What does it mean to live in a society that doesn’t truly see you? Though UK citizen, Daisy J. Hung is regularly mistaken for a tourist, asked where she’s really from or greeted with Ni hao on the assumption she speaks Mandarin. These experiences serve as a reminder that, no matter how she moves through the world, she is often seen as an outsider. I Am Not a Tourist asks what it means to be British Chinese today and live at the intersection of cultures, examining social, historical and political factors that have got us here. Fighting narrow and dehumanising stereotypes, of Chinese people excelling at school, or being devoid of original thought or leadership, or having authoritarian parents, Daisy encourages readers to interrogate their assumptions and interpretations of ‘Chinese’ identity. In the wake of the upsurge of anti-Asian racism, triggered by the racialisation of the COVID-19 pandemic as the ‘China virus’, ‘China plague’ and ‘Kung flu’, I Am Not a Tourist exposes the ongoing racism and inequalities that British Chinese communities face, and forms an urgent call for change.
