"FAKE CHINESE" is an art bachelor thesis turned booklet extraordinaire. Written by Isabel Wang Pontoppidan and designed by the inimitable Kexin Hao, "FAKE CHINESE" is an exploration of Chinese-European hybrid identities. Using her own position as a resident of the liminal space between the East and the West, the text branches out to discuss the exoticism of chinoiserie, the European decorative style imitating East Asian aesthetics, as well as the phenomenon of the banana, those individuals deemed "yellow on the outside, white on the inside".
Whilst the East and West can mingle amidst these hybrid objects, images and concepts, questions of whether they are *really*, *authentically* Chinese or European, Eastern or Western, always remain. Indeed, the concept of the ""banana"" itself illustrates this best: the individual is split up into parts, which can then be assessed as Eastern (yellow) or Western (white). If this tendency is the default vocabulary for describing those of hybrid descent and/or identity, perhaps it is time to reconfigure.