Bi’an, the UK Chinese Writers’ Network, was established in 2018 with funding from Arts Council England with the aim of connecting, developing and promoting Chinese heritage writers across the UK.

The Network’s foundations lie in the From Shore to Shore project, which encouraged UK Chinese communities to tell their stories either in writing, on stage or online. Dual language writing workshops were held in cities across the North of England, revealing stories linking cities such as Leeds and Manchester with China and Hong Kong. These were drawn together to create a drama, blending English, Mandarin and Cantonese, which toured Chinese restaurants in 2017 and again in 2019. But the workshops also showed that there was a widespread community of Chinese heritage writers keen to develop and share their writing – and so Bi’an was born.

Alongside a series of events and writing workshops, in its first year Bi’an launched its inaugural awards for poetry, fiction and drama, with publication in Stand as part of the winners’prize. The 2019 competition attracted seventy-six entries and was judged by Stand managing editor Jon Glover, Stand editors John Whale and Elaine Glover, and award-winning novelist Yan Ge, who chairs the Chinese Young Writers Association. The winners were Jingan

Young for poetry, Lab Ky Mo for fiction, and David Tse for drama.

Winners and runners-up also took part in the Bi’an Writers’ Residential at Arvon’s Lumb Bank Centre. Led by Yan Ge and writer, translator and playwright Jeremy Tiang, the five-day ...