She saw a cinema laugh at Bruce Lee’s humiliation in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, and knew she had to change views about Asians

‘Absolutely crushing’ and ‘devastating’ is how Helena Lee describes her fellow cinema-goers’ reaction to the scene in Tarantino’s film

It led the British-born Chinese editor to launch a cultural salon to give voice to East Asian creatives such as authors, a filmmaker and fashion designers

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Helena Lee and fashion designer Rejina Pyo at a talk for East Side Voices in London. Photo: Heather Chuter

Published: 2:30am, 9 Dec 2020Updated: 10:52am, 14 Dec 2020

For British-born Chinese editor Helena Lee, her come-to-Jesus moment happened in a cinema. “I was watching Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood and really enjoying the film, until that scene with Bruce Lee played by Mike Moh appeared.”

It’s the scene in which Brad Pitt’s character Cliff Booth mercilessly mocks the martial arts legend. The humiliation is thorough, deliberate, and Lee recalls the entire cinema erupting into laughter.

“It was just devastating to watch,” she says. “I looked at the audience – and they’re not racist, they didn’t mean to be offensive. However, it’s absolutely crushing to watch something like that and not feel anyone understands why that is so upsetting.

“I thought, there’s just not enough [Asian] representation. There are not enough stories out there [about] the diaspora, the people who are all among us.”

Helena Lee, features director at Harper’s Bazaar UK. Photo: Toby Shaw

And so Lee got to work. In February this year she launched East Side Voices at The Standard Hotel in London. Conceived as a platform to celebrate East and Southeast Asian voices, the cultural salon aims to “dispel the clichés and change the cultural narrative – currently so saturated with outdated stereotypes – one conversation at a time”.