Red Bus Londinium Life

Hongwei Bao discusses his debut play Hot Pot

Hot Pot new play by Hongwei Bao

Playwright Hongwei Bao on friendship, identity and the politics of sharing a meal: his debut play HOT POT opens at Playhouse East this June

Hongwei Bao is a Nottingham-based playwright, poet and academic whose work explores queer identity and East Asian experience: on the page, in the academy, and now on the stage. His debut play HOT POT, produced by the newly formed Auka Productions, tours the UK this June and July. We caught up with him to find out what a shared pot of food has to do with power, friendship and the search for an authentic life.

Red Bus: Hot pot can be such a warm and intimate meal, everyone gathered around a shared pot, adding to it in their own time and their own way. Does the play lean into that, or does the shared pot become a more contested space as the evening unfolds?

Hongwei Bao on his new play Hot Pot Photo Tom Morley

Hongwei Bao: The hot pot is a popular food in East Asia, where friends and family sit together around the pot cooking and eating food together. It often represents togetherness and reunion. The intensity of human relationships can parallel the rise and fall of the temperature, the thickness and thinness of the broth, and the simmering and boiling of the food. Hot pot is therefore a perfect visual metaphor for the changing relationship of the four university friends who meet to celebrate the twenty-year anniversary of their graduation. You can expect to see lots of drama unfolding over the course of a hot pot dinner in my stage play HOT POT.

I use the hot pot as a narrative device also because of the perceived democratic nature of the hot pot. Hot pot meals are usually quite affordable, bringing together people from various social classes and cultural backgrounds.

At a hot pot meal, everyone cooks dinner and people help themselves (and others) to food. This act itself can potentially break down social barriers and create a more egalitarian social environment. But social barriers still exist: who orders what and how things are shared are decisions influenced by social structures and power relations. For four friends occupying different socioeconomic statuses, how the bill is settled becomes an intriguing question. (Note: In Asia, it is not customary for four friends to split the bill for such a meal.)

Red Bus: The play is set after the pandemic, when many friendships were tested by time apart. Did those years give you a particular lens for examining how people grow apart, or into themselves, even when they still care for each other?

Hongwei Bao: The Covid pandemic is an important historical context, which gives the play acute contemporary relevance. During the pandemic, most Asian countries adopted a strict lockdown approach: people could be forced to stay in their own homes for months, and some as long as three years, without being able to set foot outside their doors. Extended periods of lockdowns brought about many social and psychological problems; and the impact of the Covid lockdown can still be felt today. The collective experience has shaped the collective memory (and trauma) of a generation of people, inviting discussions about individual freedom and collective responsibility. Near the end of the pandemic, the lockdown and mask-wearing became a polemic issue: some celebrated them and others condemned them. These different opinions could bring people closer or tear relationships further apart, as this play seeks to explore.

Although the lockdown in the West was overall not so strict compared to that in Asia, many East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) people living in the diaspora experienced Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism, from microaggressions to physical attacks. That was also a time when many Asian people had to make difficult choices about their lives, citizenship and sense of belonging. On top of this, the Covid pandemic also became a historical period that witnessed rising East and Southeast Asian consciousness and community activism, as documented in my nonfiction book Queering the Asian Diaspora.  HOT POT therefore captures some of identity struggles of the ESEA people during the pandemic. Also importantly, it participates in the burgeoning ESEA consciousness and cultural production in the UK and globally, celebrating Asian identity and experience in its diversity. In this sense, the story of HOT POT would not be possible without the backdrop of the Covid pandemic; nor would the production of the play be possible.

Queering the Asian disapora, book by Hongwei Bao

Red Bus: Hot Pot draws on East Asian perspectives on gay identity and the pressures of conformity. How would you describe the particular texture of those expectations to audiences less familiar with that cultural context?

Hongwei Bao: In most parts of East Asia (with the exception of Taiwan where same-sex marriage was legalised in 2019), LGBTQIA+ rights are not recognised or protected by the state; LGBTQ representations in media and in popular culture are limited and sometimes actively banned; queer groups, organisations and activism are often cracked down on. These societies are marked by deeply rooted Confucian traditions and strong family values. Children are expected to obey their parents, get married and have children at a certain age to fulfil their familial and social obligations.  This social structure marginalises queer people as well as women. Queer people are often forced into heterosexual marriages. Women are expected to marry young and give birth to children; otherwise, they become ‘left-over women’. So state policy and cultural tradition combine to exclude people who refuse to conform to social norms. This is exactly the problem that the four friends face in the play, both in their universities and even twenty years after their graduation. In a way, HOT POT is about how women and queer people live their lives and create their spaces – however limited this may be – in a heteropatriarchal society.

Having said that, I do not wish to paint a pessimistic picture of women’s and queer people’s lives in East Asia. Many people have been actively resisting social norms and carving out their own spaces. There are women and queer people who refuse to get into heterosexual marra8iges despite social pressures. Danmei, or Boys Love, is a popular literary genre in Asia, where same-sex relationships are central themes, often created by women for women. So the play ends with a hopeful tone, focusing more on individual agency than social pressure, hope than despair.

Red Bus: Auka Productions is a new company and this is your debut, with two of the founders also in the cast. What does it mean to launch with a story this personal?

Hongwei Bao: I first wrote the HOT POT play on the Fifth Word Playwrights programme. The play had its scratch night and received positive feedback at Nottingham Playhouse last year, which boosted my confidence. I submitted the script to Auka Productions in Summer 2025 during their script submission period, and was grateful that the script was selected first for Research and Development, then for production. The production is supported by a brilliant predominantly East Asian cast and creative team. Team members share a lot of life experiences in common, such as being East Asian artists living in the West. We also have many shared values, believing in the authenticity of our voices and the importance of our work in UK society. All these make the production a collaborative, generative process.

HOT POT tells a moving story of being queer in East Asia and being East Asian in the West, but the story is also universal, and its themes speak to different audiences. Themes such as identity, friendship, love and the pursuit of authenticity, freedom and happiness resonate with many people.

During our R&D readings with various community groups, audience members have commented on how relatable the story is. Non-LGBTQIA+ and non-East Asian identifying audiences also get a lot of thoughts and inspirations from the play. Perhaps what’s personal is also communal and collective; the story of HOT POT seems to have the power to bring communities together and spark conversations about our shared lives, emotions and vulnerabilities. 

Red Bus: What is it about this particular group of friends, at this particular moment in their lives, that you hope stays with an audience long after they have left the theatre?

Hongwei Bao: HOT POT is a tribute to friendship, love, youth and idealism: how important they are to our lives, and yet how vulnerable they are.  It is also a musing on authenticity, freedom and choice. Everyone aspires to live an authentic life, to pursue freedom; and yet faced with societal pressures, people make different choices, and these choices have ramifications. The four friends part ways after graduation and choose different life trajectories because of what they value. All these choices look perfectly justified in their own contexts, but some may seem more authentic than others. The audience are invited to step into the characters’ shoes and empathise with their choices and feelings. The audience are also invited to reflect on their own life choices. The purpose is not to rue ‘the road not taken’, but to ask what they really want in life and how best to achieve that.

HOT POT hopes to break the stereotypes of being queer, East Asian, and queer East Asian. We have seen many of such stereotypes on stage and on screen, as if these communities are always passive and homogenous. Each of the four friends is different from one another, and they relate to social and cultural norms in different ways. With HOT POT, we hope to challenge the stereotypes and celebrate the diversity of the LGBTQIA+ and East Asian communities in the UK and internationally.

Hongwei Bao is a Nottingham-based playwright, poet and academic. He is the author of The Passion of the Rabbit God and Queering the Asian Diaspora

HOT POT will be touring in the UK between 16 June and 5 July.

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