Oriental/Asian with pink umbrella addendum

[Tabouli]

Nethilia:
> What Ebony says rings true. A lot of the people I grew
> up with had very narrow views on white people, Asian
> people (God, I am going to rip the face off of the
> next person who calls them Oriental. Oriental applies
> to rugs and noodles. Not people)

You know, I'm half-Chinese and work in whole cross-cultural anti-racism field, and yet this "using Oriental to describe a person is offensive" concept (which I think is an American concept: I've certainly never heard of this in Australia except from an American friend of mine) really doesn't strike a chord with me.  Now I don't know how the word Oriental is used by Occidentals (: D) in the US, and it maybe be more offensive than I realise, but frankly, I rather like the word Oriental... it sounds quite exotic.  And yes, I know using the word "exotic" to describe a person has also come under fire, but I can't help suspecting that viewing people as "exotic" rather than "bloody gooks takin' over our country" is a small step in the right direction.  At least it has reasonably positive associations: intriguing, mysterious, unusual in an appealing way.  If a group of people are seen as a threat, they are resented and reviled, if they're seen as "exotic", they're seen as interesting (even if in a fairly superficial "foreign artifact" way), which may attract people to explore further and progress beyond this point to a more genuine appreciation and understanding of Asian cultures.  Small steps.

In Australia, people with straight black hair and dark slanting eyes (technically, the Mongoloid race) are called "Asian", or worse "Chinese" (regardless of actual background), with these terms often used in a sneering and derogatory fashion.  Dark skinned Caucasians with black hair are called "Indian" (which must go down well with the Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis...!).  I'm reliably informed that the latter group are referred to as Asians in the UK, and my impression is that the former group are referred to as Asians in the US (though I welcome clarification on this point!).

Now, I confess that I have *more* of a problem with the Australian use of "Ayyy-sian" than with the term "Oriental" (this is almost never used in Australia anyway, which may explain this).  Not only is it often used with resentment and contempt, it is also used as a convenient collective term for a *very* large continent with *very* diverse cultures in it.  Granted, your average Australian wouldn't know or see the difference between a Japanese person and a Thai person anyway, but the habit of people who are supposed to know better, such as educators, governments, cross-cultural trainers (yes, if I may jump on my hobby horse, there's a lot of awful cross-cultural training around and sweeping declarations about Asians are all too popular) and others of dumping everyone from North Korea to Sri Lanka in the same basket and referring to them as if they were a homogenous group irks me, especially when the same people are prepared to acknowledge supposedly vast differences between European and even English-speaking countries.  What passes as "Asian" culture in Australia seems more like "Overseas Chinese" culture to me!  To me, Asian is a geographical term, and should be used sparingly, if at all, as a cultural one.

Note, however, that this is just my view: I know many people who are quite happy to identify themselves as "Asians", and have indeed noted that international students from different Asian countries often form alliances when they arrive here, feeling more similar culturally to each other than they do to Australians.

Here's a travel tale to show you the other side of the story...

In 1994, I spent six months in China studying Mandarin and living in an overseas students' dormitory.  My fellow international students fell into a few distinct groups: Overseas Chinese who spoke Mandarin who were there attending a Chinese medicine course of mixed ages, young Japanese students taking time off university or after finishing school to learn Mandarin, and the miscellaneous rest, including 3 Danes there to learn wushu, some humanities Masters students from various European countries there to do field work, and scattered others from various countries there to learn Mandarin, like me.

When I first arrived, after 3 years' Mandarin study at university (which does not mean as much as you might hope: the standard of a lot of graduates was so bad they could barely communicate), I was finding the local accent difficult, the environment quite intimidating and the inability to communicate fluently frustrating.  Inevitably, looking at me, the Europeans decided I was one of them and took me in, before proceeding to spend most of their time sitting around complaining in English about how awful China was.  After I found my feet, I decided this was a waste of time, and instead cultivated the Overseas Chinese and Japanese students, foreshadowing my own later realisation that socially I am really more Australian born Chinese in culture than anything else.

There are many interesting things to be said about my experiences with this, but the relevant one is that one day I went to have lunch with Lanping, from Taiwan, and Satomi, from Japan.  As we set out, Lanping decided she'd better ring her room-mate to let her know where she was.  She rang up, and announced that she was going to lunch with (and I translate exactly) "a Japanese and a foreigner"!  Other Asians get labelled by country, but those Westerners...

Yes, half-Chinese I may be, and an honorary Asian I may be considered in Australia (damn, I'm getting self-conscious every time I use the word "Asian" now, after my diatribe above!), but in Asia my large light eyes and nose-with-a-bridge made me inescapably a Foreigner, Chinese mother or no.  In fact, many Chinese people refused to believe that my mother was Chinese: "You look 100% foreigner to me!"  I also noted that my Chinese student friends, including those with English majors, spoke of  "The West" in sweeping, all-encompassing tones, and appeared to regard it as a homogenous, obscenely rich, scandalously immoral and extremely dangerous place where people are all infected with AIDS and shoot each other in the streets (based on Hollywood films).  Manqing, whose English was so good I thought she was Chinese American when I first met her (despite the fact that I was the first native English speaker she'd met!),  said that she was too scared to go to The West on these grounds, even though she could probably have won a scholarship to go there if she wanted.
 
The idea that there was any difference between, say, the US and France was a completely new one (ooo, the French students didn't like that!).  I explained that Australia has a lot of Asian immigrants and restaurants and groceries (yes, rice *is* available!), and that bread wasn't an exact equivalent of rice in our diet, and that shooting in the streets and AIDS do exist, but are not part of the everyday experience of the great majority of people, etc.etc. but I never seemed to convince them.  "Whenever *I* see films about The West, that's always the way it is," they'd tell me, convinced that I was of course showing nationalistic loyalty.  I grew so frustrated by this I was tempted to rip out the restaurant section in the Yellow Pages and post it to them when I got home!

Ah well.

At least Chinese university students in 1994 were unlikely to have ever travelled abroad and have limited exposure to Western media.  Australians, on the other hand, and middle class Australian university students in particular, have less excuse for being ignorant about Asia: it's more of a disinterest and willingness to swallow stereotypes factor.  Things *have* improved drastically over the last 15 years or so, I must admit: a lot more Australians these days seem to travel in Asia and study Asian languages and eat Asian foods, partly as a result of a big push from the government in the early 1990s, where the growth in Japanese classes, especially, was out of control.

Amy Z on the lack of pink umbrella for Hagrid:
> P.S.  You could get the Hagrid and nick a pink umbrella from a Barbie or somesuch
 
How big is he?  Would a pink cocktail umbrella do?  It'd be a lot cheaper than buying an entire "Barbie on Vacation in London" kit and nabbing just the umbrella (wot me, be insensitive about the English climate?)

Tabouli.



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