Yellow Peril by Tze Ming Mok

There's a special brand of apoplectic, imploding, impotent fury reserved for Chinese people reacting to anything Winston Peters says about them. '...But ...it's.... not even TRUE!' they splutter, 'And if it was... so WHAT?? GGGaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagghhhh! [soft sound of brain haemorrhage follows]

While I was picking up my cerebrum from the floor, the Herald pointed out that, yes, it's completely untrue that 'Asians' will outnumber Maori by 2021.

While backpedalling to the Herald, Peters:

... said the definition of "Maori" [Statistics New Zealand] used was shonky.

Its website says "the ethnic concept used in these projections is the ethnic group or groups that people identify with or feel they belong to. People who identify with more than one ethnicity are included in each ethnic population they identify with".

Mr Peters said for this reason he did not believe the "Maori stat" and doubted few other Maori did.

So: there is, according to Winston, a statistically significant number of fake Maori people out there, who only think they know what ethnicity they are.

Further points that the Herald didn't mention:

1. Newsflash! Maori have already been outnumbered by Pakeha. Who have had a somewhat more significant impact on changing Maori society and culture than the recent rise of Balmoral Chinatown. Peters' press release, New Zealand - The Last Asian Colony seems to imply that Maori are perfectly happy with having been colonised by the British, because they're used to it by now. Well get this kids - the impact of Balmoral Chinatown on a non-Chinese person consists of tasty things that you can eat if you want, but which you actually don't have to. Though I strongly recommend QQ Rice, and the New Flavour dumplings - yes, they really do have 'all kinds of dumplings'. What Balmoral Chinatown does not bring is a repressive ideological system, a plague of measles, or an imperial war.

2. 'Asians' are not one ethnic group, making it even more unlikely that any one Asian ethnicity will outnumber Maori in the forseeable future. So even if, say, the combined forces of multi-diaspora Chinese, Indo-Fijians, India-Indians, Koreans, Burmese, Tibetans, Cambodians, Kazakhs, Japanese, Vietnamese, Mongolians, Thais, Malays, Taiwanese-Manchurians, Peranakans, Acehnese and Ibans one day collectively outnumber Maori - SO WHAT? GAAAAAAH! Brain haemorrhaging!!!

3. Some of the projected future Maori population and projected future Asian population will in fact, be both Maori AND Asian. And I don't mean the people that Peters thinks are just 'pretending' to be Maori (but are actually sneaky Asians trying to get on the Maori electoral roll), NOR the anthropologically-defined 'Asian-Maori' that Peters claimed to be in 2002 when he said to the dumbfounded Auckland Chinese community associations "I have

Chinese blood in me". No, I mean people like the remarkable Jenny Lee. Sorry, wrong one, I mean this Jenny Lee (see writer credits), and her huge extended family. Or Bic Runga. Both Chinese and Maori, not pretending either way, and neither side taking away from the other.

Peters was obviously influenced by the recent 'Maori uneasy with Asian immigration' Herald story, without having read the longer Central Leader article (not online unfortunately) where researcher James Chang found that "most Maori, when they talk about Asian immigrants, the people, it's in a positive tone."

Then, surprisingly, the article says cute l'il Jimmy is "assisting Auckland University academic Tze Ming Mok with further research into the Maori-Asian climate." Yeah, um, that would be Manying Ip actually. Not such a strong resemblance; names not even mutual anagrams. And it's 'Chinese-Maori encounters' she's researching, not the 'Maori-Asian climate'. I don't think Manying is surveying Maori on the weather in Bhutan, for example.

Right, I have a headache now. And the election campaign has barely started.

If there were any National Front members at this morning's ANZAC dawn service in Auckland, I didn't see them - they were either too cold to strip down to their NF t-shirts, or too afraid of copping a walking-stick over the head from the RSA.

But you might have seen instead, a tiny Chinese woman in a long purple puffer-jacket being lifted up by her strapping white boyfriend to see the old soldiers over the heads of the crowd, like your dad would lift you up. You would have seen people bundled up in families, their clothing brushed by the orange dawn, patient and mute as the grave. You would have heard a cellphone ring briefly during the minute of silence. I was wishing I'd brought my grandmother, though she would never have roused herself so early, and would have been disappointed at the lack of food available.

The previous week, a troupe of eight or so National Front members were spotted having a natter and a latte in the Open Late Cafe. That's right chaps - Ponsonby. What is the far right coming to? Sources informed me they were up for some anti-China demo. Did anyone, um, notice? Before my 2004 adventures in the Deep South (Wellington) I'd had no personal contact with any white supremacists. The National Front in Auckland - now that's funny. Imagine how bored white Aucklanders would be if, in accordance with the NF policy, all the Asians and Pacific Islanders were repatriated to their countries of origin? What would they eat? Who would be left to complain about? Who... well... Who would be left?

Sure, the National Front are a joke. Except when they go out bashing people. So what do you do? New South Wales' favourite blogger and far-right-watchdog, Darp Hau, has been trying for a strict balance in his approach: both keeping track of every white-supremacist move, and mocking them senseless. Here for example, is 'Everything you ever wanted to know about the New Zealand National Front but were too doubled over in laughter to ask'. Darp, aka Matt Henderson, maintains that most peculiar of identities - that of a Maori Australian - and true to his roots has set up a new ANZAC alliance of sorts. He's handing over his white-supremacist-watch archives to a transtasman anti-racist blog-coalition: Fightdemback. Members include my old colleagues Multicultural Aotearoa, and apparently, the venerable New Zealand Federation of Ethnic Councils.

Warning: Darp's potted histories and watchdog-entries on our local National Front fruitloops make for addictively repellent reading, but reader-comments on his entries, and quotes posted from neofascist talkboards, do include hate-speech, death-threats, and other highly offensive comments from white-supremacists. Also, links on darpism.com and fightdemback to the aforementioned talkboards will probably set off hate-site monitoring alarms in your office.

I wouldn't recommend surfing Stormfront for the purposes of knowing thine enemy (and especially not for knowing how to spell 'enemy'). It's not worth the nausea. God, the hatred! The paranoia! The pomposity! Good lord, the sheer illiteracy!

I didn't go to the dawn service just to spot Nazis. I went this year for my grandmother. There were New Zealand Chinese and other New Zealand Asians in the ANZAC forces of course. But while New Zealanders were deployed across Europe, North Africa and the Pacific in World War II, the parents and grandparents of most of the non-Japanese East and Southeast Asians currently in this country (including mine) were fighting home-turf wars of resistance. The grandparents of nearly every Mt Roskill Mainlander, or Howick Hongky, or Taiwanese riceboy were bogging down the Japanese army with the sheer mass of their country, on one bamboo-tube of rice per day, with maybe a little bit of chilli on the side. The grandfather of every Asian currently on Shortland Street was personally bayoneted in Singapore. And I have a feeling nearly every Southeast Asian's tight-permed grandma was in a former life, fighting the Japanese occupation in a tropical jungle under the leadership of a Communist-led guerrilla cell after colonial governments were outgunned. You know - as a 'terrorist insurgent'. Here's mine, clad in a classic Southeast Asian Chinese battle-mash of Nationalist uniform and Communist gun: Chan Shid Kwan, 1924-2004. She looks like she's playing dress-up, doesn't she? I don't think it was as much fun as she was expecting.

Though we weren't ANZACs, it seems that one basic geographical element of why this country was never occupied in the last World War (another being that big ocean) was because we were in the way. The Japanese army just had too many other countries to plow through first. All sides of the Yellow Peril footed the bill in this hemisphere, Japan included. So hey you Kiwis, we took a bullet for you. And now we live here. So hopefully, after he's had a whinge about our driving, you can get your grandpa to give my grandma her props.

As for the ongoing Sino-Japanese 'war': selected apologies have been offered to try and bring this bout of cynically channelled public and diplomatic violence to a close. It's been difficult to find any rational insider's opinion to link to here. So on this matter, this is The Last Post.

Here is a meaningless coincidence that has yet to be mentioned on the inflamed talkboards I've seen.

The Rape of Nanjing:
Death toll: 200,000-300,000 civilians (still disputed)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
Death toll: 200,000-300,000 civilians (still disputed)

Sure, try to weigh it up, look to and fro from hand to hand and you'll find you're just shaking your head at the pointlessness of experiments in moral equivalency, rebuttal, and revenge.

I just remember them.

Live from the Asian future: Jin at Supa Jam
The call came from a member of our Chinese posse, whose name and personalised number plate I cannot reveal for legal reasons. He was hemmed in by a police checkpoint designed to stop the Asians leaving Howick that night. Our Eastside man was driving without a license - he'd just had it revoked for, like, being Chinese. What a gangsta.

The cops were clearly trying to stop the cultural revolution brewing at Waitakere Stadium. They knew that if Chinese kids took to hip-hop over Canto-pop, The Man would be in for a world of trouble. But The Man was too late. Jin was here, the Chinese-American MC, the newest, shortest, yellowest Ruff Ryder. And to greet him that night in West Auckland, the Asians had arrived.

And I mean all the Asians. When the white folk use 'that' word, you tend to have to check who they're talking about exactly. But out West Saturday night, the full spectrum of Auckland Asian hip-hop came together in an unprecedented mass of Jin-fever.

Despite the diversity, I won't pretend there wasn't a lot of false-alarm Jin-spotting. Is that Jin? Nah, not enough bling on that cat. Is that Jin? God, I can't see, his bling is shining right in my eye. How about that guy? Nah, too tall. Of course. Him? Still too tall. That's gotta be Jin. Those guys are Korean, fool. I couldn't see, I was blinded by their matching white shirts and Nikes. How about him? Way too hot. Is that... Oh sweet Jesus, is that my mother? In the Nike jacket? Looks like it from here - hi Doctor Mok! Ah, there he is - Jin. See, he's got his name written on his neck. He's smaller than all those little kids shooting hoops with him, that's why he was difficult to spot.

My gang figured the crowd to be about 50%, maybe 60% East-Asian. I initially thought it less, but then I realised all the mainland Chinese guys were outside smoking. Smoking and waiting for Jin. Jin had hoisted the PRC flag during this collaboration with Juggy (a UK Asian: ie brown, not yellow), and had certainly won the hearts and minds of this hard posse of international students. They told me Jin was big on the Mainland, and that as well as for China, they were fronting for Three Kings, Three Kings and Hamilton respectively.

'Three Kings?' I exclaimed, 'Roskill represent!'
'You in the hood!' said my bro.

On the stands were the smooth Koreans of Daemang Productions, representing for Howick and the Shore, staying inside under the lights so they could blind us with the whiteness of their branding. They're having an album release 21 May. Bring your shades. The affiliated Japanese DJs were also nearby, exemplifying global hip-hop solidarity in trying political times. Hey, the Rising Sun logo may be the swastika of East and Southeast Asia, but you go there anyway, right? For the beats and the Japfros.

All through the stadium there were hardcore one-point-fiver packs, gangsta fobs, super-chiggers, and fobulous TABs galore.

Chinese boys had brought their South-Asian mates along, further cementing the Harold & Kumar/Jin & Juggy ethnic-geek-chic-alliance.

On the local-born front, a substantial herd from Auckland University's 'Kiwi Asian Club' was shifting about. And a relatively new phenomenon of note was the mixed local-born/one-point-fiver crew, such as my own. Some of these groups were held together by love, some just by hip-hop.

Local-borns in wide-eyed discovery-mode included fellow crew-member Dr Drasnor aka RIC1ER, genuine Chigger and infamous Rice-bomber of Pt Chev. I have a wonderful photograph of him staring gapingly at the Asian invasion, but it cannot be shown lest his bombing identity be revealed. He'd originally been ambivalent about attending.

'What do your other Asian friends think of Jin?' I asked him during negotiations.
'You and Al are my only Asian friends.'

Russell Brown mentioned this year in an entry on the Pasifika Festival, that he sensed Asian kids were integrating more than they used to - he saw an occasional white guy hanging out with them. Again, I'm not sure which 'Asians' he was referring to exactly. White boys with Yellow Fever are nothing new. But some of the people he saw could have been local-borns who are starting to hang out with other Asians for the first time in their lives, and might be bringing the odd whitey along for the ride.

Although Supa Jam was an ill-conceived, sloppy, tiresomely expansive event with a lot of waiting involved, the sociological observation made it worth the down-time. Somewhere between the third basketball game and the second Thai Kickboxing match (don't ask) I said to Dr Drasnor:

'Dras, you're not bored are you?'
'Nah man! I'm buzzing out! Look at all these Asians! Woah, check out the ice on that dude!'
'That's [Eastside Renegade]! Hey bro, you made it. Is that ...a Rolex?'
'Oh, it's my dad's.'
'How'd you get here?'
'Took the Southern.'
'Fuckin' cops.'

Eastside took in my bling appreciatively. Dr Drasnor had, under the influence of narcotics, persuaded me to get fully pimped out in jade, gold, and a ludicrously oversized chain which had previously held a light-fitting to the ceiling of my parents' living room in the early 1980s.
'That is badass,' said Eastside.

And our fobulous posse was complete. Me and Drasnor; Al Kwun aka 'Mr Asia', first generation New Zealand-born Cantophile and publicist for seemingly everything; Eastside Renegade the Taiwanese one-point-fiver skater-boy; and also around and about was Steven Chow himself, a bit distracted by all the recent critical comparisons of Kung Fu Hustle to Shaolin Soccer.

On with the show
Why do we like Jin? Like a good Chinese boy, he takes his Tims off at the door.

Why else? With a huge, echoing stadium, a small fanatical crowd of a few hundred, and the worst acoustics ever invented, he knew from the outset there would be no point in a conventional set. And so, he turned a crap set-up into a heartwarmingly inclusive show. Did I say heartwarming? Gangsta, I meant gangsta. An inclusively gangsta show. Reverting to old-school call and response, Jin hustled everyone around him tightly, and led the pack of Asians in and out of the boxing ring, around the basketball court and through the stands, breaking out b-boy battles and freestyling competitions every which way, flushing the local Asian talent out of the woodwork, and even taking it to the Chinese mums in the stands waiting for their Chinese kids.

A lot of Chinese geeks were stars that night - the biggest of whom was a boy known to us only as The Abercrombie Kid. It was his first hip-hop show, and his face was agleam as he rapped along word for word to lyrics no-one else could make out through the stadium reverb, until Jin pulled him up and gave him the mike. This kid would have busted through those Howick roadblocks using only the pure force of his qi.

'You're from China?' I asked him later.
'Yeah, International Student! International Student!'

School student I would wager. International Student Pride. It's good to see. He was representing for my old stomping ground Chengdu, and what a flow he had on that mike. They should start using Jin's Learn Chinese to help Chinese kids to Learn English.

Mr Asia said he observed a flow of white kids leaving as Jin exhorted them to Learn Chinese (or Cantonese, to be precise). I'd prefer not to believe that.

The freestyling turned up some superstar invaders. "I'm with some real MCs here", said Jin, and one of them was Aya. Phil Fuemana told me in a yumcha joint five years ago about his idea for a venture into an Asian hip-hop crossover project. I'm fairly sure he mentioned the name Aya, but no-one can check with him now. Was it the same girl?

'Nah, I'm not famous' said Aya, and fled the paparazzi after her tour de force on the MC battleground.

Amid the free-for-all audience participation, Jin engineered an intense sociocultural experiment by holding a multiethnic audience-choice dance-contest, which, oddly, I have no photos of. Jin picked a geeky Chinese guy called Chan who had come up from Hamilton for the show, a Pacific b-boy professional and some slick off-white dude. Then he picked a fine Pacific sista, a tight-bodiced Filipina Senorita type, and a geeky Chinese girl. Put them in the boxing ring. Then said:
'Guys, pick a girl to dance with'. Any local-born Chinese would recognise this as a familiar and demoralising moment.

I asked Jin later: 'You knew didn't you, that the Chinese guy would hesitate self-consciously, and the Chinese girl would get picked last. And you knew that the Chinese couple would have to pair up like nerdy rejects, like they always do, instead of choosing each other purposefully. And you knew didn't you, somehow, that they would suddenly shed all geekiness and bust it shamelessly like a well-oiled Pharrell and a sluttier kung-fu Beyonce bitch-ass ho'dog and that the Asian-dominated crowd would go wild and the Chinese couple would win, and it would be the Revenge of the Hip-Hop Nerds? How did you know Jin?'

He answered me in fluent gangsta, which, like Chinese, I can understand pretty well but have difficulty reproducing in writing. It ended in something like 'it's all about that shit.' Got me right here.

Then, like a lot of the Mainlanders that evening, I said 'Jin, Jin, you gotta learn Mandarin.'

He made a face at me like I was his mother.

Thanks to the Lumiere Reader and Alistair Kwun for the media pass to Supa Jam. And apologies to Lumiere for not having conducted a full interview with Jin, but I was just really really tired from the dancing.

While we're on the announcements, I'm looking for a flatmate - Freeman's Bay apartment, $155pw, email me through the site.

The venerable Guardian caught stoking the fires of East-Asian thermonuclear war. New Zealand's top Bursary scholar not Chinese for the second year running. These are surely the end times.

On the 'big scary China zombie-attack leaping from cupboard' Japanese translation debacle, Jim Cathcart writes further:

Oh, this has got big. It turns out that I know the Guardian journalist who misquoted the minister. I contacted the trade ministry who are completely pissed, and will be issuing a statement. Also, the Guardian's editors are running for cover.

Fark it, the mainstream media has to be responsible.

Meanwhile, my step-cousin-in-law Derek Cheng, an invader embedded within our own mainstream media, alerted me to this newest blow to our people's honour. A Chinese kid comes second two years in a row. The tears Derek must have shed, writing that article. It gives you fearful flashbacks to the wipe-out of 2001, when there were no Chinese in the top Bursary echelon at all. We can usually count on some halfbreed ethnic 'smuggling', but that year not even the top Maori and Pacific scholars were secretly Chinese (though one was secretly Indian). When Chinese high school students are no longer the best in the country at being Maori or Samoan, you have to ask yourself: Are we going soft? Are Chinese kids these days no longer being locked in the basement for a week with only Euclid's Geometry and a roll of haw flakes to sustain them? Are their parents not whipping them on the legs with chopsticks to drill them in the laws of thermodynamics? Are these kids... god forbid... relaxing and having fun instead? Becoming (shudder) well-rounded individuals?

Goddamn NCEA.

ADDENDUM: The gaijin experts battle it out. Stephen Walker wrote from Japan on the Trade Minister's verbal output:

what he said, in a post-cabinet press conference was: [paraphrase] blah, blah, Chinese govt needs to rein in those protesters, blah, blah, if they want to joint the ranks of market economies, blah, blah [/paraphrase] "Kowai kuni desu ne." well this last part does indeed mean, "Scary country, eh?" and it wasn't a very diplomatic aside. but nakagawa-daijin is not known for his tact and diplomacy. mainly because he is a right-wing nationalist prat.

in terms of mistranslation, i don't think so. the word "kowai" has several meanings depending on the context, and "scary" is one of them. whether it is the most suitable translation in this context is debatable, of course. "intimidating" and "frightening" are two other options that spring to mind.

I guess the Minister didn't see the tape-recorders on the news-conference table.

Wait a minute: Japan's Trade Minister said China is 'scary'? Are you sure? According to one reader, who seems to know his Senkaku from his Diaoyu, this was a definite case of crap translation.

Unfortunately, one that has been splashed across world headlines. Jim Cathcart, a kiwi who has been spotted writing for the Kyoto Journal, said:

What's happening in China is really getting perverted by both sides. The Japanese media are blowing it way out of proportion, while the Western media start mistranslating the Japanese foreign minister who described China as "scary," when he was actually trying to describe the protestors' actions as erratic.

Looks like yet another case for hanzismatter, who reminds us that what may be 'son-in-law' in China translates as 'pussy-whipped' in Japan.

I'll be sure to ask Japan's Blues Minister what he thinks, Friday night.