I habitually pushed back against being Chinese, but what I was railing against was a spectre concocted from a lifetime of misinformation.

In two millennia of dynastic history there is only one woman, Wu Zetian, who wore the Emperor's yellow. Like many women in history she was criticised harshly by scholars.

I used to fear growing older. I saw it as a slow act of narrowing, where the body and mind stiffen and restrict.

Time to take the grandparents grocery shopping. But which shop? A consideration of relative wealth and personal progress.

I grew up understanding the necessity of work and a certain degree of meniality. There was no notion of following your passion.

What was that rating thing they used to do on Outward Bound? Hold up your fingers - left hand for physical health, right hand for mental?

The cleaver is essential in Chinese cooking — in experienced hands it is almost the only knife required in the kitchen.

What's my real job? Fitting a creative life around the need to survive means compromise, juggling and hustling - and about living with that reality

Mum had a trick she used to get you to go to bed when you were a toddler — she told you a family of tigers shared our house.

Red Packet warns us that there are things lurking in the neutral zone of cross-cultural chaos that can deliver awkward surprises.

Cooking Scene is a cross-cultural conversation on culinary reality for the carnivorous. All over a fresh meal.