home-free

It's a strange thing to transition from being a ratbag young adult into an actual adult person. My life right now is amorphous, and I exist in a place that feels about as close to limbo as one could imagine. Lately I've been craving the feeling that you get when you return home after a long journey; that one that feels like relief, comfort and safety flooding your system all at once.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when that feeling stopped coming to me. The thing about my depression is that it often rears its head without me even noticing, slowly consuming me until it can no longer be ignored. It demands to be acknowledged. Suddenly, I'm a greasy-haired girl who been so dibilitatingly empty that she hasn't showered in two weeks. Each time, I let my depression engross me, and then I'm left scrambling; to apologise to neglected friends, to finally call back my mum, to take responsibility for my life once more. Repeat the ordeal every month, and that's how I have been choosing to live for almost four years. I have wasted huge chunks of time, without even realising. Now I'm 23, an adult, with nothing to show for it but constant attempts to try and restart my life.

To be honest, I think that relief-comfort-safety feeling left when the concept of 'adulthood' first approached. In early 2016 when I left Wellington, my mum asked me to move to Tauranga so that she could look after me. I laughed in her face. Why would Tauranga be any better than Christchurch? My friends live here, my dad lives here, I'm enrolling into the University of Canterbury; I would have nothing except her if I were to move up North. Over the years, she repeatedly asked me to move to Tauranga and each time I shot her down, utterly convinced that living in Christchurch—my home—was somehow going to fix my depression. I slowly shook off these childish ideals and aspirations as my depression simmered on, unchecked. Finishing university was one of those aspirations, as was getting an adult job. Expectations I had for my friends and family were lowered, then dropped entirely. The reassurance that 'home' existed slowly left too.

Unsurprisingly, my depression has continued unabated, in spite of all the reasons I gave my mum to stay here. My friends had their own lives to worry about. My dad is a busy man that lives an hour away from me. I dropped out of university. Fast forward to this year, during an especially hysterical breakdown, it clicked. As I told my mum that I didn't think I was strong enough to keep living anymore, she told me again: "There is nothing for you in Christchurch." I gave it three years to prove itself as my home, and it failed over and over. And throughout the last three years, I failed to recognise the disservice I was doing myself. I wasn't being an adult, I was just wasting time.

Finally, we reach the point of this post. Finally, I agreed. I need to move up to Tauranga. Christchurch is no longer my home, and I need to move on. I don't want to be childish, but I can't help but hope that it's where I'll find that relief-comfort-safety again. I'm ready to try and find it.

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bamboozle ruined my birthday

Graphic design is my passion

I turned 18 roughly three years ago, in October 2014.

Every year for my birthday, my parents try to treat me to an exciting dinner that is befitting of their special little girl turning another year older. This works out pretty well because I like food and I try to keep up with the food scene in Christchurch—plus, my family is always willing to try new places and viciously rank each meal we get until we have a clear winner. 

Conveniently, in 2014 I had heard murmurs of a really great Asian fusion restaurant that had just opened up in the slowly regenerating Christchurch CBD. This was Bamboozle. My Dad and I in particular take a great deal of joy in looking at Asian fusion restaurants, because we consider ourselves superior cooks pretentious foodies and both grew up with excellent examples of Chinese cooking. We looked up Bamboozle gleefully, leaning over my phone screen to see what astronomical price we might have to pay for dumplings. 

On their home page, just under a stylized 'Asian' header, Bamboozle quietly declares themselves to be an ORIENTAL KITCHEN & BAR. While not particularly racist, the term 'Oriental' is outdated and reeks of old people that order deep fried spring rolls at yum cha. Not a good start, but this was New Zealand. What can you do? The menu came next, and we held our breath as the PDF loaded. Now, I'm a faster reader than my Dad, but I'm a bit stupider, so I had to sound out the meal names phonetically in order to understand what they said. Forgive me, but whatever accent the menu was supposed to mimic just didn't come naturally to me. 

Speaking them aloud made me feel sick. I remember, because I don't know how to do an 'Asian accent' as fluently and as readily as some others may be able to. I may be Chinese, but I have never had trouble with 'Ls' and have always been able to pronounce 'TH'. Not only this, but I had chosen to read "Won ton kouw kum nou", which I think is some kind of cum joke. Worst of all, the wontons cost $16.50 for four of them—that's over $4 for one dumpling. Dad and I recoiled from the menu. I closed the tab. 

In the end, I decided we should go to Fiddlesticks. (★★/★★★★★)

This experience with Bamboozle has been with me for such a long time that by the time Stuff.co.nz's review came out, I was almost ambivalent. Even now, I'm writing this late—my post comes several articles, polls and think-pieces later than it could have. I remember mentioning Bamboozle to friends over the years after The Birthday Discovery, to receive mostly support for my offence taken and disdain for whomever the owner was. However, over time, the fire I felt about doing something to this restaurant slowly died out. This is New Zealand, what can you do? 

This is the main thing that I can tell you about existing as an Asian person in a Western society. You never stop noticing racism, but you can definitely stop caring. Micro-aggression, macro-aggression, just-plain-aggression; it all amounts to the kind of racism that is so deeply entrenched in the world around you that you just get tired. I am still constantly thinking about how Asian people are discriminated against every single day, and recently I've been thinking about how I can actively alleviate some of that pain, but that doesn't mean I'm going to take someone to task over them complimenting my make up by calling it "...nice and Chinese." Despite being somebody that takes pride in their culture and relishes defending its honour, I've learned over time that I have to pick my battles.

Phillip Kraal is the kind of guy that makes me angry all over again. Phillip Kraal is the kind of guy to take someone's culture, make it worse, then make fun of them as he profits off centuries of hard work and hard living. The idea that your food isn't good enough for a white man until he sprinkles cheese and cheap jokes all over it is familiar in a way that Asian people know as second nature. So is the knowledge that once bastardized, your food will be treated with more respect than your ancestors that invented it, or your peers that have perfected it. The same isn't only applicable to Bamboozle, or to just Asian food. Strides made in the fields of technology, the arts, and entertainment made by Asian people all over the globe still aren't enough to for us to command the respect that Phillip Kraal gets from Cantabrians defending his funny little jokes. 

The Bamboozle menu is racist. This is the only statement about this situation that I believe with my entire being. Perception means that some people will find this racism funny, and some people will find it harmless, while the rest have no opinion whatsoever. I care more and more about the experiences that I face as a Chinese woman—rather than just notice them—which made Bamboozle's racism truly intolerable. How I choose to react will now be more active, emphatic and productive, because I owe it to myself. The question I used to ask in passivity is now determined: What can I do? 

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we're not all white

Lorde demonstrates how white people may want to fight against systemic racism by acknowledging her privilege and how problematic it is. Wow queen!

In circumstances other than this one, I wouldn't say that it is particularly brave to use your platform that reaches an audience of 5.51 million to speak out against the discrimination of people of colour. I'd say it was more of a moral responsibility. However, what makes this situation the exception is the existence of a phenomenon called the stuff.co.nz comments section. Lorde's ties to little old Aotearoa mean that when she tweets, whatever she tweets, it is likely to show up in a stuff.co.nz article on a slow news day. There, attached to the bottom of these articles or to their respective Facebook links, is this place that exists much like Dante's ninth circle of Hell exists just above it.

Let me be clear: this is not a condemnation of stuff.co.nz. This is a wail of anguish (and of rage) inspired by the readers of stuff.co.nz that believe their terrible, horrible, no-good opinions are worth being archived in the same place pictures of puppies are saved. But, I digress.

It is late early. I am tired. Most of all, I am angry. I am angry because of these people:

Jason, reverse racism is like the tooth fairy. It is a lie used by people to placate small minds.

Susan! What is an ethnic basket? Is my one made of bamboo or of rice paper?

Keziah... this whole mess started because a group of people didn't care about another race.

These people are also angry, but only because of three words... "all white people".  For some reason, when some people see this phrase, they forget how to read. They forget how to think critically. Certainly Jason, Susan and Keziah did. Somehow they missed the "are responsible for this system's thrive and fall" part of that sentence. I would say, and this is me thinking critically, that this is the part of Lorde's tweet that is the most important. This is the part of the tweet that does not blame all white people for the Charlottesville marches, nor does it "blame all the white people for everything that's wrong in the world" as Jason might think it does. It does not ask Susan to apologize for being white, and it definitely doesn't blame you for the actions of others, Keziah.

I single out stuff.co.nz commenters specifically because it's easier to grasp how pervasive the misunderstanding of systematic oppression is when the examples are from New Zealand. Confusing, I know. But we know that America has race-relations problems, we can see it in the media every single day; there are Nazis marching in the streets, for one. But New Zealand, sweet small New Zealand doesn't have neo-Nazis or the 'alt-right' or any such glaring examples that show us that we are ignorant of our privilege.

It is great that you are not actively racist, that you do not hurl abuse at me or other POC. It is great that the actions of ancestors do not bear any resemblance to how you conduct yourself now, in that you do not own slaves and you do not try to claim the lands of indigenous cultures as your own. Congratulations! However, these are not the only possible forms of oppression. Oppression can be passive. This is what Lorde is telling 5.51 million people, though in many more words. When you do not condemn the Nazis of Charlottesville for marching, you are oppressing people of colour. When you do not admit that the promotion of Nazi ideals is terrorism, you are oppressing people of colour. This is the systemic oppression of black people in the United States of America in live moving colour, and it is happening under the guise of 'freedom of speech'. The Declaration of Independence and the country that is supposed to protect its citizens is implicit in their mistreatment. That is institutionalized racism.

Put into a more local context, the denial that the actions of colonists some 180 years ago have anything to do with you is the kind of mindset that allows systematic oppression to thrive. This is what Lorde told us, Susan; "all white people are responsible for this system's rise and fall." Perhaps, because some people might not get past the phrase 'all white people' again, I should elaborate. The Treaty of Waitangi is the most important document in Aotearoa's history, and it has everything to do with our actions today. In terms of the future, look to New Zealand's 2017 general election, where the colonialists responsible for that Treaty are still trying to be corrected by all but two of the country's political parties. (For those that like to roll the dice, you get three guesses as to which parties they are. See the end of this post for answers.) The act of voting and participating in a general election is the most pure form of trying to change an institution and therefore the systems that form beneath it. Voting for Green Party because you want to see their 4 different policies regarding the Treaty of Waitangi put into action is an example of standing up to institutionalized oppression in New Zealand. You are using your power, your privilege as a voter to actively abate the oppression of Maori people.

It should be noted that institutionally-endorsed privilege is a heady though invisible power, and is misunderstood almost universally. I do not pretend to understand it completely, though I do somehow believe that I have the authority to write about it ad nauseam. One thing that should be understood is that privilege versus oppression is an all or nothing situation. A party that is 'passively' but systematically oppressing the other cannot then 'sometimes' be oppressed by the one with less privilege. Prejudice does not equal oppression; racism is a form of oppression, not prejudice. Basically, reverse racism isn't real.

Once more, with feeling: all white people are responsible for this system's rise and fall. Today's white people are not responsible for the actions of every other white person that has ever existed, including all that bad racist stuff. We are all only ever responsible for our own actions. What we choose to do with our own power is our business, but as it has been said before: with great power comes great responsibility. Thus, you are responsible for making well-informed decisions. Look to your policy-makers, your news media, your friendly local blog. If you have to think about whether or not you are being oppressed, you are likely to be in a position of extreme privilege. Wield it wisely. Be active, not passive.



(The two parties that do not currently have any policies related to the Treaty of Waitangi are United Future and ACT.)

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bedside manners

Recently I was confronted with something that I rarely think about: my race. Sure, I champion the Asian Agenda™ at every chance I can get. And I'm outspoken about the treatment of Chinese people in New Zealand especially. However, the fact that I am a full-blooded, purebred, 100% authentic Chinese woman is almost never in the forefront of my mind. Maybe this is because I'm at least partially "white-passing"... or have at least had complete strangers assume that I'm either 1. mixed (more often than not) 2. Filipino (sure, I guess I get it) or 3. Rarotongan (what?). Whatever it is that I look like to other people, it isn't often Chinese. 

First, some background: I work with bedlinen. This happened at work.

Arguably the worst part of this whole story is that the customer was the first of the day, right at about 10:30 in the morning, and who's ready for any kind of self-actualization that early on a Sunday? Plus, I wasn't even involved at first. The customer came in and approached my manager, telling her about the rental property she had just purchased Down South and wanted to kit out with brand new bedlinen—a normal situation in my working world. Her problem was this: she knew that a majority of her holidaymakers would be Asian, and she just wasn't sure what they liked. I had been eavesdropping and pretending that I wasn't when my manager turned to me. The customer turned too. Fuck. I had been caught in the act... of being Asian. 

Her voice was kind of giddy once she had leveled her gaze with mine:

"You can help me! ...Wait. [She looks me up and down]. Where are you from?"

"I... (am from New Zealand) (was born in Auckland) (don't know what you mean) ...I'm Chinese?"

"Perfect. You'd know what they like. You can help me."

There are so many other things I could have said in this scenario, but since I value my $15.25 an hour I stuck with:

"Sure. I'll do my best."

It wasn't even that bad, or maybe it was. I'm still not sure, 2 weeks on. The only word I'm willing to commit to here is uncomfortable. Every time she asked me "Would they like this?" and then followed up with "Do you like it?" I struggled to reconcile the connection between 'they' and me. We looked at a lot of duvet covers and she asked for a lot buzzwords to describe an aesthetic that I wasn't even sure existed. What do Asians like? How would I know? I was only one of them. If there were a scale of 'Asian-ness' I'm sure I'm near the 0 end anyway. The worst part was that I had to use the word 'they' as well. How could I say 'we' when I haven't lived in 'Asia' since I was 2 years old? When I wasn't even born there? I didn't even live in China—I had a brief stint of living in Japan for my Dad's work and that was only for a few months. But I digress. Essentially, I had been put into a tailspin of self-doubt and race relations because of bedlinen. 

The whole encounter only lasted about 20 minutes. She decided on a rich red and gold bedspread with velvet trim and tailored, padded pillowshams to match (they're like pillowcases but fancy). She said that I had been so helpful, and that she would be back for me again. After I gave her my hours, and a last piece of decorating advice, she was gone, and I was free to be me. Whatever that is.  

Ultimately, this particular Sunday changed nothing. I'm as Chinese as ever. Which I've decided is not as Chinese as the folks that go to the Christchurch Chinese Church down the road from my parent's house, but is more Chinese than the lemon chicken that you get from your local fish n' chip n' burgers n' dumplings shop. I guess all it's done is reiterated what my own idea of ethnicity is.

I decided in my first year of university that while ethnicity and race are sisters, they're not twins. Like my eyebrows. One does not define the other, is what I'm trying to say. I decided that I was a Chinese-Kiwi. My ancestry decided that I would be Chinese. I value my race because it gave me swathes of thick, low-maintenance hair and it gives my family its history. My ethnicity gives me my love for my Dad's home-made pai kuat, eaten off placemats that feature the Mount Cook Lily, Pohutukawa, and Kōwhai. What neither of them gives me, I can confidently say, is any idea of what Asian tourists want to sleep under when they visit New Zealand.

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save us, bizarro!

Isn't it awful how, until tonight, none of this seemed real? Something to laugh off, make memes of, to exclaim "It'll never happen, don't worry" about. The Bizzarro World nature of a Trump presidency was so unconvincing that nobody ever expected it. Tonight, the free world has become truly bizarre—surreal even.

It's tempting to look inward and make this about ourselves, to think "This is awful, I can't believe this has happened". Being halfway across the world makes it easy to process this new reality, where there's no urgency to its consequences, nothing immediately effecting us. Compare our luxury to the thought of living in America right now. Moreso, the thought of living in America as an immigrant (be it first, second, third, fourth generation), as a member of the LGBT+ community, as a woman, as a person of colour. Britain's divisive Brexit referendum brought out the worst in its yea-sayers, where abuse was dealt throughout Britain in a mind-boggling number of forms... verbal, physical, emotional, even laminated cards shoved in letterboxes reading "No more Polish vermin". Project and scale up this kind of reaction onto a country stricken by uncertainty, by fear. Truly, the marginalized will be tested to the edge of their limits in the wake of this decision. Four long years stretch in front of the whole world, and who can say what will happen to any of us during them? Despair, disbelief, and anger should be the emotions that you cycle through tonight, not for yourself, but for the people outlined above. Pray for those whose rights have been taken from them tonight. Get angry. Get political.

This should be the lesson that is learned tonight. America's election this year should be testament enough of the importance of taking action. Fight for change if you are unhappy with your current situation. Make your decisions with purpose. Passivity is the enemy of change—less than 60% of the country's eligible voters participated in this election and those people voted because they wanted something to change, whatever that thing may have been. They succeeded. Ultimately, change is coming to the United States. It is our prerogative to remember why this has happened, and to learn from it.

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this old (chinese) chestnut

I am sick to death of the demonization of Chinese migrants in New Zealand. This latest opinion piece from The New Zealand Herald is nothing less than propaganda playing into a lot of middle class fears about the Auckland housing market and kiwis' need for someone to blame. Not only this, but it throws out sweeping generalizations as to the class of Chinese immigrants—"...we have been absorbing lower quality immigrants.."—and creates an 'us versus them' dichotomy that smacks of New Zealand's prejudice towards Chinese immigrants of the 1800-1900s. Maybe bringing back 1881's poll tax and restricted entry requirements, 1907's English reading tests, and 1908's severely limited entry permits would help as well? We can strike the government's 2002 apology for its suffering caused to Chinese immigrants off the record, if so.

Moreover, "Instead of seeing a balanced ethnic mix, Auckland started to acquire an unwholesomely Chinese flavour" is a stand out quote from this train wreck of an email—apparently from a Chinese migrant real estate agent called 'Adam", which is just so convenient for Winston Peters and his stance on Auckland's housing market. This use of the word unwholesome cuts me to my core. My flavour is unwholesome, because there's too many people like me in New Zealand and it's threatening the well-being of the country. At least half of this piece is dedicated not to the tailspinning Auckland housing market, but instead deriding Chinese immigrants as a collective. A collective who seek to only bring to the country "dodgy places" with "poorly designed, cheap signs", and uncork a bottle of champagne when a young-and-in-love (100% kiwi) couple's potential first home is stolen away from them "...by someone screaming in [M]andarin." This block quote says it all:
"It is about how do you want your Auckland and your New Zealand to be? Do we want trained, skilled professionals to bring our economy to the next level or all we want to see is another Chinese restaurant around the corner, or foreign visitors mistaking Auckland for China?".
Implicit within this is again a dichotomy between kiwis and 'the Chinese', where you're either in favour of trained, skilled professionals who are working to Make New Zealand Great Again, or you're in favour of that dodgy looking 'Golden Dragon' on the corner of K Road. 

In the end, the article doesn't offer any solutions, to either the Chinese problem or the housing one. It drops a 608 word bomb of insidious rhetoric about how Chinese immigrants threaten the wholesome nature of our country, and leaves you with an ominous ultimatum: "It is time for us New Zealanders to rethink." I agree. It's time for us to rethink the quality of our finger-pointing politicians, the quality of our national news outlets, and most importantly, how terrible the Yum Cha will be when we eventually get rid of those dodgy, unskilled, low quality Chinese.

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putting the why in twyford

wading into the nz politics scene wasn't on the cards for my night tonight at all (was more thinking of 'netflix and chill') (by myself), and yet i find myself sitting at my desk and squinting at screeds of online debate and trying to read articles on the auckland housing market on my phone screen, instead of watching don draper seducing some poor woman whilst delivering a speech on integrity within the golden age of advertising.

anyway, in a nutshell: labour's housing spokesman phil twyford and indeed labour itself find themselves in hot water this week after warning kiwis of a "tsunami of chinese money" coming into the country, as a result of all the nasty mainland asians coming and buying up all the property in auckland - and they have the stats to prove it. kind of. twyford claimed that almost 40% of all housing purchases made within a certain period were made by chinese buyers, but only 9% of auckland's population is of chinese descent. his implication by giving these disparate percentages is that foreign chinese investors are unabashedly buying up all of auckland's property and stealing nz land right out from kiwis' feet whilst simultaneously jacking up the prices of said land. fine. that's a legitimate threat in nz right now.

i haven't gotten to the controversy, though. it turns out, the data he was using is based on the surnames of buyers within only a three month buying period, from only one real estate company. labour determined the ethnicity of these 'chinese' buyers only from their family names. i won't pretend to know anything about any kind of housing. i do, however, know a bit about having a chinese-y surname. i feel icky, reading about this. i feel icky reading about how phil twyford saw that 'lee', 'kim', and 'wu' were some of the top 20 last names within that three month period to buy auckland property and cried "chinese investors". i'm not going to throw around phrases like "racism", "racial profiling" or "race-baiting", but even if all 20 surnames were ones that imply asian origin, is this really data to promote a new housing policy with? is that really all you're going to use? seems like a terrible idea. that, and a lost opportunity to talk about the actual threat of foreign investment, or nz's unreasonable housing prices, or any other serious topic undermined by this outburst.

i don't know. like i said, i'm no housing/economics guru. i didn't even do a lot of research on this. i wasn't really commenting on the housing side of it all really. i'll say this. to my man phil: i can't wait to buy my first home here, you've made it so welcoming.

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