Lincoln Tan: Minorities have a vital role in mainstream society

The notion of what makes one Chinese has been occupying my mind of late, especially since I started writing this column for the Herald.

One letter-writer to this newspaper said it was naive for the Herald to consider me, Singapore born, as Chinese.

Even stronger views came via email, mostly anonymous, calling me "second-class Chinese, unfit to even smell Chinese feet", and being Peranakan (Straits-born Chinese), I was "like a mix-breed dog, not sure whether poodle or collie".

To speak to someone who could enlighten me on my "Chineseness", I went to see Manying Ip, an associate professor in Asian studies who has dedicated her work to the identity of New Zealand's Chinese community.

Presented with the letters and emails, she was not at all surprised. "Nothing new," said Professor Ip. The sentiment of "I am more Chinese than you" has been around in New Zealand's Chinese community for a long time.

She recalled one occasion in 1993 when tensions between old settlers and new migrants came into confrontation.

A formal marae visit by Chinese community leaders was marred by two men vying for the honour of making the obligatory ceremonial reply speech to their Maori hosts on behalf of the Chinese.

One was from the longest-established, local born community and the other was a new migrant, a medical doctor.

When the first said: "I was born here, my association was founded in the 1930s", he was countered by the new migrant: "How can you represent the Chinese? You can't even speak Chinese properly."

During the surge in anti-Asian sentiment, as Chinese migrant numbers increased in the mid 1990s, Professor Ip spoke out in the media and she too received hate mail.

She added, "The fundamental differences between the groups are too numerous to be ignored".

The Chinese are indeed a diverse group. Looking at the makeup of the New Zealand Chinese community today, she said that the 100,000-strong Chinese community is made up of three distinct groups: local born (25 per cent), the new arrivals after 1987 (65 per cent), and refugees (10 per cent).

Within these broad groups, they are further divided into Chinese from China, and overseas-born Chinese from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. Many do not even speak a common language.

Chinese from Hong Kong and Malaysia, and some parts of China, speak mainly Cantonese, while those from Mainland China and Singapore speak Mandarin.

Even if one speaks and writes Mandarin, the same language goes by different names and is written differently in various countries.

In China, Mandarin is called zhongwen (language of China), the Taiwanese call it guoyu (national language) and Chinese Singaporeans call it huawen or huayu (Chinese language).

In its written form, the script the Taiwanese use - fantizi (traditional Chinese) - differs greatly from that used by Mainland Chinese and Singaporeans, jiantizi (simplified Chinese).

If that is not complex enough, in recent years, a new sub-community has come into being, adding to this diversity and sometimes even division within the existing Chinese communities.

These are the international students, who have come to New Zealand with different objectives from the immigrant Chinese.

Some are here to obtain the good academic qualifications associated with New Zealand education, but others have as their main aim obtaining the New Zealand passport as a gateway to international opportunities.

Many do not have real long-term commitment or desire to settle in New Zealand, said Professor Ip, explaining why Chinese students are not included in her studies on who make up the New Zealand Chinese.

However, the 34,000 or so students - most with money and time on their hands - have become the most vocal and visible presence of the Chinese in New Zealand, attracting media attention.

Log on to the discussion forums on Chinese websites and you see matters being discussed by this group hotly and emotionally.

The most interesting news tips I receive from my contacts, who include social workers, counsellors and police, involve Chinese students.

My first responsibility as a journalist is to report news. It has never been my intention to rubbish Mainland Chinese and Chinese students as claimed in letters and emails, presumably from this section of the Chinese community.

But I am not a spokesperson or representative of the Chinese community, and I have never sought to be one. The views expressed in this column are purely my own, as Lincoln Tan - the individual.

I am proud of my ethnic background and it is also my belief that everyone should be proud and confident of being who they are.

The other message I got from the letters and emails is that minorities want to have a voice and to be heard in the mainstream and no one person can ever be a spokesperson or represent a community.

Professor Ip said that until recently, mainstream media had thought of Maori as one homogeneous group, but they are not. Only now, the media are waking up to the fact that Asians are even more diverse.

With this awakening comes the moral responsibility of working towards having more diverse newsrooms that better reflect the different ethnic communities that now make up our society.

But as someone who is from an ethnic minority, I have this wish: That though we are all different, we can all be proud of being citizens and residents of New Zealand.

And as we mature as a multicultural society, issues of race and ethnicity can be discussed maturely and openly because we are all secure enough to accept who we are, and come to realise that we share one thing in common: we are all people of Aotearoa, the place we all call home.