SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2009
The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour
You know the people in this book.
You’ll remember the harassed waitress from your local Chinese restaurant. You’ve noticed those builders across the street working funny hours and without helmets. You’ve eaten the lettuce they picked, or bought the microwave they assembled. The words ‘cockle-pickers’, ‘Morecambe Bay’, ‘Chinese illegals found dead in lorry’ will ring a bell.
But did you know that there are hundreds of thousands of undocumented Chinese immigrants in Britain? They’ve travelled here because of desperate poverty, and must keep their heads down and work themselves to the bone.
Hsiao-Hung Pai, the only journalist who knows this community, went undercover to hear the stories of this hidden work force. She reveals a scary, shadowy world where human beings are exploited in ways unimaginable in our civilized twenty-first century.
CHINESE WHISPERS exposes the truth behind the lives of a hidden work force here in Britain. You owe it to yourself, and them, to read it.
Chinese Whispers by Hsiao-Hung Pai
Hsiao-Hung Pai (白晓红/白曉紅) came to Cardiff from Taipei in 1991. She has lived in the East End of London since 1997.
She holds masters' degrees (MA) in Critical & Cultural Theory (University of Wales, College of Cardiff), East Asian politics & history (University of Durham) and Journalism, with distinction (University of Westminster). She also holds a diploma in Subediting & Design (London School of Journalism).
Hsiao-Hung has written for The Guardian, Open Democracy, Feminist Review, Red Pepper, Socialist Review, Chinese Times UK, Chinese Weekly, The Storm (as a columnist), and many other Chinese-language publications worldwide. Her special interests are migration, migrant labour, and nationalism.
Hsiao-Hung has worked as an editor and on many research projects and films. She translated and wrote introduction for the book Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory by Chris Weedon (Laureate Books, 1994, Taipei; second printing, 1997). She also translated and wrote a joint introduction for The Return of the National Question by Chris Harman (Vanguard Publishing, 2001, Taipei).
Hsiao-Hung spent the early 2000s researching the working lives of undocumented migrant workers in Britain and had her collection of essays, "Hidden Assembly Line", serialised in the British-Chinese press in 2005.
She covered the Morecambe Bay cockle-picking tragedy for The Guardian in 2004. In order to understand the working lives of undocumented Chinese migrants, she went undercover in many British workplaces. Nick Broomfield's film Ghosts (2006) was based on her work.