The New Tang Dynasty Television's (NTDTV) Chinese New Year Spectacular will complete the final leg of its Australian tour in Sydney, March 29–31. Along the way it has rekindled interest in Chinese culture, not only from enthusiastic Westerners, but also Australians of Chinese heritage.
Lurline Born, an Australian, who is three generations removed from her Chinese ancestry saw the Spectacular in Brisbane and said it has started her thinking about Chinese culture.
For years she said people had noticed her Asiatic looks and had asked her about things Chinese, like recipes and Chinese New Year, but she never had any idea of those things.
"It was really strange," she told The Epoch Times. "I had never thought of exploring my cultural roots but just recently I have started to think about it."
Melbourne Property Developer, Richard Wong, said the Spectacular was one of the best cultural shows he had ever seen and was full of pride that it represented his cultural heritage.
"I think it has brought a standard of Asian culture to Melbourne, which we've not seen for many, many years," he said.
"We're very, very proud of tonight, to see how Chinese are able to produce something of such a high standard in Melbourne."
Audiences in Australia have been unanimous in their acknowledgement of the quality of the show. It is not only the beauty and precision of the dancers or the surprising appeal of classical Chinese opera and instrumentals; it is also the presentation of Chinese traditional culture, which for most, has been foreshadowed by Australia's long and integral connection with Chinese people, but little understood.
According to Toylaan Ah Ket, the daughter of prominent Chinese Australian barrister William Ah Ket, who was instrumental in the early 1900's in harmonising local Chinese and Australian relations, the Chinese population in Australia peaked at 40,000 during the gold rush year of 1861. This was approximately "four per cent of Australia's total population" at that time and was the commencement of a subtle but powerful relationship between the two cultures.
Following the gold rush for example, a large number of Chinese returned to China but many others retreated to rural and regional areas and became integral to those communities. Along with the post office, the pub and the Greek café, most Australian towns have always had a Chinese café while in all major metropolitan areas there have always been "Chinatowns".
Integration was slow, however, and there was substantial suspicion on both sides. A joint research project between a number of Australia regional museums and the University of New England has documented artefacts right through the gold rush areas of New South Wales.
Content author for the project, Ms Janis Wilton, noted that many of the pieces have been incorrectly identified and noted that all the naming implied a tendency to romanticise Chinese culture, sometimes with sinister overtones. A pottery bottle for soya sauce, for example, was described as a Ming vase, tobacco and water pipes as opium pipes and a burial box as an opium tin.
While they were understood as integral and important parts of the community, Ms Wilton said they remained outsiders and were not really understood as individuals instead addressed with generic names like "John the Chinaman" or "Chinese Bob".
This unwillingness or inability to understand what it was to be Chinese was further exacerbated by the Chinese migrants themselves who either remained separate in Chinese speaking communities or remained quiet about their Chinese beliefs and practices.
Toylaan Ah Ket spent 20 years researching a book on Chinese in Australia, titled Chinese religious Practice in Sydney and says that despite adaptations to the Australian way of life, many of the rituals of traditional China remain.
Ms Ah Ket documents three stages of adjustment to the "host" culture saying that initially Chinese people went through a stage of complete rejection. Once they had established themselves in the community, however, they went through an "adaptation phase" followed by a "reaction phase" that saw them proactive in the '70s building new Buddhist temples and revitalising old ones.
The establishment of the Thai Monastery in Stanmore in 1975 (used by a variety of Asian nationalities including Chinese); the acquisition and development of the Chinese Buddhist Society and the "Prajna Hall" in Sydney's Dixon Street; and the general revival of temple maintenance and rituals at the Glebe and Alexandria Buddhist temples are all examples of this latter phase.
Ms Ah Ket said: "Chinese gods were still worshipped and Taoist practices still followed amongst the Chinese Australian community. The god Kuan Ti variously understood as guardian of tradition, family loyalty and brotherhood was the Chief God in Australia," as it was seen as, "chief combatant against the evils of hardship and divisiveness which might undermine the solidarity of overseas Chinese in a host country."
Kuan Yin, the thousand armed goddess of mercy and boundless compassion also features strongly, not only in Sydney temples but also households, while a third God, Mi-lo-fo, was particularly common in households and retail stores. Ms Ah Ket said Mi-lo-fo is the Chinese name associated with the Indian Maitreya or Future Buddha who is expected to come to earth in an era when he is most needed. Mi-lo-fo is also interchangeable with P'u-t'ai or the laughing Buddha, she said, who is often depicted with a pot belly, feet firmly on the ground, arms stretching up to heaven and children crawling over his robe.
While many Chinese-Australians have become Christians and some atheists, Ms Ah Ket said they still celebrated Chinese New Year, and followed the Taoist traditions of respecting their elders and honouring their deceased relatives and ancestors.
The Epoch Times is proud to join with New Tang Dynasty TV and Sound of Hope Radio in co-sponsoring NTDTV's Chinese New Year Spectacular ( http://shows.ntdtv.com. )
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