Westward Ho!

Composer Alex Ho is part of a growing community of musicians combining their British and Chinese heritage in fascinating ways

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On a hot summer evening at Southbank Centre, Alex Ho gets risqué: he invites his audience to follow Chinese custom by removing their shoes. The sweaty couple sitting in front of me exchanges shocked glances. 'This'll be different!' one eagerly says to the other.

What follows is an hour-long tale of Ye Xian, surprisingly familiar Chinese folklore - a kind woman trapped by a wicked stepmother and stepsister, who gets supernatural help to attend a royal ball, then leaves a shoe - but written 1,000 years before the Brothers Grimm's Cinderella.

It's Ho’s show but he shares the stage with five other musicians, their personal anecdotes intersecting the fable. Flautist Daniel Shao balancing being ‘the Chinese kid’ in London and a wàiguórén (foreigner) in Beijing. Countertenor Keith Pun remembering his auntie telling him, ‘Dreams can’t be eaten like rice’. Erhu player Ziyang Huang summoning bravery for a guitar duet in London. Percussionist Joanne Chiang bartering with Buddha in a Taiwanese temple to become a vegetarian for six months if she aces a British audition. Percussionist Beibei Wang talking about how she ‘escaped the fridge’ as a shèngnü (leftover single woman) by coming to London at the ripe old age of 26: ‘I'm not leftover; I'm marinating”. And composer-conductor-pianist Ho's own trauma of Sinophobic slurs spat by snickering children in the wake of Covid. The performance ends with Yuè Guāng Guāng, a Cantonese lullaby inviting both rest and dreams.

The musicians’ intimacy expands the fairytale into their own Cinderella moments of finding their fit. 'In her misery, Ye Xian forgot what it was to be accepted,' Ho tells the crowd. He may still struggle with acceptance, but he is past misery. For this, he credits