Sang Ye and the Discourse of Multiculturalism
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Looking for New Opportunities: Sang Ye and the Discourse of Multiculturalism Tim Kendall I don’t care what happens, I’m not going back, and no one in Australia can do anything to make me. Just try me: you can boil me in oil, cook me in soy sauce, pop me in a steamer, whatever you’ve got a taste for. Call me a slut if you like. Doesn’t bother me. “You’re a goddamn whore!” Yeah, and what of it! “The East Wind blows, the war drums roll; in today’s world, no one’s scared of anyone else.” Chairman Mao taught us Chinese not even to fear death. So why should I be scared of losing face? Just write it all down and to hell with it ... 1 In July 1996, Nikki Barrowclough published an article in the Good Weekend section of the Age titled ‘Lost in Translation’. The piece examines the ‘new wave’ of Chinese artists and intellectuals who came to Australia just before, or just after, the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Throughout the piece, Barrowclough dismantles the old stereotypes about Chinese inscrutability and examines the demands that are involved in operating between two vastly different cultural systems. In examining this sense of in-betweenness, ‘Lost in Translation’ suggests that these Chinese artists have all emerged from periods of dislocation and voicelessness with a new understanding of the cultures they operate between. The article identifies the authors Ouyang Yu, Sang Ye, Leslie Zhao and Lillian Ng; the visual artist Guan Wei; and the filmmakers David Zhu, Clara Law and Eddie Fong. Barrowclough explains that ‘[n]ot all the Chinese who have arrived (in Australia) in the past ten years belong to this group’.2 However, it is unclear what the designation ‘this group’ actually means; whether it refers to the category of artists and intellectuals she has interviewed, the time when they arrived, or whether it refers to both. This confusion appears to be replicated in Barrowclough’s selection of artists, for she has identified the Mainland Chinese artists Ouyang Yu, Sang Ye, Leslie Zhao, Guan Wei and David Zhu with artists from numerous parts of Greater China (and in some cases countries that lie outside Greater China) such as Lillian Ng (Singapore), Clara Law (Macau/Hong Kong) and Eddie Fong (Hong Kong). The distinction between the hua qiao or overseas Chinese and the Mainland Chinese is an obvious one, but one that needs repeating. Those born and raised in Mainland China have vastly different cultural and political histories to the Chinese living in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Malaysia or Singapore. They have different motivations for coming to Australia, have entered under different arrangements, in very different circumstances and have vastly different expectations of Western culture. As artists they are influenced by different styles and traditions and as migrants they have developed a different relationship to both the local culture and to their (m)otherland.3 In elaborating on the acute sense of cultural isolation felt by many of these migrant artists, Barrowclough suggests that their sense of displacement or Jumping the Queue ‘translation’ manifests in new methods of cultural expression. She is particularly interested in the ways that these artists manage to ‘find their way’ in both cultures. It is in this context that Barrowclough suggests that at some time in the future these authors may ‘change the face of Australian literature in the same way that Indian writers like Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh have done in Britain’.4 This way of positioning migrant cultural production is deeply problematic and raises questions about the way that migrant identity is understood in multicultural countries like Australia. It reveals the way in which difference becomes appropriated by, and positioned within, the multicultural state. It suggests that successful migrant writers become repositioned as alibis to Australia’s cultural diversity, alibis to multiculturalism. The Rushdie/Seth/Ghosh comparison is not only extravagant but also awkward, for there are a whole range of contingencies and specificities that separate these British, British-Indian, American writers from the Chinese migrants mentioned here. The Mainland Chinese who came to Australia in the late eighties and early nineties would appear to have little in common with Salman Rushdie — an Indian Muslim from Mumbai (Bombay), educated in England and a product of British (post-)colonialism. The comparison appears to have been made because writers like Rushdie — symbols of migrant acculturation and integration — have become celebrated for having found their way in the cultures they operate between. What this comparison also suggests is that there are, in principle, two identities that are made available to migrants: the migrant becomes part of a model minority (and a celebration of multicultural hybridity) or is rendered voiceless and consigned to an invisible migrant ghetto. Within such a schema, Chinese culture can either spill gracefully over the dragon-painted walls of Chinatown (itself an Anglicised form of Chineseness) or it can remain obfuscated and contained within. There is little opportunity for migrant identity to exist outside or between these poles of representation. There is little room for ambiguity. The migrant stories contained within ‘Lost in Translation’ are in danger of becoming narratives about Australian multiculturalism and the artists risk becoming enveloped by the non-specific and all-embracing rhetoric of multicultural munificence. Barrowclough’s comments form part of a discourse that seeks to identify the way that migrants add to the rich mosaic or tapestry of multicultural Australia. In adopting this position, Barrowclough effaces or neutralises the insurgent and seditious aspects of Sang Ye and Ouyang Yu’s writings. Ouyang Yu chooses a position different from that awarded to him by Barrowclough. While it is true that Yu’s poetry endeavours to negotiate the different stages of translation that take place between China and Australia, his writing is also critical of the Australian literary and academic establishment, it seeks to expose the insidious racism of western liberals and operates at the boundaries of political (in)correctness. Further, throughout his writing, meaning does not always or ever become clear but remains unstable, and this instability is often seen to result in cultural isolation. In The Year the Dragon Came (1996), Sang Ye broke with conventional migrant representations to deliberately and comprehensively overturn stereotypes about Chinese migrant identity. Both Sang Ye and Ouyang Yu produce work that seriously undermines the claims of the multicultural lobby; both expose the stories that have been omitted from, or lost, in the official translations. It is perhaps for 70 Tim Kendall this reason that critics claim that much of their work ‘does not make comfortable reading’.5 It has been suggested that The Year the Dragon Came is ‘a profoundly disturbing book for Australians to read’ and reviews warn of it creating controversy both inside and outside the Chinese community.6 Linda Jaivin, who delights in the ‘spicy, prickly’ content of the book, claims that it will: [S]hake up those whose ideas of multiculturalism have more to do with colourful ‘ethnic’ customs and foreign soap operas on SBS than with the harder issues of ethical and cultural clashes between the dominant and immigrant communities.7 Jaivin expects that the book will also cause controversy within the Chinese community because of the way the text ‘show(s) the ugliness within the family to people on the outside’.8 This expression is Jaivin’s translation of a Chinese expression that is something like — ‘don’t hang your dirty washing in public’. This sentiment is reinforced by Sang’s interview with the Old Cadre. The Old Cadre insists that: ‘We can’t have these people going abroad and letting us down and our country down and our socialism down. Maybe they’re overseas Chinese. Maybe they don’t believe in socialism. But they’re still descendants of the Yellow Emperor. They can’t let our ancestors down’.9 Both Jaivin and the Old Cadre firmly distinguish between the inside and the outside and both gesture towards representing the Chinese as one big de-facto family. Each of these responses makes mention of the uneasy or disturbing character of Sang’s text. In claiming that it makes uncomfortable reading, the interviewee, editor and critic all make reference to what is understood as constituting acceptable, or if not acceptable, comfortable public discourse. Sang Ye’s stories are considered to make uncomfortable reading because they offer numerous examples of racial and cultural conflict and thereby challenge the boundaries of discursive acceptability. In dismantling the thick walls that separate the Chinese community from middle Australia, Sang Ye has challenged two different cultural taboos: he has undermined the official narrative of Australian multiculturalism as government policy and stirred up the ‘ugliness’ that exists within the Chinese community. It is expected that The Year the Dragon Came will create controversy within the Chinese community because Sang Ye has made visible or audible, narratives that are typically omitted from, or silenced by, the discourse of multiculturalism. In challenging the distinction between the inside and the outside, the private and the public, the acceptable and unacceptable, Sang Ye has not simply exposed the big family to a good public airing, but has offered an alternative history of the migrant experience of Australia. In Speaking for Themselves Sang Ye says that: You can only speak like this to Chinese, you know. The Australians are dogs. Can’t expect them to understand. Our “Taiwan compatriots” aren’t much better, in fact, they’re complete fuckwits. The only thing they know about is pussy — yellow pussy ... [In Shenzhen] I finally decided to “liberate myself”. Everything was a matter of PR no matter what company you ended up with.