ABSTRACT

As someone who was born and grew up in China, who has spent the last 15 years working in British higher education and lived in Newcastle and London, I have often found it diffi cult to answer the above question in small talk. I can never get it right. If I say that I’m from London, I can guarantee that the next question will be ‘But where are you really from?’. People expect to hear that I am from China or somewhere in Asia. But I feel that I am misleading them if I just give them what they want to hear. I am Chinese, but that is not all. I am a Chinese living in London, a professor in a British university and have two children of school age who were born and grew up in England. I have a good idea of who I am, but I need to do a lot of work to explain it to other people, or be selective in presenting myself with some element of audience design. This is because I am an ‘outlier’, living away from my ethnic place of origin.