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‘This is gonna be cringe’

Many Chinese Kiwis are distancing themselves from Chinese Language Week, which they say is more about Pa¯keha¯ making money than respecting diverse Chinese cultures. reports.

Eda Tang This is a public interest journalism reporting role funded by NZ On Air.

‘‘Next week is going to be a tough week for our Chinese communities,’’ tweeted Sidney Wong, a Cantonese speaker and doctoral student in linguistics.

New Zealand Chinese Language Week (NZCLW) kicks off today, and Wong is one of many Chinese New Zealanders actively distancing themselves from the event. It would, he added, see many Chinese communities ‘‘continue to be erased and made invisible in the name of economic prosperity’’.

Tze Ming Mok, a social scientist and Asian community advocate, thinks the name is misleading. ‘‘Really what it is, it’s the week of Mandarin language education in service of capitalism and New Zealand’s foreign affairs agenda. [It’s] not really a week for Chinese people.’’

Mok is disappointed to see that of the seven board members of the New Zealand Chinese Language Trust, Labour MP Naisi Chen is the only Chinese person. ‘‘It’s not like we’re lacking in Asian people who speak Chinese,’’ says Mok.

‘‘We already know that it’s not for us as it’s literally just a webpage full of white people. My expectations of Chinese Language Week were always like, ‘well, this is gonna be cringe’ and they have met my expectations’’.

The NZCLW campaign has largely been fronted by nonChinese ‘‘Mandarin Superstars’’ who share their experiences of learning Mandarin and the opportunities it has opened up.

According to its website, NZCLW ‘‘is designed to increase Chinese language learning in New Zealand [and] seeks to bridge the cultural and linguistic knowledge gap between China and New Zealand by delivering fun and practical initiatives that assist Kiwis to learn Chinese’’.

Jo Coughlan, chair of the New Zealand Chinese Language Week Trust, says that although there are many languages within China, New Zealand Chinese Language Week focuses on Mandarin. ‘‘This is the language taught in New Zealand schools and universities, and our purpose is to encourage New Zealanders to learn Chinese, so we concentrate on the language taught in our education institutions.’’

According to the 2018 Census, there are at least 18 Chinese languages spoken in Aotearoa. Efforts to include other Chinese languages have been pushed by Richard Leung, who is national president of the New Zealand Chinese Association and a leader in Auckland’s Chinese community.

Leung says that although it’s good the Ministry for Ethnic Communities granted $20,000 towards NZCLW from its development fund, it’s disappointing the event hasn’t become more diverse as a result.

‘‘Supporting an organisation that has chosen to erase the needs and histories of communities in Aotearoa New Zealand doesn’t seem diverse or inclusive, and it does nothing to support the Government’s initiatives to strengthen social cohesion.’’

Leung discussed his concerns with board members of the NZCLW Trust, and got an essay by Nigel Murphy about Chinese language history in New Zealand uploaded to the trust’s website.

He also lobbied for the prime minister and the minister for ethnic communities to include Cantonese, Hokkien and Teochew greetings in their video greetings for NZCLW, and pushed for a more accurate description of NZCLW on the Ministry of Education’s website. But he says this is just ‘‘a small start’’.

‘‘NZCLW has nothing about being proud of our culture and heritage, unlike all the other language weeks. It is not about preservation of our whakapapa, [but] the refusal to preserve endangered languages and cultures.’’

Leung says it would be more accurately described as Mandarin Language Week, and is concerned that ‘‘in one or two generations, Cantonese will be very much an outside-of-China language, even in Hong Kong’’.

Cantonese-speaking students

in Hong Kong have told i-Cable that they were punished at school for speaking Cantonese. In 2010, the Chinese government attempted to cut Cantonese broadcast programming in Guangzhou, sparking protest and fierce criticism.

Latest Census data shows that 36% of Chinese New Zealanders speak Mandarin, 20% speak Cantonese, 6.9% speak other Chinese languages, and less than a quarter do not speak any form of Chinese. Up until 2018, Cantonese was the most spoken Chinese language in the country, before it was overtaken by Mandarin.

‘‘Ignoring the existence of other Chinese languages is deeply disrespectful to the legacy and struggles of early Chinese migrants to Aotearoa New Zealand and their descendants,’’ Leung says.

Grace Gassin, Te Papa curator of Asian New Zealand Histories, leads a project called Chinese Languages in Aotearoa that highlights complex issues of cultural identity within various Chinese New Zealand communities, sharing their stories in Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka.

Gassin says the issue with Chinese Language Week is that often it’s ‘‘more about trade or economics or about Chinese New Zealand ties, rather than the kind of ko¯ rero that local Chinese communities want to have and are struggling to have heard.’’

Gassin, who is a Hokkien speaker, says all Chinese heritages matter, ‘‘regardless of whether your language is deemed economically useful’’.

To be more linguistically inclusive, she adds, Chinese Kiwis need to be supported to ‘‘stay connected to a mother tongue that in some ways has been lost through an assimilation process and these other kinds of historic processes’’.

Coughlan acknowledges that the NZCLW Trust is not a New Zealand-Chinese organisation nor a Chinese organisation.

‘‘The trust was set up initially by academics, diplomats, and business people to encourage non-Chinese New Zealanders to learn Chinese,’’ she says.

‘‘New Zealand has a diverse and vibrant society, and we hope our work contributes to that.’’

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2022-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/288381292728080

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