China diaspora: Master of the hardest contest: English
Kung fu master Alice Bei Dong took a leap of faith on love when she left China behind for Australia in 1992.
Kung fu master Alice Bei Dong took a leap of faith on love when she left China behind for Australia in 1992.
Following her heart and Chinese-born husband to Australia, Bei Dong says she knew nothing about her adopted country. Was there television? Refrigerators?
She spent the first year locked up at home watching SBS on TV, trying to get a crash course in English so she could fulfil her dream of opening a Chinese martial arts school.
Bei Dong is the founder of the Wushu Association in Sydney, one of the oldest tai chi and wushu schools in Australia. She is highly awarded by the Wushu Association in China and has trained national and international champions in a broad range of Chinese martial arts.
Her story mirrors that of many of Australia’s migrants. Bei Dong came to Australia so that her husband could reunite with his family. He was the last to make the journey, with his parents, brothers and sisters already here.
Bei Dong battled to learn English and to make her own way. “When you come to Australia for China you already disconnect from China,” she says.
“I came to Australia to start a new life. The most difficult thing is the language.
“When my first child was born my (Chinese-speaking) mother-in-law said, ‘You will learn English from your children.’
“At the time I thought that would take too long, but it was true. As my first child went to preschool and started to learn English words, I did as well,” she says.
Today, Bei Dong’s son is 27 and her daughter is 23.
“They were educated here and consider themselves to be Aussies,” Bei Dong says.
Both children have travelled to China “to visit relatives and see the good and the bad”. “It is life experience,” she says.
Bei Dong still travels to China for competitions but is now firmly rooted in Australia.
She says tai chi and wushu are “China’s gift to the world”.
The Weekend Australian met Bei Dong as part of a series of articles, supported by the Judith Neilson Institute, on the region’s Chinese diaspora.
The investigation has found a community that retains strong heritage links with China but has a mixed and sometimes difficult relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.
Australia’s Chinese community is a diverse mix that includes families that have been in Australia for generations, dissidents enjoying sanctuary from persecution and a new wave of migrants from the mainland who have benefited most from China’s new era of economic prosperity.
Forty-one per cent of members of Australia’s Chinese diaspora have come directly from mainland China and 29 per cent were born in Australia.
Others have come via a range of Asian countries including Malaysia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan and Indonesia.
According to the 2016 census, half of all Chinese migrants from the mainland have arrived in the past eight years.
Chinese migrants are on average younger than the rest of the population, reflecting a high number of students.
Melbourne has the highest number of mainland Chinese migrants, with 86 per cent of the city’s arrivals from China coming to Australia since 2007.
The southern Sydney suburb of Hurstville is next, with 51 per cent being recent arrivals.
Many diaspora members say the ability to speak English is a key to embracing life in Australia. Language and culture are skills that Tony Tang, who organises multicultural events in Eastwood, in Sydney’s northwest, is trying to encourage among new arrivals from China.
He coaches foreign students at the nearby Macquarie University to immerse themselves in the local culture.
“Foreign students have to learn a bit of the Aussie culture and not speak Mandarin all among themselves in one group,” Tang says. “We have a long way to go.”
