Bevan – Auckland / Hong Kong
“New Zealand is my home. I’m a migrant. I came from somewhere else, but this is my home now.
I do give people a lot of solutions about different things that come up in their life. Well basically being there, listening to them. Sometimes that’s probably all they need. I don’t think you need to do a lot.
Sometimes we think that we need to tell people how much we appreciate them, but sometimes someone might just actually need you to just listen to them, or just be there for them when they needed to, and often that’s all they actually needed. The last thing I did; a friend of mine, she talked about her issues, family issues with me, just the other day, and so I let her talk, and then I gave her solutions and told her how she can deal with it next time it came up. I think she, I think she took it on. That’s, that’s how I, yeah how I demonstrated how I care about them.
I came from Hong Kong when I was 15 years old, and have been living here for most of my life now. I came to New Zealand in 1996 just before Hong Kong was handed over to China, yeah this is my home, and I’ve been working in the community sector for a while, a lot of time working with migrants and refugees, and now more of a community market. I’ve been working for the Council dealing with community markets for about four, five years now. The whole aim of running these markets is to actually provide a place for the community to hang out, socialise as well, building community empowerment and capacity as well, and of course, you know, in some way also providing an opportunity for new business ideas, or just basically allowing them to provide for their family.
I used to be a member of the Ethnic Advisory Panel for the Auckland Council, and people do know about what I do, and I’m quite outspoken. So people do come to me and start writing very interesting and white supremacy stuff that I’ve never seen before. I think most New Zealanders are not racist. They may be ignorant of some cultural issues but most of them are not racist. I think with the rise of social media and things, you get people who can be more of a keyboard warrior and start writing things that they would never say in front of you. I think then of course, actually in a very strange way in New Zealand, I think with the rise of things like Trump, in New Zealand we seem to have a more of an acknowledgement of the racism that takes place here. We see more people talking about it racism in New Zealand, and migration and the impact.
I don’t really have to talk about it now, because everyone started jumping in and saying this is wrong – I mean we get the usual things like, oh you speak very good English or, where did you come from. We make those assumptions about different people, too. I, I feel like we seem to have changed quite a bit now, with Trump being the President.
I’m one of those people who were called 1.5 generation; I came here as a child, so I have got cultural background from my home country, but also I’m kind of a Kiwi, so I don’t quite fit into either of the community. People make assumption of who you are and what I tell people is that it’s best to just be who they are, and be comfortable with who they are, irrespective of what cultural background they’re from, because I don’t think you can be one or the other.
It’s more like a spectrum and, and so you can’t go, oh I’m Chinese therefore I must be this and even within the Chinese community we’re quite different. So it’s about being comfortable with who you are, what you want to do. I do sort of have conversations with people about culture and racism. A lot of the time as I said, it’s just ignorance. They don’t even know about them. So you can be educating them about your background; what is it that you do, and hopefully they, they are interested to learn more about different cultures.
My hair, oh my hair. It’s green. I had different hair colour for a while, and I had pink, blue, purple, all sorts of different colours, and just recently I have decided to go from teal to green. It’s just something that is different and something to play with. It makes me happy. I used to have different haircuts all the time, but it’s a bit hard because you’ve got to wait for it to grow, and then you’ve got to put your hair, so I thought I will just do some different hair colours, and once I’ve started with a little bit, then you just kind of get addicted and you start putting more and more on your hair, and yeah I’ve like had different hair colours for quite a few years. This is kind of one of the colours I haven’t quite done before, so yeah I’m quite enjoying it.
The Wesley Market has been running here in Mt Roskill for about 23 years now. It started with a community group basically providing fresh produce to the community. A lot of them are on benefits, and so we’re hoping that they will spend all that money on something good for their family. I’ve been doing this role for about a year and a half and we’re trying to make this more of a community market. So we’re bringing more community groups here – a lot of the people that come are regulars who just want to hang out and have a chat with neighbours and things.
Some involving of the neighbours as well, so that they feel like, this is actually their market. We also have got a lot community gardeners who really just come here and hang out and maybe play a bit of chess and, and things like that. So we want this market to be more about the community and what they want, and also community ownership. We want them to tell us what it is that they want from this market as well.
I think, you know when we go back to that question about racism; sometimes we just make assumptions about people, which is actually human instinct. So we make assumptions about people based on how they look, or how they come across, but I think we need to acknowledge it. Then we can try and find a way to actually have those conversations with those people, actually get to learn about them, who they are. Even if we have different ideas about things, or we share different views, there are a lot of commonality between us that I’m sure we can still get along. So you know, get to know your people, get to know your neighbours, get to know strangers um, and um meet some new friends.
I sometimes feel like I’m unfairly judged because of what I’ve done or how I look, and people make assumptions about, even with my green hair; they probably think that I’m someone who is really out there and crazy, but then when, when people get to know me then they realise it’s a different person altogether.
On a day to day basis, people don’t really make very rude comments to you, but I have had white supremacy people who come and write things about how they’re more superior, that we don’t belong here, or that we sound funny or we do crime, or basically being labelled as people who are here to take advantage of New Zealand, not contributing and, and how they are much, much more, superior than coloured people. So, I have got a few of that.
If you talk to them about facts and history and things like that, they just sort of back down. They attack how you look, how you talk, who you associate with. Or your family sometimes. Say things about your family that’s not worth it – I have quite a few of those.
I’m not too offended by the personal one anymore. I am more offended by the ones that are about my family and things because I can’t see why they should be pulled into this. It’s the same thing of how they just don’t really look at you and talk to you about who you are, but they just see this is how you are. We’re born the way we are, so I can’t change how I look. I can’t change the fact that I’m Chinese. They are not being able to see through it.
It’s learning that people who do that are actually doing it to make themself feel better. So sometimes they wanted to do what they do because they feel like, it makes them feel superior, and makes them feel like they’ve got a value in the society. So actually not giving any air to them is actually easiest way to deal with it. I know it’s kind of hard but if someone is attacking you just don’t respond. My philosophy is that if you don’t fight back, they’ve got no-one to fight with, and then they just have to move along.”