NZ views of Asians changing

Ten years ago if Tze Ming Mok was yelled at on the street she knew it was purely an attack for being Asian.

These days she's more likely to hear, "Hey, hot stuff, what are you doing?".

It may not be the most eloquent of signs that society is changing, but at least there is a change, Ms Mok says.

"It's a different level of acceptance, and maybe people still have the stereotypical beliefs but it's almost as if there's a beginning of a cultural accommodation going on."

It is a topic she feels passionate about - enough so to have organised a march of several thousand people in Wellington last month to affirm diversity and reject racism.

Now she has won a top literary contest with her essay Race You There, in which she gives a personal account of being an Asian growing up in New Zealand.

Ms Mok was the joint winner of the $2500 Landfall Essay prize with screenwriter and poet Martin Edmond.

Her essay was written at a time "when I was feeling personally and emotionally involved in some of the things that were going on. Entering the competition I didn't feel as though I wasn't speaking for Asian people, but I really wanted to speak to Asian people."

In the essay, the 26-year-old describes life at Hay Park Primary, in Mt Roskill, Auckland, as "probably the happiest time of my life. This was partly because words didn't mean anything yet".

Things changed for her when she attended a predominantly white private Auckland school.

"It was kind of bizarre coming from Roskill South to a really, really poncy, European-dominated school."

Ms Mok said that was a time when people were talking about the "Asian invasion" and accepting the stereotype. "That was a time when even in the old Chinese communities ... some of them wanted to speak out about that `Asian invasion' rhetoric and make some kind of public opposition towards Winston Peters and the like.

"But they were told to keep quiet by the elders so as not to draw attention to those kinds of controversial issues and relate them back to the Chinese community."

She says times have moved on "in a really big way".

Now those people forbidden from speaking out are heading the communities that tried to silence them.

"It's much more acceptable now than it was 10 years ago."

This year's was the fourth Landfall Essay Competition. It is sponsored by the Otago University Press.

Ms Mok was born and bred in Auckland but now works in Wellington.

She has written a novel which she is hoping will be published.