Published

Anna Chen's new website is now LIVE!

Anna's collection of poetry, REACHING FOR MY GNU, is published by Aaaargh! Press as a paperback and an ebook. American readers can find the ebook here.

Anna has written for the South China Morning Post magazine with her City Scope column.

Reviews for the Morning Star.

THE GUARDIAN 4th May 2018
When is a dress just a dress? American teenager's Chinese prom dress and cultural appropriation
... With President Trump and his acolytes pumping up yellow peril fears around China, and his trade wars threatening to slip into hot wars, the last thing we need is this trivialised pastiche of serious debate. Minorities have precious little ammunition with which to challenge tribal juggernauts. Don’t waste what little cultural and political firepower we have.
Read more HERE

FIRST GREAT WESTERN magazine 24th December 2014
ST IVES - PORT OF INSPIRATION
Anna Chen on how St Ives came to be one of the most important art communities in the country
Read more HERE

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST magazine 26th October 2014
The Chinese in Britain: personal tales of a journey to a new land
Cover story for the South China Morning Post magazine

NEW INTERNATIONALIST magazine December 2012
2012 was the end of reason
Roll up, roll up for the End Of The Enlightenment Show! You there, in the best seats right up front, watch in wonder as the world as you know it comes crashing down, the pillars of civilization torn asunder by neocon Samson and his delightful assistants! The Mayans may be wrong about 2012 marking the end of the world, but it’s the end for us – and what a spectacle it’s turning out to be....
Read more HERE

THE GUARDIAN 16th July 2013
Ken Loach's The Spirit of '45 whitewash
Black people have lived in Britain at least from Roman times … The first Chinese visitor we know of was the Jesuit priest Shen Foutsong, who communicated in Latin when he worked at Oxford's Bodleian Library in the 17th century. ... People of colour have been part of the fabric of British society for centuries, but you won't find many in official histories – either from the right or, more shockingly, from the left. Ken Loach's feature-length documentary, The Spirit of '45, is one recent example. A documentary about the creation of the welfare state and its legacy, it presents us with Loach's vision of the British working class, united in the struggle for a better Britain. And though it covers the period from the 1930s up to the Thatcher era, everyone featured in the film is white – it's as if people like me have been bred out of the working-class gene pool. …
Read more HERE

THE GUARDIAN 22nd October 2012
Memo to the RSC: east Asians can be more than just dogs and maids
The Royal Shakespeare Company's casting for The Orphan of Zhao seems to hark back to an age of British imperialism
It's no fun being bred out of the cultural gene pool. Watching TV, theatre or film, I'm on constant alert for a glimpse of someone who looks Chinese, for the slightest resemblance to an estimated 499,999 others like me living in the UK.
Barring Gok Wan, scientist Kevin Fong and the odd TV chef, UK Chinese are virtually absent from mainstream media. So it was with a sense of "here we go again" that we learned that the esteemed Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is mounting the classic play The Orphan of Zhao in the way prize trophies usually get mounted: gutted and stuffed.
Read more HERE

THE GUARDIAN 2nd August 2012
The monstering of swimmer Ye Shiwen says much about declining superpowers
Chinese Olympic athletes are people, not comic book villains. Something's going on when one nation is so singled out
It's not cricket, you know. There's something fiendishly cruel about the monstering of 16-year-old Ye Shiwen, who won a swimming gold in Saturday's 400m individual medley. First she was labelled a cheat in front of a global audience and then refused an apology when repeated drugs tests show up clean as a whistle. ...
More HERE

Anna also writes for the South China Morning Post and the Morning Star.

A selection of Anna's New Internationalist columns here

New Internationalist August 2009: Suave Criminal

New Internationalist June 2009: Boycott Meets Girl

New Internationalist May 2009: Who's Left

New Internationalist Dec 08: Route 42 To Dystopia

New Internationalist Aug 08: Hello, Dalai

New Internationalist June 08: Non-Iron Lady

New Internationalist 1: China Panic

Guardian — Don't call me an Asian Babe, Martin Bashir

Tribune: A Bad Case of the Trots

INTERVIEW: with Squat Magazine on the media and Beijing Olympics

George Orwell: A Literary Revolutionary?

Sergei Eisenstein: In Perspective

"Next Wave Home" Another Province anthology. New Chinese writing from London

More writing here

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