Bridge Builders:
The Guo family

The family Guo are a mixed Chinese-British unit living in a typical North London street. But there's nothing typical about this family. 

Their back stories are fascinating and during the pandemic they decided to tell their story to the world via YouTube and other video platforms. They have found friends and fame across the internet and their weekly broadcasts routinely reach 250,000 views. So why do so many people tune in?

The youngest member of the family, son Toto Guo, became the driving force behind the YouTube channel – and he always knew his family was especially interesting and entertaining. 

"My dad's an amazing musician, my mom's an amazing gardener. But I feel like they never really had lots of people being able to enjoy their art and their work," he explains. But the family's YouTube channel changed all that. 

"Finally, people have a chance to see them and to interact with them. Now it's like thousands, millions of people," beams Toto. "So for me, that makes me really proud."

The opportunity to make the videos came about because of a huge threat: the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the father Guo Yi is in his late sixties, he's still a busy musician – but pandemic and lockdown curtailed his ability to work.

Even so, he wasn't sure about this new type of performance. But his son Toto was already an expert vlogger, and Guo Yi's friends had also told him that he had to find a way to tell his life story. 

It was a success from the very first livestream. "The people really enjoyed my story," Guo Yi recalls, "and the first time we got about 10-20,000 people watching me. Toto said 'It's a good idea, you must do it.'"

Although he has lived in London for nearly 40 years, Guo Yi still has a strong accent which reflects his homeland – as does his personality. "People think I'm a strong Chinese character – 'You never have changed'," he smiles. 

Yi's life in the UK still revolves around Chinese music and food. But this is not someone who has refused to assimilate. There can be few greater signs of this than marrying an Englishwoman and raising a mixed-heritage family. 

No wonder social media caught alight discovering these bridge-builders between cultures. As Guo Yi puts it: "How fascinating about the very, very Chinese man married with the very, very English woman." And while many women might seem "very, very English" next to Guo Yi, Amanda Guo – known to most as Manda – is indeed a certain archetype of Englishness. 

Raised in "a lovely house" in South Kensington – now the heart of London's museum district, and long one of the capital's most respectable areas, bordering Knightsbridge and Chelsea – Amanda couldn't be more English as she hesitantly admits her parents were "well-off" while insisting they weren't "really wealthy". 

With perhaps typical English reticence, Amanda was somewhat skeptical about the livestreaming project, and left it to the boys. But eventually she was pulled in from the wings to center stage, by public demand: after five months of Guo Yi talking about her, the audience became suspicious.

"The people asked me, 'Are you lying to us? You haven't spoken any English. Where's your wife?'," he laughs. "So I said 'Come on Manda, you have to come and help me!'"

Amanda expected a subsidiary livestreaming role to her husband – "He's very well known in China, people have heard of his music" – but their family dynamic soon became central: "Because I'm English and Guo Yi is Chinese, I think there's an interest in that." Guo Yi couldn't agree more: "The story is really, really fascinating for the Chinese people."

They may be two very different people from very different cultures, but their honesty and openness about the compromises and learning in their relationship has gathered a huge YouTube following, with 8.5 million views and rising fast. 

"I feel quite proud that we've brought something together," says Amanda, "sharing something so two different cultures can see that we're not that different."

Their story has also brought together people around the world. "We ask them, 'Where are you?' And they're all over the world – Africa, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, New York, Canada and Australia," says Guo Yi. "It's amazing that they can talk to us."

And while the audience stretches around the world thanks to modern technology, part of Guo Yi's motivation was to look backwards: the pandemic made him reflect on his fascinating life. 

"I'm already nearly 70 years old, I don't have much time left," he says, "but when I have this energy I want to do a lot of things to build between China and England."

It's something he has been doing for decades.

It wasn't just world-famous musicians that Guo Yi met while busking. One chance encounter changed his life forever: Guo Yi's first busking 'patch' in South Kensington brought him into contact with the woman who would become his wife. 

Amanda Ridley was born in 'South Ken' in 1956 to an upper middle-class family. "I think our childhoods were very different, definitely," she says of her husband. "My father was a consultant and we lived in a lovely house. I wouldn't say we were really wealthy, but I'd say my parents were well-off – nice holidays, I remember. And my grandparents had a lovely house in the country."

While Amanda was studying social anthropology at university, a friend of her mother mentioned that she had seen someone playing an exotic instrument at the local Underground station. 

"She loved his music – I mean, when you hear it, it's really extraordinary," says Amanda. "She thought I'd be interested in meeting someone from a different culture, and I knew nothing about China."

That cued up a classic English social encounter: "She had a dinner party and invited me and my mum and Guo Yi and his brother." And immediately Amanda's interest became somewhat more than anthropological. Even now, she struggles to find the words to express it.

"I immediately…. I don't know, I just really, I think fell for him probably, but didn't really know it at the time. He was very charismatic."

Thus began a cultural exchange: Amanda was interested in Guo Yi, while Guo Yi wanted to know more about London and asked Amanda to show him around. They had lots of trips to museums and parks and got to know each other better. And almost accidentally fell in love.

The relationship came naturally to Amanda, although its crosscultural nature had its challenges.

"There's so much to learn, I suppose, and that sort of fascination… I think it's very hard to say why people are attracted," she says. "Obviously language has been a big barrier – still is a barrier, really: I'm not clever enough to speak Mandarin, and Guo Yi speaks English, but he's not perfect. So we sort of just communicate. I think we've both got a similar sense of humor – we laugh at the same things."

This wasn't the first time Amanda had tried to embrace a new culture, as she had spent a year of university in the United States. "I was in a university in the middle of America and everyone was really great, but I felt this kind of loneliness," she recalls. 

"I felt quite culturally different and I could never quite put my finger on it because we actually shared the same language and a lot of history. Whereas I didn't really feel that with Guo Yi. I don't know why."

Meeting the in-laws

In 1987 Amanda and Guo Yi celebrated their marriage by going to China to meet his family and see his home country.

"The first time I went, Guo Yi and I had just got married, and I loved it, really loved it. It was very different then – when we first landed, I remember looking out of the plane window and there was a woman sweeping the runway with a brush. 

"Then as we went into Beijing, there was this incredible noise, and I said, 'Hey, what's that sound?' And it was the bicycle bells. So it's very different to how it is now."

While Beijing was full of bicycles in the 1980s – it's difficult to get an accurate number for the city itself, but as a country China produced 41 million new bikes in 1987 alone – there were very few cars on the roads. 

"Once we took Guo Yi's mother to Tiananmen Square, and we waited on one of the ring roads for a taxi for about an hour," remembers Amanda. "And now it's obviously jammed the whole time." 

If Amanda was meeting a whole new country, she also had one particularly important person to get on the right side of. 

"We stayed in his mother's flat, and I was quite nervous to meet her because she's quite formidable, and she's been very critical of Guo Yi's girlfriends beforehand. Sometimes she'd say to them 'Get out! Get out!'," Amanda laughs.

Thankfully, she didn't suffer the same date. "Her English was amazing. She wanted to go to the Beijing Hotel, which was then called the Peking Hotel – we had coffee there and that was quite a luxury."

Amanda also stuck by her newfound family. "We'd go to shops sometimes and Chinese people weren't allowed in – it said 'Western-only shops.' So I decided I'm not going then, unless Guo Yi's friends can come."

If Beijing was a new experience, then the culture shock deepened when the couple went traveling in the countryside.

"We went on a trip down to Yellow Mountain, and it was strange – everyone was so amazingly kind and warm, but we were supposed to sit in different parts of the train. Guo Yi had the hard seat and I sat in a soft seat – it was quite separate then, it's not at all like that now. 

"When we booked into a hotel, it was very difficult – they wouldn't let me stay, or they wouldn't let Guo Yi stay. We'd have to show our wedding certificate and they'd say, 'Where's Wandsworth Town Hall? Where's the photo?' 

"I think being Western was quite a novelty, it was unusual. Sometimes I used to get really stared at – not in a nasty way, just in a quizzical way. Whereas now when I go, you're not a novelty at all and it's much easier – you're just a person."

The next generation

In 1992 Amanda was surprised and delighted to find that she was expecting a baby: "It was amazing, because I'd always been told I might not be able to have children, so he was sort of a gift."

Right from the first moment, Guo Yi's busy career was to take him away from being a hands-on father. "Toto was born at four o'clock in the morning and at five o'clock, Guo Yi's supposed to be at the BBC studios," recalls Amanda. "He just literally legged it there." 

Throughout Toto's childhood, the couple tried to introduce their son to Chinese culture.

"We went to China when he was 18 months, his first trip to China. And that was amazing because on the flight going there he started really talking. And then we got to China, he started speaking Mandarin!"

Toto was able to meet his Chinese family and when they returned to the UK, Guo Yi and Amanda sent him to a Chinese nursery part-time. However, the Chinese community in the UK was predominantly from Hong Kong which was still, at that time, a British colony. 

"It was Cantonese speaking, really, but they did speak some Mandarin. But they gave them Chinese food and there were lots of actually mixed-race Chinese children – he made a really good friend who was Chinese and black Caribbean."

The couple's biggest regret when raising their son was that Guo Yi didn't speak Mandarin with him.

"We both regret that a lot," Amanda concedes. "He has a lot of cousins from Guo Yi's sister's side who always spoke Mandarin." "I had no time to teach him," admits Guo Yi sadly.

"I wish we'd spent a bit more time in China, especially maybe when Toto was younger," continues Amanda, before brightening: "Hopefully we're going to spend more time now."

Finances restricted their options, but Guo Yi and Toto went together when the boy was 11 years old. 

"I think it was very, very important," Guo Yi says. "I took him to Beijing, we saw the Forbidden City and all over, and then eventually I took him to my home where I was young – the area really looked dirty. 

"I asked him 'Where is your favorite place?' and he said 'Baba, your home' – very sentimental. Since that time, I think he started to like Chinese food, Chinese songs and Chinese films. He collected so many films he became kind of an expert."

Toto is a fine example of growing up with mixed heritage. Life has not always been easy for those who marry across cultures, but Amanda sees improvement over time.

"It's much more integrated now, I'd say," she says. "There are always some ill-informed, ignorant people who are prejudiced or racist, and they probably are about many other people who are different from them. But generally, I think people have an interest in Chinese culture – it's just quite normal, especially for us because we live in London, which is such a mixed, culturally rich and mixed city. I don't notice particularly that Chinese people are treated differently in any way."

Even so, a certain recent global pandemic has threatened that harmony.

"Coronavirus could have happened anywhere in the world and it just happened to be discovered in China," says Amanda. "I think there was some backlash from that – ignorant people saying, 'Oh, it's the Chinese fault', which I think is really shocking. And I'd be ashamed if any Chinese people suffered from that in this country, or any mixed-race people, but I think that is a minority."

Guo Yi and Amanda have been together for 34 years. That's a laudable achievement for any couple, even from the same culture. Ask them how they manage it, and they begin the loving banter typical of so many long-term relationships.

"My background is completely different from Manda," says Guo Yi, "because when we were young, we didn't have a fridge, we didn't have a washing machine, we didn't have a television, telephone – we really, really had nothing. 

"But then when you were young," he says to his wife, "you already have these kind of material things. And of course, you don't understand our life – that's a big barrier between you and me. When I watch Chinese movies, after five minutes, I'm crying but you don't understand."

Amanda starts diplomatically – "It's true. My background is different" – before agreeing with her husband's assessment. "It's never boring with Guo Yi but I think you have to be realistic – there are struggles too, from being from different cultures. Even now, often we still misunderstand each other from a cultural point of view, not just personality.

"But we get through it, we sort it out. I feel proud that it's possible, you can have very different cultures and backgrounds. It doesn't really matter – your personality matters much more."

Drill down into the differences and they begin to squabble lovingly. 

"I'm better at eating Chinese food," volunteers Amanda, before turning to her husband: "You're quite stubborn about Western food." Guo Yi doesn't argue, confessing that he has "a Chinese stomach." He cooks his own food, but this too can still be a bone of contention for Amanda.

"It's ridiculous – I still complain about the amount of oil flying around the kitchen," she smiles. "And then I think: it's 34 years! We just need to have a separate kitchen, not open-plan, and put an extractor in – or have a kitchen outside…"

Asked to give advice for anybody starting a mixed Chinese-British relationship, she jokingly sticks to her guns – "keep your kitchen" – before humbly admitting: "I think probably it would have been better if I spoke Mandarin. But it doesn't matter, we're very happy. It's fine."

Guo Yi gazes at Amanda, says "Already 35 years have passed," and Amanda laughs: "Yeah, It might be strange if I suddenly spoke Mandarin…."

The two have been building bridges between China and England for all these years, but they're not stopping yet. Indeed, as they embrace retirement with a wholly unexpected new pastime of livestreaming their life experiences to a welcoming world, they're entering a new phase of cross-cultural pollination.