Siow's new video for "We Were"

Brave soul honoured

A TEENAGE boy who died saving two friends has been recognised with a bravery award.

Darren Chhuon, 16, swam to the rescue of his friends at Edithvale beach in dangerous conditions on January 14.

The Springvale South teen was able to get his friends to safety but the conditions and exhaustion proved too much and he died at the scene.

Darren’s mother Dany Dy accepted the posthumous Royal Humane Society Bravery Award on his behalf at last week’s ceremony at Government House. “I’m very, very proud of him, but I always say I wish he was still alive.”

Darren’s best friend Kosing Tchong said: “I feel pleased Darren is being remembered here today as a hero, because that’s what he is”.

Darren Chhuon's mother Dany Dy (second from left) with Ausi Thai, Michael le, Susan Hong and Kosing Tchong.

 MordiallocChelseaLeader

Green odyssey takes cyclist to Copenhagen

Kim Nguyen spent 16 months cycling from Brisbane to the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen to promote sustainable travel.  He has been able to see first hand the effects of climate change including severe flooding in south-east Asia, the spreading of the Gobi desert in Mongolia and dried up riverbeds in north-eastern China.  Nguyen travelled around 100 kms per day and would rest every fourth day.  Along the way he suffered injuries and his bike started falling apart after 6000kms and he did a few improvised repairs to last the remaining 12,000kms.

When he reached Europe, local cyclists rode with him to show their support.

In Copenhagen, he will attend an alternate climate change forum and meet various delegates including the Australian team.

He is already plannig to do the trip again.

For more details click here for the ABC report.
For Kim's Official Site click here.

Asian Australians on Television 2009

I have been dwelling on making this post for far too long, so here it is. I will split the post into two and edit as required. The first part is a list of Asians on Australian TV for 2009.  I don't watch as much TV as I used to so there may be some roles and guest appearances that are not listed.  The second part is basically a list of defensive arguments that certain people may have regarding the lack of Asian Australians on Australian television. When I say white, I mean culturally white, so that is inclusive of Italians and Greeks.

First though, who was on TV in 2009? Let’s have a look at some of them. Note that this is not a personal attack on any of the actors as they’ve done quite well. If there is an attack it’s more of an attack on the roles offered:

Lawrence Leung - Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure
In each episode, Lawrence revisits aspects and ambitions of his childhood.

Pros – First Asian Australian to get their own show? (Lee Lin Chin’s Fashionistas does not count!) A lot of hilarious scenes and some that were cringe-worthy. Awesome Asian parents.

Cons – Weak Asian nerd stereotype, albeit a creatively, funny nerd.

Karen Pang - Play School
Pros - Still going strong
Cons - ...

Alan Kwong, Paul Amores – Beauty and the Geek Australia
When I heard about this show my first thought was “betcha there’s an Asian dude”. Boy did I get a surprise when they had not one but two! Both got knocked out in the first two eliminations, so predictable.

Pros – AM/WF couples :P

Cons – Weak Asian nerd stereotype. For those of you who like to point out that the other nerds were white so all’s good, get over yourselves. How many positive AA male role models are there on commercial TV? So why exactly are you defending white Australian TV? You like seeing your own people restricted to these types of roles or does this actually reflect how you view Asian males?

Poh Ling Yeow - Masterchef, Aliqua Mao - Australian Idol


Pros - Asian Australians on TV.  Reality TV is one area where Asian Australians have a chance to be themselves.

Cons - Not too sure about the ending of Masterchef, there were obviously other factors at play.


SBS Shows
Anh Do, Sam Pang, Luke Nguyen, Renee Lim, SBS News Crew

Pros – Asians/Asian Australians on TV

Cons – SBS

Hannah Wang – Rush TV ABC3
Hannah is a co-presenter on this action/sports show 4 da youf.

Pros – Asian Australian on TV

Cons – Asian females are more viewer(white) friendly for TV and are usually paired with a white male. Just have a look at America’s news channels. Whilst overall, having Hannah on the show is a big positive, let’s just wait and see whether this will be an increasing trend in Australia. Anna Choy (Big Breakfast, Big Arvo) also falls into this category.

Lucas Tang - Snake Tales
Lucas plays the role of Digby Nguyen, an exchange student that goes to the fictional town of Barren Barren to study.  The school is actually a snake park.

Pros - Asian (Asian Australian?) on TV

Cons - Foreigner stereotype with accent  to match

Jordan Rodrigues - Home and Away
Jordan plays the role of Jai Fernandez, who lost his family in the Boxing Day tsunami and comes to Summer Bay to join Miles with whom he is close. The character of Jai Fernandez was only created in response to Neighbours introducing an Asian character.

Jordan is leaving Home and Away to act in ABCs new show Dance Academy.

Pros – Quite a good role. Speaks with an Australian accent, not Asian-accented English, although this does not fit with the character profile.

Cons - Crazy character background. So your parents died in the Boxing Day tsunami and you came all the way across the seas to a shitty town in Australia to reconnect with some old white dude named Miles who is very friendly with you? Paedophile alert!!! How did you make it past Border Security? The notion of Asian Australians on Ramsay St or Summer Bay doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore does it? Also a stereotype of Asians being foreigners.

Hany Lee - Neighbours
Hany plays the role of Sunny Lee, a Korean exchange student. Sunny Lee was created by Executive Producer in response to claims that Neighbours was too white. Sunny’s last appearance was in November.

Pros – Asian Australian on Neighbours

Cons – What’s up with the weird ass hybrid Australian/Asian/American/wtf accent? Again, a stereotype of Asians being foreigners. There was quite a lot of negativity to Hany/Sunny being on Neighbours. There is even a I hate Sunny Facebook group (10,000+ members although the group seems to have disappeared now) and if you read many of the offensive posts before they are deleted by the mods, it’s easy to see that a lot of the crap is due to her being Asian. One of the more tame comments is “Go back to where you come from”, heard that before from somewhere?  Anyway, she's not on the show anymore so I guess that means Neighbours is back to an all white cast.

Hany Lee and Jordan Rodrigues were both born and raised in Australia and yet the roles that they play are those of foreigners. Hany was made to put on the accent so she was more convincing. I can just see it now, the casting agent telling her “Try and sound more like a gook”. Is it any wonder we don’t see many Asians on TV? When the few roles available are those where you have to de-Australianise yourself and act like a jackass, the frustration and disgust that so many AA actors must feel must make them question why this is all happening in the first place and for how much longer.

And a final one:

All Saints
The last Asian on this show was Ling-Hsueh Tang, in 2002 which is around seven years ago.

Cons -  A suburban hospital with no Asian doctors? No Asian male doctors?  What the f?  Remember the American show ER that was supposed to be based on a hospital in Chicago?  And in the 15 years of that show, there was only ever one Asian American doctor (played by Ming-Na), while in real life the ratio of Asian doctors to black/white was much, much higher.  If you don't know what I'm referring to click here: ER stands for Ethnic Ridiculousness.

Pros - The show is finally dead after 11 years of crappiness!!!


Television Ads
Woolworths Everyday Credit Card – Asian Australian Family
HBF – a few Asian Australian chicks
Beer Ad – South Asian speaking in a very stereotypical accent
Microsoft – Asian Australian guy, IT nerd

I do believe (as a general feeling as I didn't do a summary of the 08 AAs on TV) that we have seen more AAs on TV this year, but numbers alone shouldn't be a measure of the success of Asian Australian actors.  We need to look at their roles, and from above it's obvious a lot of them were based on stereotypes and misrepresentations.  The effeminate asian male, the asian foreigner, the submissive asian girl, all non-threatening characters.  Don't get too excited just yet, there is still a long way to go.

Stay tuned for part 2 where I'll tackle the arguments against having more Asians on Australian television.

GQ Men of the Year - Lawrence Leung

Congrats to Lawrence for winning the GQ Men of the Year Award - Comedian of the Year

He was up against the likes of Charlier Pickering, Josh Thomas, Tim Minchin and Dave Hughes.

From Melbourne, Lawrence Leung is a comedian, writer and director, best known for his ABC series Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure. The show, which is based on “all the things I wanted to do as a kid but never got around to because I grew up”, has built a cult following.

Lawrence Leung: "Thanks GQ for recognising me as a man instead of a manchild. This [award] is going to the pool room with my other capital letters."

GQ

Pedalling for a world of peace and harmony

COLIN LEE, a 29-year-old man from Ryde, was farewelled yesterday morning by Citizenship Minister Virginia Judge, as he set off to ride from Sydney to Melbourne.

Lee (pictured) is setting off on the journey as part of Pedallers for Peace, and will ride alongside Emily Alexander (18, Bahai), Mohamed Assoum (20, Muslim) and Evian Gutman (25, Jewish).

They will arrive in Melbourne in time for the Parliament of the World’s Religions meeting next Wednesday.

“Our pedallers for peace are setting in motion a pre-Parliament of the World’s Religions youth dialogue started in Sydney two months ago,” Ms Judge said.

“They are an inspiring group of young people, spreading a message of peace and harmony across two states.”

The 1050km journey will be filmed for a major documentary as the group rides through the Illawarra and along the South Coast.

They will conduct school visits and interfaith events in Thirroul, Kiama, Nowra, Ulladulla, Batemans Bay, Narooma, Bermagui, Merimbula and Eden before crossing into Victoria.

More than 10,000 people will participate in the Parliament of the Worlds’ Religions meeting, which addresses issues such as indigenous spirituality, health, education and peace building.

The Dalai Lama will speak at the closing session on December 9.

Banana Split - Portable Film Festival

I stumbled upon this short film on one of my forays into the internet world.

It's called Banana Split and is about growing up Asian in Australia and also Malaysian-Chinese-Australian in Australia.  Written by Sharon Chung and directed by Clinton Tan in 2005,  it was entered into the Portable Film Festival in 2006.

Synopsis

Grab a taste of Malaysian-Australasian life! The culture, the family, friends and bananas lah! An authentic recipe for what it takes to grow up as a foreigner in your own kampong (backyard).

If the video does not come up you can access it directly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF9VF1toZTg

Festival video site here.

Where am I on television?

Opinion piece by Lara Song from Korean Bulletin which seems to be a short lived Korean-Australian news site.

In my senior years of high school, I used to watch the television show ‘Beauty and the Beast’. For those not aware of the program, it was hosted by the late Stan Zemanek (who really played up the part of being the obnoxious, foul mouthed ‘Beast’), with a different panel of ‘Beauties’ every show.

Viewers would write in letters with problems of varying consequence and the bevy of ‘Beauties’ and the ‘Beast’ would give their solutions (or at least their opinions) on the matter. The more difficult challenge for the ‘Beauties’ would prove to be on dealing with the onslaught of verbal attack and put downs from Zemanek if they happened to disagree with his typically hard line right wing conservative point of view.

Needless to say, it was compelling television viewing. One of my favourite ‘Beauties’ was Dr Cindy Pan. I was always that little bit extra excited when she was on the show. She was always so poised, calm and assertive in a charming, likeable way. She had an air of authority about her when she spoke. Plus, she was Asian.

There were no other Asian Australians on television regularly at the time, not one that I was aware of at least. So to me she was an oddity, unique, and deserving of admiration. She was the closest that I could see myself on TV. Not that I necessarily wanted to be on TV you see. But she represented something that I could be if I chose, and more importantly a feeling that there was someone who seemed to reflect me in the mainstream Australian media.

Growing up in the nineties, I was desperately searching for role models - someone or a group of people I felt represented me, in the media. Someone I felt I could really relate to, perhaps by way of looking like me, maybe with a similar background, or possibly a similar upbringing. Someone who would understand me and my way of looking at the world as an Asian Australian, or even as an ethnic migrant Australian. But unfortunately, I didn’t find much.

I remember in my early teens, I went through a phase when I watched quite religiously the dramas unfold in Summer Bay and on Ramsay St (otherwise known as ‘Home and Away’ and ‘Neighbours’). Never at the same time of course (for some odd reason, there seemed to be two camps during high school, and watching one precluded you from watching the other). I relished in the drama of the shows. But over time, it slowly dawned on me that rarely did the people on these shows reflect me, my group of friends (who were and are of various ethnic backgrounds), my family or the community of people that I was a part of in suburban Sydney. I lived in a culturally diverse community; why didn’t these shows reflect that? When was the last time you saw a Korean family, a group of Lebanese girls, or Sudanese brothers on Home and Away?

Sadly and unfortunately, these ideas and images of what an ‘Australian’ is, is also broadcast to some one hundred nations around the world through these programs. I find it quite amusing (and a bit annoying) when I meet tourists from overseas who upon walking through the city are surprised at the ethnic diversity we have in Sydney.

It may seem that I’m picking on Neighbours and Home and Away, but I only mention them because they are iconic Australian programs and are accepted as such. They are meant to reflect the Australian way of life. However, in an interesting report by Britain's racial equality chief, the show Neighbours was branded “too white” by black and Asian viewers in Britain. Trevor Philips who is the Equality and Human Rights Commission Chairman said that Britain’s major broadcasters remained “hideously white” when choosing programs. Perhaps Australian broadcasters can also take heed.

I am aware that I have made no mention of SBS, the multicultural and multilingual broadcaster. Certainly as a public broadcaster set up for this purpose, they promote cultural diversity in all forms in their television and radio programs. Programs like ‘Fat Pizza’ have gained popularity beyond SBS into the cultural consciousness of the mainstream public. Hence I’m concerning myself with only what is broadcast on the commercial networks, which more accurately reflects the level at which we have embraced ethnic diversity on television.

It’s not all bad news however. I’ve observed it’s a very different story when it comes to reality programs. Shows like ‘Australian Idol’ and ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ (SYTYCD) which is based on the skill, talent and popularity of the contestants usually have a broad ethnic and cultural mix of Australian society. From Guy Sebastian and Natalie Grauci off Idol to Demi and Saramsa off SYTYCD, these shows present the personalities, the stories and the talents of the performers, and we end up falling in (or out of) love with them for who they are. I wonder if the diversity of talent on these shows is a factor in its success perhaps.

Aside from the reality shows, has Australian television embraced more diversity and difference in the ‘noughties’? I believe yes. I’ve noticed a greater range of ethnicities particularly on commercials, TV shows, the news, and other programs (think Fuzzy off Video Hits, Ahn Do the comedian, Karen Tso from Channel Nine news, Nuala Hafner from Channel Seven weather). I think if nothing else, commercials will have to reflect more accurately the consumers they hope to target their products or services if they want to be competitive, and it seems that they along with the commercial networks are slowly coming around to that idea.

I have only made mention of television so far but there are other mediums of media that are undeniably under-represented by a broad spectrum of ethnicities including talk back radio, publishing e.g. magazines, and Australian literature although we seem to be slowly progressing on all fronts (‘Growing up Asian in Australia’ is a particularly relevant and entertaining book; a collection of stories edited by Alice Pung).

I believe that if we look ahead ten years from now, we would have moved even further ahead on the road to reflecting more accurately on television and in other media, the cosmopolitan multicultural society that we are. We must, to be a more inclusive society, one that accepts and embraces a person regardless of where they are from and is happy to represent that image to the rest of Australia and to the rest of the world. That is my vision for Australian media anyway. I think it’s an inevitable change and it’s happening now as we speak. However, as citizens of this beautiful country we call home, I think we all need to question and challenge what we see more on television. And most importantly, get involved ourselves. As Gandhi’s famous quote goes, perhaps we need to first be the change that we want to see in the world.

Forgotten Carlton hero celebrated on canvas

What is it about the wonderfully-named Wally Koochew that more than 100 years after chasing the leather for the Carlton Football Club he should now be immortalised on canvas?

Though he only wore the original Carlton guernsey with the chamois yoke in four senior appearances through the 1908 season, Koochew is forever remembered as the first League footballer of Chinese origin.

And now, his portrait – in mixed media on polycotton - proudly hangs on a wall of the aptly-titled Kick Gallery in Northcote, as part of artist Tim Vagg’s exhibition, Heroes, Drunks & Bounders – Forgotten Tales of Melbourne.

For Vagg, a 36 year-old Ballarat-born artist of 15 years experience, there’s no doubting Koochew ranks as a hero.

“For the most part I’d prefer to leave judgment to the viewer, but certainly, Wally fits into the ‘hero’ category,” Vagg said.

“I originally heard a fellow named Sam Pang mention this largely forgotten story of Sino-Australian footballers like Wally Koochew and decided to follow it up. Although I’ve never done studies based on famous figures before, I wanted to provide a living memorial to people like him who didn’t get recognition in their own lifetime . . . and every painting has a distant story.”

Walter John Henry Koochew (sometimes spelled Kou Chow, Kow Chow or Ko Chow) was born in Carlton on July 6, 1887. Wally’s father, James, migrated to Australia from Whampoa, 13 kilometres south of Guangzhou (Canton), aboard the ship Frances from the port of Hong Kong in 1865 - one year after the Carlton Football Club was formed.

For James and so many Chinese, the lure of Australia was gold.

Having spent his formative years in the north-western town of Macedon, Wally Koochew was recruited to Carlton from neighbouring Brunswick. But by 1909, he was back at Macedon after an all-too-brief Princes Park foray.

Upon his retirement as a player, and after health issues intervened, Koochew ran a hot dog stand at the old Arden Street Oval in North Melbourne. He died in the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1932, aged 44, and was laid to rest in Heidelberg Cemetery, not far from the grave of the great Australian game’s founder, Tom Wills.

The Koochew painting, which has already been snapped up by a Carlton tragic, is taken from a team photograph captured prior to the Blues’ round three match with Essendon at Princes Park in early 1908. The photo appeared in the Weekly Times of May 23, 1908.
CarltonFC

RIP Jack Wong Sue

 Jack with three of his seven children

It is with great sadness that I make this post. Jack Wong Sue OAM DCM, WW2 ANZAC, has passed away at the age of 84.

It was over a year ago on ANZAC day when I first noticed Jack while channel surfing. He was in the ANZAC day march in Perth and my first reaction was "wtf". I was confused. The commentator said something along the lines of "...WW2 veteran Jack Wong Sue..." I made a mental note to chase this up. This is something I never expected to see.

ANZAC day for me has always been a day when the whites grandstand over the rest of us. That we were just 'japs' and we were a threat to them in WWII, conveniently forgetting that the other menace during WWII were the Germans, aka whites. Or that I wasn't even a 'jap'.

So to see someone with Asian features in the ANZAC parade was truly mystifying. In my full twelve years of Australian education, not one teacher had even hinted that there may be Australians of non-white race, apart from indigenous Australians, fighting for Australia. No one ever told me about Chinese Diggers. You can see why they would omit those details.

Anyway, it wasn't until this year that I started to do a bit more research and boy was I surprised. There seemed to be so many: John Joseph Shying, Billy Sing, Jack Wong Sue, Kate Quan and many more.  There are also many who had fully anglicised names who we may never track down, and many mixed children of Chinese fathers and white mothers who took on their mother's maiden name when enlisting in the hope that they would not be discriminated against by the army/government.

In addition to these, there were also many who were denied the opportunity to fight for their country due to discrimination and many whose efforts were not recognised. The Australian Government had betrayed them.

Jack himself suffered a lot of racial discrimination and abuse before, during and after the war. Yet despite all of this he was a determined man who achieved everything with steely resolve. He took crap from nobody, not even higher ranked officers. A larger than life character who was skilled in many things, he enjoyed scuba diving and playing music with his band. I don't think my descriptions or his wiki do him justice. I really recommend reading his book "Blood on Borneo".

I had been in discussions with his son Barry on Friday about making a documentary on Jack's life, especially before and after the war. Barry had told me his father was really sick and it had gotten worse. So this afternoon when I came across a story about his passing away, I was shocked but not surprised.

We've lost one of our greatest.

Lest we forget.


Hear Barry Sue talk about his father

World War II hero Jack Sue has died in Perth at the age of 84.

Mr Sue was a member of Z Special Unit, a special forces reconnaissance unit which operated behind enemy lines in South-East Asia during World War II.

Z Special Unit was the predecessor to the Special Air Service Regiment.

Mr Sue spent months behind enemy lines in Borneo and in his memoirs claimed Z Special Unit commandos in Borneo killed 1,700 Japanese and trained 6,000 guerrillas.

Allied forces later invaded Borneo.

Mr Sue was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal and rose to the rank of Sergeant during his army career.

He was awarded the Order of Australia in 2006.

His son Barry Sue confirmed he died today.

In 2006, The West Australians' Rod Moran wrote of Mr Sue's war-time exploits.

Head-hunting Dyaks, murderous Japanese infantry and the tragedy of the Sandakan Death Marches in the fetid jungle of what was then British North Borneo provided the grim backdrop to teenage warrior Jack Wong Sue's experience of World War II in the South-West Pacific, Moran wrote.

His award of the Order of Australia Medal was partly for his recording of those experiences in Blood on Borneo, a remarkable memoir of his nine months behind enemy lines in 1944-45. Published in 2001, more than 17,000 copies of the book have been sold in WA alone.

But Mr Sue's trajectory to war began when he was merely 16 years old. After receiving a white feather in the mail - a symbol of cowardice - he joined the merchant navy, sailing the submarine-infested high seas on a Norwegian oil tanker.

En route, he rubbed shoulders with nazi sailors on shore leave in pro-German neutral ports, and witnessed the fiery death by torpedo of an Allied merchantman at night.

On returning to Fremantle he attempted to enlist in the Royal Australian Navy, but was rejected because of his Chinese background. The fact that he was Australian-born and that China was a wartime ally made no difference.

Ironically, it was precisely his oriental appearance and connections - as well as his fluency in Chinese and Malay - that led to Mr Sue's recruitment into Z Special Unit, an ultra-secret organisation that infiltrated agents behind Japanese lines throughout the South-West Pacific for sabotage, guerilla warfare, and intelligence gathering.

After extensive training in the ruthless methods and technologies of clandestine warfare, Mr Sue was sent into the field as agent AKR 13. Leaving Fremantle on the USS Tuna, he was inserted into Borneo to conduct operation Agas 1. He had been issued with “L-tablets”, lethal capsules to be ingested if captured. At the time, Borneo was occupied by 37,000 troops of the Japanese Imperial Army.

The aim was to gather intelligence on Japanese troop movements as a prelude to the Australian invasion of Borneo. It was during this operation that Mr Sue won the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his actions in securing intelligence at Bongawan railway station.

Mr Sue was also involved in Operation Kingfisher, a plan to rescue the PoWs at the brutal Sandakan prison camp in northern Borneo. With nearly 2000 Japanese troops in the area, Mr Sue had to reconnoitre the camp and its hinterland.

All but six of the 2400 prisoners at the camp died on the subsequent Sandakan Death Marches, or were murdered at the camp itself. Mr Sue is the last living witness to the third and final march.

Historian Lynette Silver, author of Sandakan: A Conspiracy of Silence, describes his predicament: “Into their line of vision came a contingent of Japanese guards, followed by four skeletal creatures, so starved and emaciated they looked more like mummified corpses than human beings.” They were Australian PoWs.

Mr Sue's instincts told him to kill the guards and free the prisoners. But his training told him to stay under cover. The image of his countrymen as the living dead haunted Mr Sue.

In 1945, at the age of just 19, Mr Sue emerged from the jungle emaciated, psychologically haunted and a decorated war hero. With great fortitude, he began the process of building a new life in civvy street.

Jack Sue, a quiet hero and a brave man
World War II RAAF Officer and Z Special Unit hero Jack Sue remembered
PerthNow
ABC
Yahoo

Join the Asian ANZACs page.

Korean Australian Twins climb Youtube rankings

Meet Janice and Sonya, or JS as they're known, twins who hail from Sydney.  They've been posting cover songs on Youtube since 2008 and have steadily gained a loyal following.  They sing a mixture of songs, sometimes in Korean too, accompanied by an acoustic guitar. They have super s w e e t voices.

They've uploaded 22 songs so far but my favourite, and by the looks of it, everyone elses, is Officially Missing You by Tamia.  Keep it up girls!



Looking through some of the comments, Janice seems to be more attention than Sonya, even though they're twins.

Their official channel is here.

The Question of Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts is Largely Avoided

The following is a piece by Ming-Zhu Hii about the lack of diversity in the performing arts and was printed in The Age earlier this year.

One of the main reasons that I started this site was because of the lack of Asian representation on Australian TV aside from the stereotypical depictions, and during my search of online material I also came across some forums where Asian Australian actors/actresses voiced their discontent with the state of affairs in the performing arts sector.  I previously posted one of the rants here - Frustrated! Where's the colour-blind casting in this bloody country!!!.  It shouldn't come as a surprise that TV shows and Plays are affected in similar ways as the writers and casting agents are always white.

I am working on a piece that summarises the state of affairs in the TV industry but in the meantime I hope you enjoy the following by Ming-Zhu Hii.  (Note, the article was a jpeg and I couldn't ffind the online article so I typed it all out for the search engines.  I have a shocking typing accuracy so if something doesn't make sense, read the jpeg version)

The question of ethnic diversity in the performing arts is largely avoided - Ming-Zhu Hii

I am now playing a Russian actor (pictures below) in realism at the MTC, alongside a predominantly white cast who are also all playing Russian characters. I am brown, yellow or olive-skinned, depending on the light in which you choose to view me. No matter how hard you might squint, however, you couldn’t call me white.

When asked about my race, I generally answer, “I’m Australian. My father is Chinese from Malaysia and my mother is a fifth-generation, mixed-bag, white, Anglo-Celtic Tasmanian.” I was born in Hobart, given a Chinese name, and grew up speaking only English. An only child of mixed-race parents in (at the time) a very white little city, I am, as they say, as Chinese as a Chiko roll.

I graduated from the VCA in 2002 with a degree in dramatic art. In my first year out, I auditioned for two Filipino roles, on Japanese, one Chinese, and one half-French, half Native-American character. Who was I to complain? At the tender age of 23, with an unclear path before me, all I was interested in was getting out of the dole queue and onto the stage. I accepted all the roles I was offered, irrespective of how uncomfortable they variously made me feel.

I realise now that everyone of them was conceived of, written and cast by a white person. They weren’t always horrific stereotypes – one was even brilliantly satirical – but they were all created largely from a white perspective, and, I can imagine, without serious ethnic consultation.

The question of race in casting is really only the beginning of the discussion. A lasting solution must embrace change in the whole sector.

For my part, as the years have passed, I have been more discerning about the projects in which I act. I have tried for or taken roles that specify race only if they are as genuinely interesting and three-dimensional as their white counterparts, but largely have favoured jobs in which race is not an issue.

In Australia, the question of racial diversity in the performing arts is largely avoided.

Cross-racial casting (otherwise known as colour-blind casting) is often regarded as a taboo subject. A Ghanaian-Australian actor doesn’t want to appear ungrateful for the opportunities she is offered, even if somewhere deep down she finds many of them to be insulting and stereotypical; similarly an Anglo-Saxon actor doesn’t want to be implicated in a matter that might jeopardise her career.

It’s increasingly ridiculous, this fear we’ll be offending those who offer us jobs by saying “I’m sick of playing sweatshop workers and taxi drivers; why can’t I get an audition for Juliet?”. Considering that two out of four Victorians were either born overseas or have a parent from overseas, almost three-quarters of these people speak languages other than English, and that nationally 2.5 percent of the population is indigenous, I can’t help but feel the performing arts have quite a long way to go.

It is not unheard of for mainstream Australian theatre casts to include one or even a few non-white artists in roles traditionally assigned to white actors. But this is rare, and the widely held view remains that cross-racial casting is a political act that might detract form the play’s content.

In the great majority of productions in this country that have been cross-racially cast, actors of various races have appeared on stage without it distracting anyone. It is only regarded as such when our primary concern is with the colour of an actor’s skin.

In theatre, more so than in film and television, where we all know that what we see on stage isn’t real – where the audience actively suspends disbelief for the duration of the performance, the reluctance to cast diversely can be regarded as a far more political gesture.

Lee Lewis wrote an in-depth analysis of how Australian theatre can overhaul its casting habits in her 2007 Platform Paper, Cross Racial Casting: Changing the Face of Australian Theatre, in which she suggests that what we see on our stages is how we go on to see our world embodied.

If this is true, and I believe it is, then we as audience members and theatre workers (actors, directors, producers alike) have an incredible opportunity now to change the way we see ourselves as Australians, to reflect how we truly are now as a nation, and how we want to be in the future. There is no quick fix for the whiteness of Australian stages, but if we can begin to look at the way we cast our plays, we will begin to re-examine the way we run our theatres, and in so doing, re-imagine how we tell our stories.


- Also check out Ming-Zhu Hii on Lee Lewis' Challenge to Australian Theatre

50 Years of Time Magazine - Victor Chang article

 
Time magazine has been in Australasia for 50 years and to commemorate, have chosen a representative  for each decade it has been printing in this region.

Victor Chang has been selected for the decade 1979-1989, for giving hope that Australia's attitudes towards asian migrants was changing.  Sadly, he was murdered in 1991 by two kidnappers.  One of the kidnappers, Choon Tee Lim, was to be released on parole after serving a minimum of 18 years prison time.  Chang's family were not informed of the pending release as they were not on the victim's register, which only contains details of victims of crimes that occur after 1996.

You can read the article here, or read below (shamelessly copied and pasted from Time Magazine)

 

1979-1989 Victor Chang

By Sharon Verghis

In 1999, Australians taking part in the People's Choice Awards, a kind of pop-culture popularity contest, had a choice to make. The four finalists for Australian of the Century were Dawn Fraser, a beloved swimmer from the 1950s and '60s, Donald Bradman, the greatest cricketer ever to pick up a bat, Fred Hollows, an eye doctor whose techniques had helped a million or so people see again, and Victor Chang, a Chinese-born Australian heart surgeon. It might surprise non-Australians used to seeing the country as a bastion of old-fashioned white values that the nation's television viewers opted for Chang.

Australians loved Chang, a softly spoken Shanghai-born doctor who collected heart-surgery breakthroughs and fast cars with equal passion. The son of Australian-born Chinese parents, he arrived in 1953 to finish his high-school studies. By the time he was murdered in a botched robbery in morning traffic on a July day in 1991, he had become one of the country's great immigrant success stories, and, at that time at least, a rare Asian face in Australian public life. Lauded for re-establishing heart transplant surgery in Australia, after the field had languished due to the risks and costs, he founded the highly successful National Heart Transplant Program in 1984, created an artificial heart valve, taught his skills to doctors from around the world, and was working on an artificial circulatory system when he was killed. "When no one else was putting their hand up, he was saying, 'Yes, we want to do [heart transplants],'" says Dr. Phillip Spratt, director of heart and lung surgery and transplantation at St. Vincent's Hospital, where Chang worked. (See TIME's health and medicine covers.)

Chang was part of a larger tale. One of the defining narratives in 1980s Australia was the beginning of large-scale Asian immigration. Modern Australia has always been an immigrant nation; since 1945, 6.8 million people have arrived from the four corners of the globe. For much of that time, though, immigrants were overwhelmingly from Europe. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 established what became known as the White Australia Policy, which effectively shut out Asians and other non-Europeans. As Australia's first Immigration Minister, Arthur Calwell, said in 1947: "We have 25 years at most to populate this country before the yellow races are down on us."

The end of that racist policy in the late 1960s and early '70s saw nonwhite immigration edge up. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees arrived in the late 1970s and Asian immigration expanded even faster in the 1980s. In the mid-1970s just one Asian country, India, made the top 10 source countries for immigrants to Australia. A decade on, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam joined it on the list. The Labor Party, which held power for most of the decade, saw immigration as a way to make Australia as dynamic as places like Singapore and Hong Kong. It was "the only tool readily at hand to challenge our complacency, smugness and parochialism," as one immigration official argued.

Unsurprisingly, the new immigrants were met by some anti-Asian sentiment, often focused around ethnic crime, gangs and joblessness. A fierce national debate was sparked in 1984 when the renowned University of Melbourne historian and academic Geoffrey Blainey decried what he believed was a disproportionately high level of Asian settlers. In 1988, then opposition leader (later Prime Minister) John Howard sparked further debate when he called for the rate of Asian immigration to be slowed for the sake of social cohesion.

Twenty years on, Australia is a different nation. Chinese languages rank among the most spoken in the country. A quarter of all Australians are foreign-born, compared to just 11% of Americans, and 6% of all Australians consider themselves ethnically Asian. Victor Chang would have been amazed by this rapid reinvention. But in his wake, Asian immigration has had a major impact in business, economics, politics, the arts, science and food. "Vietnamese is the new meat pie," says Andrew Jakubowicz, professor of sociology at the University of Technology, Sydney. Prominent Asian Australians include the Federal Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong; John So, the former lord mayor of Melbourne; Henry Tsang, the former deputy lord mayor of Sydney; fashion designers Akira Isogawa, Jenny Kee and Lisa Ho; chefs Kylie Kwong and Tim Pak Poy; filmmaker and 2005 Young Australian of the Year Khoa Do; comedians Lawrence Leung and Anh Do; neurosurgeon Charles Teo; violinist Susie Park and artist Shen Jiawei.

Australia's Asian influx is reshaping the look of the country. A report this year on mixed-race marriages by Australian National University and Monash University academics found a striking rise in intermarriage between third-generation Asian Australians and white Australians. Their growing number of mixed-race children are the most visible symbols of a new country.

The nation, however, continues to grapple with its cultural identity. Australia is "caught between geography and history, and it continues to be uncomfortable," says Professor Jakubowicz. "We are [no longer] I think, a forlorn outpost of empire, but we are not either an Asian-Pacific nation." Yet even that judgment is changing. Australia's cities have long boasted statues of British monarchs and English explorers. Now, a bronze statue of Chang, dressed in surgical scrubs and clasping a stethoscope, stands sentinel in front of the new $73 million building that houses the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney. From its plinth, the statue smiles serenely as nuns, office workers and doctors bustle by, scurrying down streets framed by huge industrial cranes and countless Thai restaurants.

Verghis is a Sydney-based freelance journalist and the daughter of south Indian migrants from Malaysia

Hey I'm Kevin - Asian Australian in Microsoft Windows 7 Ad

An Asian Australian appears in one of the new Windows 7 television ads, where he takes you through a new feature where you can snap windows to get two windows side by side.  Been waiting for this ad to hit youtube after seeing it on TV.  So great to see an AA speaking fluent Aussie English!

My other favourite ad is the Woolworths Everyday Credit Card Commercial, see if you can figure out why :)

'What the f---?' Aussie arrested in Dubai after swearing at policeman

I had to lol after I read this story.  Sun McKay, a South Australian, was arrested in Dubai International airport after swearing when a stranger came up and grabbed his wrist.  Unluckily for him, the stranger was a plainclothes policeman and swearing at an officer attracts a hefty fine.  So far, Sun has had his passport confiscated and has spent $4500 on legal fees.  He is still awaiting trial.

When Sun McKay was manhandled by a stranger in the arrivals hall at Dubai International Airport, he did what many young Australians would do. He swore.

"This guy in a blue shirt grabbed my wrist quite hard, pulled me towards him and started yelling at me in Arabic, and I just said: 'What the f---?'" Mr McKay said.

Unbeknown to Mr McKay, the man was a plainclothes airport policeman, and the 32-year-old private security consultant had just committed a crime.

Almost a month later, with his passport confiscated, Mr McKay remains stranded in the Emirate awaiting trial on charges of insulting and using inappropriate language to a police officer.

Mr McKay has already spent 15,000 dirham ($4500) on legal fees, with no end in sight.

"My lawyer and I will obviously push for a fine, but the penalties here can be straight away deportation or up to three years' imprisonment and then deportation."

A former Australia Defence Force member who has been working in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2006, Mr McKay had visited Dubai about 20 times over the past three years without incident.

"I had no reason to know this guy was a policeman, because he had no insignia or anything."

When the officer produced ID, Mr McKay apologised, but to no avail.

"I was taken upstairs to a small room and interrogated, in quite a brutal way, for three hours. There was lots of yelling and gesticulating; they were smoking and blowing it at me. I was told repeatedly and very aggressively that this was not my country and that they could have me thrown in jail for what I had done."

Mr McKay said he asked for water, a translator and access to a phone, but was ignored. Despite continued apologies, he had his passport confiscated and was sent home at 3.30am.

Mr McKay's lawyer, Mohsen Mohamed Zin El Din, said that just getting a court date could take between three weeks and three months.

And once the criminal case is settled, the police officer could choose to launch a civil case against Mr McKay.

"Sun agreed that he was guilty," Mr Mohsen said. "It is not good for him. I told him to deny it."

Mr Mohsen said his client was most likely looking at a prison sentence of one month, plus court costs of 10,000 to 15,000 dirham, and compensation payments to the police officer.

Mr McKay said he had received little co-operation from Australian consular staff in Dubai, whom he accused of being “rude and abrupt”.

Consular staff met Mr McKay but said that he used “insulting and inappropriate language” towards them. Mr McKay denies this.

Mr McKay is living in a company-owned villa in Dubai's no-frills al-Rashida district.

"For the time being, they are allowing me to stay rent free, which is fantastic of them. But when I get out, I doubt I'll have a job any more. At one stage everyone was quite enjoying the joke. Now I am definitely not."

Mr McKay is the latest Australian to fall foul of authorities overseas, most notably in the Middle East.

In January, Australian citizen Nasrah Alshamery, 43, was arrested by Kuwaiti police after allegedly insulting the emir, Sheikh Sabah IV Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Saba, during a row with airport officials.
WA Today

2009 OZ Asia Festival - Adelaide

So many things going on at this festival!  Check out the Shows and Films, amazing stuff.  But why is it in Adelaide?

These are the movies that will be shown:

Documentary Double (15+) - OzAsia On Screen 4th October  
A Sense of Place (15+)
Director: Marie Ferris (Australia 2007)

Goodbye Revolution (15+)
Director: Esben Storm (Australia 2008)

Kung Fu Chefs (PG) - OzAsia On Screen 4th October Starring Vaness Wu, Cherrie Ying and Sammo Hung, Kung Fu Chefs is a fun film for the whole family.

Balibo (M) - OzAsia On Screen 7th October Stars Anthony LaPaglia.

Pankh * - OzAsia On Screen 9th October Starring Bishpata Basu, Mahesh Manjrekar and newcomer Maradona Rebello.

The Sky Crawlers * - OzAsia On Screen 10th October Director: Mamoru Oshii ( Japan 2008) 

The Great Indian Butterfly * - OzAsia On Screen 11th October Starring Aamir Bashir, Sandhya Mridul, Koel Purie and Barry John.

Tony Ayres Double (15+) - OzAsia On Screen 11th October  

CHINA DOLLS (15+)
Director: Tony Ayres (Australia 1997)

SADNESS (15+)
Director: Tony Ayres (Australia 1999)

 

The Way We Are - Hong Kong On Screen 13th October Director: Ann Hui

 

 True Women For Sale - Hong Kong On Screen 14th October Director: Herman Yau Lai-To

 

 Protégé - Hong Kong On Screen 15th October Director: Derek Yee

Forever Enthralled - Hong Kong On Screen 17th October Director: Chen Kaige

Three Kingdoms - Resurrection Of The Dragon - Hong Kong On Screen 17th October Director: Daniel Lee

 

Nick Sun Stand-up Comedy

I don't really see too many AA's doing stand up comedy (Anh Do and Hung Le come to mind).  Came across this clip on Youtube.  Funny or not, you decide.

The Yang Principle -Time Magazine

As a gay Australian of chinese descent, William Yang is intimately acquainted with the world of the outsider. Over the past 30 years, the award-winning photographer and performance artist has been quietly telling an alternate story of Australia, one inhabited by the displaced and marginalized — from AIDS victims to Aboriginal Outback tribes to the little-known Chinese settler communities dotting remote rural areas.

Yang, whose work has featured at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, has also told a more joyful, hedonistic tale of the country, capturing its gay and party scenes, and its key cultural figures, from the late Nobel Prize – winning author Patrick White to actress Cate Blanchett. From Sept. 19-25, he will showcase 16 prints of Sydney gay life at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in northern China's Shanxi province, while next February a major new work, My Generation, commissioned by Australia's National Portrait Gallery and based on the Sydney art scene of the 1970s and '80s, will be unveiled as part of Sydney's Mardi Gras. (See pictures of the gay rights movement.)

Yang is excited about his Pingyao debut, if a little uncertain about how some of the raunchier images — of naked bodies and nude men embracing — will be received by the country's conservative art establishment. The photos, he says, are "all kind of vaguely erotic, without being in-your-face. What I wanted to do was open up a discussion about homosexuality, which is something that's not talked about much [in China]."

Born William Young in northern Queensland in 1943, Yang grew up in Dimbulah, a tiny tobacco-farming town, with no connection to his Chinese heritage. His grandparents emigrated from China in the 1880s, and his family was completely assimilated — he and his siblings spoke only English. At 6, after a white schoolmate called him "Ching Chong Chinaman," Yang went home upset and asked his mother if he was Chinese. She gravely told him yes. "I knew in that instant," Yang writes on his website, "that being Chinese was a terrible curse."

He was very much a cultural misfit at high school in Cairns — he describes his time there as the worst years of his life. "I desperately wanted to fit in but there was no way that I could, not with the way I looked. Also, I knew I was gay but didn't understand what that was." He went on to study architecture at the University of Queensland, where a love for theater was sparked, and moved to Sydney in 1969. Yang tried to make a living as a playwright but found it too difficult, so he switched to photography, holding his first solo exhibition, Sydneyphiles, at the Australian Centre for Photography in 1977. "It was very successful and that one exhibition established me as a photographer of the scene, both the glamorous celebrity set and the darker, underground gay scene which was becoming visible."

At 35, he started searching for his lost Chinese ancestry by researching his immediate family and the history of the Chinese in Australia, and in 1983 he changed his surname from Young to Yang in a symbolic reclamation of his identity. "I described it as a kind of coming out as Chinese," he says. "It was a big thing for me to embrace." His first trip to China was in 1989. "The people welcomed me — they said, 'You've come back, you've come back home.' It was incredibly meaningful and moving."

Much of his art since has explored this cultural heritage, and it is among the key themes of perhaps his best-known work — 1992's critically acclaimed Sadness, one of seven dramatic monologues featuring photographic slide shows. His work strikes a chord with the wider Australian community because "Australians wonder about [displacement] a lot. For so many here, there's a homeland across the seas." His images of Australia's long Chinese history — its shrines, graves and old gold-mining settlements — are also eye-opening for many viewers. "Most people had not heard a Chinese-Australian story told from the Chinese point of view. I think my stories were some of the first to be told in the mainstream."

These days, Yang has become part of Australia's artistic mainstream himself, witnessing along the way an evolution in the country's attitude toward its minorities, particularly gays and Asians. He also notices more tolerance and diversity. "It's a slow process," he says. "There's always some resistance to change, but if the new attitudes hang around for long enough, then people start to accept them."

Time Magazine

William's official site is William Yang

Ah Xian wins $50K Clemenger for "Concrete Forest"

Ai Xian first came to Australia in 1989 and after 'discovering porcelain' has worked largely on busts and full-body sculptures that have been decorated with traditional Chinese elements often realised under his meticulous directionon his sculptured forms by highly skilled Chinese artisans, most often from Jingdezhen, a centre for ceramic production since the Ming period. His work was soon exhibited in important groups shows and he came to particular prominence when he won the inaugural National Sculpture Prize at NGA 2001. Last year he had his first one man show in Europe in 2008 at the Gemeente Museum, Den Haag, Netherlands.

As well as his porcelains he has also made carved lacquer and elaborate whole body cloisonné enamels on beaten copper underforms. Commentators on his work, noting the internal oppositions between form and content, and between traditional Chinese and western practices, in his work and the resemblance of the decoration to tattoos, have evoked the hand of indelible cultural imprints viewed afresh from a western art-production context. Xian himself has stated “when you’re away from China, you have a clearer picture of the country and its culture.” Collectors, both State and private have been keen to acquire his work (A bust, "Human Human (Bust 5)" sold for a record $A150,000 this August).

Read the rest at Arts Hub
The Age

This guy makes some really creative and amazing moulds.  Here's some of his other work

 

Attract/Repel Play - Melbourne Fringe Festival

The Store Room presents Attract/Repel by The Melbourne Town Players, a performance-interrogation into self and the other, by Ming-Zhu Hii.

Attract/Repel is a raw, beautiful and idiosyncratic investigation into racial identification, discrimination, and the darkness and light inherent in Australia's many-cultured society. It takes an unflinching look beneath the surface at who we are, how we behave, and why we are still being racist.

In collaboration with four of the country’s most exciting actor/theatre makers, Ming-Zhu Hii goes beyond the pale, averts the politically-correct, and asks the questions we’ve all been too scared of for far too long.

Attract/Repel is a remarkably rich and unmissable new work from The Melbourne Town Players, creators of the critically acclaimed Sandwiches.

“We are living in a period of extreme racial unrest, cultural intolerance, and racially motivated violence, while the population of our country has never been more diverse.” - Ming-Zhu Hii

Previews 16, 17 and 18 September 2009
Open 19 September - 10 October 2009

 The Melbourne Town Players