YPAD - a brand new annual campaign and exhibition

Did you know these things about British history?

• The first and most highly documented visitors from East Asia were young Japanese men Christopher and Cosmus in 1588 and Chinese mandarin Michael Alphonsus Shen Fuzong in 1687...
• By the 17th Century, British views towards "The Orient" was that of fascination. Fast-forward to the 19th Century and it was that of contempt and fear in the lead up to the Opium War...
• In 1915, when the Titanic set sail, there were eight Chinese men on board, and when it sank, six of them survived...
• During WWI, 140,000 Chinese Labour Corps assisted in the allied war efforts, often living in extremely poor conditions with lower pay than their Western counterparts...
• In 1945, after the end of WWII, thousands of Chinese seamen were illegally and sneakily rounded up and sent back to China, leaving the families they'd started without knowledge of what had happened...
• The first Chinese takeaway opened in Bayswater in 1958...
• In 1979 after the Vietnam War, Margaret Thatcher gave 10,000 Vietnamese people refuge in the UK. But not before she said it was "quite wrong that immigrants should be given council housing whereas white citizens were not"...
• In 2003, the first North Koreans arrived in New Malden, a.k.a. Koreatown, which is now home to thousands of North and South Koreans (the largest settlement in Europe), the latter of which started moving here and forming a community in the 1950s...
• In 2012, conditions of the Overseas Domestic Worker (ODW) Visa revoked the concessions and rights thousands of Filipinos working in the UK...

These are just some of the amazing and sometimes heartbreaking stories ESEA (East and Southeast Asian) people in the UK have faced over the centuries, showing how rich and long our histories stretch back here. It shows that our struggles - racism, colonialism, assimilation - and more importantly, our triumphs over the odds are nothing new.

Join Voice ESEA and our partners Kanlungan Filipino Consortium on 6th May - the day in 1882 when the Chinese Exclusion Act in the US was signed into federal law - as we launch Yellow Peril Awareness Day (a.k.a. YPAD)! Yellow Peril - a term that?depicts the peoples of East and Southeast Asia?as an existential danger to the Western world -?continues to rear its ugly head through history and in more recent years. We want to ensure the next generation of ESEA people don’t have to battle anti-ESEA scapegoating through this annual deep-dive into chapters of interwoven British ESEA history.

The in-person exhibitions will take place in Bethnal Green, London and Ancoats, Manchester from 11am to 4pm and will take you on a journey through time, highlighting some of the most impactful stories as retold by our diverse community. It will also feature panel discussions with experts and those with lived experiences, exclusive film showings, and activities for both adults and children to immerse themselves in and learn.

We hope to see you there!

P.S. Feel free to join myself and Abbey Wong as we facilitate a webinar on this topic for Inclusive Companies on 1st May! Sign up here.

For reasons why we use the term Yellow Peril, please refer to the bottom of the above event pages.