This issue falls into two thematic sections, one on the politics of Chinese identities, the other on art and collections. The first part deals with possibly the most pertinent topic in Chinese studies at present, and that is the question of Chinese identity, how it relates to China in the narrow sense of the PRC on the one hand and to alternative identity categories on the other. The question is of particular pertinence in the context of the surge of racism against Chinese and other East and Southeast Asian communities since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK and across the world. We alert you to our call for papers on Chinese Identity in an Age of Anti-Asian Racism and #StopAsianHate with a deadline of 15 August. The four articles engaging with the question of identity in this issue address the problematic in different timeframes and with different conceptualisations. The second half of this issue features three articles which each deal with differing aspects of art, aesthetics, and media in the contemporary PRC; it includes the prize-winning essay of the 2020 Early Career Researcher Prize by Angela Becher. We conclude with an elegy on a Hui Muslim mosque.