Imelda and Taikonaut: How To Save The World, Part I. She was possibly the first British Chinese comic on TV with her BBC2 debut in Stewart Lee's Fist of Fun in 1996.
Anna took time out from her performing career in order to organise the press operation for the anti-war movement in the aftermath of the events of September 2001 and during the build up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She also campaigned on Chinese issues such as the Morecombe Bay disaster and was the press officer for the community protest which successfully challenged the MAFF and media over the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) smear of 2001 resulting in a public apology and vindication from the minister. Anna was a founder member of the Chinese Civil Rights Action Group which grew out of the FMD action and was the precursor to Min Quan, a branch of The Monitoring Group.
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