My story – the next bit

(originally posted 22nd February 2009)

Part 2- Culture Clash

In the early 1990s, there was a popular misconception about Asians. Unlike today, back then, there wasn’t as big an influx of Asians into New Zealand and the Asians that were already there had moved over years before and their kids grew up in the country. At the same time, the newer immigrants spent their time in their own clan talking in their respective tongue and this lead to the misconceptions.
‘Ch’ing chog!’
‘Can…you speak…English?’
Worse still Asians were touted as; computer geeks, mathematics nerds, having slant eyes, study nerds and sticking to our own kind.

I’d always found the misconceptions to be an arrogant attitude from the local, having being un-used to a multicultural society and accepting not everyone was comfortable in their own skin in a new country. However I soon discovered why these misconceptions exited and how it was portrayed to the locals.

At school, I’d see nearly all the Asian kids glued to their own group, faired very well in tests, assignments and exams and almost all struggled with the English language. Still I resented this logic, it was unfair to assume all Asians were the same, but too afraid to stand up and speak my mind I rolled with the punches.

It all started in year 7 at Remuera Intermediate. All my subjects were held in the same except for English. It was conducted in another part of the main school building, this room didn’t differ from the others and I thought nothing of it as the class was highly enjoyable. We played spelling games, spelt out words and deciphered the meaning of simplistic words; e.g.
‘What is a rail way track?’
‘What is another word of toilet?’
I never made a deal out of this class aside from it being slower in it’s explanations but I knew something wasn’t quite right. The other English class where all my friend went to, they did real writing tasks and learnt from reading actual books. My class didn’t read books of our own accord, the teacher did the reading for us.

My comprehension of the English language was far ahead of those in my current class as I’d be reading books and writing stories from a young age so the language barrier of to other Asians was no burden on me, and it wasn’t until Year 8 did I realise what I was missing out on when we tackled Shakespeare and other great Literature novels.

Once I got to high school at Penrose i was again dropped back into a lower substandard English class, naturally I enjoyed it for the first week or so before it grew tiresome and I wanted more of a challenge. It wasn’t helped by the fact in the more advanced class they were learning ‘Romeo and Juliet

‘By 1998 we moved from Auckland to Sydney and due to my two previous years of high school in Auckland, I dropped back to repeating year 9 at high school in Sydney at Willoughby girls High school and again it was their case of assumption when they placed me in the ESL class. I was fed up at this point at being judged on what I was representing, as a non-speaking English student, rather than being treated for who I was. So in this ESL class I stayed for a week and used it to my own advantage. I became the show pony of the class, answering every question asked ahead of anyone and spoke quickly to make a point. I’d even lost my temper at one point when the teach asked:

‘What does the word loo, mean?’
‘For heaven’s sake it means toilet!’ I’d yelled. The elderly lady teacher was happy to treat the other students at a lower level but I wasn’t about to put up with it, that outburst saw me shifted to the right class.

Because I always played the good student in school, doing work without question, and never contributed in discussions and only talked on a one-to-one basis that had eventually lead to my death trap. My teachers’ automatically assumed because of the way I worked, playing the role of the non-talker, I didn’t know what was going on and not in-tune with reality, when really that was never the case. I learnt fast to break out of that role and become a pest later in high school, at family dinners and by the time I got to uni.

Even now, from time to time I might cross paths with a local who will speak slowly to ensure I understood or ignore me completely. Sometimes I smile and talk slowly back in return, and other times I speak at my normal pace and purposely speak louder if they ignore me,
‘Thank you; you have a nice day now.’
And leave them embarrassed.

I look like an Asian, yellowish skin, brown eyes, black straight hair and know one or two customs like everyone else and eat with a chopstick and the food, as well as being born in Singapore, but I by no means feel like one. 22 years overseas has seen the end of my Asian association.