Tse still feels a bit uncomfortable about being seen as a role model or advocate for LGBTQI+ and Chinese people, but says he’s learning to embrace it as a privilege. Photo / Supplied
Tse still feels a bit uncomfortable about being seen as a role model or advocate for LGBTQI+ and Chinese people, but says he’s learning to embrace it as a privilege. Photo / Supplied
Chris Tse never set out to be an ambassador for Aotearoa’s Chinese and queer communities. But by virtue of his role as the nation’s youngest ever Poet Laureate, it ended up happening anyway.
Tse says he only realised he had become something of an unofficial “spokesperson” for these communities this year at the Auckland Writers Festival.
“I was signing books and someone came up to me in tears and told me how important it was that I was the Poet Laureate and how much it meant to them,” Tse recounted on Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night.
“It kind of freaked me out, to be honest. But then I realised, when I was their age, I never had anyone like that I could look up to and see, ‘this is a possibility for me, this is something I could become’.”
Tse still feels a bit uncomfortable about being seen as a role model or advocate for LGBTQI+ and Chinese people, but says he’s learning to embrace it as a privilege.
“[Being Poet Laureate] is not just about poetry, it’s actually about being a very visible figure for a lot of these communities as well. So while I’ll never get my head around it, I do accept that it’s a great honour to be able to stand in this position.”
Tse was named Poet Laureate last year, becoming the youngest person ever to be awarded the role, which is designed to enable poets to create new work and promote poetry throughout New Zealand over a two-year period.
He won the award on the back of an impressive body of work that has in large part been an exploration of what it means to be Chinese and queer in Aotearoa.
These identities were never really spoken about when he was younger, he says.
“I grew up in Lower Hutt in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and I was never the only Chinese kid at school. There were actually quite a few of us, so I never felt like I was really that different.
Super Model Minority, by Chris Tse.
“My mum and dad ran a Chinese takeaway outlet, a Chinese restaurant and a Chinese grocery store, so we were surrounded by the Chinese community coming into our store all the time. That was a very big part of my upbringing.
“But I guess the thing that was sort of missing is we never really talked about what it meant to be Chinese in our family, we never talked about identity. It was sort of just this thing that was there, [but] we didn’t really acknowledge.”
Tse’s great-grandfather immigrated to New Zealand in 1919 – alone, as back then, Chinese men weren’t allowed to bring their wives and children with them – and had to pay a clearly discriminatory poll tax to even enter the country.
While the poll tax has long since been abolished and Helen Clark’s Labour government offered an apology to the Chinese community, Tse says he still faces discrimination as an Asian man in New Zealand.
“I’ve been very lucky that it’s never been physical, but I’ve experienced all sorts of racist taunts and people screaming out of car windows and casual racism as well,” he told Cowan.
“It’s something that you sadly learn to live with and deal with in your own way. But I’ve been more vocal about it because you have to bring it into the light, right? Otherwise, people think it doesn’t exist. They just assume that you’re making things up.”
Even since becoming a successful poet, Tse hasn’t managed to escape the negative assumptions people hold of him based on his race.
“Someone asked me after an event once whether I wrote my poems in Chinese, then translate them into English, and I had to explain no, I don’t write Chinese or read Chinese. And they said, ‘Oh, yeah, you sound like a native speaker’. And I was like, ‘Well… [I am].’
“Sometimes you’re in those positions where you just don’t know how to respond to people. It’s like being caught in headlights and then you realise after the fact, ‘Ah I could’ve said this’.”
Tse says he’s never experienced discrimination for being gay, but he’s still conscious to avoid putting himself and his partner in positions where they might be at risk of it.
“Living in Wellington, it is somewhat safer. And the circles I tend to hang around are very pro LGBTQI+ and it’s safe. But that question is always in the back of your mind and you never know what’s going to happen.”
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7:30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
