The other day I was sitting on the train with one of the Chinese students currently boarding at my mother’s house, and we noticed something interesting; grafitti scratched into the chair in front of us. In Chinese. Apparently it said “Such-and-such girl is hot” followed by a scratched “you’re an idiot”. What greater sign of integration could there be than the fact that mindless train vandalism is now appearing in Asian languages? I felt a warm glow. Australia really is changing. I had noticed it when I got back from Tokyo and I was shocked how Asian much of the city looked. Me, someone who had always spent so much time hanging around in Chinatown and just come back from seven years in Japan and Korea.
I have always been around Asian people. My high school was about a third Chinese, and for some reason I always got along really well with Chinese girls (and had crushes on the Asian boys). My relationship to Chinese culture has always been a weird mixture of comfort and familiarity ( it was always there) and intrigued exoticism (I still never knew what any of those characters said, or what people were talking about).
When I was about 15, a Chinese couple moved into our street, and I remember walking past their house on garbage collection day and taking their piles of old Hong Kong magazines. I would take them to school and flick through with my friends – having them explain excitedly who all these Cantonese celebrities were, as they gasped wide-eyed over the latst scandals. I immediately wanted to know more. It was like this whole other, glamorous, undreamt-of world opening up in front of me. It was about this time I became aware of Faye Wong – then in her slightly Latoya Jacksonesque “really-white foundation and dreaded-extensions” incarnation – and started to learn more about the Cantopop scene.
Sadly though, I am these days pretty much out of date: none of my Chinese friends is really that interested in whats going on in Hong Kong pop music anymore (they’re all too busy hiking in Bolivia), and there is a whole new generation of artists I’m not really familiar with. I’m sure Faye Wong doesn’t mean shit to 12 year-olds in Singapore or Shanghai these days.
But, the city as a whole is meshing more and more with Asia. Record lebels of immigration,a huge inflow of foriegn students, tourism; the trend seems unstoppable. So I thought I’d do a little special, (with HYPERLINKS!!!!!!!!) through Asian Melbourne.
Poster on the heavily Vietnamese Victoria St, Richmond, trying to round up support for Australian Idol contestant Thanh.
