Ian Buruma talks to Chinese artists about how their cultural relationship with China shapes and determines their work whereverthey are or go in the world. From mainland China but now living in exile in London, the poet Yang Lian reflects on the democracy protests of 1989 in and around Tian'anmen Square in Beijing and the power they continue to have. From Taiwan, the novelist Huang Pao-Lien talks about growing up on the island but always feeling she belonged on the invisible mainland where Chineseness was made and defined.
Other artists from Hong Kong who are American-Chinese - the children of emigrants - find it impossible to escape from the idea of China but essential to negotiate paths away from the ancient country still very much alive in the modern world. Can they ever be anything but-Chinese?