On July 24, 2017, the University of Melbourne and Monash University in Australia had an incident of exclusion against Chinese students, affixing traditional Chinese characters to various buildings of the school, saying "Chinese people are forbidden to enter." Otherwise face prosecution and deportation "and other content."
The following day, < New York Times > reported that the slogan was the work of a local far-right Melbourne-based organization, Resistance Australia, which has more than once distributed posters of racial discrimination on campus. December 2016, The group distributed posters with the words "Australia is a white world" and appeared on the campus of the University of Melbourne.
Although the school, Melbourne, was quick to respond, Monash said it was not what it did and would never allow discrimination and xenophobia on campus.
Are overseas Chinese vulnerable to discrimination? Western reference has written specifically about this: authoritative data tell you whether 4 million Chinese are second-class citizens in the United States.
Are the 1.2 million Chinese in Australia really discriminated against? Yang-Jun specifically invited Amy, a former Melbourne student who currently works in Melbourne, to write an analysis that many of the so-called "discrimination" Chinese in Australia are not what you think they are.
I am a graduate student majoring in landscape design at the University of Melbourne. During the period of the above-mentioned against China speech, the Gallery of the Design Institute of the University of Mexico displayed a series of classroom assignments on how to promote social equality through landscape design; Also during the against China speech, Mozambican university students participated in the parade in an organized manner, calling on government to accept refugees; Also during the against China speech, the instructor in the course of architecture theory said: "in recent years, more and more international students, especially Chinese students, you have in fact saved the college, if not you," he said, "in recent years, there have been more and more international students, especially Chinese students. It is impossible for the school to maintain such prosperity. "
Discrimination seems to be an inextricable topic for immigrants. When it comes to discrimination, the sum of "difference", "integration" and "conflict of contradiction" is closely related.
In my opinion, the crux of the problem is not what China is doing now, but what the world has changed after globalization. From being closed, fixed and single, to a state of mobile, pluralistic and open, in other words, various cultural practices began to intersect and mash, and the former kind of either one or the other had spent his whole life turning himself into a local person's integration. All of a sudden it is no longer true.
In Australia, Putonghua has become a major children's education programme promoted by the government, with more than 30, 000 schools launching Chinese language learning programs this year.
Melbourne, for example, has colleagues of all ethnic groups in the company during the day, many of whom work in foreign languages rather than in their mother tongue. In the Chinese restaurant at lunchtime, foreigners at the next table ate small cage buns with chopsticks and sat next to the Chinese wife. Perhaps he had worked in China earlier. While I was talking to a Jewish friend about a trip to Europe, I wish each other a happy holiday instead of a merry Christmas. When they get home at night, they may all read a few Economics people, or simply swipe an international credit card and buy it all over the world at online shopping.
In such an era of increasingly blurred boundaries, is it an ancient sense of penetration to talk about "integration" again? The middle class of modern society is composed of two levels of internationalized local culture, not so much as Chinese A and B. Let's talk about these two levels respectively, as well as the emergence of discrimination and negative views.
Internationalization: equal respect and clarity between the public and private sectors are very important. Otherwise, other people will "discriminate" against many Chinese immigrants and have no concept of the boundary between "Commons" and "private domain". They do not understand what is "other people's" and what is "public". They are also vulnerable to criticism or so-called "discrimination".
When I was a student at the University of Melbourne, the school room was not allowed to eat, but the work was tight. Sometimes people broke the rules, ate fruit sandwiches and so on, and the supervisor turned a blind eye.
Gradually, Southeast Asian students began to eat heavy-tasting curry. Chinese students were even more exaggerating. I once saw people pack two portions of dumplings, a meal at noon and a night, and the old vinegar was soaked in garlic and chili oil and put it into the night. The dense smell filled the room. Someone said, "what's the matter?" Foreign students can eat sandwiches, we can not eat, racial discrimination! "
Eating heavy-smelling food in public is not really pleasing.
All right, but eating fruit sandwiches doesn't give off a pungent smell and doesn't affect people.
The other was a group discussion in class. The Chinese girl in the same class could not understand, in front of the Australian mentor and classmate, suddenly asked me in Chinese: "Hey, what does Amy, mean?"
The teacher looked at us blindly, wondering why he was suddenly thrown out of the conversation, and I was embarrassed myself. The girl is still very unhappy: "so hypocritical as well?" Can't I speak Chinese if they don't understand Chinese? Then I don't understand English. They say the same! " I do not think she can understand that the reason why people speak English is not because the Chinese have to accommodate foreigners, but because it is a multi-ethnic and mixed international school that must communicate in international language when the mother tongue is not available to each other. Class discussion is not a private conversation, she can at least say hello to her mentor before she speaks Chinese.
And a joint lease. I used to rent a three-bedroom villa with two Chinese students, three bedrooms, and other areas. The two students gradually began to break the agreement, avoid cleaning public space, do not litter, litter. Sometimes they tidy up their rooms, but they turn a blind eye to the public areas.
In contrast, one time to a Japanese boy YUJI's home, a holiday home, the flight time is similar, agreed to meet first, and then take a taxi to the airport, share the fare. Entering the door, YUJI knelt down and polished the living room floor, unpacking his suitcase and shoving in a few books. His suitcase was a mess, and he didn't care, because it was his own. And he would have cleaned up the public area before his vacation, just to show respect for others.
Behavior without a sense of border is not to be loved.
It is also important to see if the values, specialties and tastes are the same.
China's sudden explosion, after a long period of deprivation, has had too much impact on the values of the younger generation. Consumerism and hedonism seem particularly evident in young Chinese, overwhelmingly overriding other ideals, aspirations, curiosity and exploration.
I had an elective in the Galapagos archipelago of South America where I studied the local impact of urbanization. And this course is especially favourable to international students, can be waived half the fee. I thought it was a pity that I had already completed my elective course credits. But oddly, few Chinese students are interested in it. A Chinese girl asked, "where is the Galapagos?" I said that's where Darwin studied evolution! Ecuador, South America Very interesting, red crab, iguana. "
This was Darwin's study of evolution.
But the girl apparently had no interest in it: "Ecuador is poor. Why are you going to such a haunted place?" It is said that surfing the Internet is a problem. Besides, I don't have time for holidays. I'm going shopping in New York. "
On the other hand, we studied the effects of various formulations on the strength of cement. Because the day to mix cement, but also under the pond to install cement embankment, most of the students wear overalls and boots. Two Chinese girls, wearing short skirts and high heels, carrying small handbags with palms, came to the studio with heavy makeup on their faces. The two foreign boys in their group looked at each other, and you could read the inner play from their faces: whether the two girls came to work or did it.
Most of the time, the point of communicating with people from different backgrounds is not whether you share the same language, but whether you have the same topic. When you talk to someone about designing, talking about evolution, talking about a book review, participating in a game, you're not communicating as a "Chinese", but as a professional, as a educated person, Communicate as an athlete.
This is a very important part of internationalization, and as everyone communicates at this level, their backgrounds fade away. In other words, you can't have nothing but our nook and cranny. If you can't communicate at the level of knowledge and intelligence, you can only stay at the level of paternalism, then the backgrounds are completely different from each other, and of course there is nothing to say.
But the "foreign people" have every country, different ways do not seek, in fact and nationality race has nothing to do with.
After internationalization, the local culture is very valuable.
Globalization brings a certain degree of homogenization, the light of this layer, is still thin. In fact, in a gradual "convergence" environment, your original culture, the most difficult to internationalize, the most local things, is the most valuable, but also these local elements, make you look particularly interesting. It is a pity that many of our fellow countrymen are moving in the opposite direction.
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After some Chinese immigrants came to Australia and began to become internationalized, they quickly abandoned their own local culture and took a kind of "depressed, I follow Zhou"-style determination, and broke up with their own culture. Can be described as overcorrection, fire into the devil. I know a female classmate, meeting a foreign mentor is the following opening: "We Chinese students do not have imagination, I would like to ask you."
On one occasion, the Australian professor showed a picture of a bad political garden on stage and said with a smile, "Chinese students should know where this is, and has anyone come to introduce us?"
It turned out to be silent. "every time I talk about this chapter in recent years, I ask students here and I find you young people no longer understand these ancient civilizations and the culture of their own country," the professor said disappointingly. "well, if no one wants to introduce it."
When I really couldn't hear it, I stood up and introduced it. When it came to the political aspirations and humility of the literati in the past, the professor was very happy, and the foreign students were very interested in it. After class, they came to me and said they would like to visit it later.
In the past, during the Spring Festival in China, the bus stop was marked with a big Chinese sign: Melbourne to welcome the New year.
My personal experience is that the more familiar and confident you are in your culture, the more valued you are. Such an international group of people may find it beautiful for Chinese women to wear cheongsam, but they do not know that cheongsam originally evolved from the dress of the cheongers who are good at riding shots; May have been to buy silk, but not necessarily understand the silk weaving industry from the end of the Ming Dynasty to the Chinese society.
In Australia, some Chinese girls deliberately imitate the exaggerated accent and pretentious tone of the local people, cater to each other, and fall in love with non-white men, which seems to me to be a waste of effort. And kung fu should be used in the most valuable places, and then believe in their own value.
At the beginning of my graduation job search, someone suggested that I should change my resume to a foreign surname: "so they don't see you as a Chinese, you may have a high success rate." I rebuked it on the spot: "my mother graduated from the school with first-class honors and served as a first-class company in the world. For his interest, she went abroad for a master's degree in a second language and stayed permanently, all of which." Is it not worth a foreign surname? "
In the end, I did a great job of eliminating seven local candidates. The contract was signed in Chinese, and the boss said, "that's cool. I like your signature."
Of course, it doesn't mean you're international and localized. Discrimination and prejudice don't happen. After all, this kind of thing is based on the gloom of human nature. The greatest characteristic of human nature is that it has not changed for thousands of years, otherwise the abolitionist movement would not have been so difficult, nor would the anti-fascist war have been fought for so many years, and there was no need for religion to exist.
A small number of people in Australia are victims of globalization and do not have to care about their prejudices.
I took over a job as an interpreter while I was in school and took a group of Chinese businessmen to visit a farm in Melbourne where they were interested in investing. In the process of translating for both sides, it was learned that several directors of the foreign side had more or less co-operation with the Chinese market, and had also been to China many times. Several of their children are learning Chinese, and some have even eaten hot pot.
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In the middle of the day, an Australian old man with rags and rags on the farm suddenly rushed out and shouted to us, "the Chinese get back! Our offspring can't afford to buy a house when you're here! The Chinese go back! " The driver was embarrassed, explaining that he was a former farm worker who, because of his poor health and gambling's debt, had to sell his old house and live in the farm dorm. In fact, the farm no longer hired him, but out of humanity and the heart to drive him away, let him continue to live.
Some people, he's just looking at you what you don't like, what's wrong with you. Some people call this "unjustifiable prejudice," my feeling is exactly the opposite, there is no love for no reason, there is no hatred for no reason, there must be some reasons.
In my experience, these prejudices are usually victims of globalization, who are short of resources, powerless, and irrational, and are easy to pass on hatred. At the end of last century, the first wave of laid-off in Shanghai came, and many old-fashioned industrial workers lost their jobs and gathered all day long to scold outsiders.
The same is true for Australia. This society, in which the gap between the rich and the poor is small, prices are stable, and the pace is slow, in the process of globalization, in order to maintain the operation, it is also rapidly changing and adjusting, immigrants are pouring in, house prices are rising, and competition is becoming fiercer day by day. Converges with other big cities in the world. The victims of this wave, because of the limitations of their own education and vision, can not understand the big changes in the pattern, so they vent their grievances on the immigrants.
So-called discrimination, in fact, is the upper class against the lower class bias. In the former static world pattern, disdain chain is very simple, developed country despises backward country, power despises civilian. But with globalisation, and with China's power changing, the chain of disdain rules are becoming increasingly subtle and complex.
I think the better way is to understand this chain of contempt rules, so-called "live to understand". At the same time always strive to profit, the so-called "live better." But do not be restricted by its rules, and do not regard what is developed on the basis of human weakness as a golden rule or even a lifelong pursuit, a so-called "live at ease".