A person who can’t put down roots in Australia
Every migrant who comes to Australia, no matter what the reason for their arrival, will go through a number of stages of change to establish a new life in Australia. No one comes to Australia with a clear idea of what their future will be like. With each person’s age, experience, abilities, opportunities and life choices, each migrant will decide how they want to live in Australia, and this is a personal free choice. But I believe that at different stages of our lives, we will continue to reflect on whether the life we have chosen suits us, or whether we have integrated with the community.
More than a decade ago, I interviewed a business leader from Shandong, China, who claimed to be the founder of a Fortune 500 company. He proudly told me that Shandong Province had a population of 96 million, four times that of Australia. He thought that if only 100 people like him came to Australia, they could buy the whole country, so he thought he would take no time to get to know or integrate into a society that would change with the ideas of these new immigrants from China. 5 years later, I found out that my friend had left Australia and gone back to China.
This friend is a rich man in China, I believe he is powerful and influential. In China, he may be a privileged member of the upper echelons of society who can influence the leaders who govern China. Or his business affects the lives of many people and the government has to listen to him. But when you come to Australia, it is the Australian laws, social rules, the government’s governance, and the consensus reached by different sectors of society that determines how the society works. For this friend, in such a society, no matter how big the house is, how good the environment is, how successful the children’s education is, how high class the life is, etc., it does not make him decide to plant his roots in Australia. The basic conditions for his previous success did not exist in Australia.
He didn’t understand why he couldn’t renovate the house he had paid for as he wished; or why he had to apply for permission to cut down some trees on the homestead he had bought; or why he couldn’t just pump up the water from the river on the homestead for his business. To him, all the laws in Australia did not serve him, and they were not as simple and easy as they were in China. So he decided not to take root here, and since investing his money in this country did not give him a very high return, he finally went back to China and disassociated himself from Australia.
Dear readers, do you think you are one of those people who can’t put down roots in Australia?
Acceptance of diversity is the starting point
Most of the Chinese who came to Australia more than 160 years ago to seek gold were Cantonese from southern China, as many European merchants had come to China to do business and had been accommodated in Macau since the time of the Kangxi Emperor. With the opening of Hong Kong, these merchants could only stay on the British-administered island, occasionally travelling to Guangzhou and some other cities along the coast to engage in trade. The people in the vicinity of Guangdong occasionally had a broader view of the world, and when they heard about the gold mines in Australia, many of them flocked to Australia.
These Chinese who came to Australia did not intend to stay in the country for a long time. They hoped that they could find gold and become rich and return home to marry and have children. Yes, some of them did, and many towns and villages in Guangdong were built this way. But many of them died at sea or were buried in Australia for various reasons and were unable to return to China. Today, these people can find their graves in the cemeteries in the rural areas of Victoria. One year during the Qing Ming Festival, I followed the Chinese community to pay homage to these pioneers who came to Australia to live in Melbourne’s city centre, and they are still remembered today. Some of them may not have been able to find gold, but they started their families here with Australians, stayed in Australia, or lost their Chinese identity and became true Australians.
One year, I was travelling around Lake Entrance and visited a winery. The owner was a Westerner, but there was a picture of his great-grandfather, a Chinese, on display in his home. He knew I was from Hong Kong and proudly stated that he was one-eighth Chinese, but I could not see any Chinese culture in him. I wondered at that time if his great-grandfather, who really had his roots planted here, would his situation be the same as that of my fourth-generation descendants.
At that time, I thought, if my fourth generation grandchildren can live in Australia as happily as this winery owner, even if they do not have any connection with the Chinese culture, or do not know Chinese at all, wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing? Because his great-grandfather did transplant the roots of his culture from China, where he was born, here, and his descendants have become nationals of Australia, a young country. The owner still has a photo of his great-grandfather and knows where his ancestors started. He told me that his grandfathers and fathers came from other countries. I felt that this is the characteristic of Australia’s multiculturalism.
Through multi-generational marriages, most Australians have been able to absorb the best of different cultures and become part of the Australian society today, which is rarely seen in Chinese history.
The Progress of World Civilisation
Chinese culture originated from a very early stage. The Xia and Shang dynasties represented different tribal cultures, and the change of dynasties indicated the rise and fall of different ethnic groups. Similar to the rise of other peoples or empires in the world, when a people was conquered, most of the adult men were killed, and the rest of the weak ones, such as women, the elderly and children, were migrated away from the local area and assimilated into the local people, gradually losing their own cultures, customs and habits.
In the Zhou Dynasty, the Zhou culture allowed different tribes to co-exist. After the Zhou Dynasty weakened and entered the Spring and Autumn Period, different cultures co-existed and absorbed each other, which was the most open time in Chinese history. Confucianism emerged as the dominant culture that guided the way people dealt with each other in the society, while Legalism became the philosophy of the rulers to control the people, and Taoism gave everyone a great deal of freedom to live their lives. From the Qin Dynasty onwards, the written word was unified, and by burning books and burying scholars, the rulers were able to control the minds of the people. It is this combination of cultures that formed the special state of China’s great unity for 3,000 years. No matter how the dynasties changed, the new rulers, after overthrowing the previous rulers, controlled the country with this culture. Even if there were invasions of foreign races, they were soon integrated into the country by accepting the Chinese culture, and this is how the cultural pride of today’s Chinese people was constructed.
In fact, European culture had a similar situation, from the Greek Empire to the Roman Empire, there were different ideas co-existing in the society. However, after the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Islamic culture, Europe entered a thousand years of dark age, where people were separated from each other, cities from each other and countries from each other. Religion dominated people’s lives, and people’s thoughts were suppressed. It was not until the Renaissance and the resumption of cultural exchanges between people that Western civilisation flourished, and the establishment of a modern civilised society began.
The development of Australian society was also influenced by these factors. From the time the British settled in Australia, the Australian social system was established. In this resource-rich land, we have developed democracy, freedom, fairness, the rule of law and other Australian values that people living here are proud of. When you and I apply to migrate to Australia, the Australian government requires us to recognise and accept these values. The friend I contacted at the beginning of this article was unable to recognise these values and felt that this society was bad because he could not exercise the privileges he had in China, which made him live in a higher class than others. These are some of the people who are not suitable to migrate to Australia today.
Contributing to the strengths of our culture
Chinese immigrants to Australia today, unlike those who came more than 160 years ago and returned to their homeland simply to find wealth, are actually willing to make their homes here. It’s also a sign that we are determined to establish our roots in this land. Whether you are an overseas Chinese from a Southeast Asian country, a new generation of people from China who grew up under communist rule, a group of people who have lived through the difficult times in China and whose lives have been greatly improved by the reforms and openness of China, an elite group of people who emigrated to Hong Kong prior to the handover, or a new generation of Hong Kongers who have felt in recent years that Hong Kong people have been denied the freedoms of democracy and who feel that they need to be “exiled from their homeland”, the community of Australia has welcomed us here, as it has done for the last 200 years or so. As in the past 200 years or so, the Australian community has welcomed us to re-establish our home here.
In this country, multiculturalism is respected, which means that we will be treated fairly, our culture will be accepted, and our next generation will have the same opportunities. We are also asked to accept others of different cultures, to give them the same respect, and to give their children the same opportunities.
All of this may not have occurred to you. It doesn’t matter, as long as you feel welcome and accepted here, and you are willing to transplant your roots here, this is your new beginning.
In this case, it is worth thinking about how we can transplant to this country the cultural values that we find so beautiful in our place of origin. This is an important thing for us to think about, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you in my next column.
Mr. Raymond Chow