The Chinese women in Australia tackling race barriers and helping their community culturally integrate
- For many Chinese people Australia can seem like an unwelcoming place, partly as a result of cultural misunderstanding
- Women like 23-year-olds Emmelyn Wu and Yifan Wang are working to develop cultural exchange opportunities and promote Chinese culture
A friend was delivering a speech at the annual Asian Australian Leadership Summit last month, an event billed as “40 under 40”, to celebrate the success of 40 young Asian-Australians.
The summit reminded me of Eddie Woo, a Chinese-Australian teacher and YouTuber, who won Australia’s Local Hero award last year and was then chosen to address a prestigious Australia Day event held at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Despite his professional success in making maths popular in Australia, Woo’s speech was a moving address on the sadness of race dislocation.
“When I was a kid, what seemed to matter was that I didn’t look Australian,” he said, recalling his schooldays. “This is part of what made the everyday racism that I grew up with so frustrating. It wasn’t the intimidation, the mocking or the loneliness that really bothered me so much, as it was my inability to understand what people wanted, that would satisfy them and make them stop.”
Olivia Huang, a Chinese-Australian in her late 20s, agrees that neither Asians nor women are treated equally in Sydney’s corporate sector. She has lived in the city for more than 20 years and remembers her early trauma.
“When I first arrived in Australia, there were one or two Asian kids in my year,” she says. “I was teased for being an Asian and some kids often made fun of Asians’ slanted eyes. Sometimes I felt angry and isolated, as it was such a big change from China to Australia in terms of English, culture, traditions, people and everything else.”
