Uplifting, intimate portraits of young British Chinese men

When photographer Naomi Wong was a child, her family moved from Hong Kong to a small market town called New Romney, set just off the southeast coast of Kent. There, while her mother worked in her uncle’s Chinese takeaway, she and her cousins would play around the counter and hang out by the woks. “My mum and my other auntie also worked with my uncle,” Wong recalls. “And she had loads of boys, so I was raised alongside my boy cousins. We would always spend so much time together and they would always look after me.”

When she was a teenager Wong moved to Scunthorpe with her mother, losing that closeness to her extended family. As she grew more aware of the world around her and her place in it, she realised that as a Chinese person, there wasn’t a lot of space for people who looked like her or her cousins in the wider culture, nor was there much representation.

“It’s isolating – it was just me and one other Chinese kid in our school and I didn’t have any friends that were Chinese until I was 13,” she says. “I remember being with my mum, and we would rent VHS tapes and watch TV together, and every time there was a minor East Asian character in the background my mum would get really excited by that.”

Wong’s soon-to-be printed photobook, 後生仔, translated to mean ‘young man’, is her way of filling that cultural gap she found herself in. Building on the memory of those years spent with her male cousins and spurred on by an old photograph she found in a skip of her father in Brighton in the 80s, she decided to create a project that spotlights and uplifts Chinese male youth living in the UK.

“Chinese men don’t really get represented in British culture,” she explains. “I can’t think of a film or a TV show where there’s a Chinese character and I can’t think of many public figures – there are maybe some actors now but it was not the case when I was growing up. But when they were represented it was a bit problematic – they were not [portrayed] as very masculine or it was a bit of a joke.”

Throughout the process of creating the book, Wong photographed and interviewed a dozen young British Chinese men, often within the sanctuaries of their own homes. The book, captured with warmth and intimacy, dives into their stories and highlights the diversity of their experiences. There’s Tai from Bedfordshire, whose father also ran a Chinese takeaway, who now uses food to connect with his heritage and culture, alongside football fanatic Jun Chan from Barry, South Wales, who is a member of East and South East Asian (ESEA) football community Rise United.

“I really wanted to photograph someone who’s into football, because of the connection to my dad,” Wong says. “He used to play football and really loved it, but there’s actually loads of Chinese football fans in England that are not represented in the football culture – I remember my uncle would be obsessively watching football all the time in the takeaway.”

Her work also highlights some of the daily conflicts that many British Chinese men face while navigating life in the UK. From feelings of displacement to navigating complex familial situations. “Some of my friends who I photograph are gay and can’t come out,” she says. “They’ve had discussions with their parents and hinted things like: ‘I have a friend who I’ve been spending a lot of time with,’ but they can’t say that they’re their partner – there are a lot of very traditional pressures.”

But her book ultimately gives her sitters space to just be and express themselves comfortably. “Things are definitely a lot more positive compared to what I saw and witnessed as a kid –there’s a long way to go, British Chinese men are still underrepresented, but things are changing,” she continues. “後生仔, is a love letter and it’s a tribute to all the British Chinese men, all the people I grew up with and my dad as well. It’s really nice to be shining a light on their stories and to be able to photograph them all looking very beautiful.”

後生仔 is available to pre-order at Naomi Wong’s official website

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