Vanessa Ellingham considers the lives of her Auckland friends who have Asian heritage.
In an apartment block downtown, you recall what you used to hear in another anonymous beige prefab, just off Symonds Street in central Auckland. You have moved to live further down the hill, but you can still hear the sound. What is that sound, Wendy, what is that sound?

Through the thin walls to the sides, above you, behind your head, the sound of marble on plastic. You can hear the clacking like 50 plastic blocks in the washing machine; up, back, left, right.

North, south, east, west; four winds etched into the mah-jong tiles. I know what that is, that sound. A new game of mah-jong; tiles shuffled around the board by nimble little hands.

Old Chinese game

Wong Wun-Mei. Wendy Mei Wong. Wendy.

Here is your apartment, an old hotel on Anzac Avenue, the street named for those who fought for us, the Kiwis. Almost three years earlier you had flown north, Wun-Mei, to study in Auckland. You flew away from your parents’ home in Wellington on that infamous southerly breeze. It blew you all the way away from your Grandma with her own room in your big house, calling her friends over to play guess what in the room downstairs. Old Chinese game, not something teenagers play much.

In this new city, Asians stick together, you say. In 10 years, Asians will make up one third of Auckland city’s residents*. In Wellington your friends were a mixed bag; in the classroom there was no reason to just pair up with the other Asian girls. Here in Auckland, though, Asians move in packs, much more difficult to penetrate, by either side, you say. In your previous apartment, and in this one now, are Asians, more than any other ethnicity. Chinese on all sides of you, through the walls, making the familiar sounds of that familiar game…

Here, your Auckland apartment is a clutter of old noodle cups and undone dishes. Your bedroom offers a photomontage professing your love for your boyfriend, Tze, and another, collaged into a heart, in admiration of your friends. The room is yours, Wendy. You’ve been lying in bed drawing on the walls, drawing Tze’s face in pencil. When it’s time to move out something from the Japanese shop will scrub that right off. You know where to get it.

Rise now, Wendy, girl among girls, it is time for your chemistry test, and then off to a meeting for your group report. You will nap later, after lunch, and then shower. Bedtimes this week have been 1 or 2am; the last week of semester is hectic. If you had the choice it would be more like 2 or 3am; holidays soon.

Here on the overcrowded table are jars of marmalade you made in class, food product development. Most of your classmates are international Asians, as you say. At assignment time, you teamed up with the only two European girls. Maybe you are more Kiwi-Asian than the others.

You say their English aren’t good; it’s kind of a joke and kind of a mistake. You laugh it off.

You were born here, Wun-Mei. Here in New Zealand, Wellington Hospital. Ever since you were little your parents reassured you, You’re a Kiwi, Wendy.

At primary school you were teased by one boy. The jokes were racist, probably, but you didn’t know that then. You tried not to express your Chinese side around school; you would pretend you couldn’t speak Chinese. Speak Chinese, say something in Chinese, say something.

People are just curious, you tell yourself.

It’s not like I’m the only Asian.

It’s just polite

Here are your pals now. Here is your boyfriend, Tze, from Malaysia, swaggering into the bubble tea restaurant, sports bag slung over one sculpted shoulder, dragging him slightly off kilter. He wants to know, and asks the others, Where are we watching the game tonight, boys?

Momo Tea, Fort Street, sitting behind the menu giggling with your girlfriends. Something to eat, get the chicken. Yeah, get the chicken, and don’t forget the prawn crackers. Drinks arrive, fluorescent concoctions: radioactive green, Barbie shoe pink, slushy ice, floating flowers. Or pearl milk tea, treasures at the bottom, tapioca balls, chewy, sucked up through a wide straw.

How late can we stay here? They’re open real late. They’ll actually stay open until everyone has left. 3am, 4am. It’s just polite.

Here are your friends. Your girlfriends and their boyfriends. Chinese, Malay, Filipino, Korean. You’re Chinese, but who are you, Wendy? What do these people say you are?

Just how Asian?

Raybon Kan’s book says you’re an Asian at my table. Manying Ip’s book says you’re an alien at my table. Professor Ip, Asian studies at the University of Auckland, an advocate for you and yours. She has heard what they say about you, over at the university where she watches over you all.

Rich, spoilt, flash cars, but you can’t drive properly?! Nerds, work too hard, have no life, keep to yourselves. You don’t mix.

Sarah is chatting through her tea about feeling the cold shoulder in her lectures. Ok, I’m not just gonna talk to the Asian girl ‘cause she’s Asian, not even ‘cause she’s Chinese, like me. Maybe they think we don’t want to talk to them; maybe they don’t want to talk to us.

You say it feels good to find someone from the same place, the same state. Keren agrees: It’s a comfort.

How did you all come to be here?

You met Tina at high school, and you moved to Auckland, to the halls of residence, together. Sarah found Tina when the haughty Caucasian girl, sitting alone by herself, refused to speak to either of them. Paired up; well fine.

A mentality, Tina says, of not wanting to take the easy way out. They felt the same; they became friends.

Sarah, a mock voice of another girl, a later revelation: Oh, so you’re cool, not an Asian-Asian. Not like Tina.

How Asian are you, Wendy Mei? Wong Wan-Mei.

Lucky Kiwi girl

Here at the Asian table, (but they’re all Asian tables at Momo Tea; giggles). Here at the table, the boys say that if you go to an Asian girl’s house, the parents are always on you. Don’t shut the door.

Nods all around. When poor Seve went to visit Keren in Wellington he had to stay at her aunty’s house down the road.

You’re lucky there, Kiwi girl. You say your parents have no rules.

Tze came to visit you at home in Wellington. He slept in the spare room, but after the first night you negotiated with Dad. You were raised here, have grown up with these values. You live away from home now; all they can do is trust us.

And a lucky thing, you think. In Malaysia, Tze’s family would expect you to call them Uncle and Aunty. But you call them Mr and Mrs. His mum said that if you were in Malaysia, you would fail. But it’s ok, ‘cause you’re not there.

Playing in the streets

You met at the university gymnasium, dark eyes peeping through light bobbing nets. Your badminton romance.

He often reminisces about his home, Malaysia, where people play badminton in the streets. There aren’t enough courts there for everyone; it’s your sweetheart and he’s telling you stories of a badminton heaven, the combination of which makes your eyes flicker. He’s told you all about it.

You play twice each week, but you used to play more. You recall your own home, Wellington, Hutt Valley, the badminton club with Malaysians inside swiping at the sky until 4am. Key to the club. Play whenever you like. Your home is still there, south.

It’s not late, but bubble tea can be done at any time of day. Seve says one of his Korean friends can call him at 2.30am for a meal, and that’s fine with him. Here in Auckland, if you’re out that late, you’re supposed to be clubbing, says Sarah. Probably everyone thinks we’re at home studying.

You feel lucky

Study: there is pressure, but there is choice. When Tze’s parents were tertiary students in Malaysia, they weren’t allowed to leave the country. No choice. Now they have sent him here to study, he feels the pressure.

Sarah’s parents arrived from a small Chinese village in the 80s, and built themselves up from the ground. She says she wants to do well; that’s all you ask of me. Tina, too – her parents, assigned jobs by the Chinese government, worked the same jobs for 15 years. Got tired, got out.

Here you all study now, but there is choice. You don’t know what to attribute it to, but you feel lucky, you all do. Some study med, law, but you chose food product development, Wendy. A class, you were surprised to find, full of other Asians.

You don’t ask questions in class. It’s not because you’re shy, or can’t speak English, or think you’re smarter. It’s because you don’t want everyone to have your ideas. People need to find out for themselves, you say. You found that out for yourself.

We just get used to it

Your advocate, Professor Ip, says acceptance should not just be promoted, but must be worked at from both sides.

You say, your friends say, you resonate when you all say, right around the table, north south east west: We just get used to it.

Resigned.

The professor, her hope for you is that you will gain an even wider world view, not just a New Zealand view. Mix with all sorts; be tolerant, broad-minded.

Mix naturally, she coaxes. Go for drinks together, chat, include. But who will come for bubble tea, you wonder. You can have ones without the tapioca pearls, if you like. They are pretty chewy, get stuck in your teeth.

Stick together, that’s what we do, you say. Huddled up, reminding each other, the catch-cry: we’re outsiders here.

Outsiders, and yet you continue to grow. Things are changing for you, Wun-Mei, but slowly, organically. A new round of mah-jong.

* Subnational ethnic population projections – Statistic New Zealand, 2008

Vanessa Ellingham is a journalism student at AUT University. This article was first published in Te Waha Nui, the on-line student newspaper.