We would like to thank everyone who came to support our in person celebrations after a 3 year hiatus. We were initially planning for maybe 30-40 guests but ended up with a packed out event of 7 tables of 10 at the legendary "Dumplings Legends" on Gerrard Street taking over the whole of the 1st floor of the restaurant.
"Way before Covid was known, I started to detect anti-Chinese sentiments and musings. This wasn't just aimed - often aimlessly - at Chinese people, but anyone who 'looked' like them. Fast forward to the Pandemic, Sinophobia went through the roof when little else could leave the home. Conspiracy theorists - aided by far left and right politicians and certain media outlets - blamed, rightly or wrongly, the Chinese government for the outbreak. This led to Asian/Chinese businesses and people being violently attacked and victimised.
A few weeks ago, there were some social media feeds celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the opening of the Hong Kong British Nationality Overseas (BN(O)) scheme on the Home Office's Twitter, such as "the UK is proud to have welcomed 144,500 people from Hong Kong", "many Hong Kongers have said living in Britain is like coming home".
On International Women's Day, Chinese Lib Dems' Merlene Emerson interviewed our newest member, Ms Yue He Parkinson, about why she is interested in UK and China politics and her decision to join the party.
When Paul Mc Garry called me to introduce Ed, I wondered if he had fallen on his head and sent him a row of big eye smiley faces. As a newbie Councillor and member, I felt I was probably a bit of light weight to do the job to introduce our party leader. Some serious preparation needed to be done.
[The following is an English translation of an article in Chinese FT by the author.]