My Chinatown

You've recently joined Chinatown Arts Space – what were you doing before?
I was Ken Livingstone's adviser for culture and the creative industries: a brief that also included tourism and the promotion of London – and I was involved in setting up London's offices in Shanghai and Beijing. I've had a long relationship with Chinatown: at the Mayor's office, I negotiated extending the Chinese New Year festival into Trafalgar Square back in 2002. With my deep interest in China and East Asia and my commitment to London's arts and culture – particularly its international aspects – CAS was the perfect fit.

What do you most like about Chinatown?
The best thing about CT is evidently the fantastic food. I've eaten here and in China – and I know that if you go to the right places, you get excellent and authentic Chinese food. My favourite places are Y Ming on Greek Street, which is just outside Chinatown – I consider it my local – and Canton, which is great for roast meat at lunchtime. There are all sorts of other good places too.

At the same time, Chinatown needs to extend itself beyond food, which is why I'm keen to help it improve its arts and cultural activity to give people an even wider experience of what Chinese and East Asian culture is like.

What is your role at CAS?
My role is to work with Chinatown's stakeholders to fit CAS's projects in with what's going on in Chinatown. By doing this, we'll increase Chinatown's artistic and cultural offering to make it a destination that people visit for more than just food.

What does CAS have in the pipeline?
CAS's track record of excellent projects is continuing with David Tse still on board as creative director; he's currently working on a CAS project about the life of Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong, who came to Britain because the roles she was given in Hollywood were very stereotyped.

The project is called Piccadilly Revisited; it's centred around the 1929 British silent film Piccadilly which Anna May Wong starred in. It spans several arts including dance, film and music - it illustrates some of the things she came up with during her life as the first Chinese star to really make it in the international film industry.

It's very much in development; the key people are composing, choreographing and writing and they're working very hard together at the moment. There's a lot of interest from local stakeholders and from London venues. We hope to be able to put it on as a work in progress by September with a completed version in March next year – then we hope to take it on tour.

Where would you like CAS to be in five years time?
Firstly, I'd like to see it established as an organisation that works with other people and organisations to spread arts and cultural activity throughout Chinatown. Secondly, I would like CAS to become a champion of Chinese and East Asian artists in London as a whole, developing partnerships and relationships to ensure that the talent within the East Asian community is brought to the attention of other art and culture organisations.

How will you make it happen?
A lot of it will come down to networking with other organisations to make them aware of the talent that's out there – we're also developing our website so that everyone can see what's going on. There's growing interest in what's happening in China and East Asia at the moment; we'll take every opportunity to ride on the back of that interest and make people aware of what's happening.

What is your favourite East Asian art?
I love Japanese film: Kurosawa's films are some of my favourites – and great film has come out of China too: Zhang Yimou's and Chen Kaige's early work is fantastic. I think that much of what comes to the West's attention is primarily film; however, Saatchi is doing a fantastic job of bringing Chinese contemporary art to a western audience. I think we'll see incredible synergies between that and British East Asian artists who work in a different cultural context but have similar cultural sensitivities.

What would you like to see on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth?
I was actually involved with the commissioning programme that is currently taking place so I'm very happy with it as it is. I think the Schütte piece that's up there is great and I'm really looking forward to the Anthony Gormley artwork that's coming next.