Let's just say that it was disappointing.
It's not that I don't enjoy lion dances and parades in general. But my time in London -- and this blog, which is essentially serving to be a repository for my field journal notes -- is meant to turn a critical eye towards events and phenomena around me. London's New Year was certainly a field day for a critical sociologist! (Or anthropologist, or folklorist ;) )
Firstly, the parade opened with some shouts from the town crier. Now, I realize that this is a tradition in London, but still -- the cultural and symbolic significance of this is, I think, pretty obvious.
The real start of the parade opened.
The next group seems to... be predominantly white. OK, I suppose that's OK...
I include these girls because in the press coverage in the following days they were featured almost exclusively in the photographs. The BBC, The Guardian... I feel like this group of people represent something (though I don't know what) and interestingly enough in the press coverage where they were so predominantly featured, there wasn't any real explanation of who they were. For that matter, there was no explanation of who anyone in the parade was supposed to be. Rather, they were presented, I reckon, as more exoticized than anything else. What is important is not their cultural significance within the realm of the parade, but rather that their garb is different -- i.e., "Oriental." Oh Edward Said, where are you when I need you.
I guess it was at this point that I thought things started to get weird. Though there were a few predominantly-Chinese performances between the last photo and this one, from this point onward, for maybe five acts, all the troupes were either all-white, or perhaps had one or two Chinese members.
Now, I don't necessarily believe that POC performance spaces must be all POC. I remember last year there was a big controversy over Colors of Rythm because a white student, as part of a hip-hop troupe, was going to perform but didn't identify as Black or POC. I was pretty upset that she wasn't allowed to perform, especially after an organizer told me that "allyship is not something you declare, it's something you earn over time." Well, that girl had earned the trust of her fellow performers, who were predominantly Black, and what it really boiled down to was that she wasn't allowed in the performance because she was white. Whatever happened to the all-mighty dialogue?
Anyway, I think that it's fine that people are interested in and want to participate in Chinese culture. My real issue with the New Year parade was that some of the groups were all white. I.e., there really was nobody to invite them to perform alongside. When a group of white people decide that they'd like to participate in another cultural form without the invitation of the community, or rather without members of that community alongside them participating, then I think it comes periously close to Orientalist appropriation.
Now, I might be a little heavy-handed, admittedly. It might be that these people were invited by a local Chinese cultural organization. It might be that East Asian people in Britain are glad for the participation, a sign (maybe) of acceptance. But even if that were the case, what's the deal with the fact that they were apparently representing "China in London" during this New Year parade?
I guess, knowing at least a little something about British Imperialism in China during the 19th and 20th centuries, it sits even less comfortably with me than had I seen the same thing in, say, Mexico.
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