Kiwi 'bananas' discover their roots

Bevan Chong displays his name in Chinese characters. Picture / Greg Bowker

Kai Luey quite happily labels himself a "banana" - yellow on the outside, white in the middle. The New Zealand-born national vice-president of the New Zealand Chinese Association (NZCA), however, has a serious mission: he is determined that young Chinese New Zealanders get a grip on their Chinese heritage before it's lost to them.

"Their command of the language is 0.2 per cent or a bit more - they're yellow Kiwis," says Mr Luey, a 63-year-old electrical engineer whose father and mother came to New Zealand in 1916 and 1920 respectively.

"We want them to feel that they are something different - that they should understand their background and their roots. And that they're in New Zealand because of some pioneer settlers who suffered a lot of hardship, and paid a lot of money [the poll tax on Chinese], to give them the opportunity to have a better life in New Zealand."

Chinese have been migrating to New Zealand since the Otago gold-rush days of the late nineteenth century. Up to the 1980s, most were from Canton in southern China. Many of this "model minority" have assimilated to the extent that they can't speak Cantonese or don't know their heritage.

Communist China was, in years gone by, too dangerous or expensive for a re-visit.

To reconnect Chinese Kiwis with their homeland, the NZCA runs an annual "Winter Camp China Tour". In December, a group of 19 Kiwi Chinese, aged between 18 and 25, travelled around China's southern province of Guangdong.

The travellers were led - and have been for some years - by travel agent Janet Joe, a New Zealand-raised Chinese who didn't seek out her roots until she hit her 20s, in the early 1980s.

"Before they go [on the camp], they say they are just Kiwis," she remarks. "The younger ones call new immigrants 'Asians'. But they need to look in the mirror. Sometimes they think because they don't speak the language that they are not Chinese".

Among those who unwrapped their history was University of Otago dentistry student Bevan Chong, 21, who went with parental advice not to expect too much, but was "blown away" by the experience.

As well as introducing the country, its language, and cultural cornerstones such as martial arts and calligraphy, the trip took the travellers to their ancestral villages, generally poor, rural spots to which they are linked by their surnames.

The son of Eden/Albert Community Board member Virginia Chong and dentist Philip, Mr Chong, a third-generation Chinese New Zealander who speaks little Cantonese, was following in the footsteps of his two elder brothers.

But their tales and photos couldn't prepare him for almost inexplicable feelings that enveloped him on stepping into the no-frills, stone house in Gwaliang, where his paternal grandfather was born.

He eventually picks the phrase "deja vu ... you stand there in awe". Unused cooking utensils, boxes and bowls and an old motorbike were gathering dust. Although the house had once had electricity, the toilet was a communal longdrop.

Also on the trip was Bucklands Beach market researcher Natalie Sew Hoy, 21, a first-generation Chinese New Zealander.

Her father, Jack, came over as a 3-year-old and her mother, Lin, at 13.

Christchurch-born Ms Sew Hoy, who speaks a few words of Cantonese, felt a strange rapport with her ancestral village. But it wasn't like coming "home".

In Auckland, the Sew Hoy and Chong households celebrate Chinese festivals such as the Chinese New Year - last Thursday was the first day of the new lunar year.

Although Mr Chong and Ms Sew Hoy's parents speak Cantonese and/or Mandarin (China's national language) to varying degrees, neither of the pair has been formally taught.

Ms Sew Hoy's Cantonese is too slight, she says, to talk with her non-English-speaking 79-year-old grandfather Jun Yip, without a parent translating. The generation gap is hard enough to manage, she complains, without an intermediary.

Both Ms Sew Hoy and Mr Chong say language barriers caused frustration in China - especially when they met distant relatives.

The camp also introduced the Kiwis to Chinese history. Mr Chong says he had never heard, for example, of Sun Yat-Sen, the physician-turned-nationalist recognised by Chinese as the "father" of modern China.

Both were shocked by the numbers of beggars. The air pollution, says Mr Chong, was appalling; city traffic congestion and driving habits made Auckland's roads look tame.

Mr Chong returned to New Zealand with a strong sense that while he lives in one country and sees himself as "mainly Kiwi", two cultures fuse within him.

"I've seen that part of me that I haven't been able to see for 21 years: my heritage, my culture. I see myself differently because of decisions by my grandparents which changed the way I would live my life." Implicit is that China would never have offered the lifestyle of New Zealand.

Ms Sew Hoy says she has returned "more proud of the fact that I'm Chinese" and has forged friendships among the tour group.

"Before I went on the trip I didn't have many New Zealand Chinese friends at all. But I want to get more involved, and this year I'm going down to Christchurch for the annual [New Zealand Chinese] Easter [sports] tournament."

There is a new and pleasing security in the company of other Kiwi Chinese: "You find you've got so much more in common. I'm not saying my other friends are bad, but with Chinese you've got that extra link."

Both Ms Sew Hoy and Mr Chong are determined to get to grips with Cantonese, and both talk about living in a Cantonese-speaking country; language, they now know, is the key to learning more.

Ms Sew Hoy now sees herself has having "two sides". But socially there is some distance between them: "It's not like my Kiwi friends are going to understand where I come from if I talk to them about [my heritage], whereas New Zealand Chinese friends have a better understanding."

Mr Chong says he enjoys "the best of both worlds".

"I still call myself Kiwi," he adds. "No one side takes precedence over the other - they both mean just as much to me."

Mr Luey says the camps are also about imparting to Chinese Kiwis many of the values associated with Chinese culture. "[Chinese New Zealanders] have more stickability and determination. We don't have the number of broken marriages as in the white community.

"We don't have people committing crimes to the same extent - that's young kids from China with too much money and too much freedom."

Still, he is concerned that some local-born Chinese have marginalised their heritage to the extent they view themselves as standing apart from newer arrivals.

"Some of the Kiwi-born Chinese tend to look down on the more recent migrants, and I don't think that's a good thing," says Mr Luey. "We're all migrants - it just depends on what stage you came here."

Chinese in NZ

1867: 1219 people
1966: 10,263
1986: 19,500
1991: 37,689
1996: 82,320
2001: 105,057

Source: Census