The Year the Dragon Came

China-born writer Sang Ye's The Year the Dragon Came is a book of oral history. It contains manuscripts of Sang's interviews with sixteen recent Chinese arrivals in Australia, who "speak frankly about their lives in two countries, about their dreams, struggles and hopes". The book was originally written in Chinese and translated into English by six Australian professionals, including Geremie Barme and Linda Jaivin, who are known for their critical perspectives on China's authoritarian politics.

Large groups of Chinese migrants began arriving in Australia in the late 1980s, to work and to find ways of settling in this country permanently. Since the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, these migrants and those who arrived after the event have become more determined to remain in Australia. Many of these Chinese migrants are intellectuals such as university graduates, musicians, writers, artists, journalists and actors, who had professional careers in China. There are also many lesser-educated people who came on the pretext that they were studying short-term English courses.

When these Chinese migrants realized that life in Australia is not as easy as they had imagined and that their qualifications were not easily accepted, they became frustrated and bitter. One of these migrants, whose story is collected in The Year the Dragon Came, expresses his sense of loss in Australia:

"In general, you could say that I haven't had much fun in Australia. It's not much of a life. Often, when I drink too much I feel like crying. I was a real man in China. Now, I'm just a fucking wimp. Who the hell am I? I don't even know who the fuck I am. That's the way it is. It's really fucked up. I am so bloody unhappy. Who am I? What am I doing here? What have I come here to do? These bloody questions are always popping into my head. It's such a fucked-up feeling."

Another Chinese migrant lashes out on Australia and its people for his own misfortunes and broken dreams:

"My landlord is an old man who's seen a lot of the world. He thinks of Asia as a filthy place, contaminated both spiritually and materially. I agree. He also thinks Africa's a mess and Europe is too old, and he's right there too. But I don't agree with him when he says 'Australia's the best'. That's bullshit. In the eyes of the Chinese, you're a second or third-rate country. It's just that you've opened your doors a bit wider than the rest and we've all crowded in. The first-rate countries are America, then France and West Germany; in the second tier are Northern Europe and Japan and only then Canada and Australia. Canada's a bit better than Australia because it's closer to America. To put it more bluntly, Australia's become a refuge for drifters, a dumping ground for the world's garbage."

The Year the Dragon Came was written with a view to its being translated and published for an English-speaking readership. Because of this, the emphasis of the book is to enable mainstream Australian readers to better understand the thoughts and feelings of newly arrived Chinese migrants.

However, the interviews collected in this book are extremely confronting, for both Australian and Chinese readers, as neither group had expected that the various differences between the two societies could be represented in such a disturbing way. "Nearly all of the interviewees have referred to Australians as 'devils' (guizi) or 'foreign devils' (yang guizi) or the slightly more polite 'foreigners' (laowai or waiguoren), apparently oblivious to the fact that in Australia, it's they who are the foreigners," Sang reports in the Preface of the book.

If what Sang claims is true, that "China is a country with a strong xenophobic, isolationist tradition; a place where deeply racist sentiments are not uncommon", then Chinese readers would undoubtedly prefer to "keep the family's ugliness from people on the outside". Meanwhile, Australian readers would be stunned and even angered by the comments made by these Chinese migrants who obviously do not appreciate their being accepted by Australia and its people as temporary or permanent residents.

Sang has been criticized for selecting the most negative interviews for The Year the Dragon Came. It appears that with this book, Sang has set his agenda deliberately -- he intends to "shake up those [Australians] whose ideas of multiculturalism have more to do with colorful 'ethnic' customs and foreign soap operas on SBS [Australia's Special Broadcasting Service] than with the harder issues of ethical and cultural clashes between the dominant and immigrant communities". It would be fair to suggest that Sang has succeeded in this regard.

Sang Ye's The Year the Dragon Came was published by University of Queensland Press in 1996.

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Copyright: Christine Sun, Taiwan.com.au Portal, 2005. All rights are reserved.