The Project

The Edinburgh International Festival commissioned three local artists from diverse ethnic backgrounds to work alongside TheatreWorks Singapore and its production of Diaspora which forms part of the Festival 09 programme. The artists - Pamela So, Rabiya Choudhry and Pio Abad - have been working with TheatreWorks director Ong Keng Sen to develop individual projects as responses to diasporas in Scotland. This project was made possible by the Scottish Arts Council Black and Ethnic Minority Artists Bursaries fund.

This website, Following the Diaspora: Chinese Lives in Scotland, is the contribution made by Scottish/Chinese artist Pamela So and charts, in a very personal way, the lives of Chinese people who have chosen to make Scotland their home. It is a development from a project commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, London and The Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester called Cherish: Chinese Families in Britain. Following the Diaspora: Chinese Lives in Scotland explores memory and homecoming, as well as celebrating the lives of the Chinese Scottish Diaspora.

Pamela So has been searching for people of Chinese descent in a journey which has taken her from her home in north Ayrshire, Scotland, to her ancestral home in Shunde, Guangzhou, China, and back to the most northerly shores of Scotland in Caithness and Sutherland. The result is an interactive portrait of several individuals who are proud to be of Chinese descent and want to share their thoughts and experiences, giving a sense of what it is like to live within two cultures.

In the image galleries there are scenes of homecomings, celebrations of weddings, Christmas and New Year, Scottish/Chinese style. You are also offered glimpses into family albums and collections which reveal how Chinese domestic life incorporates Scottish cultural habits.

Many of the photographs have been taken by the participants themselves on visits to relatives in their homeland or of their own special interests. These range from drinking tea, drumming, golf and horse jumping. Listen to interviews of voices from Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan recently arrived or born in Scotland which reveal the speakers identity as clearly as any written history.