Public Address - Yellow Peril (Home)

Come on baby light my culturally and ethnically appropriate fire. | Oct 24, 2006 12:29

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.')

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Filler | Oct 12, 2006 10:26

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.

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Smoking gun, flaming dumbass. | Oct 05, 2006 11:06

Although he's been pilloried by seemingly everyone over the distracting absurdities of Maori nonexistence, the most dangerous claim in Brash's latest oeuvre is that the health inequalities Maori face (despite not existing) are their own choice, and the state has no duty to address those inequalities.

An 'Asian' public health doctor friend of mine (and fellow AENer) was struck with the nagging feeling that seeking the advice of ex-Reserve Bank governors on the determinants of inequality in Maori health outcomes, and whether they had any relevance to the Treaty of Waitangi, was a poor substitute for maybe asking a doctor or two instead. Medical ones. So here's what he and his other (medical) doctor friend thought, in their Herald article today.

Not only do they believe, like good lefty doctors, that historical Treaty violations have an ongoing effect on Maori wellbeing, they also point out that Article Three of the Treaty guarantees equal treatment for Maori but that Maori are not receiving it. This is not because they are getting a better 'special deal' from the medical system - in fact hard evidence is accumulating to show that Maori are receiving a worse level of treatment and access. "This constitutes a modern, continuing violation of Article Three," say the docs, and Article Three's guarantee of 'equal rights and privileges' is "[o]ne of the few aspects of the Treaty that all New Zealanders seem to agree on."

We agree with Dr Brash that health services should be provided to all New Zealanders according to need. There is clear evidence that the greatest health needs in this country are for Maori and it seems unlikely to us that Treaty violations have made no contribution to the unequal state of Maori health. According to need, there would be a case for prioritisation of Maori health needs whether or not the Treaty existed.

If we want to organise our health institutions according to need, and aim to respect the guarantees made in the Treaty, we have to prioritise Maori health and allow that this might require "special" treatment for Maori communities - to enable them to enjoy an equal level of health to most other New Zealanders.

If we keep our heads in the sand about ethnic inequalities in health, we are saying that it is okay for Maori to have worse health than other New Zealanders. And that is just plain unfair.

It's good to see someone taking the 'one law for all' jargon back into the realm of substantive equality.

In Brash's original op-ed draft to the Herald reported on here, after his discourse on choice and smoking, Brash avoided that whole 'dying' problem, and skipped to a far more important indicator of equality:

"Nobody would suggest that because there are relatively few European New Zealanders in the All Blacks, there has been a breach of the Treaty.

You know, if Pakeha began dying ten years earlier than everyone else in the country, you can sure as hell bet they'd complain about a breach of *something*. I mean, once Pakeha started getting squeezed out of medical school by the 'Asians' last decade, they changed the entry requirements quick enough.

Not that it made much of a difference of course. It is telling through, that probably the biggest health system inequality that white people might face, is that once they're in Medical school, they're surrounded by 'Asians', and this might make them feel like they're in a mulitcultural country.

It's predictable that a neoliberal like Brash would stick by the 'individual choice' line to absolve the state of responsibility for producing equal outcomes for all citizens; but it's surprising that he would so casually dismiss Maori health with a freaking All Blacks comparison. Maori health stats probably carry the most disturbing examples you'll find of that accumulated history of injustice. However one wants to explain it (whether through neoliberal 'choice'; or blood-quantum's relevance to colonial treaty making...) saying the government has no responsibility for trying to stop Maori from dying nine years before everyone else just makes you sound like an asshole - and one who should never be tasked with the responsibility of caring for his mum, let alone the whole country.

Sample 'seemingly everyone' Brash-pillorying roll-call on nonexistence of Maori
To Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples, add also:
Winston Peters
John Roughan
Matt McCarten
Tapu Misa
A Full Blooded Maori

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