Yellow Peril by Tze Ming Mok

Underbelly of the Dragon by Phil Taylor in the Herald last week, was a salacious Scorsese retelling of the Tam Yam Ah assassination, but was actually excellent. It covered a lot of the same ground as the Coddington article - so why was it good, and 'Asian Angst' toilet paper?

Aside from the exoticising headline and the sensational goriness that you'll get with any crime story, Taylor doesn't fall into single one of the usual pitfalls on bad reporting about 'Asians' and crime, almost as if he read that handout me and Tessie Chen gave to the Herald people a few years ago:
Refusal to use the pointless contextual descripter 'Asian' to describe any of the people involved? Check.
References to specific ethnicity, dialects and provinces? Check.
Understanding of the difference between East, Southeast and South Asian? Check.
Specific reference to a specific gang, named, and its specific origin, rather than pointless generic reference to 'Asian gangs'? Check.
A comparison to the Sopranos, followed by: "...organised crime differs little between place and ethnicity. "Human nature doesn't vary between cultures, does it?" notes Mark Benefield, a sage detective on the police investigation team." Check.
Reference to involvement of specific Pakeha and Maori people/gangs in the murder case and in paua smuggling? Check.
No suggestion that this specific crime was a part of a creeping "Asian menace" to New Zealand society? Check.

Taylor's was the article that Deborah Coddington should have written, but was either incapable of, or was steered away from. In fact, even though it's a long gory story about a Triad assassination, there's nothing in Taylor's article that anyone could really complain about - compared with ten pages of officiously detailed complaint that I just posted in to North & South, on behalf of various interested parties...

...One of whom has just fallen prey to its front cover call to 'send some back', taking the extreme step of deporting himself.

So long Keith, nice of that cop to take the handcuffs off for the photo. He must have been one of those liberal multicultural cops you read about in the Herald sometimes.

Here's the text of the opinion I wrote with an actual Asian doctor that was in the Herald on Sunday last week. I think they gave it a headline like 'Time to stop Asian stereotypes' or something, although my original suggestion was 'Not every Asian is an innumerate Asian.'

______________

Although we are two Asian Aucklanders, it may surprise Deborah Coddington that we have no prior convictions, don’t like chardonnay, 50% of us are allergic to shellfish (and therefore have no interest in poaching paua), we have no idea who Kelly Swanson-Roe is, and 50% of us aren’t even Chinese. When Ms Coddington discusses ‘Asian crime’ or ‘Asian health’ our greatest concern is not PC sensitivity, but basic numeracy. Who cares about political incorrectness when we have plain old mathematical incorrectness to contend with?

There is no PC cover-up – Asian communities want to increase awareness about the problems some of us face. For too long, we have been invisible in policy, service provision and national consciousness. Key issues faced by our communities are low levels of employment, difficulties in accessing services and racism.

Last week, delegates at a conference on Asian New Zealanders’ health at the University of Auckland discussed the seemingly high Asian abortion rate. Unfortunately, Ms Coddington did not attend as evidenced by her surprising and false claim in the Herald on Sunday that four in five pregnant Asian women in New Zealand terminate their pregnancies. That rate is for teenage pregnant Asian women – and Asian New Zealanders have the lowest rate of teen pregnancy of any broad ethnic category. For all Asian women the actual rate is about 1 in 3, compared to the national average of about 1 in 4 – high, but not 80%.

Worse statistical problems crop up in the so-called “gathering crime tide” of Asian offending highlighted by another recent article of Ms Coddington’s. This magazine article referred to “our unacceptable level of Asian crime”, reporting that arrests of Asian New Zealanders (excluding South Asians) increased 53% between 1996 and 2005. It failed to mention that this slice of the Asian population more than doubled in that time, going from being under-represented in crime statistics by a factor of about 2 to 1 in 1996, to about 4 to 1 in 2005. We can only assume that the “gathering crime tide” is going out rather than in, and that the level of “Asian crime” is “unacceptable” because, like a hill country water table, it’s getting too low.

Where there are genuine issues about crime or health for Asian peoples we welcome debate in good faith, and direct engagement with communities. For example, a New Zealand study has found that Chinese international students do have a high abortion rate - this signals a real issue for young people from conservative societies arriving in New Zealand lacking knowledge about contraception and finding themselves isolated. As a country, we need to do better for these young women, not demonise them or label them “bad Asians” for having abortions – and the situation is not helped by mistakenly suggesting these statistics apply to all Asian New Zealanders. Asian communities – nearly as over-represented in the health sector as we are under-represented in crime – are qualified and ready to participate in and support inclusive policy and practice based on sound evidence.

However, all too often, people wanting to debate our community issues are not seriously interested in those productive outcomes; nor in the hard evidence; nor in what ‘Asians’ actually think; nor in who ‘Asians’ even are. Obviously, most Asians in New Zealand are not Chinese international students having abortions – most Asian New Zealanders aren’t even Chinese. “Asian” is a problematic term generally used by the media to mean East Asians, but the population of 400,000 Asian New Zealanders widely quoted from Statistics New Zealand projections refers to a much larger and more diverse group of people. About half of New Zealand’s Asian population is South Asian or Southeast Asian.

For all of us though, being placed as “Asians” in a false dichotomy against “Kiwis” or being described as not part of the general “public”, as Ms Coddington did to us recently, are familiar attitudes that we’ve faced for a long time. Contrary to Ms Coddington’s wistful belief, there was no ‘golden era’ before new migrants ruined our reputations, when Asian New Zealanders were loved by all within an inclusive rainbow nation.

To move towards that utopian state, the most basic of “Kiwi” values is called for – fairness. If there’s a problem, find the real numbers and we’ll talk. But we shouldn’t need to prove that we are “Kiwis”, nor as citizens and residents be considered fair game for being “sent back” if we aren’t “good Asians.” Ms Coddington notes that ‘not every Asian is a good Asian’ but would anyone make such a banal claim about any other ethnic grouping in New Zealand? More to the point, not every journalist is a good journalist, and where on earth are we meant to send them?

If people are serious about addressing the problems Asian communities face, we need to be acknowledged as New Zealanders in our own right: not as outsiders who have to earn our stripes, not as people who can’t read or speak, and definitely not as people who can’t count.

Tze Ming Mok is a writer

Kumanan Rasanathan is a public health medical doctor

This column first appeared in the Herald on Sunday, 26 November 2006

A week after Deborah Coddington called critics of her 'Asian Angst' article 'insane bloggers' with no audience, the Head Vulcan Mr Ng has mind-melded with the Listener, myself and Kumanan Rasanathan had a column in the Herald on Sunday (not online), and Kim Hill surprised me on NatRad with an extended questioning on the article and 'Asian stuff' when I was expecting her to ask me about poetry or bluebells or something.

(Note: The Kim Hill interview is pretty long and embarrassingly self-indulgent by the way - I think the North & South stuff is about two thirds of the way through. Meanwhile the Listener's Media column this week also gives Keith a plug, and has some internal dish from ACP)

There are other moves afoot. Suffice it to say that interested parties are mobilising as individuals and collectively - like the many tentacled octopoid Peril of yore, or an anarchic Hive Mind - and are more interested in the editorial accountability of North & South than trading insults with Debs.

At the most inspiring grassroots direct-action level, we have this story on good authority: 'Editor of North & South in cafe confrontation shock!' ACP Media have in their office building, a little lunch shop or cafeteria, with a mainly young East Asian staff - thought by ACP insiders to be Mainland Chinese international students or ex-international students. After Robyn Langwell had some brusque words with the girl on the counter about a food order, the staunch kid retorted: 'If you've got a problem with Asians, you can take it up with my manager!'

Anonymous ACP cafe worker = New People's Hero.

On that note, I'm always trying to make the point that getting society to acknowledge the rights and contributions of minorities by overemphasising the model minority 'high achievers' who get awards and prizes and are well integrated, is problematic. The student cafe workers, streetcorner newspaper sellers, the factory workers, the grocery stackers, the toilet cleaners, the fruit-pickers, the construction workers, none of whom have a mainstream voice (in 'Kiwi' English on the radio, or in weekend op-eds), who might be ghettoised, who might have poor English, who may not even be residents - these are the people we most urgently need to acknowledge as making important contributions to this country.

I'm reminded of this scene in Dirty Pretty Things as the dastardly exploiter gets outmaneouvred by Nigerian/Turkish/Chinese/Black refugee and migrant coalition:

Dastardly exploiter:
How come I've never seen you people before?

Nigerian doctor turned bellhop:
Because we are the people you do not see.
We are the ones who drive your cabs.
We clean your rooms.
And suck your cocks.

With this tarty tease of a headline and lead para, you’d have expected news of a radical Islamic army flinging sachets of Whiskas at Supre girls on Queen St. But the only supporter of the ‘uncovered meat’ comment in this story was one guy on a yahoo group - that’s right, not even a blogger!

Radical mufti finds backers in New Zealand was the Herald headline. Backers does suggest… plural. The lead:

A Sydney mufti who compared unveiled women to "uncovered meat" has gained followers in New Zealand, despite an attempt by the country's official Muslim body to disown him.

Again, ‘followers’ – plural?

Simon Collins is generally pretty great, but this story bears a whiff of desperation. Aside from the forum comment from one disturbing misogynist (it's so difficult to find disturbing misogynists online...), he couldn’t get anyone to actually ‘back’ the ‘meat’ comments. I can see how the line of questioning could have gone with the ex-President of FIANZ – ‘so, uncovered meat?’ He thought it was "inappropriate". ‘Do you disagree with his message that Islamic women should dress to cover themselves?’ He thought that view was "quite legitimate", considering what the Koran says. How that all ended up with the ‘Zionist Christians’ comment is admittedly pretty impressive.

If it had been left here, illustrating the conservative and perhaps kooky conspiratorial leanings of one community patriarch who is no longer in charge, that’s one thing. But the story’s lengthy attempts at implying FIANZ is trying to dishonestly deny some association with or ‘following’ of Al-Hilali, is pretty shady. Since when did conference-hopping indicate that, as a foreign attendee, you held sway over the national policies of the host association of which you are not actually a member? Who hasn’t been to a conference where a random attendee waffles irrelevant crap, and is sent politely on their way with smiles, nods, and eye-rolling? Who has been to a conference where everyone actually agrees about anything? Good god, I believe I once spoke at the same conference as Pansy Wong.

If the story had been left there, that’s another, worse thing. But that came to only one fairly equivocal ‘backer’, and not really any evidence of a ‘following’ for Al-Hilali here. Hmm, no offensive local male Muslim bloggers could be found – in fact, blogger and columnist Irfan Yusuf from Australia actually confirmed in some depth how Al-Hilali has no connection to New Zealand Muslim associations.

… So to the newsgroups!

And hence, some dickwad commenting on a yahoo group becomes some kind of representative indicator of Muslim opinion in New Zealand, whose freaky comments somehow deserve a response from Anjum Rahman.

This kind of thing is just insane. Of course, one could argue that at least one person holds these opinions, and this is just reportage of general public sphere discourse. Then why not look at the blog comments on Irfan Yusuf’s site, and run stories like “Drowning all Muslims like rats finds white backers in Australia”?

Or why not point to Garth George’s mega kooky effort in his Herald column on Friday and give him legs with headlines like “Kiwi Christians: ‘God’s rainbow disproves Climate Change’”? I’m serious guys, Garth George believes that evidence of rising sea levels from the polar ice caps melting is laughable nonsense – ho ho ho! – because in the post-flood covenant, God gave Noah the rainbow sign. He clearly doesn’t know the second half of Baldwin’s couplet - ‘No more water, the fire next time.’ It must be embarrassing enough for sane Christians to have him coming up with such public weirdness every week – but imagine if he was actually thought to represent some politically significant segment of Christian opinion on science, embodying the struggle for Christianity’s soul in contemporary New Zealand society. Or imagine if we expected, in outraged tones, for 'moderate' Christians to regularly denounce George's oddities lest they be automatically held in suspicion of backing his rather literal reading of Biblical climatology.

I know this is obvious and not terribly witty, but it is really objectionable to randomly pick out crazy talk by idiots and present them as valid representations of collective group opinions – and to consistently do this on Muslim issues is unfair.

It is unfair because it seems that out of all the random talkboard posters in the country, only the Muslim ones - and angry Chinese international students - have the power to be portrayed as being ‘representive’ of significant community opinions. Random posters on sites such as Public Address System have yet to be granted such mainstream acknowledgement. This is unfair, is it not? So, in the style of a lot of these new ‘system’ questions, here’s a starter for ten:

For which unpopular political idea would you want your web forum post to be used as proof of that idea's insidious threat to New Zealand democracy?

Public replies now possible - click the 'Discuss' button to become a national representative of your race or religion, and make sure you include your relevant demographic information.

On Saturday I learnt that 'Diwali party: Fijian style' is code for 'there will be irreligious booze and expired fireworks at the Diwali party.' "We are of course burning this tree in honour of Ram," a guest observed approvingly as the host ran to shake out the flames.

Once the tree was out, the gathering eventually noticed that a bush in the driveway was also burning in honour of Ram.

Crackle crackle went all our arguments for special responsible-and-culturally-appropriate fireworks dispensations in future possible fireworks bans.

It's important to note however, that we burnt the vegetation because the fireworks were old and shot off in wonky directions, not because the fireworks wranglers were irreligiously drinking. Why were they old fireworks? Because fireworks just aren't widely available at culturally appropriate times of the year other than Guy Fawkes. We obviously need to have fireworks sold all year, everywhere, to preserve our ability to safely blow stuff up in culturally appropriate circumstances at any time.

When the move came to ban double happies back in the 90s (were they later officially 'unbanned'?) I muttered darkly about the indirect discrimination it entailed for Chinese families safely and boringly celebrating Chinese New Year in their backyards with fireworks that we ourselves invented.

I conveniently blocked my memories of running screaming in fear as my brother chased me around our responsible and boring Chinese family backyard, flicking lit double happies at my legs, while our dog cowered inside. That all happened at Guy Fawkes though, not Chinese New Year, and so therefore I blame the decadence of the West.

If we had remained pure and stayed in China, we'd simply be blowing up the entire city with munitions-level strings of individual double happies the size of adult forearms, all lining the streets cheerfully in the open, with legless beggars shuffling about between the explosions hitting up the floods of pilgrims heading for the city temple for lucky cash, the temple itself awash with burning molten candle wax spilling out of huge devotional pyres, further adding to the very convincing atmosphere of a mass refugee exodus from a deafeningly live war zone. Beijing alone clocks up several hundred casualties every Chinese New Year, and the occasional fatality, as the odd devotee or army unit is blown sky high. If they survive, they then become Chinese New Year legless beggars. Not to mention the kids that get chained into fireworks factories that then set on fire. Did I mention China had a fireworks ban during Chinese New Year for ten years? Eveyone ignored it.

Yeah, um, we like fire. And blowing stuff up, including ourselves, the people who make the fireworks, and the factories they're made in. It's cultural though.

A guest at the Diwali party elaborated on the Hindu affinity with fire. His sister's wedding reception at the Sheraton featured a centrepiece flame several feet high, which they had to pre-test to make sure it didn't set off the sprinklers. And lo and behold, to the delight of the happy couple, the flame, several feet high, did not set off the Sheraton sprinklers.

Tip: never stay at the Sheraton.

Blowing stuff up, loudly, and having big fires, can be a deeply spiritual and cultural experience for Chinese and Indian people at specific times. I mean, I could certainly lie and say this is my primary reason for enjoying said blowing up of stuff. Truth is of course, that it's fun, and the reason it is fun is that it is kind of dangerous, and on Guy Fawkes, it is also fun because everyone else is doing it (which makes it more dangerous).

Because fireworks are fun, people will say anything to make sure they can keep doing it. My motives may be false, but this doesn't mean the statement is not true - ahem: 'whether or not fireworks sales are banned for Guy Fawkes, they should still be made available at Chinese New Year and Diwali for cultural and religious purposes, because use of fireworks by small minority groups will not lead to nationwide teenage chaos and mass torture of animals.'

Sigh - poor puppies. Oh the policy conundrums of modern times! if only, as the fireworks-ban lobby suggests, crazy teenagers inspired by V for Vendetta would actually try to blow up parliament instead of their siblings and pets. And then this yearly fireworks angst would transform from a boring public safety issue into an interesting political one.

Something worth about a minute of Diwali party banter prior to the tree-burning, was the the Indonesian Chinese woman called Lolita Chandra who complained about receiving a Diwali card from Phil Goff.

Firstly, one might wonder how an Indonesian Chinese woman ends up being called 'Lolita Chandra.’ It's possible she is married to an Indian Chandra, which would make you wonder why she's complaining. However, as part of the anti-Chinese extremism under Suharto after the overthrow of Sukarno, Chinese people were required by law to change their names to sound less Chinese. It's also possible that Indonesian Chinese Catholics were further persecuted by being forced to take names from great 20th Century modern novels that would produce the most cheap laughs at Mass.

It's cute that her Indian friends think it's funny. I wonder if they also think it's funny that she doesn't think it is funny. If she finds it offensive to be misidentified ethnically, it's odd that she would be blaming Phil Goff rather than Suharto, considering that Suharto was the one who erased her ethnicity from the public record - if indeed she was one of those 'converted' by presidential decree and never got around to switching back. I was pretty bemused myself when David Cohen kept insisting that I was a Dutchwoman, but hey, if he'd started sending me tasty miniature cheeses to commemorate my family's migratory journey to New Zealand on the Sibajak (via Java perhaps...) I probably wouldn't have been complaining.

However she got her, let's face it, indisputably Indian name, if Ms Chandra was, say, Malaysian Chinese from just over the border, her more chilled out multicultural Malaysian reaction would have more likely been ‘oh, a Diwali card, cute! Just like we send to our Tamil friends, except of course we call it Deepavali. In fact, I’m sick of everyone calling it Diwali. Discrimination against Southeast Asians and South Indians! I shall complain to the papers!’

Although, if she was Malaysian Chinese maybe she’d still be called ‘Chan’ and wouldn’t have ended up on the Diwali-card list, and instead could be getting upset about receiving a Chinese New Year card from Phil Goff when she's a Catholic and doesn't celebrate such paganism, and certainly not with fireworks. Unless they're, you know, 'blessed by the Pope' (code for 'really kickass loud ones.')

When I met John Ong at last year’s ASPA awards I was super-impressed that his family was tight with the Lims of Lim’s Supermarket and Lim Chhour foodcourt. This meant that he was famous. The Lims people, the Lims. Not to mention that John’s sister was Mrs Fong from Karateparty’s ‘Ask Mrs Fong’ column.

This year, Mr Ong became even more famous for leaving the delights of a 9-5 grownup government job to edit Critic, choosing the life of a Keith Ng student media survivalist once more. No wonder they gave him a prize. You better believe that when the Chinese Cambodian refugees started getting airlifted into Auckland a quarter century ago that they’d never let their kids edit student magazines unless that magazine avoided angering Chinese people with confusing use of irony or unprofessional use of photoshop, and of course, unless their magazine was officially the best one and got a prize for it. A belated congratulations to all the ASPA entrants and winners, thanks to Ben Thomas and the Listener for the free booze, and of course, congratulations John - you’re top of the class. Now get back to work.

With the help of the Lims, this post is now fleeing to the kitchen, because I'm making jiaozi for my artist friend Kah Bee Chow, soon to be part of a group show at the Auckland Triennal along with Mainland Chinese conceptual art-collective behemoth The Long March.

Because Keith’s ‘parsnip and fish green Thai curry’ freaked me out so much, here’s my vegetarian dumpling filling recipe:

Mix together:
1 bunch finely chopped chives (sprinkle salt and drain if you have time, which gets rid of drippy dumpling syndrome)
1 egg, scramble-fried and crumbled
3 chinese mushrooms, soaked in soy sauce solution and chopped finely
about half an inch of ginger, chopped finely
with:
sesame oil
salt and soy sauce to taste
white pepper
with another raw egg and a little corn starch to combine

Wrap with the yellow label jiaozi pi made in Otahuhu you can always get at Lims Mt Albert or Soung Yueen on Hobson St, but for some reason not at Lim Chhour K’Road which sells this pallid Taiwanese one sometimes that I don’t like so much.

And last geeky gasp: there are countless reasons not to like Robert Kaplan or disagree with his 'South Korea will align with China against Japan' bet, but at least the man knows more about North Korea than the insights revealed by the ‘I’m so rone-ry’ song.