In Search of Rice is not your typical Chinatown visitor experience.

There are no stop-and-stare facts or dates to memorise. Instead, this is an artist-led participatory performance experience that invites you to feel Chinatown in a different way.

Guided by three artists you’ll move through London’s Chinatown together as a group - listening to stories, noticing colours and markings, breathing in scents, and responding to the space around you. It offers time to pause, tune into the city, and reflect on our own relationships with food, place, and community.

Along the way, you’ll hear voices and personal memories that reveal how Chinatown was built through migration, hard work, care, and community – often by people whose labour has gone unseen, especially women.

This walk shifts between past and present, asking simple but powerful questions:
What does it mean to belong somewhere?
Who makes a place feel alive?
What stories are hidden in the streets we walk every day?

For many people who have worked in Chinatown, rice symbolises abundance and sometimes life itself. The Chinese phrase 找口飯吃 (Mandarin: zhǎo kǒu fàn chī; Cantonese: zaau2 hau2 faan6 hek3; Hokkien: chhōe kháu pn̄g chia̍h) means “to make a living” and can be literally translated as “in search of rice.”

In Search of Rice is a ritual sequence: gathering rice, washing it, cooking it together, and finally sharing a spoon of rice and performance. We invite you to connect with others and experience the city through your senses. It’s about walking differently, listening closely, and recognising that every step we take helps shape Chinatown’s future - just like individual grains of rice coming together to make something nourishing.