“You’re English is really good!”

“Thanks, it’s my only language.”

This was an exchange that happened quite frequently during my childhood in Australia. Back in the 80s and even early 90s, there weren’t many Asian immigrants who came from English-educated backgrounds, at least not where I lived, near the Melbourne CBD. Most of our kind were and still are found in suburbia, where they can occupy large houses. Where I lived there were the commission flats with refugees from war-torn and politically unstable countries. This was the perception of Asians with which I had to live, and from which I had to try to distance myself.

I was brought up to believe that we were better because we had the Queen’s English.

My parents, having migrated from Malaysia, the former ‘tin-and-rubber jewel’ in the Empire’s Crown, thought it would be best for my younger brother and I to speak English at home. It was hoped that that would make things easier for us at school. Instead, we had to battle preconceptions that as Chinese people, we could speak Chinese. There was no concept of the difference of being a Chinese national, and ethnically Chinese. Even today, I struggle to explain that I’m Chinese, but not from China. In the playground I was asked what “ching-chong” meant. I didn’t know. I went home and asked mum. She said it didn’t mean anything. In Grade 2, I was called upon by the head English as a Second Language teacher to act as interpreter for a new student who was Vietnamese Chinese (ethnically Chinese, Vietnamese national). All I could do with him was count. I felt utterly pathetic and useless. Faced with such expectations, there is only one primordial response: shame.

Even more utterly pathetic and useless is my uncanny ability for languages other than Mandarin. I feel so silly sitting in the presence of my mother talking to our relatives ‘back home’ as she tells them how good I am at languages. I have a theory behind my mind’s bizarre resistance to the acquisition of Mandarin. I put it down to childhood trauma, simply because I have no other avenue. If WASPs can learn Mandarin, there really is no reason why I can’t either. Hearing Kevin Rudd speak is like a dagger in the gut.