Aiming for a multicultural NZ

Immigrants have settled in Christchurch for many years, but how do they really find the city? JOHN McCRONE investigates.

Do Mainlanders still have a problem with yellow skin? A recent British immigrant – a white woman – was a little startled at the casual racism she found among Christchurch folk.

Plainly the estate agent took her as "one of us" when he said, "well, you won't be looking as far out as Avonhead. Or "Asian-head" as we like to call it here".

Then there was the neighbour who chuckled about a new police codeword to be heard on the airwaves – DWA, or Driving While Asian.

And the other neighbour whose first welcoming words were thank goodness you are not Chinese or Korean. Down at the golf club, the same remark – because, you see, we are being over-run and the Asians just don't mix.

All said without either guilty look or confiding tone.

Then there is the other face of the city, the Chinese lantern festival that gets more popular every year, the elegant Buddhist centre which has appeared on Riccarton Road, the simple fact that Christchurch is 8 per cent ethnically Asian and rising.

It need hardly be mentioned that with the stunning emergence of China as the economic powerhouse of the new century, the politicians and business community know which side of the bread is buttered.

So, as the Government followed up its 2003 initiative "Seriously Asia" with the launch of yet another national framework document last month "Our Future With Asia", how is our integration actually going? Do the polite Kiwi smiles mask an iceberg of resentment?

And what should integration mean? To put it bluntly, do we still expect Asian immigrants to turn themselves into "good sorts" if they want to be accepted – to dump several thousand years of culture and refinement and adopt a life revolving around malls, barbecues, loud cars, touch rugby and a few beers?

This is the old assimilation model says Auckland University Asian Studies professor Manying Ip.

"It's based on the assumption that the Pakeha way, the monocultural way, is superior and therefore everyone should become little white people," she says.

Among Asians there is a lively debate taking place, especially at forums like the recent Auckland Going Bananas conference (yellow on the outside, white on the inside), as to how integration should work.

Ip says the wrong way is the backward looking one, where either side remains stuck in the past.

For white New Zealand, this means trying to preserve its identity as an outpost of empire. For incoming immigrants, it is hoping that if they form city enclaves of large enough number, there will be no need to adapt. Ip says Kiwi identity has to evolve to reflect the new multicultural reality.

Lincoln Tan, Auckland publisher of bilingual Chinese community papers, says in the modern world, it is not essential that everyone becomes the same. Instead, cultural pluralism can become part of the national identity.

There is Pakeha and Maori. Then the Pacific and eventually the many Asian cultures.

In Auckland, now 19% Asian and on track to hit 25% within a decade, the change is already well under way.

Ip says in just the past few years, the "ethnoscape" of the city has become visibly altered by Chinese language signage, ethnic groceries on the shelves, Asian architectural flourishes.

"The physical look of the place is different."

The browning of Auckland is a well- known story. But now the early signs of an Asian cross-over are being celebrated with cartoonist Ant Sang, TV3's bro`Town designer, including Hong Kong characters in the Pacific boys' adventures, and DMP (Daemang Productions) breaking ground as New Zealand's first "Korean hip-hop collective".

So Auckland might well be on the path to becoming our vibrant fusion capital, the kitchen cooking up a spicy new national identity. But what of Christchurch? Is it just a little further back on the same cultural curve, or is it going to do the Asian thing differently?

The over-riding impression of Asian immigrants is that the racism encountered in Christchurch is of the mild variety.

Tan, a Singaporean who started as a publisher in Christchurch when he could not get a job as a journalist, says for newcomers it is the very unexpectedness of any overt incidents – "the young fellows shouting at you to go home," – which is half the shock because New Zealand has long been selling an image of racial harmony to the world.

"Before I came, I was told that New Zealanders were more welcoming, more accepting. So if the same thing had happened to me while walking down the streets of Sydney, chances are I wouldn't feel as shocked or hurt."

Tan and others say the true problem in Christchurch seems to be cultural inertia. The locals are comfortable with the way things are and do not want to be hurried along to some new world balance.

Harry Lim, a Singaporean who started out at NZ Forest Products and now works as a business consultant after selling his language school, says there are in fact two integration issues here – cultural and economic. The disappointment of many South Island migrants is more about the latter.

At the intellectual level at least – the realm of policy makers and pundits – there is the recognition that New Zealand is adapting too slowly to global shifts in power.

While other small nations like Iceland, Finland and Singapore have increased their average economic "connectedness", as measured by exports and foreign investing, from 42% to 89% of gross domestic product (GDP) over the past 15 years, we are the only developed country to be exporting less, managing to drop back 3 points to just 39%.

Simply as a country, we are failing to integrate with our Asian neighbours.

However, Lim says such figures do not seem enough to rouse Canterbury business to action. The mostly small firms here have been doing well enough out of traditional markets and domestic growth over the past five years that exploiting the ready-made Asian connection remains a rather abstract notion.

 

 

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