If you want to watch me on the telly, I’m in the new season of the ABC series You Can’t Ask That in an episode about Chinese Australians. Stream it on iview or wait for it to air every Wednesday at 9pm (I’m on June 9).
You Can’t Ask That
The Baby-Sitters Club: the perfect PG escape for millennials and their kids – or anyone, really
Ann M Martin’s series was a staple of my childhood and luckily the Netflix reboot is excellent. I wrote about it for The Guardian.
Chinatown Melbourne is a one-way street that took a turn
‘Between Australia’s hunger to spin its immigrant communities into a simple, palatable narrative, and the PRC government’s mission to absorb the accomplishments of overseas Chinese into its own national history, the richness and complexity of Chinese Australian life can get lost.’
Read my feature on Chinatown and Melbourne’s Chinese communities in Culture Trip.
On immortality and kindness
‘Sinophobia never went away in Australia. Colonisation never ended. Racists might sometimes shift their focus but it’s the same lens. Maybe now it’s our turn in the crosshairs again. But we’re in all the water, treading furiously while trying to turn off the tap, here, there, and everywhere.’
In April, Emma Thomson from Correspondences asked me to be part of a project reflecting on escalating racism against Asian Australians and the themes of Lisel Mueller’s poem, ‘Immortality’. I said yes and I wrote these reflections in May and June. Now they feel like time capsules as every month of this year introduces another world entirely. You can read or listen to my pieces at the link above or visit the viewing room for the whole project here, which includes work by Kuang Zai, Selina Lo, Eileen Chong, and Ouyang Yu.
What’s wrong with saying ‘ni hao’?
‘I do speak Mandarin. But I know when white people say ‘ni hao’ to me in Australia, it’s not intended as hello in Chinese – it’s intended as hello in chink.’
I wrote this article for HuffPost Australia in honour of chef Sarah Tiong’s masterful move in that Triple M interview last week.
Jinghua Qian 