Meek? Sexualised? Good at mathematics? There are tonnes of stereotypes against east Asian people and they are relentlessly played out, and propagated, in the media.
But the BBC’s new sitcom Chinese Burn, is hoping to change the way east Asian women are viewed by western societies. Writers Yennis Cheung and Shin-Fei Chen, want to shake-up what they say is a narrow definition of east Asian people. They ask: why are people of east Asian heritage never portrayed as normal, average people?
“We’re not the other,” says Shin-Fei Chen, who co-wrote the show and plays Elizabeth. “We have similar goals and dreams and failures and fuck-ups.” Yennis Cheung, her fellow writer who stars as Jackie, agrees: “Chinese women are never portrayed as ambitious, but we are. We want to work, we want to make it in other countries. We’re going to be OK.”
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