Story Feast 2025: ESEA Futures
On the day of the Far Right rallies in central London on the 13th of September 2025, it felt momentous to be there to stand with my fellow East and Southeast Asian authors, and our diverse audiences at SOAS. It was a day packed with fantastic panels. On the ESEA Futures panel, we discussed how we first got into genre fiction, Western definitions of sci-fi imposed on ESEA literature and how legend and lore sit at an intersection between speculative genres. It was the first time I had spoken about Wuxia storytelling to an Anglophone audience in person, specifically discussing the differences and similarities in its speculative elements with similar fiction in the West.
Posted in Events and tagged Asian, authors, books, diversity, ESEA, festival, fiction, inclusivity, literature, london, POC, representation, SFF, speculative, Wuxia
Brighton Book Festival 2025: Sinophagia
One of my highlights of 2025 was being invited to the Brighton Book Festival, whose motto is “making the marginalised mainstream”, to be part of their first ever event on horror literature, an apt occasion to discuss my anthology Sinophagia, the first curated collection of translated contemporary horror from China. Alongside two wonderful fellow authors, we read extracts from our books, and discussed topics such as female horror fiction, horror literature in relation to the exploration of facets of human nature, horror fiction and the writing of grief, followed by some great questions from a very interested audience, and signing. The venue was packed with an audience that did very much, go in there!
Posted in Events and tagged anthology, books, festival, fiction, horror, literature, SFF, women, writing
Christmas in China
Beyond “Made in China” being stamped on almost every toy under the tree, you wouldn’t really consider the impact of Christmas as a festival in China, indeed my childhood was almost entirely Christmas-free.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, christmas, culture, customs, festival, tradition, winter
The Boss Behind the Cowherd and Weaver Myth
This time last year, I launched my book “From Kuan Yin to Chairman Mao: An Essential Guide to Chinese Deities” in the UK. Vivian Ni, the wonderful manager of Guanghwa in London, my bookshop of choice for the launch, wrote a lovely article for the occasion of Qi Xi, which she published on WeChat. I liked it so much that this year, I have translated it into English to share with my English-language readers on the same occasion of Qi Xi. The article contains a brief interview with me, I hope you enjoy it.
Posted in Articles and tagged book, china, Chinese, culture, deities, festival, gods, interview, literature, Qi Qiao, Qi Xi, tradition, Valentine's
Traditional Han Clothing
The National Day celebrations of 2021’s Golden Week has been a celebratory extravaganza of traditional culture. A substantial part of this was the showcasing of dozens of hanfu brands, not to mention the performers, from musicians to martial artists, all looking their best in traditional clothes. Over the last decade or so, hanfu has come to somewhat replace the cheongsam as representation of national clothing. The rise in and diversification of output to cater to festivals, fashion events, cosplay, and a general rise in popularity after hundreds of MMORPG and streamed historical and fantasy dramas, mean that hanfu is now more of greater appeal and more available to the general public than any other modern times. In this article, I’ll talk about the essentials garments of traditional clothing.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, clothes, culture, festival, Qi Xi, Qi Xiao
Zhong Qiu Jie: Mid-Autumn Festival
Tomorrow is 中秋节(“Zhong Qiu Jie”), Mid-Autumn Festival. I did a tweet stream a few years ago that proved immensely popular. Since then, I have been meaning to write about the traditional rituals and beliefs of Zhong Qiu for quite some time. Mid-Autumn Festival takes place on the 15th of the eighth lunar month, and is the second most important Chinese traditional festival after Spring Festival. Like many wonderful parts of Chinese culture, it emerged when the system of festivities came into shape during the Han Dynasty, and became a popular tradition during the Tang Dynasty. Whilst it shares similarities with Western the harvest festival, it’s also a time when families re-unite, offerings and thanks are given to a range of gods, all in all a time when people gather to enjoy their union with Nature and with each other.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, culture, festival, harvest festival, mid-autumn festival, moon
Hei Bai Wuchang: Soul Hunters From the Netherworld
During this Ghost Month, I want to look at a pair of gods who have continued to capture the Chinese imagination through the centuries, 黑无常 (“Hei Wuchang”) and 白无常 (“Bai Wuchang”), “Wuchang” being the Daoist term for god of the underworld.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, culture, festival, Ghost Month, god, underworld, Wu Chang
Burying the Dead in 21st Century China
The Chinese traditionally divide the year into twenty-four seasons, each being two weeks long. The seventh season following the start of the Lunar Year, is Qing Ming, the first of China’s three annual festivals of the dead. The season starts with a historically rooted “Cold Food Day”, and the pagan aspects of the ancient festival of welcoming the Spring. This is usually enacted in the form of outdoor activities like picnics and sports, and of course, the honouring of ancestors with the first cleaning of their tombs since winter. (https://snowpavilion.co.uk/traditions-of-qing-ming/).
Posted in Articles and tagged burial rite, cemetery, china, Chinese, culture, ecological, festival, festival of the dead, Qing Ming, tomb sweeping
Eight Festive Dishes & Eight Festive Traditions For Spring Festival
If you’re reading this you probably already know about Chinese New Year, so I won’t spoil the festive occasion with too much scholarly detail. 8 is the lucky number in China so here are 8 festive foods and 8 festive traditions for Spring Festival. Since CNY is as big as Christmas and China is vast, every region has its variation of customs. Having a northern mother and southern father, mine will be a mixture of northern and southern broadly speaking, leaning towards southern because that’s where I spent my childhood.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, Chinese New Year, culture, festival, food, Spring Festival, tradition
Summoning of the Soul of Qu Yuan
The coming weekend (20th of June) will bring 2015’s Duan Wu Festival, the ultimate Chinese celebration of summer that is more commonly known around the world as Dragon Boat Festival (https://snowpavilion.co.uk/duan-wu-dragon-boat-festival/). However, the origins of the festival, and the poet whose life it celebrates, are rarely focused on.
Posted in Articles and tagged aesthetic, china, Chinese, Chu, cosmology, culture, Duan Wu, festival, mythology, poetry, Qu Yuan, shamanism, The Great Summons, verse, Warring States