“Mixed race,” Chinese identity, and intercultural place: Decolonizing urban memories of Limehouse Chinatown in London

ABSTRACT

London’s Limehouse Chinatown was often negatively portrayed in the media and popular fictional works, which stigmatizes and racializes the Chinese community. There has been little scholarly studies about the memories of the original Chinese residents in Limehouse Chinatown. As a project of de-imperializing city, I situate this article in the contested field of postcolonial cities in relation to decolonizing imperial legacies with a focus on contesting a racialized ethnic minority space, i.e., Limehouse Chinatown. By reframing the racialized Limehouse Chinatown from a bounded Chinese space into a shared place beyond the Chinese community, I seek to re-inscribe the memories of Limehouse Chinatown into the narrative of the postcolonial intercultural city of Londonwith some original interview-based accounts from the Limehouse’s mixed race residents. In turn, the role of writing about ethnic minority spaces such as Chinatown is also examined.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• mixed race
• urban memory
• intercultural Chinatown
• decolonization
• London
• interracial place

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the Heritage Lottery Fund, RIBA Research Trust and Paul Mellon Centre for the Studies of British Art for funding the research of the Chinese history in Limehouse that helped form this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yat Ming Loo

Yat Ming Loo, an architect and architectural historian, received his Master’s degree in Architectural History and PhD in Architecture and Urbanism from The Bartlett, University College London. His research is inter-disciplinary, incorporating approaches from architecture, architectural history, cultural studies and urbanism. Main research interests include intercultural city, postcolonial urbanism, urban memory, minority spaces, architectural theory and decolonization of architecture. His publications include: Architecture and Urban Form in Kuala Lumpur: Race and Chinese Spaces in a Postcolonial City (Routledge, 2013), The Chinese East End (Historic England and University Liverpool Press, forthcoming), Beyond the Market: Building Sino-Latin American Cultural Relations (2016), and “Towards a Decolonisation of Architecture” (2017). Having taught at the Bartlett (MA Architectural History), he is now an Associate Professor in Architecture and Urbanism, teaching architectural humanities and design studio at The University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He is also currently an Adjunct Professor at the UCSI University in Malaysia.