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The Hole | Nov 29, 2005 09:00
After defecting from the Communist Party, my grandfather worked the Golden Triangle with a fleet of trucks as an opium smuggler. When the family got to Singapore from Burma, the PAP tried to hire him as a political strategist - Nguyen Tuong Van's not so fucking lucky.
My gong-gong's not the only big-time drug-dealer the Singapore Government has had dealings with. As Opposition leader Chee Soon-Juan points out:
Singapore is reported to be the biggest business partner of Burma with US$1.5 billion worth of investments. Former US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Gelbard stated that "since 1998 over half of [the investments from] Singapore have been tied to the family of narco-trafficker Lo Hsing Han.''
There are reports that Lo Hsing Han now operates a deepwater port in Rangoon and a highway from the center of Burma's poppy–growing region to the China border, facilities well-suited for exporting drugs.
[...]
Let me ask the questions that I have been asking since 1997: Will the Government open its books so that we can verify if our GIC funds are still invested in projects linked with Lo Hsing Han? What steps has the Government taken to pressure the Burmese regime to crackdown on drug kingpins like Lo? Why does our Government continue to trade with the Burmese junta when it has been shown that the military has close ties with narco-producers like Lo?In addition, Singapore has been fingered in the laundering of Burma's drug money. Bruce Hawke, an expert on narco-trafficking in Burma, wrote: "The entry [of drug money] to the legitimate global banking system is not Burma but Singapore." Is this true?
I have been raising these questions since 1997 but each time the local media assiduously blacks them out.
[...]
Criticising our government for killing small-time drug peddlers while doing business with drug lords is necessary. Whether it is a Singaporean or an Australian who is going to dangle at the end of the rope is immaterial. A life is a life and if we are going to take it, let us be absolutely clear of the excruciating hypocrisy that currently exists.
Singapore: Sometimes you make me laugh fondly, sometimes you make me sick.
As December 2nd approaches, you can sense the news media waking to the realisation that this kid is going to die. It's too late to right the 'balance' by putting him on the top of the page rather than the bottom, or publishing a picture of him instead of Michelle Leslie crying about the media being mean to her.
So the pretty white women have gotten off - a cynical yet unavoidable observation, and maybe it's just a coincidence. Maybe it's wrong of me to feel more anger and grief for Nguyen Van Tuong than for Schapelle Corby (whose case I basically ignored), or Michelle Leslie (it worked out for her anyway) or Julia Bohl (the Germans seemed to lay enough on the line in that case). Someone has to. He's a son of the Vietnamese diaspora, born in a Thai refugee camp, and it's yet another of my old-countries which has taken him back in - to kill him. What was it that Lee Kuan Yew said about us immigrants to the west, that time he came to Auckland in the 1980s? That we were the ones who weren't good enough to stay - good riddance to bad rubbish. My parents never forgot it.
Maybe if we'd stayed, we could have changed this.
Here is Singaporean literary star Alfian Saat's short-story 'The Hole', written for the vigil against the death penalty, held earlier this year for Nguyen's best friend in Changi, Shanmugam Murugesu. Shanmugam, a Singaporean, was executed for a kilo of marijuana in May. The government banned the vigil organisers from using his photograph on any publicity material or websites.
[Update: additional comment on norightturn, including details for the Singporean Embassy in Wellington]
Only Asians are allowed to make fun of Pansy Wong | Nov 25, 2005 09:51
[Updated] Did he or didn't he? I didn't catch any of the footage, but there are mixed reports from the people who heard or watched the parliamentary recordings. What I did catch yesterday afternoon, was a Ministerial Advisor in full damage-control mode, asking me to acknowledge the denial from the Minister of any racist intent, of his love of multiculturalism and Chinese people in general, and presumably that he is not a cunt. Plausible enough that it was a slip of the tongue and a Herald beat-up - wasn't that what we all hoped? I'm rather too busy these days to go around picking imaginary fights, as one reader suggested.
Might I ask though, if there was no Pansy-mocking going on at that point (by Cunliffe or otherwise), what on earth was Michael Cullen doing drawing attention to people being amused by Pansy Wong's 'trouble with words'?
Shame on me for reading the Herald. I suppose I should have known better. I should have relied on Ministerial press releases instead. Except... there wasn't one. The 'I am not a cunt' press release the Advisor emailed me at 4:30 pm yesterday doesn't seem to be on Scoop. It only seems to have been released at 1pm yesterday (that's pretty slow for an Immigration Minister falsely accused of racism) and not to any of the three 'ethnic'/'Asian' networks that I'm constantly bombarded by. I had to put it on AEN myself. The Advisor seemed particularly unhappy that Cunliffe had put in so much time and work with the Chinese in New Lynn, and "yet one beat-up story is run and people are prepared to believe the worst". I suppose that's because Chinese people (though we're very smart, good-looking, and have great accents) aren't generally capable of just 'sensing' what all other Chinese people are thinking.
Let me try it out though: hhhnnngghhh...."Labour government... in coalition with... Winston Peters... give us a reason... to trust you."
If this has truly been a nonsensical affair, than it's more of a shame that the parliamentary questions that Pansy Wong was actually asking (link below) have been thus obscured.
*
yesterday's post, around 10:30 am
A class act, our new Minister of Immigration. Some in the English-language communities already refer to him as 'Silent T'; perhaps his new Mandarin name shall be David 傻屄liffe.
Caught mocking Pansy Wong's accent during Parliamentary Question Time, by asking her to 'wead' a particular document, Immigration Minister David Cunliffe "later said his remark was accidental and did not know he had said it."
Um... is this the manslaughter defense? No premeditation here, just accidentally tripped over a foreigner. Perhaps this is a job for Ms/Mr Accident Compensation Corporation.
[Update: The Question Time transcript of this affair, via Idiot/Savant of course, who actually reads these things.]
Shall we avoid a long string of Chinese obscenities on this occasion? Yes, we shall. Predictably, this makes me fucking furious, and I don't even like Pansy Wong. I know Wong has developed a damn thick skin, because this is hardly the worst she's seen of it in the House. Michael Cullen's comment to Tau Henare who took such umbrage in Wong's defense, that National MPs were also smirking at her questions, is rather beside the point. But it's true. Wong gets shit from her own Party.
But this kind of bullshit from the Minister of Immigration of a government that is meant to care about people like me and my parents, is an insult with serious legs. Most 'Asian' communities shouldn't have any particular concern about the comments of our Minister of Foreign Affairs - we're not foreigners (we live here). But the Minister of Immigration is our Minister. And an accidental remark is all too often the measure of a man. 'Silent T' had better start sucking up to us fast, or face worse than the Silent Treatment - long strings of community-supported obscenities on Yellow Peril that he doesn't know how to 'wead'.
Okay, that's the best threat I can come up with right now. Um... how about email bombardment?
Accent is becoming the final frontier when it comes to triggering racism - more on this later, probably. But for now, one of the most pathetic things about mocking people's accents is that the people who do it in that 'Parliamentary' way, are generally monolingual, aren't used to hearing other accents, and even have difficulty understanding fluent first-language English speakers if those people are not speaking 'kiwi'. In other words, accent-mockers are likely to be hicks without a clue, who will hardly be able to communicate with anybody if they ever travel outside New Zealand. Meanwhile, Pansy Wong speaks four languages. Stick that up your chouhai, Cunliffe. Same goes to the rest of the publicly indignant but secretly snickering patronising gits in parliament.
Here's a positive angle though, on the confusing fates of the NZ First diaspora. Winston luring more Asian students to New Zealand, Tuariki Delamere allegedly corruptly importing more Asian sub-millionaires, Tau Henare defending Asians from political racism (even if simultaneously still covertly laughing at them)... I think it's safe to say that the Invasion has truly proved victorious over its original 1996 nemesis. It's just our 'friends' we have to worry about now.
Yellow on the inside front cover | Nov 23, 2005 09:06
"Yolk is being the yellow surrounded by white. Yolk is also the 'centre of life' of an egg," writes Lincoln Tan in the inaugural issue of Auckland's newest 'Asian youth' publication. Presumably, the whiteness surrounding this yellow centre is the crappy tasteless stuff no-one's interested in.*
Yep, the irrepressible Lincoln Tan, editor of New Zealand's first bilingual Chinese tabloid rag cum voice-of-the-people paper iBall, has returned to his Asian roots. That is, to Auckland. The mega-Asian central-city foodcourt free-pulp reading market was calling to him from afar. From the deep southern reaches of Christchurch, Lincoln could hear the Auckland international students crying out for a more authentic kind of colourful ad-filled crap to drip their sundubu onto.
Here it is kids: Yolk. Not to be confused with ...Yolk. Nor with Hardboiled. No sirree, this shit is fresh. Fresh and for the freshies.
A Korean girl graces the cover of our local no-gloss namesake of the classic Asian-American mag, but with the paper entirely staffed by Chinese people from S'pore, Malaysia, Mainland China and Taiwan, and with half the text in fanti,** I don't think this is really an 'Asian' paper. But it is a Chinese paper. Shame, the first issue's covergirl won't be able to read her own profile.
Don't worry Gayoung, neither can I. Online tests prove that I am almost half-literate in jianti,*** but have a fanti reading age of however old I was when mum stopped with the flashcards. Three I think.
So here's my NZ-born Chinese translation of the heart and soul of Yolk editor Vivienne Ni's first editorial: "A lot of friends asked me why you'd want to something something translate Chinese something funny something something. My answer is that Yolk represents something something new something something."
Sure does.
I'm already liking Yolk a lot more than that similar English-language youth market colourful advertising rag I see in the foodcourts (what's it called? Max? Mono? Maxo?). At least some of Yolk is vaguely relevant to me, and with its bilingual content and accessible writing style, it's good practise for people in need of brushing up their Chinese - or English - reading skills. In that sense, Yolk could provide a new window for semi-literate huaqiaos into the world of their new-generation contemporaries, and vice-versa. That is actually... something. Something worth something.
Here's something else to cheer the semi-Chinese-illiterates. This glossary box: 'Don't speak English, Speak Kiwi' explains a few choice turns of phrase - such as that here, 'Mainlander' means a hick from the South Island rather than a hick from Mainland China. You get a little nervous round-about the 4th entry down. Now let's get this straight. Lincoln is from Singapore, therefore his English is perfect. But he's also from Singapore, where lesbians are either illegal or officially nonexistent, I don't remember which. He also lived in Christchurch for three years. So maybe in Christchurch 'Dyke' really does mean 'toilet', and uppity women get called 'toilets' as an insult. I dunno.
The gossip page bearing the questionable glossary is a highlight: Jay Chou balding rumours sparked by excessive wig use! Faye Wong slammed in China for having a second baby! Shu Qi on pashing Tony Leung!
Another chunky crumb of Yolk worth savouring is the short feature where an uncredited writer goes out and asks some Chinese kids in noodlebars what they want out of Auckland. Answer: 24 hour noodlebars. Hell yeah! Taller Park, I'm looking at you. It's so embarrassing when Keith Ng comes to town, and expects to find noodles at 4 am because this is Auckland, not ethnically desolate Wellington. He's all like: "Where my noodles bitch? You find me some fuckin' noodles and a lemon coke 'afore I put the Hong Kong Gambling Authority on yo' ass!" The word 'GenerAsian' is also used seriously in this article. Hoo-boy. I was like, kind of kidding.
You can guess what a magazine full of uncredited stories, and featuring a caricature of Winston Peters drawn by the managing editor means. It means 'our editorial team of two-and-a-half wrote all the stories.' It also means Lincoln has forgotten that this is a city of super-slick Asian graphic artists (who could probably draw him some cool killer Winston Peterdroids inside of a minute). My dear fellow yellows-on-the-inside, if you've been doing your own reviews of Yolk in the foodhalls, you probably couldn't go far wrong by emailing them with your own glossaries and story ideas, and all the rants and opinions you've always wanted to send to Yellow Peril but were too afraid of my sneering judgement to do so. Yolk probably hasn't developed any sneering judgement yet. My bet is that they would welcome more writers with something to say. And you could Win Atrium on Elliot Shopping Vouchers. This rag is ours - own it. It's free after all. Email yolk(AT)iballmedia(DOT)co(DOT)nz.
There's another element of Yolk to get involved in. Here's my crappy translation of the Yolk Covergirl's curriculum vitae.
Name: Gayoung
Gum-colour?: Pink
Birthdate: 1982.12.31
Nationality: Korea
Height: 157 cm
Weight: 46 kg (this can't be right, surely)
Star Sign?: uh... Capricorn?
Blood type (I'm pretty sure it's blood type, though at first glance I took this answer to be either bra size, or lowest Grade ever in an internal assessment): B
Zodiacal year: dog
School: Auckland University
Home something change something: parents and something something little brother
Something good: walking around the streets
Favourite food: Sukiyaki
Favourite flower: some dumb flower
Favourite colour: pink?
Favourite... um... exercise?: Walking around the streets
Favourite something something: Peace something something something something (everyone loves peace)
Favourite singer: Christina Aguilera
Favourite film: Far from Heaven
Favourite... um... plum?: Some kind of plum?
Favourite kind of clothing: cute with a hint of sexy
Favourite place: Mission Bay
So far so barfy. Dear Yellow Peril readers - only YOU can stop babydoll princess-cut cute-with-hint-of-sexy, long-haired Mission-Bay-loving Yolk Girls. Our people need to know that Christina Aguilera is now an approved form of military torture. Pleeeeeassse, there has got to be a Yolk Girl out there whose idea of a good time is a little more than 'walking around the streets'. If you're in Auckland, are between 18-30, "have a fresh exciting look and a great personality", fill in the Yolk Form and send a face and full-length shot to Yolk Magazine, iBall Media Works Ltd, PO Box 46018, Herne Bay, Auckland. The Chinese version specifies that you have to be over 160 cm tall. I guess the girls who read English are likely to be taller already, because of all the English-language protein we get.
Footnotes
* Derek Cheng made this joke, while wearing a Yolk t-shirt, reading Yolk, and popping the yolk of the egg atop a bibimbap masquerading as a chicken donburi at Mercury Plaza.
**Fanti: traditional Chinese script, used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the old diaspora
***Jianti: simplified Chinese script, used in Mainland China and Singapore
The distinction between fanti and jianti is a purely written one, and does not relate to oral dialect. For example, there is no relation between the fanti/jianti split and the Mandarin/Cantonese dialect split. You cannot 'write in Mandarin' or 'write in Cantonese' except in the sense of idiom specific to each dialect. Never ask if something is 'written in Mandarin or Cantonese', especially if you are a NZ-born Chinese journalist working for a major daily, attending an Asian media networking lunch. Not that this has ever happened to anyone I know.
The Treaty of Waitangi's relevance to Alien Species: Part 3 | Nov 17, 2005 11:08
Play the audio for this post MP3, 109.6 KB
Winston Peters? You are a whipped man. Make sure you round up plenty of hot Asian guys to bring back from your Loving the Asian Invasion Tour and when you return, me and Manying Ip will greet you singing 你现在是我们的婊子 (translation: 'you are now our bitch'), a classic Beijing Opera accompaniment to the traditional Chinese Victory Dance.
Early days yet, but I'm still still laughing my ass off and looking forward to reports of our Minister of Foreign Affairs Outside Government 'doing a lot of [laundry] in the Beijing [dog] restaurants.'
*
It's now Thursday and I'm reporting on a conference that happened on Sunday. Keith may have something to add on the implications of that for 'Chinese timekeeping'.
The Treaty of Waitangi and Asian Communities Symposium was not just positive and cuddly about the Treaty, but also intelligent, critical, and lacking the kind of bitterness and reductiveness that Treaty discussions often can't escape within the Maori/Pakeha discourse. There have been some comments that the kind of discussion Keith and I have been having on and off Public Address is one that should have been in the mainstream media. I don't know if that's possible - unless geeky Asians suddenly take over the mainstream media and act like logical argument over a hot lemon Coke at Taller Park is the only thing people ever care about when it comes to colonialism and race. Beyond our blogs, beyond an 'Asian' symposium, it would actually be incredibly difficult to talk about how X issue (which affects all New Zealanders) specifically affects 'Asians', without Pakeha itching to jump in with their opinions and dominating the space. It's not that those opinions are unwelcome - I just wouldn't mind a few minutes to sort it out between ourselves first, like in the foyer or something.
At the end of the Symposium, Maori researcher Belinda Borell said something that vindicated a hopeful assertion I've made before to a Chinese audience: that from what she'd heard that day, we 'Asians' sure understood racism a lot better than plenty of Pakeha audiences. It's a good start.
A few highlights:
- Manying Ip's research on the parallel stereotypes of both 'Asians' and Maori of each other as 'privileged', and likely to side with whitey against 'us'. In other words, played off against each other. There was a Maori call to cut out the middle man. A good call, and a strangely familiar one.
- Sally Liu's research on the Chinese language media concluding that on Maori issues, their effort consists of a pathetic cut and paste of Mainstream Media articles, but problematically translated, even more underrepresented in frequency, with hardly any Maori voice, and basically no independent journalism. And that this is screwing us all.
- Changzoo Song proving himself funnier than either myself or Keith.
- the combined South-Asian and Southeast-Asian contingents reminding everyone else that British colonial domination, and postcolonial negotiation of identity, is actually rather familiar to us.
- Ruth de Souza's closing line of her presentation, just the delivery of it - quietly, thoughtfully, a little wearily: "I want to be part of something." Made me want to have a little tangi. I think I was just tired.
- The saintly, contained look on Sir Paul Reeves' face when the word 'hori' came up on my powerpoint presentation. (see Part 1)
- The hope that someone in the mainstream media was noticing that there is a critical-mass of brainy, politically-engaged Asians out there, and realising that they can go to people other than me for 'Asian comment.'
The presentations are available from Manying Ip, and I have attached Kumanan Rasanathan's to this post - click the 'audio' button for a PDF.
There was some lively discussion on AEN in the aftermath. This particular part was my favourite:
*Alistair Kwun*Sent:* Monday, 14 November 2005 8:52 a.m.
Dear AEN,
For those who weren't able to make it to yesterday's (Sunday) symposium on *Human Rights, Treaty of Waitangi and *Asian Communities*, you can read all about it at: (link to Herald article)
[...]Kind regards
Alistair Kwun
On 11/14/05, Kumanan Rasanathan wrote:
Yes Alistair and all, as you can read in the Herald, we had a really exhaustive six hour symposium on immigrant Treaty tests. Amazingly, we didn't get to discuss whether this would open up a new market for tutoring.
Kumanan
Yep, the Herald took a pretty lame lead angle, although the second part of the article wasn't bad. It was only reportage from the first half hour of the conference though. Poor Errol Kiong - he never stays for a full ethnic community conference. He's probably ethnic-conferenced out. I've heard that Alistair, Tessie and I successfully managed to stop the Herald from creating an 'ethnic beat' with our seminar there earlier in the year, but I think Errol's still getting locked into the ghetto. I saw this happening early on, and thought - hey, bad for his career... but good for us! Maybe in the long run ...not so good? Stupidly, ironically, both Errol and Keith Ng missed the standout presentation of the Symposium, because they were catching up with each other to talk about ...what? Ghettoisation of ethnic journalists by giving them all the ethnic conference stories?
The presentation in question was by one of my favourite Yellow Peril readers Kumanan Rasanathan, PhEG (Pointy-headed Ethnicity Geek), who managed to make it to some of Keith's key constitutional conclusions (which I don't have much argument with) without those weird stop-off points about the invalidity of metonymic legitimacy of 'the Crown' and its historical compacts. Running with Universal Human Rights also helped streamline the argument. Good old Universal Human Rights. I'd encourage you to read the full paper, which has jokes in it and everything. To the ear in fact, Kumanan has a very similar cadence to Russell Brown. Here he is on that old bugbear, Biculturalism vs Multiculturalism.
I have to admit that I always used to find biculturalism problematic, because it seemed to extend the lack of space in the Treaty for people like me across the whole of New Zealand society – it seemed to imply, that we, and our cultures, didn't exist here. Many people in our communities prefer the concept of multiculturalism. But having lived in Australia and the United Kingdom, I've revised my opinion.
[...]
In Australia, multiculturalism delivers far less than it promises. I attended a so-called "diversity in health" conference recently in Melbourne. The Australians call people like me CALD, which stands for "culturally and linguistically diverse". In terms of translation services for health care for minority groups, and as with many other things, in resourcing, they are in many ways far ahead of New Zealand. But beyond the rhetoric of how many languages are spoken or the wheeling out of diverse costumes and musics for the opening of functions, in Australia multiculturalism operates as a veneer for the systematic monoculturalism of healthcare there and the continued invisibility of the majority culture.
So our communities in New Zealand, in seeking multiculturalism, should be careful what they wish for.
The Treaty of Waitangi's relevance to Alien Species: Part 2 | Nov 11, 2005 09:09
The question 'where do rights come from?' is as important as it is boring. Therefore, as many Star Trek analogies as possible will be incorporated into this unplanned but obligatory political-philosophic-follow-up to Keith's last post.
Spending the better part of last evening talking to Keith to figure out his objections to the Treaty of Waitangi's 'contemporary relevance' as per our Symposium panel brief, was seriously complicated by Keith also not believing in:
- rights as deriving from anything but guns;
- rule of law;
- constancy of the historical principles of democracy, or value in looking for any;
- natural justice, natural law or natural rights.
...So far so Hobbesian/pre-Federation Klingon.
But here's the killer. He also doesn't appear to believe in:
- the relevance of any law passed, right accorded, or treaty signed prior to the parties involved attaining the universal franchise (presumably in a Western liberal-democratic modern nation-state mold - you know, like a civilisation that has acquired the warp drive)
And at the same time, he does believe in:
- the current principles of democracy;
- and that they should be enshrined in law in the form of a written constitution;
- thereby guaranteeing us our rights;
- and providing us with a better basis for national identity than the Treaty of Waitangi.
The obvious addendum would be:
- although the written constitution, rule of law, and the guarantee of our rights would provide as little guarantee as anything before it, if we didn't have enough guns to enforce it.
This seems to be a kind of unstable approach. It's kind of like the ambivalent, fragile foundations of the initial peace between the Klingon delegation and the Federation in Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country, the gappy accommodation between brute-force and a brand-new foundationless shine of Federation democracy. Here's the crux of his argument:
"Nobody believes that our right to be in New Zealand is derived from Her Majesty, right?...the government gets its right to rule from the people, not the other way around… So why then should we take seriously the idea that our right to be in New Zealand comes from the Maori chiefs who signed the Treaty?... The idea of the Treaty of Waitangi as the source of our rights as citizens contradicts the reality of our political system..."
The whole 'irrelevance of laws passed by unelected leaders now dead' line is pretty difficult to take seriously at all from a legal perspective. Since Keith brought it up again, the Magna Carta was signed by 13th century English feudal lords, arguably governing far less democratically than 19th century rangatira. From what I can tell, it is the basis of our contemporary legal right to be free from the absolute rule of Kings. Is that a contradiction of our modern democratic system or its very beginning?
Why do people hate common-law constitutions so?
What's the problem Tuvok? What are these rights that we Aliens have derived from this Treaty?
Although Keith seems to have conflated them rather... illogically ...there is a difference between
a) how 'the Crown' accessed the right to govern New Zealand
b) the way we acquire/d the right to have citizenship in general and whatever rights citizenship gave you at the time
c) the way we accessed our right to control the government as democratic citizens.
a) Governing rights
The Crown accessed the right to govern through the Treaty of Waitangi. Legally, that's what happened. If Keith wants to say it was a 'legal fiction' because only guns and/or democracy matter now and the 'Crown' has no real power, then we might as well be doing Star Trek metaphysics about whether it's possible for Riker to have real feelings for his imaginary holodeck girlfriend who was programmed on a real person somewhere but she died down a wormhole in the Delta Quadrant (probably trying to leap away from his horrible saxophone playing).
b) Citizenship rights
I suppose the Treaty of Waitangi enables the successor of the British Crown to govern citizenship in a land that is no longer Britain. If that is indirectly the source of the right of the government to grant New Zealand citizenship, so what? What's the problem? You can't just colonise a country without getting consent from who was there first, unless you're Australia and pretend that no-one was there.
But Keith equates citizenship with the right to participate in government, possibly sees it as a fundamental human right (depending on whether he's feeling Hobbesian or Liberal) and due to a weird understanding of the purpose of law itself, 'feels' miffed and alienated that this inviolable right actually appears to be 'sourced' in some dead Maori chief, rather than in, say, a written constitution (which would inevitably include the same dead Maori chief).
Okay then. Who believes laws and rulers are fountains from from which rights spurt as if from heaven? Anyone? Now, who believes that rights and freedoms are fundamental to our understanding of our own nature as human beings in human society, and that laws are made to express that? What's wrong with interpreting how we should deal with each other's rights from historical laws and treaties signed by people who were expressing ideas about their rights that are not remarkably different from our own ideas?
Is the past not only another undiscovered country, but another planet? Are our ancestors, in fact, aliens?
c) Democratic rights
I think Keith is barking up the wrong tree here, because citizenship doesn't necessarily give you access to the right to participate in government, unless the citizens have managed to get that access. The way Tangata Tiriti accessed our right to control the government though elections as democratic citizens was not through the Treaty of Waitangi. It might have been a mixture of guns and withholding sex. I don't think Maori claim to have given it to us. Elections that is, not sex.
Keith wants a 'national identity document' that encapsulates all of the ways we get our rights - ie, a written constitution. Fine, but why just bag the Treaty? It's kind of funny and alien-like that Keith finds these rather pedantic concepts about the irrelevancy of the Treaty to be personally relevant to his life, although we both agree that the audience at the Symposium would probably find it totally boring and irrelevant, and so we probably won't talk about it there in our 'relevancy of the Treaty now & in the future' segment. With regard to the Treaty, I'm more interested in the ways we can use it than the ways that we supposedly can't, or the things that it supposedly isn't. I don't think it's so crazy to think the principles of active protection, partnership, mutual recognition, engagement and reciprocity are rather useful for building a culturally-deep civil society. I am also going to include pictures of graff-painted skateboards in my Powerpoint presentation on 'Asian Youth' opinions. I think that will also help with the cultural depth, and with the pretense that I am young.
The other in-depth disagreement Keith and I had during our discussion, was over who was funnier, him or me. I thought that we were probably about as funny as each other. Keith was certain that he was way funnier than me. Here's something to agree on though: this is probably the most boring post I've ever written.
The Treaty of Waitangi's relevance to Alien Species: Part 1 | Nov 09, 2005 11:31
If Keith Ng and I were a Star Trek spin-off, we'd be a Tuvok and Worf odd-couple sitcom.* Worf: "We are surrounded by enemies! Let us attack! Roooarrr!" Tuvok: "That would be highly illogical." Worf: "Pah! I will attack YOU Vulcan quisling!" Tuvok: "That would be even more illogi..."WHAM!
No prizes for guessing which Lieutenant-Commander is which.
But people are full of surprises. For example, I was recently talking to Keith about how it's great that Asians can afford to be rational, unemotional and geeky when discussing the Treaty of Waitangi because of our relative lack of distracting historical baggage, therefore allowing us to get far more productive political theory done. Imagine my mirrored shock when Keith started talking to me about how the Treaty of Waitangi made him 'feel'.
It didn't make him feel good.
In my opinion, highly illogical. Perhaps a Vulcan mind-meld had gone awry.
If you want to know what we were talking about, you can see more of Bizarro-Keith vs Bizarro-Tze Ming live at the Human Rights, Treaty of Waitangi and Asian Communities Symposium this Sunday at Auckland University. Keith and I are going to be on the Asian Yoof Panel, along with Karishma Kripalani (one of the organisers of this year's Human Rights Film Festival). I'll report on proceedings in 'The Treaty of Waitangi's relevance to Alien Species: Part 2', but the whole Symposium is free registration, so come along. We three Kids' Panelists are on at about 1:30, but may simultaneously be on the Sunday afternoon Lynn Freeman/Chris Laidlaw panel discussion on National Radio, due to the magic of pre-recording. The fact that I know who Lynn Freeman is, is probably proof that I shouldn't be on a Kids' Panel.
I pointed out to Manying Ip that I'm not really 'youth', and that if she was desperate to put me on a panel, it should be a Southeast Asian panel.
"Tze Ming," she said rather wearily, "there will be NO Southeast Asian panel."
Roooaarrr!!!
But there will be an awesome South Asian panel featuring some of Auckland's finest postcolonial ethnicity-geeks and a Korean panel as well as the usual Chinese panel with the usual Chinese suspects.
And of course, the 'Young Asians' panel - which really should be called the 'Asians with too many advanced degrees in Political Philosophy and Identity Politics but not enough in Law" panel. There is a great danger that myself, Keith and Karishma will geek out the whole auditorium just when everyone's expecting us to be all cool and young and shit. I will be forced to admit that I'm three years past the Ministry of Youth Development definition of 'Youth'; Keith will be forced to admit that he's actually 37; Karishma will have to confess that although she's an immigrant, she's never lived in Asia.
The 'Young Asians' panel is meant to be discussing the "Relevance of the Treaty - Now & in the Future" so I thought I'd ask some real youth what they thought, given that it's rather dubious to consider either myself, Keith or Karishma as your 'typical' Asian youth... although I'm not sure if the reprobate friends of mine who answered my weekend Treaty text-message survey are a good representation either.** Would it be fair to propose that the more Young Asian Professionals (YAPs) in this list of respondents, the more accurate it is as a reflection of Young Asian opinion?
Treaty of Waitangi: relevant to you? Why/why not?
NZ-born tagger - uh-oh - and ...IT professional! Woohoo, YAP-hit!:
"yes becuase it ripped off the Maori and that's not cool. Getting ripped off ain't cool by any culture's standards."1.5 gen/newish migrants - one text answered for three. One artist - uh-oh... one landscape architect... YAP-hit! 3rd, engineer-turned-businessman... so close on a primary-YAP capture, yet so far!**:
"2 'no's' because Asians didn't sign it. I say dunno because I am not aware how it is relevant."1.5 gen - artist. Oh dear:
"if a hori cant walk free in his own land thn wat chance does da othr colourd folk hv in dis place?"1.5 gen - architect - YAP!:
"very relavnt because im a NZer. Not relavent at all because we need to get over ourselves."NZ-born film-maker... losing YAP points fast:
"Yes.. I'm a new zealander and the treaty is relevant to all new zealand! Not trying to be pc.. Just basic important knowledge!.."1.5 gen student/community worker... hmm, borderline YAP possibilities still?:
"relevant,bcos it is important 2understand d history of d place we live in & we can learn many things from observin how the maori ppl is treated as minority by d policy-makers & make inferences abt how we as minorities may b treated as human beings, citizens & potential leaders."1.5 gen IT professional/journalist... so half a YAP?:
"relevant, how a country treats its indigenous (uggh, hate that word) is a reflection of how open they are 2 other cultures"NZ-born film-maker/film-production... that's not the kind of 'professional' we're looking for... losing more YAP points:
"Relevant due 2 unique position I have in maori broadcasting and my exposure 2 the culture"1.5 gen actor... okay, this survey is now officially screwed:
"Relevant cause i am nzer. Nt relevant cause we r nt educatd bout it properly in skols...i mean wot does da treaty really signify 4us 2day? wot is da truth &does it create a beta society r my questns. Bt lacknin in knowledge,i cnt really say."1.5 gen - another artist. Even more screwed:
"Yes, definitely, I live in this country, how could it not be relevant - not to sound defensive at all. And as a relative newcomer who perhaps isn't directly involvd in tht history, ie by ancestry etc, it informs me of this history which is very much a part of nz now."1.5 gen rapper and shoe-saleman. Effectively, the YAP-nemesis:
"It makes me happy to see Maori people happy, that says it all."
Despite or perhaps because of my remarkably poor sampling method, I'm not sensing too much discomfort out there, nor projection of experiences of general societal marginalisation onto the terms or principles of the Treaty itself. There's both curiosity and boredom. So... what's up with Tuvok? What do Asians who feel marginalised by the Maori-Pakeha Treaty discourse, or insecure about the guarantees the Treaty presents for their national belonging, actually need in order to 'feel' better? Better information? A written constitution? Nullification of the Treaty?
Or do they just need a hug?
Maybe what they really, really need, is a Symposium.
*Possible names for the Tuvok & Worf show: "Please Do Not Feed the Aliens" or "YOU will be Assimilated" (this second option could be a game-show).
**The group surveyed is ethnically broader than the build-you-a-Chinatown survey, but doesn't include Asian people also of Maori descent, or people directly involved in the Symposium. A big fat zero-hit on primary YAPs (Doctor-Engineer-Accountant), and not even the full spectrum of secondary YAPs covered (IT-Architect-Lawyer). Me and my friends are such disappointments to our parents...
where's the Party? | Nov 02, 2005 10:19
Actual, physical mail arrived the other week, addressed to 'Tze Ming Mok, Public Address'. Like this is my job. Opening the envelope, the crest of the Chinese Communist Party stared out from the centre of a creamy summons - AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!
Lefties in the West enjoy the tongue-in-cheek adoption of Communist paraphernalia - Mao caps, Lenin beards, hammer and sickle flags, red star tattoos, portraits of Che, etcetera. Hell, I've done it myself, with the requisite blackness of humour - it is my family history after all. Funny how history comes back to bite you in the ass.
There it was - the Party crest. The Consulate-General of the People's Republic of China. They know where I live. They read my blog. As they say... it 'gave me pause.' Or alternatively:
It scared the crap out of me.
Turns out all I should have been afraid of was two-hours-that-seemed-like-four of government-sanctioned movie (read: sentimental tragic-romantic drivel with a lot of slo-mo petals falling and curtains billowing) at the opening night of the Chinese Film Festival last week.
But no, I didn't go for the pre-film cocktails at the Consulate.
A World Without Thieves on the weekend was a hell of a lot better, although it's the second consecutive Andy Lau film I've seen where he's wearing a bad wig.
I was planning on going back to China again for a while next year, but have decided against it. You know, bird flu, mounting print & net-censorship, violent supression of organic civil-society democracy movements, the Campaign against Public Intellectuals (yeah, hilarious I know - in New Zealand would it be a Campaign to find Public Intellectuals?), systematic use of torture, urban migrant poverty, Beijing air pollution... these things do weigh heavy on the soul. It's not the same for all Chinese people, even ones from China. But I'd rather not be there right now, in a place where there is too much wrong, and too little that I could put right with my presence.
I am somewhat loathe to test whether I'd have any trouble getting in, or whether I'd get in trouble without meaning to (me and my little pink bicycle were briefly detained by a variety of security forces, my film exposed, my camera broken, and my residence permit 'misunderstood' on the first day of the Iraq war the last time I was living in China - it was an accident, honest!), or get my relatives in trouble (none of whom have any name that is related to mine if anyone is looking). So yes - there are some personal things at stake for me in terms of whether or not the Chinese government and its representives know who I am, what I care about, who I've worked for, and whether they are of a mind to make things difficult for me in entering or leaving or living in China. If they do choose to in the future, I suppose I brought it on myself. You make your bed, you lie in it - I didn't have to blog occasionally about human rights and democracy in China from the safety of New Zealand, especially for an audience that's probably more interested in amusing anecdotes about my mother and Hot Asian Guys or all that 'new New Zealand' shit anyway. I mean, I really should have thought about whether it might inconvenience a holiday or an arts residency one day.
Reminds me of the time I attended a Free Tibet rally in Aotea Square in 1997. The Chinese Consulate would generally send its informants or spies or whatever to Tibet rallies, and photograph the activists. There was this hippy dude I knew who was introducing the speakers, and I asked him not to mention my name, as I was travelling to China later that year. What do you know but ten minutes later, "and speaking for Amnesty International on Campus, Amnesty president Tze Ming Mok - cheers Tze Ming!" "Uh... yeah, thanks."
You can't do much in a situation like that but go "ah, fuck it," and take the mic. It's a free country. It didn't affect my visa that year.
It's possible that only the people marketing the Chinese Film Festival know who I am. But when I received the letter from the Consulate last week, and faced the other possibility that they really are reading this, I had to think for a moment whether this would affect what I write. Whether, if I know what's good for me, I should refrain from referring to things like: "the Chinese Coprophagist Party's colonic irrigation", and break off my blog-alliance with Glutter, and stop linking to Reporters sans Frontieres, and turn down opportunities to hang out with Jung Chang unless I write that she's 'a running-dog bitch', or hold my tongue instead of saying that the movie Hero and its subtitling of 'tianxia' as 'our land' instead of 'all under heaven' was a big fat Zhang Yimou sellout to shitty Chinese Government nationalist propaganda, but that he redeems himself in House of Flying Daggers with a philosophy of individual freedom standing against the inhumanism of mass movements and state absolutism, even though Andy Lau has a bad wig.
Nah, fuck it. It's a free country.
****
On the local front, I just missed the Millennium Tree 'planting' ceremony in the Domain. It's a 6.5 metre high stainless-steel tree-sculpture that is a present from the Chinese New Zealanders Millennium Trust to the City of Auckland. They're calling it a present from "the Chinese Community" to Auckland, but we all know there isn't one. And it's not from me. But it is to me, so sweet as I suppose. Sun Wukong's staff? I dunno. From the photos, it kind of looks like a washing-line, harking back perhaps to the laundry-based heritage of the Old Generation Chinese in New Zealand. Probably looks different in real life. You know, like way bigger and super-impressive. The residents from the original site, the Parnell Rose Gardens, threw it out of their 'hood on aesthetic grounds. What did they want from "the Chinese community", a fucking pagoda? I'd prefer this sort of weird 80s shiny-pipe Wall Street modernism to that crap. It reminds me of a certain David Bowie lyric, with those helicopter pans of Hong Kong: "I'll give you television/I'll give you eyes of blue/I'll give your men the tools to ruuule the world!"
Okay, I'm coming round to the Sun Wukong staff idea.
****
Additional notes to previous glossary.
Nagi' is etymologically more akin to 'ho' than 'nigga', meaning specifically 'naked ladies' (thanks Manisha), though it seems that in certain diaspora usages this morphs contextually to 'South Asian naked ladies/slutty ho's/fine hotties/hardcore beeyatches from da Hood'. Which is kind of like saying 'my niggaz' but for girls. Unless you're neither South Asian nor naked. You can spot an example of this contextual diaspora usage in Anoop Dogg's 'Drop it like a FOB'.
Vic Chou (who only ever writes in to correct me) reckons 'Nanyang', according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, doesn't have the 'Yangtze' Yang. Vic is Hongkie I think. Yes, most people know that Nanyang is conventionally spelt 'Southside', not 'South of Yangtze', and the Yangtze is nowhere near Southeast Asia. However, collective Nangyang community wisdom has suggested to me that there is an aurally conflated historical meaning, referring in an embedded homonymical way to the old Chinese view that anything south of the Yangtze was 'barbarian' country. As the borders of China moved with Han colonisation of the South, 'barbarian' country moved even further South. Then again, collective Nanyang community wisdom is notorious for being rather cut-adrift from proper and refined Chinese historical knowledge. 'Coz we Nanyang, muthafucka! So, if we make shit up, it's probably alright as long as it's about ourselves.
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