Dimsum Review - A Relic of the Commonwealth Generation

Review of British Chinese website - Dimsum.co.uk

Dimsum was once considered the heart and soul of the British Chinese community, even participating in community activism with a British Born Chinese forum, however Dimsum has gradually fallen to the wayside reflecting a changing of the guard and a lack of homogeneity within the British Chinese community. 

The online British Chinese community can be summed up as follows...

Chinese (mostly mainlanders) that haven't assimilated use Chinese text websites: Netbirds, lkcn.net and ukchinese.com.

British Born Chinese use: BritishChineseOnline

Youngsters of the clubbing generation use : Neehao

So who uses Dimsum?

Web Statistics 

"Dimsum.co.uk is visited more frequently by females who are in the age range of 55-64, have no children and graduate educated"

Only one third of internet traffic is from the UK. Looking at the search traffic, the top searchers inadvertently found the website searching for dim sum food, not specifically Chinese topical issues. A sizeable chunk of its traffic comes from spam and harvesting.

 Although Dimsum boasts over 15,000 unique users every month, why is it that 20 out of the last 24 articles on its homepage stretching back two months have no comments on them? Over 30,000 unique users commenting on just 4 articles?

Its a matter of content. Despite Dimsum's homepage being a cornucopia of overflowing user based articles, there are no young  polyphloisboian voices to be heard here, the plug is pulled on the NeeHao promoted DJ's, this is maturer, classier, like a glass of Hennessy XO, this is not for the Asian nerd, Hello Kitty and TVB are not welcome either, rather classical music, modern theatre, art and fine cuisine are the order of the day.

Compare the articles on White Male Asian Female inter racial relationships on 8asians.com -(all very modern using quotes from Marie Claire etc).... with Dimsum articles written by passive middle aged Chinese women from the home counties (who are not going to rock the boat for fear of upsetting their White partners and the White community), you can already see where the website Dimsum is heading. If Dimsum is considered the heart and soul of the British Chinese community, then one has to conclude the UK is far behind the USA in terms of 'Asian' radicalism.

Advertisements or Articles?

The articles are on the whole professionally written, but bureaucratic, like a trade magazine, and of no real interest or concern to anyone except those who work in the trade industries. Dimsum's articles are thinly disguised advertisements for profit businesses or self-interest public Chinese associations/organisations and the networked British Chinese socialite cronies associated with them, it sums up the objective of the website - its promotional, if there is nothing to be gained either personally, financially etc, then no article will be written for publication.

There is an article on the website VisibleChinese, an of A-Z of British Chinese cronyism, the usual suspects are all listed, its self-promotion just like Dimsum itself. Mark Wu runs the website, he is also the interactive associate for Yellow Earth Theatre Company. Its the same people self-promoting themselves.

There are common themes with the backgrounds of the contributors who write the articles...

Wah Yin Rixon - FOB Chinese female Married to a Caucasian jazz player. She is also a trustee of.....can you guess?...The Yellow Earth Theatre Company!

Naomi Christie - FOB Chinese female, although you wouldn't think so judging by her name. She now lives in China, obviously either inter racially married, has interracial parents or adopted by white parents.

Sally Maier-Yip - FOB Chinese female - recently relocated from Singapore with her inter racial White partner to UK, clearly in no position to write about British Chinese issues.

Olhos Degato - FOB Chinese male Mainland migrant, has an Black inter racial partner.

Paul Courtney Hyu - Mixed race Eurasian

Jenny Hao -FOB Chinese female - socialite mainlander on a student visa studying medicine at Goldsmiths. How British is she?

Merlene Emerson - FOB Chinese female immigrant with a White husband

Philip Ling- BBC male with a white interracial partner.

Anna Chen - Mixed race Eurasian

 The only observable regular contributor with a Chinese partner is Susan S. Cheung, who migrated to the USA and is no longer part of the British Chinese community, yet still contributes articles on a British Chinese website.

Given their background and their pro-assimilation, pro-inter racial marriage agenda, pro-migration agenda, it is questionable whether they even believe in the concept of being ethnic Chinese, the website completely neglects BBC's, it does not cater for BBC's at all. In what way are these contributors fit to represent British Chinese community? Unless of course 'British Chinese' has now become a euphemism for inter racial breeding and the dissolution of one's ethnicity. 

What is peculiar about the site are the articles relating to traditional Chinese culture such as 'Feng Shui,' 'Chinese herbal medicine,' 'traditional Chinese musical ensemble,' these are the types of interests these older 'si-lai' fogyish FOBBY women participate in, yet they completely neglect the most important thing that makes them Chinese and their future generation Chinese - 1) marriage to a Chinese male and 2) having Chinese children. Its bizarre these Chinese women take such an big interest in very traditional Chinese subjects when they're married to White men, but it seems to be common theme on Dimsum. Turtle mothers logic Click Here

Featured Articles - Social Class Bias

Have you heard the story about the Singaporean student studying medicine at Cambridge who was hit by a bus, her white boyfriend committed suicide a few days later? http://www.dimsum.co.uk/features/tragic-deaths-of-two-youths.html Why this story? Is it because she’s a FOB studying medicine at Cambridge and has a white boyfriend (these 4 subjects seem to form the theme of the website, 1-female 2-oxbridge 3-FOB 4-white inter racial partner), therefore her life is of greater interest than a Chinese who works in the Takeaway?

Series of pointless articles about Taiwan that unsurprisingly failed to attract any readers comments, written by 'Rixon' whose husband incidently is Oxbridge Alumni, the latest article is on Yinsey Wang - 'a Cambridge' law student.'

Do we see a connected theme here? It's a tripartite network of FOB's, White's and Eurasian's largely of a certain social class acting to exclude BBC's unless they're a lapdog, of the right social class, Christian or attended the right university. Its quite simple, when FOBs marry whites, they produce Eurasian children, BBCs do not figure in the equation and are therefore excluded.

Undoubtedly, Dimsum bypasses the BBC and takeaway and restaurant demographic, unless its a corporate or a Michellin Star restaurant. There is an article on the Michellin Star Hibiscus restaurant, and what has that got to do with British Chinese culture?  Absolutely nothing. The Hibiscus is not even a Chinese restaurant. Dimsum's review's are a representation of the types of bourgeois Asian women and their White partners who eat at upmarket restaurants.

Extreme Bias

Here is an opinion on Ai WeiWei's imprisonment by Dr. Katie Hill (yes, She's White and married to Ai Wei Wei's artistic friend Cai Yuan), just how objective is she going to be? Well....

http://www.dimsum.co.uk/viewpoints/support-the-release-of-chinese-artist-ai-weiwei.html

If I ever saw a piece of writing that was so westcentric, so one-sided, so blatantly promoting anti-Chinese Communist government propaganda, this would be close to it.

'We applaud William Hague, the French and German governments and the EU representative in China, for their efforts to speak up publicly on behalf of Ai and other prisoners, such as the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo.'

Kudos for boot-licking the western governments. Is she a Con-Dem voter by any chance? Oh look there's the obligatory reference to Liu Xiaobo.

'We also applaud David Cameron’s statement regarding the importance of human rights on his visit to China last year, which is a significant step in the right direction.'

Yes, that's correct, David Cameron the regime change orchestrator, the white knight saviour of the both the Arab and Oriental worlds.

"As an immediate priority we urge Western and other governments to exert strong pressure on China to treat its citizens with the respect that they deserve, as a matter of basic justice and humanity."

That's right, in China, there is no justice, no legal system in place, no legal framework, it is a feral uncivilised country with no humanity, just ask Morrissey.

"China's credibility in the world is at stake if it does not significantly improve its human rights record."

There's that repetitive westcentric view again that China cannot progress to be an global economic or political power unless it moves to western democracy and does what the west wants.

On the book reading list on one of the forums, there is a recommendation to read Amy Tan! If you aren't familiar with Amy Tan, she was described as a race traitor by some sections of Chinese American society.

One of the major criticisms of the British Chinese community is the lack of  leadership from its communities leaders, with these types of ineffective sycophantic Uncle Tam's literally running the Dimsum's content and running British Chinese society, pandering to White people to improve their own social, political and economic status in the eyes of White people, is it any wonder? Today, Dimsum has become the tumbleweed of websites, what remains is a meaningless, neglected, outdated billboard (that nobody reads) plastered with self-interest advertisements thinly disguised as articles representing the interests of a tripartite social class (that has long had its day and achieved very little for the British Chinese community), as such the virtual billboard deserves to be covered in virtual graffiti. Dimsum? More like DingLeiGorFai.

Reviewed by BBCZeitgeist