The 2017 John Marsden & Hachette Australia Prize Nonfiction - Angela Chen

Angela Chen’s story From, From? has been awarded The 2017 John Marsden & Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers in the category of nonfiction. Angela was presented with the award at the 2017 Melbourne Writers Festival at a special event, and wins a $500 cash prize, an exclusive book pack from Hachette Australia and acknowledgement of her winning entry in Express Media’s flagship publication Voiceworks, Issue #109. Read Angela’s winning story right here.

From, From?

Angela Chen

“Where are you from?” Alice asked, blinking her big blue eyes at me.“Carnegie,” I blinked back, tucking back a strand of my inky-black hair. At the time,Australia seemed too big a place to even comprehend.“But where are you from, from?”*As we grew older, I learnt to say “China” because it was what new friends werewaiting for when they saw my flat nose and black eyes. China was the only placeoutside of Australia we knew, thanks to the Telstra/Bigpond ad about rabbits, NasiGoreng and The Great Wall. I was lucky; Chantal’s “Sri Lanka” was always met withblank stares. “It used to be called Ceylon,” didn’t help much either.Then came Grade One, when we studied “countries” in school. We had to completea family tree listing the places of our ancestors’ birth. I watched, filled with trepidationand my own brand of childlike veneration, as my classmates unveiled stunninglypolished family trees, retailing glorious descriptions of aunts in America, great-unclesin England and even a great-great-grandfather from Scotland! ... All the while I hadno idea how to write about my own origins.“Doesn’t matter, they’re all from China,” my mother offhandedly responded over acrackling wok of vegetables.“But do we have a great-great-grandfather from Scotland?” I inquired.“No,” Mama said.“What about a great-uncle from England?” I tried.“No.”“Oh.”I frowned.*“Doesn’t matter, they’re all from China,” I parroted flatly the following day to astaggered reception of confused applause. My ancestry of “China-China-China”became something of a year level joke following that.Afterwards, I began interrogating my parents incessantly about China in theunrelenting manner that children do. Australia I knew, but what was this “China”, thismysterious place where everyone seemed to think I belonged? What could they tellme about China? Did they know anyone in China? And was the Great Wall reallybuilt to keep the rabbits out?One day after a particularly unremitting round of verbal investigation, Mama gave inand hunted out a dusty album of cheery, fresh-faced youths who looked vaguely likethe heavy-browed, old (I thought at the time) relics I knew.I studied those sepia pictures of their university, their hometown, places that oncemeant so much to them, but meant nothing to me. I stared at them so hard and forso long, trying to feel something, anything for those black-and-white places. Nothinghappened though, except for the black spots that clouded my vision after an hour ortwo.That was when my parents decided that it was time for me to go to Chinese School.*“What beautiful daughter you have!” the assistant head teacher exclaimed to uswhen we first walked into the dingy portable on the Mount Waverley campus.Mama smiled a little smile. I stared dumbly back at her: “ ... huh?”I had never been called that word - “beautiful” - before. “Beautiful was a wordreserved for Jennifer Hawkins and her fellow long-limbed Aphrodites who graced thecovers of Women’s Weekly, Who and New Idea that lined the Woolies checkout.They were all tall, leggy and blonde: three adjectives I knew were unattainable, andwould never be applicable, to short, black-haired, Asian me.In Chinese School, though, my eyes — formerly merely a “Japanese-y lemonsqueezy”curiosity — all of a sudden sported the coveted “double-fold”. Everyonetowered over me during the week. But on the weekend, I could nearly beconsidered… tall! My thin lips, nothing like Angelina Jolie’s voluptuous pout, weresuddenly two parts of a classical “cherry mouth”.*I learnt from my classes that Chinese history was much, much more than justkeeping the rabbits out. The written language was unlike anything I’d ever seenbefore; each character was a picture, a symbol in and of itself.I became mesmerised by chengyu - precious four-word idioms, with stories to eachand every one. I would pore over them for days, fascinated by the myriad tales: thefrog in the well, the musician and the cow, the artist and the dragon’s eye.The first time I ever uttered a word of Chinese in front of my day-school friends is stillvividly fresh in my mind: “My poster is nice, but it’s a bit hua she tian zu,” I mused.“Huh?” was their reply.And then, to my surprise, “Was that Chinese? Can you say it again?”Blushing madly, I’d briefly muttered that hua she tian zu literally meant “adding a footwhen drawing a snake”, or, in a less figurative sense, ruining something’s effect byadding unnecessary things. When I’d finally gathered up the courage to remake eyecontact, I was captivated by their response - Open mouths? Beaming eyes? Aresounding chorus of, “That’s so cool!”From then on, my chengyu were no longer a secret from friends — they were oursecret to share with the world.*These days, my chengyu friends and I are all at different schools and on differentschedules, but we always make time for “Australian” food. Chinese, Korean, Thai,Indian, Italian, Greek… we must have eaten the whole of Melbourne city between us.Amidst the many spicy tears and steaming tongues, something deeper than a bowlof Vietnamese pho runs between us.Indeed, our streets are a conglomerate of international culture. Accepting. Sharing.Embracing. People who might have once pronounced my mother’s name “zoo” nowpronounce it the Chinese way, “shoe”. While there is no doubt that indeed, I havechanged, I still wonder who has changed more — me, or our world?*My beaten, battered copy of “First Chinese Chengyu Stories” still sits by my bed tothis day. It’s terribly tattered and way too easy to read, but it reminds me ofsomething I had never felt so surely before: that once intangible theory of where I’mfrom and where I am.So where am I from, you ask?“Carnegie …… near Caulfield.”