Language when I was young

Language when I was young
Address to graduating Canterbury students in Chinese language, Nov. 2007
Dr. James Ng


Madam President, your Excellency, distinguished guests, young graduates and students, ladies and gentlemen,

May I thank Bill for his kind words,
It is just a pleasure to be here and add my congratulations to the students who have done well in the study of the Chinese language.

If I may address the students at this juncture, your study will not only open the door to work opportunities but also to another culture. You will gain vistas of the great Chinese civilisation, your perspective on life will widen, your insights will deepen and your soul will be enriched.

I know this will happen because I have travelled a long journey in language. But my journey is the reverse of yours because I went from Chinese to English.

When I was very young in the 1940s, I lived in two worlds, the Chinese world at home and the New Zealand world at school and in the wider community. My family was part of the Chinese ethnic minority in New Zealand, which was then virtually all Cantonese in origin, from the Cantonese countryside and numbered less than 5,000 persons. How did we come to New Zealand in the first place? Well, in the nineteenth century a Cantonese stream of goldseekers went to the goldfields of California and from there to British Columbia and Australia. In 1865, the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce and Otago Provincial Council invited the Cantonese miners in Victoria, Australia, to come and rework the Otago goldfields. So they came to New Zealand, some 5,000 at their peak population, and were acknowledged to be a hardy, industrious, peaceable and law-abiding people. But two features of the Cantonese in early New Zealand stood out. One was that the European gold miner, and later, the European working man, regarded the Chinese as potent competitors with a wide range of capability. The white apprehension led to major discrimination and the passing of laws against them.

The other feature was that we Cantonese were determined sojourners, not settlers. As such, our forbears made repeat sojourns overseas in order to acquire capital to take home to China, and the goldseekers and each succeeding generation in New Zealand and elsewhere endeavoured to pass this way of life to their male descendants. Therefore they spread from the goldfields to other work in the host countries. But the laws accumulated against them such that into my father's generation in New Zealand, they faced entry barriers, the cessation of new naturalisations, the withholding of new permanent residencies, and the aim to get rid of the Chinese from White New Zealand. Cantonese sojournism minimised their bonding with the general New Zealand society. They remained as strangers in the land and consequently were not able to counter the prejudice against them. Their impotency heightened a stubborn pride of race, while simultaneously evoking resentment of their treatment.

The result was that my parents were hardly integrated into New Zealand society. They thought of China as their homeland. Cantonese was their primary language and they insisted on Cantonese spoken at home. My father only spoke fair English, my mother only a few words. They worked together in our laundry and their social circle was kith and kin and other Chinese. Their lives focused on family and the extended family in our ancestral village. The village was the font of our Chinese traditions and culture; it was the centre of our parents' dreams and there we invested in land. Other Cantonese in New Zealand were predominantly of like mind and social level. In this country we were mainly in three relatively lowly types of business market garden, fruitshop and laundry but in China, many of us were in the landlord class.

The Cantonese population in New Zealand was mostly men but there was a small number of families here, 125 in 1936. And between 1939-41, some 250 wives and an equal number of young children managed to come as war refugees on temporary permits. They boosted the total number of our families to about 400. My mother, brother and I arrived with the refugees, myself at five years of age.

I went through the school system. As you can imagine, childhood and schooling are the best times for new immigrants to influence and be influenced favourably. I must have spoken simple English within weeks of going to school, thereby enabling me to form New Zealand links and friendships.

I had a happy childhood with a secure family background. Outside the home, I was in an accepting social microclimate. I use the word microclimate because New Zealand around 1950 still generally regarded Chinese as desired immigrants behind European races. Possibly the Korean war and echoes of McCarthyism had a hand in retarding the progress of acceptance of we Cantonese.

In my teen years I realised I was becoming more at ease in the New Zealand world than in my parents' world. For instance, whenever I spoke Cantonese, it seemed as though I had to switch my brain over. This stage in our young lives was known to my parents' generation as bane a kwei, or becoming a foreign devil¡which they used to nip in the bud by sending the children back to China for schooling. My parents did not consider this drastic step for me because of the unsettled state of postwar China.

Yet my youth was not so smooth a path as in childhood, chiefly due to personal introspection. You will know that as one becomes more aware of the wider world, one asks the universal questions,Who am I? and What is my future? In my case, and I am sure with my Chinese peers too, we asked the further questions; Am I a Chinese or a New Zealander? Is it possible for us to become full-fledged New Zealanders? How is it that we are in such a lowly position in New Zealand? and What is our history in New Zealand so we can learn and absorb its lessons?

There was no easily available literature on the New Zealand Chinese, nor for that matter on the sociology of ethnic minorities. Our parents were of the firm opinion that we are Chinese, and in recalling memories of the past, were adamant that we had no future in New Zealand. You will understand that their entrenched beliefs would require singular events to change, but strange to relate, four exceptional events soon occurred close together.

The greatest of these was the victory of communism in China in 1949 and the subsequent so-called land reforms in 1951-52. Land was confiscated and the landlord class shattered, hence destroying the great sojourner base of the Cantonese sojourners in New Zealand and elsewhere. Thus our parents lost their dreams of China.

The second, almost simultaneous event was the exposure of the Chinese Kuomintang party the opponent of the communists as a grossly incompetent and corrupt body. This deprived my parents generation of an alternative ideology to communism, nor would they consider Kuomintang controlled Formosa as an alternative homeland.

The third event was the decisions of postwar New Zealand Governments to allow the Cantonese war refugees to stay, to reunite more Chinese families in New Zealand and in 1951, to allow the naturalisation of Chinese again. These were brave decisions considering that much of the general populace were not ready for them, but they were linked to the feeling that the New Zealand Cantonese had contributed well to the war effort. As it turned out, Chinese new immigration was limited by the world situation. The important thing to us was that the limitation was not due to a revival of past prejudice, and indeed, it looked as though the government changes could be a precursor to our full equality in New Zealand.

The fourth event was a spearhead of young New Zealand Cantonese proving that we can have a fulfilling homeland in New Zealand. A few of my older peers had gone to university during and just after World World 2, mostly in engineering and the sciences with the idea of returning to postwar China and helping in the renewal of that country. Their idealism was not to be. In turning to employment in New Zealand, they were able to positively answer the question, Will Europeans employ and promote us?¡¯ They did, but there was one last question, Will Europeans patronise us if we go into private practice? This was answered in spectacular manner by the first New Zealand Chinese doctor to enter general practice, in 1950. He was almost overwhelmed by Europeans wishing to join his practice. I may be exaggerating somewhat, but evidently, whatever else Europeans thought of Chinese, their memories of traditional Chinese doctors and herbalists had convinced them that Chinese medicos were clever and caring persons, especially towards the elderly.

The doctor's success led to other young Chinese going to university, including me. By 1960, we had 88 graduates, who consolidated the thinking that we New Zealand Chinese can now settle here with confidence. More, we learned that by way of tertiary education, we could join the middle class and significantly contribute to the New Zealand nation. New Zealand itself by the late 1960s and 1970s was undergoing a generational change, which led to the better understanding of ethnic minorities and the concept of multiculturism.

What is the role of language in all this? I have been talking of gaining a new homeland in which integration and assimilation are vital outcomes, whereas you will be learning Chinese without such deep developments in mind. For my ethnic minority, language reflected our degree of New Zealandness, and our command of the English language was the skill which enabled us to enter the New Zealand world. Your journey in language will not require a radical change of life; nevertheless, I am sure that learning Chinese will be a fascinating and rewarding experience for you, and I wish you all the best in your endeavour.

Thank you for listening so well.

http://www.nzchinasociety.org.nz/Chineselanguagestudent.doc