Chinatown... A Jewel of Adelaide That Almost Wasn't

Adelaide has a reasonable asian community, although this is the most un-asian city of all of Australia, with only about 6-7% of the population identifying themselves as asian in the 2006 census. Approximately, 60,000 people identified their parents from coming from an asian country. As such, it's doubly important that Adelaide have a focal centre for asian culture, and Chinatown and the annual OzAsia Festival are two important parts of that.

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There are two entrances, straddling Moonta Street, and Chinatown covers a couple of blocks of asian grocery shops, restaurants/food courts, and assorted businesses with an asian feel. Gouger Street, apart form having a number of great restaurants, also has a good number of Chinese/Asian restaurants (we might review a few later on).

Actually, the fact that there are any chinatown's in Australia should not be taken for granted. In the Restriction to Immigration Act of 1901, known colloquially as the White Australia Policy, limited the ability of migrants to work in Australia, and indeed for non-white people to immigrate to Australia. Actually to be fair, it wasn't a White Australia Policy - but rather a European Australia Policy... which stated that a prohibited immigrant included... 

(a) "Any person who when asked to do so by an officer fails to write out at dictation and sign in the presence of the officer a passage of fifty words in length in an European language directed by the officer"

That's not to say that non-Europeans were the only ones to be forbidden immigrant status. The 1901 Bill also excluded:

(b) "any person likely...to become a charge upon the public or upon any

public or charitable institution"

(c) "any idiot or insane person"

(d) "any person suffering from an infectious or contagious disease of a loathsome or dangerous character"

(e) "any person who has within three years been convicted of an offence"

(f) "any prostitute or person living on the prostitution of others" 

(g) "any persons under a contract or agreement to perform manual labour within the Commonwealth", where this exempted Pacific Islanders amongst a select set of people.

The reality is that the immigration officer could ask the prospective immigrant to dictate in any of the European languages, almost guaranteeing the ability to exclude unwanted immigrants (non-Europeans) from entering Australia.

Thankfully, the dictation test was removed - but it took until 1958 to do so!... and another 16 years before the White Australia Policy was gone for good.

So, apparently we weren't racist, just linguistically biased (as well as discriminating against the lowly, the idiots, diseased (or loathsome?), prostitutes or any manual labourers! Actually the first Chinese labourers came to Adelaide from Singapore in the 1840's, however, immigration of Chinese into South Australia was often a way of avoiding the immigration restrictions into the Victorian goldfields.

The Chinatown that we now know didn't really evolve until the 1970's and 80's, with the steady influx of Vietnamese migrants and refugees, escaping the war in Vietnam. The central element of Chinatown is Moonta Street, perhaps most recognizable for the two Paifang (Chinese-style archways) on both the southern and northern sides, which were donated by the Adelaide Council and Chinese government.

And of course, it wouldn't be a Chinatown without some Chinese Lion guardians...

And of course, there's other sorts to be found in Chinatown... and we bumped into S-kun at one of the shops... did I mention that they were offering free face-painting to children? Unfortunately, L-kun doesn't like face-painting... so he got an owl painted on his hand. Year of the Tiger was last year, this is Year of the Rabbit... but rabbits don't make for such impressive face-painting.

S-kun gets read to roar

Since then, there's been a slow growth of Asian migration into Adelaide, and a burgeoning of asian shops within the city, which generally cover both asian (and non-asian) vegetables, but particularly asian ingredients from all over. Nowadays, we can get a large number of ingredients from asia - including from Japan.

Actually, Chinatown sits at the western end of the Central Market (previous post). There is only one specific Japanese grocery store, known as Little Tokyo, which sits on the eastern side of Central Market (next to the Hilton Hotel). This is a small, but nice, shop that has a good range of Japanese ingredients.

 If you're Japanese, you might find it hard to pay the mark-up from Japanese prices, but that's the realities of a small Japanese community in Adelaide. You can also find a fair few of these ingredients in the Chinese supermarkets in Chinatown, so shopping around is also recommended. Little Tokyo also has a range of cooking utensils and dishes, plus a small range of other household and arts/crats goods.

On a related area, one of the breadshops that we definitely recommend is Breadtop, which is on Grote Street, next to Chinatown. There's lots of asian, including Japanese-style, breads and pastry's here, and they're relatively cheap too. They also do cakes, but we've not purchased any from here.

My favourite, melon pan, can also be purchased here... I was introduced to melon pan (a rockmelon flavoured bread) back in my first trip to Japan in 2003, and have been a devoted fan ever since. In case you didn't know, they're the two from the left on the bottom shelf (the cream-coloured ones are the ones I'm familiar with in Japan). They light, yummy, and very convenient when you're grabbing a bite to eat from a combini (convenience store) in Japan. Still, in Japan, there's soooo many yummy and convenient foods available.

I definitely recommend checking out both Little Tokyo and BreadTop... and next time your in and around Chinatown, it's good to reflect that Australia up until relatively recently had very strict immigration aimed almost entirely to prevent the sort of multi-culturalism that we enjoy, and indeed cherish today. It's only through such reflection that we can ensure that these sorts of things don't happen again.

My Darling is a Foreigner - A Review

 
ダーリンは外国人  = daarin wa gaikokujin = My Darling is a Foreigner. A book and movie review.

Well, this is a very short post that most probably doesn't do any justice to the manga or the movie (though more so the manga).  Note: the English version was renamed Is He Turning Japanese? The manga is the product of Oguri Saori and the first volume dates from around 2002. It is an autobiographical and humourous account of Saori's (the manga artist) life with Tony László (the foreigner). It was originally marketed at a purely Japanese market however became very popular amongst ordinary Japanese.

The good thing is that the manga doesn't take itself all that seriously, and it has a quiet charm that for me attracted me by the fact that it wasn't trying too hard. T-chan absolutely adored the first manga book (though less so the later volumes) and thinks it sugoi omoshiroii (really interesting/funny). I had to wait till the bilingual version came out (last year) to really enjoy the book... but for me it was amusing, but not quite SUGOI! Oguri definitely has a nice simple narrative and charming way of describing her sometimes stretched relationship with Tony. Whilst the framing is always "relationship with a foreigner", the books also cover interesting insights into the Japanese language and psyche as well.

My thoughts on the movie are less generous however. The movie was also released last year - and whilst it is broadly based on the manga series, there have been some significant changes. The most important thing however is that the ever-present aspect of Tony's gainjiness (gaijin is the colloquial form of gaigokujin = foreigner) becomes a footnote to what is otherwise a fairly "normal" relationship. The movie perhaps tries too hard to be a romantic drama - which is quite different from the manga. And it doesn't really succeed... Now I have to admit however that I'm not the demographic the movie is after... even though we have a mixed marriage, we live outside Japan and therefore have quite different experiences. It also turns towards the absurd when Oguri's character (played by Mao Inoue) chases after Tony to the USA - but you'll have to make your own mind up about that.

Overall, the movie however seems to me to gloss over many of the episodes that made the manga interesting...  and paints a very strange image of Tony (played by relative unknown, and wooden, Jonathan Sherr). We see someone who is comfortably living and communicating in Japan, yet is simultaneously reduced to near stupidity, lacking common-sense of anyone who has had any involvement in Japan. I can only assume this is for artistic purposes only...

T-chan also thought the movie was no where near as interesting as the manga. Zannen. I wonder how successful this was in Japan? IMDB gave it 6.6/10... but I think i'd give it 2.5 out of 5 stars. T-chan gave it 2 out of 5 stars (because she had such high expectations). My suggestion - read the manga and give the movie a miss unless you can pick it up cheap at the rental store (or online).

For a very interesting discussion on the manga and the very tense relationship between Tony László and another infamous foreigner in Japan, David Aldwinkle (who has been naturalised to Debito Arudou ) read this article. The story between these two men seems much more interesting, and yet features no where in the movie... I think this other story says a lot more about foreigners and Japan. By the way, Arudou is based out of Sapporo... T-chan's home.

By the way - watch out for a cameo from the real Tony in wedding scene.

Racism in the Supermarket... It's Still Ignorance Wherever You Find It

Well - I was going to post a fairly light piece on cultural differences this evening, however there's been a slight change of plans. I will instead recount a short - but poignant - story from this evening. Tonight, our family walked down to the local supermarket in our neighbourhood... principally as I had promised L-kun last night that I'd buy him some strawberries (ichigo) to go with ice-cream, and I don't like breaking promises. Even small ones.

Well - it turns out we had to make some compromises on the shopping list, but just as we were waiting at the checkout, a male (about 30-35 years old and fairly average looking) accompanied with his younger female partner walked past us casually. As they reached level with us, the man said (somewhat loudly), "...another f#####g mail-order bride". Insinuating, I suppose, that any white male with an asian woman must have purchased her off ebay... It didn't matter to him that T-chan had lived here for the last 8 years, or indeed had come to Australia to study nearly 17 years ago. It didn't even matter that she has struggled through those years with homesickness and worry about her parents whom were still far away in Japan. It didn't matter who I was, or how we had met (or even where). All that mattered to that man was that there was a white man and an asian woman. Apparently that was all the information he needed to come to his earth-shattering insight that he felt he just had to share with the world.

The truth is, I couldn't believe my ears... I still can't. He clearly wanted us to hear it. Yet he had not broken stride at all as they continued to walk down the shopping isle. After a moment of being stunned into silence, I almost growled "Excuse me!...."... but he continued to walk away, a dismissive hand in the air - as if to say that he'd wasted enough of his breath on us.

I am not exactly what you'd call an Alpha Male, but as T-chan can attest to, I can be quite stubborn when it comes to things on principle. And the principle of insulting not only my wife, my son, myself, and all other inter-racial couples out there was one that had me seeing red. The choice of going down and confronting him, whilst appealing to my sense of justice, was not something I would like to do with my child watching. L-kun deserves the innocence of not knowing such bigotry exists. He will have that lesson later on, when perhaps he is old enough to understand that it's root cause is ignorance - and ultimately that's also the fault of our society.

I know that racism is alive and well in Australia, as it is in most (if not all) parts of the world. And yet, for all the 30-40 years of planned multi-culturalism in Australia, I am continually amazed at how little distance we've apparently come. Of course - this is not a normal thing to happen to us, but it doesn't need to be common for it to have a devastating impact on us. It is obviously not good to have someone insult you in a supermarket (of all places)... in front of your family. That's not to say that everyone should be the same - or heaven forbid, share my views.

I guess, I've been happily content to post about our good-times as a half Aussie - half Japanese family here in Adelaide, Australia. The truth is, it isn't all beer and skittles, as the saying goes. And the more disturbing part was (as T-chan told me later on); if it wasn't for me there, she wouldn't have necessarily known that they were insulting us. How often does the background racism go unnoticed by those that we love but can't defend all of the time? What should we - or even can we - do about it?

It is difficult for me, as a man and a husband, to hear my wife insulted. And it is even more difficult for us both to keep our hearts unclouded when we think of the future of our son. In the immediate moment, I can but write out my frustration. In the longer term, we can only hope that the future will continue to show a society growing more tolerant of diversity... and failing that, then at least for those that can't tolerate that diversity to at least shut their cake-holes.

Right now however, I'm not a proud Adelaidean. I'm not even a proud Australian. What a shame... all this over one ignorant man. And that's about all I wanted to say about that right now.