Growing Up Asian in Australia

by Alice Pung

  I tug Mr Murphy’s shirt. ‘Now that’s a photo for the newsletter.’

  Mr Murphy heads back into the hall and gets his plate of curry. ‘Wow, this is really good,’ he says. I can’t believe it. I thought his head would explode. The other teachers are pale but they slowly go back to their tables.

  Mrs Schwartz takes another mouthful of beef salad. ‘Yum, this is pretty tasty.’

  Mr Winfree clutches his water bottle like a baby, but he gives me a thumbs up.

  Maybe the teachers are being nice or the chilli has numbed their brains. I walk back to my plate. Most of the chips are gone. Rajiv is grinning, with potato bits between his teeth. ‘They were getting cold,’ he says.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. I cut out a piece of kangaroo meat and chew on it. It’s no use. All I can taste is guilt. It tastes a lot like chilli.

  *

  Everyone in 5/6W is nursing a giant belly after lunch.

  ‘I never want to see any food again,’ Jennie says.

  Mr Winfree nods. ‘I don’t think I can eat until next week.’

  Rajiv proudly plays with a toothpick. ‘I can’t believe there was no dessert.’

  At the end of the day, we all trudge outside with our empty trays and bowls. I carry my schoolbag like a soiled nappy. The stench of chilli is unbearable. Mum is talking to Mr Murphy and Mrs Schwartz. I wonder how many hours of detention I’ll get.

  ‘Well done Mrs Yip, you and your husband are magnificent cooks,’ he says. ‘Every dish was delicious.’

  Mum smiles. ‘I’m happy you liked the food.’

  ‘We’ll definitely be asking for more in the future,’ Mr Murphy says.

  ‘Next time,’ Mum says, ‘maybe you can try something spicy.’

  Lessons from My School Years

  Ray Wing-Lun

  My sister held my hand and led me through the gate.

  ‘Just sit over there on the benches by the monkey bars. Wait for Sister Mary to call all the kindy kids. And do what you’re told.’

  I had waited years for this day to find out what people did at school, and to find something to do other than kick stones, play in the sand pile and shine the apples in my parents’ fruit shop.

  *

  Sydney’s North Shore in the 1950s was not, for me, leafy streets and solid brick houses. It was our fruit shop in Lindfield, where my family lived and worked. My world was the stretch of shops along the highway, a back lane where mechanics drove cars backwards and forwards, the railway line behind the back lane and the library and park at the end of the lane.

  Our fruit shop was always shiny and clean with fancy displays of fruit. Its doors opened wide across the whole shopfront, welcoming customers to come in. And they came in. They were friendly and chatted with my mum and my dad. They asked about what was fresh and gave advice on clothes and gadgets and schools and on ways of doing all kinds of things in the local community.

  My dad had come to Australia when he was seventeen with no English and no business experience. Now, he was a successful businessman who drew customers in. He had a wide smile. He was keen to ask what people wanted and what they knew about this and that. He always made sure that he had a chat and that they were happy. He was friends with all the local shop-owners and enjoyed the dinners and parties held by the local Chamber of Commerce.

  Dad loved everything modern. He had a huge refrigerated cool-room built for the shop; it was the talk of all the shop-owners around. Mum got an automatic washing machine to replace the old wringer and Dad had a camera, tape recorder, movie camera and movie projector. He also worked hard. He loaded and unloaded the trucks with crates of fruit and vegetables. He was not tall, but he was strong. At night, in the little office under the stairs, he would do the accounts. You would hear the rapid clicking of the Chinese abacus as he checked all the figures. The neat and perfect columns tracked every item down to the last penny. Afterwards he would practise his calligraphy in both Chinese and English. Skinny and shy with a scratchy scrawl, I always wanted to be strong and to write as beautifully as my dad. I wanted to be the warm big-hearted man my dad was.

  My mum was beautiful. Whether in her simple work frocks or silky cheongsams, she drew constant admiration from shop-keepers and customers, and most of all from me. She was a little more careful in what she said and did than my dad. She had to be, because of Dad’s big eyes and big plans. She taught us to respect our elders and look after our family. She watched the pennies. She made our clothes. She gave us advice about working hard, being careful with our money and getting on with the gweilos.

  Aware that she had no education and how much there was to learn about this new country, she read magazines, listened to the radio and chatted with the customers to make sure she knew what to say at the right time, and what to advise us to do when visiting friends or going to school. We learnt table manners and the formalities of polite conversation. Our politeness and deferential demeanor singled us out as those shy Chinese kids from the fruit shop.

  The shop was busy enough for all kinds of relatives and friends to come to work there. This helped Dad to fulfill his family duties by bringing relatives out from China. It brought an audience of Chinese relatives and workers to listen to my dad’s stories and to share in the secrets of business success in Australia. It brought the only Chinese people in Lindfield to Lindfield.

  I didn’t play much with the few local kids from the other shops. I mostly tagged along with my older sisters and brother when they had friends over. Sometimes, I would go to the markets with my dad early in the morning, or accompany him on his home deliveries. We would go as far as Pymble, a good five or six miles away. I was amazed by the green trees and gardens, the houses that looked like the ones on TV. I wondered how people got to live in those homes.

  As the fruit shop prospered, my dad began to plan for weekends. At first we only had Sunday afternoons, but eventually we took the whole of Sunday off. We would go on picnics with relatives and workers from the shop, and sometimes with the families of the local policeman or other shop-owners. We would visit distant relatives somewhere on the other side of Sydney. Their shops were very different from our open, airy, sunlit fruit shop. They were dark and narrow with the strong smell of salted fish, dried prawns and other Chinese foodstuffs. Unlike all the workers in our shop, these relatives spoke Chinese to us. I felt uncomfortable. They were the only other Chinese people we knew. They were very different from the people whose shining houses we visited on home deliveries.

  Most of the time, I did my jobs and played my games and kept out of the way. Customers smiled, chatted and patted me on the head. My siblings came home from school with stories to tell and ribbons and stamps that showed they had done well. There didn’t seem to be room for me to ask questions, for me to do things that counted. I watched and I listened.

  *

  I was going to school now. It was my turn to do things that mattered. I wouldn’t have to just watch and listen any more.

  Boys and girls were running around shouting and screaming. I couldn’t understand anything. My mother had warned me, ‘We have to watch out for gweilos. They can be nice sometimes but they won’t always treat you the same.’ I stuck to watching and listening, trying to work out if I should be scared or afraid. I stuck to my guns and said nothing.

  One day, I was sitting by the low brick fence counting the cars and trucks on the highway. Tony was one of the biggest boys in the class. He came up with three or four kids behind him, chanting ‘Ching chong! Ching chong! Don’t even know how to talk! Don’t even know how to fight!’ I didn’t know what to say but I did know what to do. I had had many fights with my older brother. I used my arms to cover my stomach and my face. He punched and punched until he got tired. I think I counted seventeen. I got a few red marks and bruises. I punched him once in the stomach. He cried and Mick ran to dob me in to Mother Fabian. Whatever else might happen, I now knew that I could look after myself.

  I became involved in everything after that. Tony i
nvited me over to play at his house. I had rock fights and cracker fights with my brother’s mates in our back lane. I learned to grit my teeth as rocks hit my garbage-can lid and tuppeny bungers rang in my ears or sizzled in my hand as I waited for the wick to run low before throwing it.

  Even though we were in the back lane behind the shop, my parents didn’t seem to know what we were doing. They only found out when we broke the windscreen of a car or when my brother got run over by one of the mechanics in the back lane. We felt the rough timber of packing-case planks then.

  Mum and Dad were busy: they were starting a restaurant next to our fruit shop. Dad was up before we were awake and didn’t fin-ish work until late at night. All our Chinese workers were learning English and getting ready to join the ranks of the many Chinese grocers and restaurant-owners across Sydney.

  My second cousin came from China to live with us. Her dad was a captain of a Chinese freighter. She took me to the library, bought me milkshakes and read to me. Her name was Carmel. I loved her. She ran away with one of the workers in the fruit shop instead of marrying one of the educated people Dad had picked out for her. Dad said she hadn’t done the right thing and told us not to talk to her again.

  So much was happening. I was learning a lot. I am not sure whether anyone could have said what I was learning. I didn’t know.

  *

  When I was nine I went to ‘big school,’ run by the Christian Brothers. It was a couple of stations away, in Chatswood. Chats-wood was like a slow country town; there was no sign of the bustling centre it would become.

  On my first day, my straw boater was trampled and I got the strap because I didn’t know whether my second name was ‘George’ or ‘Wing’ or ‘Lun.’ A lot of other boys didn’t know their second names, either. We all got two each. The sixty-five or seventy boys in the class lived in dread from that day on. We were in Strap-Happy Jack’s class. Almost every day, the whole class would be lined up at least once to get the strap. We got the strap for making mistakes in our homework, or in mental arithmetic, or in spelling bees. We got it if our ticks were too big, for standing in the wrong place, sitting next to the wrong boy, moving too fast or walking too slow, being part of a rowdy group of boys … There were lots of ways to get the strap, and not too many ways to avoid it.

  I can still feel the tingling fear in the boys as they waited for the strap. The sight of them writhing on the ground shocked me and stays with me as a picture of what evil we can do to each other, what pain we can bear, and what horrors we can hide. This memory haunts me. It paints the dark side of human nature better than any history book has been able to do for me.

  We didn’t just sit there and take it. We placed bets on who would get the most straps each week. We rubbed gum leaves on our hands to numb them and dared each other not to flinch or cry. I remember getting fifty-seven one week and I still didn’t win. Sometimes there is no winning.

  My brother always came first in class and got lots of attention and praise at home. Despite nearly always being the last to get an answer wrong in spelling bees and mental arithmetic quizzes, I only came ninth in my class, and for some reason was pushed backed to thirteenth. I had to wait quite a few years before I could stand up on speech night to get a prize.

  The swimming carnival approached. I couldn’t swim. My sisters and brother asked my dad if I could have swimming lessons at the local public school, but Dad was too busy. My sisters wrote a note asking for me to be excused from the carnival. Strap-Happy Jack read it out in class. He said, ‘We all know these Chinese people don’t contribute to anything. They are worthless and shouldn’t be part of this school. They should all be sent back on a slow boat to China.’

  For Strap-Happy Jack, this might not have meant much. After all, there weren’t many Chinese people to worry about. The only other Chinese people I remember seeing in Chatswood were my brother, our two second cousins who went to our school, and another boy who went to the public high school.

  School, my great opportunity to find out about the world and to do things that mattered, had become a very bad dream that I could not understand or escape. I could not do anything to make it better. I was nine. If I was a quiet boy before, I now became a ghost. I walked the playground in the middle of a thousand boys, invisible and absolutely alone.

  *

  A couple of years rolled on and life stirred. Shintaro the Samurai arrived on Australian TV screens and inspired new activity. The playground was alive with star knives and ninjas. I breathed in the noble traditions of the black-haired heroes and villains. I began to feel some value in my Asian culture. I was a samurai in a foreign culture. I was still a quiet boy, but I began to feel alive again. I became an observer, a thinker and a judge of the world around me.

  As I went through high school, some teachers and students began to find something of value or interest in me. One teacher mentioned that my performance in tests indicated good opportunities for the future. I was selected to appear on television in a school-team quiz show. My teachers let me do whatever level of mathematics, science or English that I chose, despite my total lack of application. I became friends with all the leading boys of the school and became active in school activities. The other boys were curious about this quiet boy, and perhaps even worried about me. They treated me very well.

  But in my final years of school, confusion began to boil.

  I was at the top of the school social tree, enjoying all the benefits of a competitive system that looked after those who made the school look good. I was uncomfortable.

  My mother, like every Chinese mother then, always wanted a doctor in the family. I wanted to shine for her. I knew I hadn’t done the work to get the marks. I didn’t like the sight of blood. I knew how much it was all for show – to show that she had done a good job. I wanted recognition, too. I thought that just once, recognition would be good.

  Teachers focused on blue-eyed boys who did well in sport or school, or they harassed the boys who were already headed for the scrap heap. The new school counsellor, much loved by the boys, said only one thing to me: ‘Five foot seven, hey? Not short enough to have an inferiority complex. Go on and get on with it!’

  But I couldn’t focus or study. I couldn’t take advantage of the one thing the school did provide: discipline. As one of my friends has said, ‘The school was all about discipline. Without the focus on results and punishment, I wouldn’t have been able to do so well in the HSC.’ But for me, punishment came whether I studied or not. I did well or badly whether I studied or not. I could see that the strap didn’t help those who struggled to do their work. I would work extra hours in Dad’s restaurant rather than study for an exam the next day. I didn’t have discipline. I was stuck. I couldn’t do what a good Chinese boy should do.

  I needed to do something to shut out the guilt. I needed to shut out the questions about wasted opportunities, a wasted life, questions about what was a good thing to do. My brain, my heart, were pounding. If I couldn’t help myself, I could do something about this competitive system that didn’t look after those who most needed it.

  So in 1971, in my final year of high school, I decided to set up a workshop program. The best students would present papers on the biggest topics in each subject (something similar seems to happen online now at my sons’ school). I put it to the deputy principal and, almost voiceless, presented it to the class. I recruited a team of helpers, booked workshop times, collected money, stencilled and printed the presentation papers, and sat back exhausted with a month to go to the final exams.

  I am not sure whether what I did was unique or remembered by anyone. But it gave me a sense of purpose. It taught me how to work with people. It taught me to be passionate. It taught me how satisfying it is to care about what happens to other people.

  *

  I don’t think I ever spoke to my mum about what really happened at school. Once I must have mentioned that I didn’t like what we did there. She said I had to learn what the teachers wanted; when I grew up I
could do what I wanted. I was a frustrated boy of nine, and replied, ‘If I spend all my time learning what they want, I won’t have time to learn to think and do things for myself.’ I don’t think I spoke to anyone again about what I thought about school until it was all over.

  I never got used to doing only what I was supposed to do. Sometimes, I wondered if I was a bit slow on the uptake. But I just thought differently; I had different ideas about what was important. I just had to find the right opportunity to use the kind of thinking that I had.

  I learned a lot in those school years. I learned enough to set me up for a lifetime of learning.

  Exotic Rissole

  Tanveer Ahmed

  I loved everything about my best friend, Daryl. I called him Lynchy, performing the Australian practice of elongating someone’s name with an ‘o’ or ‘y’. I admired his crew cut and was riveted by his rat’s tail, which he sported with great confidence. I wished I had a rat’s tail, but my parents were horrified, believing it would be my first step towards juvenile justice.

  My dad still cut my hair once a month, a ritual we undertook while I sat on a stool in the bathroom. Each time he reminded me how he had cut his relatives’ hair while he was growing up in a small Bangladeshi village. He almost collapsed in his armchair when my mother came home once and confessed to a $100 haircut. He was adamant, it seemed, that I would never pay for a haircut again.

  Lynchy advised me gently that my father’s forays into hairdressing had to stop. We were almost twelve years old and were beginning to take an interest in girls. My chances of meeting a girl were zip while my father was channelling 1970s rural Bangladeshi fashion through me, Lynchy said.

  Lynchy would visit my house every day after school and we would ride our BMX bikes to the local creek. There we would play marbles, skim rocks across the water or play French cricket with a plastic bat. I had never visited Lynchy’s house. He always made an excuse about his annoying older sister or explained that his parents didn’t like having guests. I didn’t push it. I thought my parents were annoying too and I was embarrassed that my house always smelt like curry.