A Zeal For Otherness

By Greg Li

Chinese-ness seems to be celebrated – our culture, language, work ethic, food, and everything that makes up who we are. 

On Chinese New Year, shopping centres in Melbourne host cultural events featuring lion dancing and various kinds of cultural display. Earlier this year, I was working in Forest Hill, an eastern suburb of Melbourne. As I sat behind the front desk, I heard drums, cymbals, and gongs resounding faintly on the side of the shopping centre behind me. Minutes passed by, the sound only grew louder. When the performers rounded the corner and the music swelled to a point that my colleagues and I could no longer hear each other, one of them gestured to the door, mouthing something I couldn’t make out. I flipped the switch and the door slid shut. Understandably, the high-pitch music was quite annoying, but as the lion dancers passed our shopfront, through the glass doors that were now locked, I saw a number of people holding up their phones to capture the moment. People love the novelty of Chinese culture. 

My manager once told me that my middle name – which is Chinese – was very cool. ‘Fancy’ was the word she used, her tone cheerful and gleeful, as she watched me type each letter of my unpronounceable, unspellable name. At least, for a Chinese surname, mine is easy enough to spell. Although she didn’t know how to pronounce my middle name nor what it means, it still looked fancy to her, a little mysterious and exotic. People fancy the distinctness of the Chinese language, and are drawn to the exoticness of the unfamiliar and incomprehensible. 

I overheard a conversation outside our shopfront when I was on receptionist duty. A tall, young gentleman who was advertising for the Royal Flying Doctor Service had stopped a short, elderly lady of Asian appearance who measured about three-quarters of his height. As they carried on with the conversation, the gentleman found out where the elderly lady was from; how long she had been in Australia; and whether she had family here. I sat behind my desk, trying to suppress an internal fit of giggles and eye-rolling as the gentleman replied to the elderly lady with an exaggerated “oh, really?”, his eyes widening in surprise every time she answered his question. The elderly lady let out a light laugh at the gentleman’s surprised reaction to everything she had said, an expression I could only interpret as awkwardness. His surprise and interest might have been feigned; after all, talking to passers-by was his job. But people crave originality. They get excited when they hear a truly original life story. 

My friend and his wife once brought me to a Chinese restaurant to get some takeaway soup. He told me this had been a routine for them – they’d got the same soup every week on this day whenever they were in town. Before we went in, he commented on how fast they were at serving the food. After you pay, the guy at the counter would say… He mimicked him in a faux Chinese accent, saying, “Corn soup, ten minute.” Then he let out a cackle, clearly proud of his rendition; an accent his children often asked me to imitate. I followed him through the glass door and the oil-stained plastic strip curtains, feeling unsettled as though there was something I should say in response but finding nothing to say. I remained silent, all the while thinking to myself that serving a bowl of corn soup within ten minutes wasn’t that impressive at all at a Chinese restaurant. I’d definitely seen better. We are known for our extraordinary work ethic, after all. People enjoy Chinese food and find delight in getting their food quickly. I tried to push the echoing accent in my head and the cultural appropriation out of my mind, but it helped little when my friend began to speak to the guy behind the counter in the same feigned accent. I couldn’t tell whether the guy had noticed or if he was too engrossed in his work. He was Chinese and after all. 

Chinese-ness is celebrated. 

As the lion dancers passed our shopfront, I couldn’t say I particularly enjoyed the noise. So when my colleague asked me to shut the door, I gladly obliged. As the noise got trapped behind the sliding glass doors, I was enveloped in a strange feeling that this tradition was part of me, but I could not decide what to feel about it. Indeed, no longer do we need to make noises and pretend we are lions the size of two fully-grown humans to fend off enemies or evil spirits, both in the physical and the metaphysical world; and the noise might be causing unnecessary disturbances. However, as I feigned my annoyance while turning the keys to lock the automatic door, I secretly delighted in how I managed to shut the Chinese-ness outside. But in hindsight, I felt like a cheat, a hypocrite. 

My manager did not know what my Chinese name means. And I was reassured when seconds later she did not ask about it – a name that had been a burden to me for most of my life. I was conflicted by her commenting how it was fancy. It’s just a normal name like any other name if you ask me. It wouldn’t be special if I were in China. But of course, I was not in China. I decided it was for the better that she didn’t ask how to pronounce my name or what my name means, because I wouldn’t know how to explain. 

The gentleman who worked for the Royal Flying Doctor Service was trying to make the Asian lady feel welcome and valued by acknowledging that her story was impressive. But it was, in fact, her story, which she’d told people countless times, which was not impressive to her, at least not more so than everyone’s stories to their respective owners. As I felt the awkwardness that hung in the air between them, I was reminded of the countless times I was asked where I was from – the question I loathed so much that I tried my best to show others that I am not from anywhere else – and the surprised curiosity that invariably followed. 

Chinese-ness is celebrated, and sometimes, only too conspicuously. 

When the doors were shut and the lion dancing music faded to a muffle, I felt what I did was an attack on my culture. The celebrated Chinese culture was shut down. It could be shut down only because it was expressed excessively and extravagantly. Too conspicuous, too different, too…weird. Why do they have to do such a thing to make Chinese feel Chinese anyway? It did not make me feel Chinese. It made me feel like my culture is intrusive, disruptive, and exasperating. It made me want to hide my culture.

Back in high school, classmates would ask me to say things in Chinese. At first I’d tell them good-heartedly but only to realise they weren’t genuinely interested. They’d deliberately mimic whatever they heard in the weirdest way possible which they thought was funny, and everyone would simultaneously copy each other as they laughed so hard that they became breathless. At the end they’d be saying things that bore no resemblance to what I’d told them at the start. When I was the only person who didn’t laugh, I got told I was no fun, and Chinese people were no fun. I stood there, speechless, asking myself what was so funny about the pronunciation. So when my manager decided not to ask about my Chinese name, I felt relieved, as if I’d just been let off the hook. The traumatic experience with saying anything in Chinese made me feel like my language is a laughing stock, vulgar, ridiculous, and inferior. It made me want to hide my language. 

My friend J told me about a time when her manager had asked her to type her name into the rostering system on his phone. When she’d handed the phone back to him, he looked at what she’d typed in, and vocalised her first name. Then he stared at her surname, hesitated uncomfortably for a second, and muttered jokingly, whatever that is. She told me, My surname is my father’s name, so I’d like people to say it correctly. But I’m not gonna be mad at him for getting it wrong on the first try! I hope this didn’t make her want to hide her surname. 

A strange question that is commonly asked is where are you originally from? This kind of question is usually asked when a white person, believing that only people who look like them can be originally from Australia, is talking to a non-white person. What does it even mean to be originally from a country? Do I have to be born in that country? Or do my parents have to be born in that country? Is that enough? How about if my great grandparents came to Australia from that country a hundred years ago, and because they are not white, I am not white? Does that still make me originally from that country? This is commonly known as racial profiling. And sometimes, instead of asking where are you originally from? They ask, where are you really from? The word really implies that I might be hiding something from them; that what I’ve been telling them might be fake. These questions make me want to hide everything about me that’s Chinese, because only then would I not be asked where I am really from. 

Otherness seems to be celebrated. However, the celebration has a tinge of eeriness and half-heartedness to it. There is something I cannot pinpoint; something that resists being reduced to a single, pin-downable event or activity.

I often ask myself whether Chinese-ness or otherness is anything that needs to be celebrated. If every time there is lion dancing we close down our shopfront; if every time my Chinese name is used or when someone asks me how to say something in Chinese, the memories of the quasi-deliberately twisted pronunciation and the ensuing chortle flood my mind; if once in a while when I meet someone new I get asked where I am really from so that their curiosity is satisfied because I look different, I don’t see the point of celebrating this Chinese-ness or expressing this otherness. If any part of our culture and our language can be used against us, it might as well be suppressed to nil. I might as well hide my Chinese-ness and deny who I am. 

The celebration of Chinese-ness is not helping. It makes me want to hide myself and every part of me that is Chinese. 

So I did. I shut the Chinese-ness inside me and did not let it out. I deliberately ignored anything that has to do with Chinese culture. I refused to learn more Chinese such that my spoken Chinese remained elementary and my written Chinese even worse. I paid no attention to Chinese traditional festivals and their significance so that I could proudly tell my friends I knew nothing about them. I loathed being the conspicuously different person amongst the others. I felt like Hermione and the other muggle-born students of magic at Hogwarts, despised and rejected. I wished desperately that I would not be culturally Chinese. So I meticulously curated an Australian self and hid my Chinese self within. The cultural non-Chinese-ness I've developed is impeccable. I refused to express my Chinese identity not even when I was asked to for the fear of being turned down and shut up. I let the facet of me that is Australian show to the point that I almost forgot there is Chinese-ness inside me. 

Once I was at work answering a phone call from an elderly lady who had come for a dental appointment the day before, I told her I was her dental assistant. When she’d asked my name, in her slow-paced, sweet voice, she said Greg is quite an Australian name. Obviously, she remembered that I was Asian-looking. She then went on telling me about how one of her children’s partner had their parents migrate to Australia and now they were taking English lessons. I told her my parents were also taking those lessons and by means of a half-joke, I said I needed to improve my Chinese. She sounded delighted and complimented my English. At the end of our small talk, she said I was well assimilated. I felt flattered at her comment. Someone is finally noticing how Australian I am, I thought to myself. Her approval made me happy, because my years of effort of assimilating worked. But should I be happy about it?

It’s nobody’s fault that being a minority and a part of an ethnic diaspora means constantly denying who you are. But at the same time, it’s everybody’s fault. 

I denied my Chinese-ness at every possible occasion. 

*

Chinese-ness is a beast. Otherness is a beast. 

Although we feel we need to deny our otherness, there seems to be a zeal for things that are different; things that are not White or Anglo or English-speaking. But these things that are different are for some reason not to be let loose for them to express themselves. They have to be controlled, displayed at the convenience of the majority. Caged, restrained, and tamed, lest they become loose and pose a danger to the majority. They should be fenced in, locked up, only let out during public exhibitions on Chinese New Year, Harmony Day, when people want to know your Chinese name, when people want to know where you are really from because you look different, and when people want to get cheap, tasty food quickly. 

Yes, these “things” I am talking about are the representations of Chinese identity – the lion dancing, the Chinese language, the faraway place where our ancestors came from, Chinese food, and the Chinese accent. People pick and choose the things that belong to us that benefit them and be zealous about them. When they feel like having a dose of Chinese-ness, they have Chinese food and fake a Chinese accent so that they feel connected to the Chinese people living in their midst. They ask people what their real name is and where they’re really from because they perceive something different from them, because people who look like us cannot have Tom, Sarah, and Ben as their real name nor can they be really from Australia. And when they are not zealous, or when we do things that they don’t feel like being zealous about, they tell us to be like everyone else. Or worse, they send us home, to where we are really from, like they used to do. 

Chinese-ness and otherness are beasts that are tied up. 

*

Not only do we have to deny who we truly are, we need to pretend that we are who the majority is, which is, most of the time, not who we are. So be like the majority I did. 

Pretending I am something when I am not seems hard, but there are in fact many things I can do to achieve that. I speak with a natural Australian accent which makes people think that I was born and raised in Melbourne when I was actually not. I dress like a modern Australian young person. I get half of my clothes from Cotton On and H&M, the other half from my local Op-Shop because I am well accustomed to Australian life. I live in a suburb an hour away from the city and drive to the train station to take the train to uni. I cook spaghetti bolognese (which is not even Australian but Australians eat it), meat pies, and eat raw salad and carrot sticks. I have a passport that says my nationality is Australian. And when asked where I am from, I tell them I am from… 

*

When my family was granted permanent residency, my friend G gave me two Australian flags for me to stick to the side windows of my car. I folded them up neatly, stored them in the glove compartment, and never touched them since. I don’t think I’d ever be able to fly them. Didn’t I want to be Australian so badly? How come now that I can legitimately tell people I am Australian because it says so on my passport and fly the Australian flag from my car, I cannot bring myself to do it?

My friend A told me that Australian and western nationalities don’t carry much meaning because of all the immigration. To me, “Australian” doesn’t even feel like a true nationality. It feels like a title I get to carry which can open the whole world to me. I will always be Chinese. This friend also told me that in her country, parents sometimes try to have children in another country so that their children can have a “stronger” or more “prized” citizenship. Some people want to be Australian because they think the citizenship is strong. But what does your citizenship mean to you if it can be deemed weak or strong? Isn’t your nationality your root? It defines who you are as a person, where your family is from, the people you are part of. If it can be deemed weak, because the country that issued it is weak, or because it allowed visa-free access to only a few countries, it can also be deemed useless and can be sacrificed for a stronger citizenship. Then your identity, your family history, your root, and your belongingness are disposable and can be trampled upon. When you've scrunched your citizenship that defines you into a ball as if it were a filthy piece of yellowed paper with doodles all over it that is your life, the life of your ancestors, and the memories of your country, you throw it into the bin. Then you receive a new piece of paper, gold rimmed and shiny. You frame it as if this is who you are now, because it is better, stronger than the one you were born with, the one your ancestors had. You get a new passport in a dark blue cover with a kangaroo and an emu engraved and you now write Australian as your nationality when you fill out forms. When you’re asked what your nationality is and depending on who is asking, you might say your country of origin or that you are Australian. There is always this conflict between the two. In the first instance you’d be reminded of that scrunched paper you trashed. In the second you’d feel like an imposter. 

Australian-ness is fancy and an Australian passport powerful, precious, and well sought after. However, the belongingness and glamour befitting an Australian person that I longed for never came. Saying I am Australian feels like lying. 

I decided I will not tell anyone I am Australian. And I will never be Australian. 

This is what it feels like to be an Ethnic Australian. I need to do more and more to prove to other people that I am being a good ethnic person by embracing the majority. Maybe at the end I finally achieved that. I did all I could and was accepted by the society. But I became hollow, a clown with all the fancy Australian-ness on the outside but devoid of my own self on the inside, unsure of who I am. People might think I am Australian through and through, but the Australian-ness feels fake, like a mask I had to put on. I realised the last prerequisite to being fully Australian is to think that I am Australian. I can do everything to show my Australian-ness; to make people see that I seem to be an Australian; to give people the impression that I am Australian. But I still need to believe it myself. That is the only thing I lack. But that might be the one thing I will always lack; something I am proud to lack. 

*

Indeed, this is how a multiethnic society functions. In a diverse society like Australia, there are bound to be the majority and the minority. The former will always exercise dominance over the latter. The latter will always feel the pressure to assimilate. It’s nobody’s fault that that’s the case. But that doesn’t mean we have to give in to that pressure, because people’s attitudes do change over time. 

In the gold rush era, 170 years ago, the Chinese gold miners were segregated from the Europeans for the differences in their culture, language, and ways of life. Chinese Protectorate Camps, designed to protect the Chinese from any potential racial conflicts, were set up mostly for the purpose of protecting the gold miner community from the threat of social and moral decline should there be any interactions between the Chinese and the Europeans. The Chinese were accused of servility, cultural distinctness, paganism, and other vile qualities that were presumed to be incompatible with European society. 

Later on, when Chinese had settled in the British penal colony in Australia, away from the isolated gold mines, they started working at lower rates of pay and selling goods at a cheaper price. The Europeans feared that these rice-eating, servile Chinese would outcompete their businesses and rob all of the beef-eating White people of their jobs. They feared that paganism would lead to social injustices and dishonesty. 

On June 30, 1861, 2000 European miners attacked the Chinese living in the Lambing Flat camps, around the town that is known today as Young, in NSW. 250 Chinese miners were injured and their belongings destroyed. Later that year, because of the violence that frequently erupted between the Chinese and the Europeans, the government of the penal colony passed the Chinese Immigrants Regulation and Restriction Act. Instead of resolving violence, they restricted the number of Chinese that were allowed to live in the colony. 

On December 23, 1901, in the newly federated parliament, the Immigration Restriction Act came into effect. In the terms of the Attorney-General Alfred Deakin, this Act is to reinforce “the prohibition of all alien coloured immigration” and “the deportation or reduction of the number of aliens now in [their] midst”, so that the policy of “white Australia” can be secured. That was when the mass deportation of Asian immigrants started. Between 1901 and the late 1940s, the Asian population in Australia dropped from 1.25 per cent to 0.21 per cent. Furthermore, any non-European migrants could be asked to sit a fifty-word dictation test in any European language chosen at the discretion of the immigration officer. Anyone who failed the test was to be refused entry and deported. The test could also be repeated should the migrant pass the first one, thus ensuring an inevitable failure for any migrant deemed “undesirable”. During the fifty-seven years the test was performed, only fifty-two non-white migrants passed the test and were granted entry. 

We still live in an Australia where there is racial discrimination; the stories speak louder than anything. But we must acknowledge that we've come a long way. With the abolition of the White Australia policy in the 1970s, the numbers of Asian migrants soared. Now approximately 17.4 per cent of Australians identify themselves as Asian. 

In the end, there is only one thing left to address: the vile qualities of the Chinese that caused the conflicts between them and the Europeans, the ones that caused them to be deported, the ones that were then shunned and considered loathsome, are now celebrated. When you are pleased that your hot Chinese food is served in less than ten minutes, that is our servility. When you fancy our lion dancing and our Chinese names, that is our cultural and linguistic distinctness. So when we feel discriminated against because we are different, let’s not forget what the first Chinese people in Australia had endured and how they were treated.

Chinese-ness and otherness had always been contained like fascinating beasts at a circus, used at the convenience of the majority – more so before than it is now. But maybe we shouldn’t let this containment discourage us. Maybe we should be free to express ourselves without fear of being seen as strange, because whoever wants to discriminate against us will always find a way to do so. 

Perhaps it's time for me to understand that my Chinese-ness is not something I need to hide.

Perhaps it’s time for me to own the fact that I am Chinese. And if someone is not happy about it, so be it. 

Perhaps it's time for me to stop pretending I am Australian, and be proud of it.

By Greg Li