Growing Up Asian in Australia

by Alice Pung

  Growing up Asian in Australia

  Growing up Asian

  in Australia

  ......................................

  Edited by

  Alice Pung

  Published by Black Inc.,

  an imprint of Schwartz Media Pty Ltd

  Level 5, 289 Flinders Lane

  Melbourne Victoria 3000 Australia

  email: enquiries@blackincbooks.com

  http://www.blackincbooks.com

  Introduction and this collection © Alice Pung & Black Inc. 2008.

  Individual works © retained by the authors.

  Reprinted 2008.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

  Photo of Hoa Pham by Alister Air. Photo of Joy Hopwood by Yanna Black.

  The National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Pung, Alice (ed.)

  Growing up Asian in Australia.

  ISBN 9781863951913

  1. Pung, Alice. 2. Asians – Australia – Social life and customs.

  3. Immigrants’ writings – Australia. 4. Asians – Australia – Literary collections. 5. Race relations – Australia. 6. Australia – Social conditions.

  A820.80355

  Book design: Thomas Deverall

  Typeset by J&M Typesetting

  Printed in Australia by Griffin Press

  Dedicated to all Asian-Australians, whose struggles,

  aspirations and hopes across the generations have

  helped make this an ace country in which to grow up.

  For Alexander, Alison and Alina, who make life

  wonderful, because they are.

  Contents

  Alice Pung Introduction

  STRINE

  Amy Choi The Relative Advantages of Learning My Language

  Sunil Badami Sticks and Stones and Such-like

  Tom Cho Learning English

  Ivy Tseng Chinese Lessons

  PIONEERS

  Ken Chau The Early Settlers

  The Terrorists

  Francis Lee The Upside-Down Year

  Thao Nguyen The Water Buffalo

  Christopher Cyrill The Ganges and Its Tributaries

  Simon Tong The Beat of a Different Drum

  BATTLERS

  Hop Dac Pigs from Home

  Annette Shun Wah Spiderbait

  Lily Chan Take Me Away, Please

  Kevin Lai & Matt Huynh ABC Supermarket

  MATES

  Aditi Gouvernel Wei-Lei and Me

  Oliver Phommavanh Hot and Spicy

  Ray Wing-Lun Lessons from My School Years

  Tanveer Ahmed Exotic Rissole

  THE FOLKS

  Vanessa Woods Perfect Chinese Children

  Simone Lazaroo The Asian Disease

  Rudi Soman Crackers

  Oanh Thi Tran Conversations with My Parents

  Bon-Wai Chou The Year of the Rooster

  Mia Francis Are You Different?

  THE CLAN

  Benjamin Law Tourism

  Ken Chau The Family Tree

  The Firstborn

  Diem Vo Family Life

  Ken Chan Quarrel

  HaiHa Le Ginseng Tea and a Pair of Thongs

  LEGENDS

  Phillip Tang Teenage Dreamers

  Shalini Akhil Destiny

  Cindy Pan Dancing Lessons

  Chin Shen Papa Bear

  Glenn Lieu & Matt Huynh A New Challenger

  THE HOTS

  Benjamin Law Towards Manhood

  Chi Vu The Lover in the Fish Sauce

  Xerxes Matza The Embarrassments of the Gods

  Lian Low My First Kiss

  Jenny Kee A Big Life

  UNAUSTRALIAN?

  Uyen Loewald Be Good, Little Migrants

  Leanne Hall How to Be Japanese

  Tony Ayres Silence

  James Chong Anzac Day

  Mei Yen Chua Special Menu

  Michelle Law A Call to Arms

  Joo-Inn Chew Chinese Dancing, Bendigo Style

  TALL POPPIES

  Quan Yeomans

  Khoa Do

  Hoa Pham

  Jason Yat-Sen Li

  Shaun Tan

  John So

  Joy Hopwood

  Anh Do

  Caroline Tran

  LEAVING HOME

  Diana Nguyen Five Ways to Disappoint Your Vietnamese Mother

  Pauline Nguyen The Courage of Soldiers

  Paul Nguyen You Can’t Choose Your Memories

  Emily J. Sun These Are the Photographs We Take

  HOMECOMING

  Kylie Kwong My China

  Blossom Beeby The Face in the Mirror

  Jacqui Larkin Baked Beans and Burnt Toast

  Sim Shen Hanoi and Other Homes

  Publication Details

  Contributors

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  When I was growing up, we were called Power-Points. I thought it was because we were so smart and dweeby in a dynamic Microsoft-magnate sort of way. All that untapped potential! All that electrifying brain power! Then someone pointed to an Australian power socket, and told me to take a closer look. Imagine that if it was a face, they said, think about what kind of face it would be. They saw two sloping lines and one straight down the middle, and thought it was hilarious. I didn’t get it, because the power socket was white.

  In fact, if there was any kind of ‘face’ on it, it looked vacuously cute, like most of the lead characters in the teen fiction I was reading at the time. After a while – with the exception of Claudia from the Babysitters Club, who was Asian and funny, good at art and bad at maths – most teen fiction gave me the idea that I needed extensive plastic surgery. So I stopped reading those books and turned to John Marsden and Robert Cormier instead, who wrote with raw honesty and real feeling about coming of age.

  Growing up is a funny time. During no other period will we experience so many ‘firsts’: first day at school, first friend, first love, first fear, first heartbreak, first loss, first epiphany. This anthology is a book of firsts – all from a uniquely Asian-Australian perspective. Whether growing up in the 1950s with ancestry from the gold-rush days, or arriving more recently and attempting to find solidarity in schoolyard friendship, our authors show us what it is like behind the stereotypes. Asian-Australians have often been written about by outsiders, as outsiders. Here, they tell their own stories. They are not distant observers, plucking the most garish fruit from the lowest-hanging branches of an exotic cultural tree. These writers are the tree, and they write from its roots.

  The poet Horace said Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur: ‘Change only the name and this story is also about you.’ I felt this way when reading many of these stories. Compiling this anthology also made me more aware of the difficulties faced by earlier generations of immigrants – parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. Even with our mastery of ‘Strine,’ those born in Australia in the past four decades find it difficult to be Asian-Australian. Imagine what it must be like for Asian-Australians who didn’t and still don’t have the language. Usually, it is the second generation that accumulates enough cultural capital to be able to put their parents’ experiences into words. They also have their own stories to tell about mediating between two cultures. Stories such as Thao Nguyen’s ‘Water Buffalo’ and Pauline Nguyen’s ‘The Courage of Soldiers’ explore the generational divide with compassion, while Mia Francis’s ode to her adopted son and Blossom Beeby’s acceptance of her adopted heritage move us w
ith their unassuming love.

  This collection also reveals that there is more than one voice within any given culture – from Tom Cho’s brilliant satirical surrealism to Vanessa Woods’s wonderful self-deprecating humour, from Paul Nguyen’s aching account of adolescent loneliness to Chi Vu’s bewildered young lovers, from Hoa Pham’s painful personal journey towards acceptance to Francis Lee’s arrival in the ‘Upside-Down Year’ of 1961, and from Jenny Kee’s jubilant adolescent sexual awakening to Quan Yeoman’s insightful meditation on art and family. As Benjamin Law tentatively steps towards manhood with Mariah Carey’s Music Box blaring in his ears, as Shalini Akhil works towards becoming Indian Wonder Woman, as Annette Shun Wah helps run her family chicken farm, and as HaiHa Le leaves Jehovah to become an actress – these stories show us what it is like beyond the stereotypes.

  I have arranged the anthology around loose themes selected with a certain irony, picking out traits that have been worthy of collective national pride – the Battler, the Pioneer, the Legend – to show that these heroic characteristics are not confined to those with white faces and First-Fleet heritage.

  Strine explores the difficulties of navigating a different language: Ivy Tseng receives careful Chinese lessons from her father, Sunil Badami tries to change his name, and Amy Choi reminisces about her late grandfather. Pioneers includes Ken Chau’s personally political poems, their impact like a punch to the gut, while Simon Tong surmounts a loss of words through sheer will and quiet observation, and Christopher Cyrill shows that a sense of home can be tied to, but can also transcend, the physical landscape. Battlers features Hop Dac’s charming carnivorous pigs, Kevin Lai’s nostalgic supermarket through Matt Huynh’s incredible artistry, and Lily Chan’s deftly humorous observations of the characters who turn up in her family’s country-town restaurant.

  Mates explores stories of school, from the warm humour of Oliver Phommavanh, Tanveer Ahmed and Aditi Gourvernel, to Ray Wing-Lun’s poignant insights, gleaned from his struggles with institutional learning. The Folks includes Oanh Thi Tran’s charmingly stilted conversations with her parents, Rudi Soman’s affection for his Acha and Amma, and Simone Lazaroo and Bon-Wai Chou’s sensitive reflections on the death of a parent. The Clan features stories as diverse as Diem Vo’s ‘Family Life,’ with its gentle sense of security and place, Ken Chan’s beautifully narrated account of feuding grandparents and Benjamin Law’s hilarious yet heartbreaking look at parental separation. In Legends, Phillip Tang and his father find a connection through the death of screen icon Leslie Cheung, Chin Shen’s ‘Papa Bear’ paves the way for his progeny, Glenn Lieu inadvertently becomes the ‘New Challenger,’ and Cindy Pan’s father dreams of her winning every single category of Nobel Prize. The Hots explores love and sexuality: we meet Xerxes Matsa’s amazingly virile family, and Lian Low recounts coming to terms with her ‘forbidden’ obsession with KD Lang.

  UnAustralian deals with issues of identity and race, from Mei-Yen Chua’s special menu of cultural secrets to Uyen Loewald’s ironic poem about being ‘good little migrants,’ from Tony Ayres’s unsettling encounter with homophobic racism to Leanne Hall’s fear of serial Asian fetishists, from Michelle Law’s ‘call to arms’ to Joo-In Chew’s whimsical childhood with her hippy parents.

  I have also subverted the term Tall Poppies, a term often used disparagingly, but in this instance used to cast a new light on inspirational Asian-Australians: artists, film directors, writers, rock musicians, actors, lawyers, politicians, journalists, comedians, radio DJs, even the first Asian presenter on Play School. The diversity of our authors shows that Asian-Australians have flourished in almost every occupational field. Sociologists have some times described us as a ‘model minority’ – working hard, studying hard, conforming to the expectations and ideals of the dominant culture. This can be a burden for young Asian-Australians growing up. It implies that external indicators of success – money, education, fame, career – define the value of our contribution to society. Our Tall Poppies are included here not because they are ‘model minorities,’ but because they express, with great depth and generosity, what it is like to persist in pursuing one’s passion, to surmount racism and overcome adversity.

  Leaving Home explores the painful journeys we make in order to reconcile our internal and external struggles, including Diana Nguyen’s achingly funny instructions on ‘how to disappoint your Vietnamese mother’ and Emily J. Sun’s haunting tale of frustrated ambition and love. Finally, Homecoming is all about recovering a feeling of home, whether it is an actual physical journey like Kylie Kwong’s return to her family’s ancestral home in China, Jacqui Larkin’s sweet tale of a return to childhood, or Sim Shen’s reflections on having his first child and ‘returning’ to South-East Asia.

  I hope that these loose themes will help bring to the forefront questions of identity, place and perspective. Because the stories deal so insightfully with the challenges of coming to terms with multiple identities, they move beyond crude labels such as ‘bananas’ and ‘coconuts.’ We are not fruit (or power sockets!), we are people. These are not sociological essays, but deeply personal stories told with great literary skill. These stories show us not only what it is like to grow up Asian in Australia, but also what it means to be Asian-Australian. And this is exactly the sort of book I wish I had read when I was growing up.

  Alice Pung

  Strine

  ......................

  The Relative Advantages of

  Learning My Language

  Amy Choi

  I was never particularly kind to my grandfather. He was my mother’s father, and he lived with us when I was a teenager. I remember him coming into the lounge room one night, and when he went to sit down, I said to my brother, ‘I hope he doesn’t sit down.’ I didn’t think my grandfather understood much English, but he understood enough, and as I watched, he straightened up again, and without a word, returned to his room. I was twelve years old.

  My grandfather wrote poetry on great rolls of thin white paper with a paintbrush. He offered to read and explain his poems to me several times over the years, but I only let him do it once. I’d let my Chinese go by then, which made listening to him too much of an effort. Though I was raised speaking Chinese, it wasn’t long before I lost my language skills. I spoke English all day at school, listened to English all night on TV. I didn’t see the point of speaking Chinese. We lived in Australia.

  Monday to Friday, Grandad went to the city, dressed in a suit with a waistcoat, a hat, and carrying his walking stick. He would take the bus to the station, the train to the city, the tram to Little Bourke Street. On Mondays, he’d be sitting at a large round table at Dragon Boat Restaurant with other old Chinese men. Tuesdays to Fridays, he was at a small square table by himself with a pot of tea and the Chinese newspaper. I watched him leave in the morning and come back in the afternoon, as punctual and as purposeful as any school kid or office worker, for years.

  One afternoon, he didn’t come home until well after dark. We assumed he’d got off the bus at the wrong stop or had turned into the wrong street at some point, forcing him to wander around for a bit before finding his way home.

  A month after that, he tried to let himself into a stranger’s house. It looked just like our house. The yellow rose bush, the painted timber mailbox, even the Ford Falcon parked out the front were the same. But it was the home of a gentle Pakistani couple who let him use the phone to call us.

  Two months after that, he fell and hit his head on something. When he didn’t come home, Mum and I drove around looking for him. We finally found him stumbling along in the dark, two kilometres from the house. There was a trickle of blood down the side of his face.

  From that day forward, Grandad was only allowed to go to the city if someone accompanied him. Once or twice during the school holidays that task fell to me.

  After rinsing out his milk glass, Grandad would pick up his walking stick and head out into the street. I’d follow, a few steps behind. He wasn’t awa
re of me. He wasn’t aware of the milk on his lip, the upside-down watch on his wrist, the scrape of branches against his coat. He had a blank, goofy, content expression on his face, and turned instinctively into platform five when he was at the train station and into Dragon Boat Restaurant when he was on Little Bourke Street.

  When he was about to board the wrong tram or turn round the wrong corner, I’d step forward to take him by the elbow and steer him back on course. He’d smile innocently and seem glad to see me. ‘Hello there, Amy. Finished school already?’ Then he’d look away and forget I was ever there.

  He’d been diagnosed with a brain tumour and, three months later, he died.

  At the funeral, my sadness was overshadowed by a sense of regret. I’d denied my grandfather the commonest of kindnesses. I was sixteen years old.

  I am now twenty-six. A few weeks ago, during a family dinner at a Chinese restaurant, the waiter complimented my mum on the fact that I was speaking to her in Chinese. The waiter told Mum with a sigh that his own kids could barely string a sentence together in Chinese. Mum told the waiter I had stopped speaking Chinese a few years into primary school, but that I had suddenly started up again in my late teens.

  I have often wondered how aware my mum is of the connection between Grandad’s death and my ever-improving Chinese. Whenever I am stuck for a word, I ask her. Whenever I am with her, or relatives, or a waiter at a Chinese restaurant, or a sales assistant at a Chinese department store, I practise. I am constantly adding new words to my Chinese vocabulary, and memorising phrases I can throw into a conversation at will. It is an organic way of relearning a language. Textbooks and teachers are not necessary, since I am only interested in mastering the spoken word. I am not interested in the written word or in the many elements of Chinese culture of which I am ignorant. I am not trying to ‘discover my roots.’ I am simply trying to ensure that the next time an elderly relative wants me to listen to them, I am not only willing, I am able.

  Sticks and Stones and Such-like

  Sunil Badami