Asia.

I was watching South Park today...

(why..? no particular reason...)...

...and it reminded me of an embarassing event that I participated in as a child...

The South Park episode featured a Chinese guy and a Japanese guy fighting...

...after their fight they agreed to give a presentation to school children about how all Asian cultures are different...

...but it ends badly...

...as the Chinese guy states that the Japanese always try to invade other countries and they often commit hara-kari (Japanese ritualistic suicide...?!)...

Anyway... aside from the fact that South Park is seemingly insensitive towards Japanese (and every other nationality...)...

...I think the (indirect?) point about the ignorance towards Asian studies education is pretty clear...

It is important (albeit difficult) to teach school children in Western countries about the differences in Asian cultures...

I still maintain that Australia is in ASIA. 

I know that the continent of Australia is technically viewed as 'Oceania'... but Oceania is such a lame name for a continent...

... and Oceania is also the most lonely continent... Australia barely collaborates with New Zealand...

...(ok, that is not true... Australia and New Zeland are sort of chummy...).

Considering Australia's regional location below Asia, and considering that Australia has been influenced by an influx of so many Asian immigrants and traditional Asian cultures, Australian schools and Universities have tried to develop Asian studies programs to try and develop a more broad understanding of Asian diversity.

The problem is that these kinds of programs were initially formulated by white people in the 80s and 90s...

...which meant that a lot of information and content about Asian cultures was completely off-the-mark... or simply offensive...

For example...

In the 90s, my Australian government-funded school tried to facilitate an event crudely titled;

'ASIAN DAY'.

Keeping in mind that I am from Broken Hill, a remote mining village in Central Australia... this event was poorly constructed...

So here were the instructions for my school's event;

1. 'All Children must dress as an Asian'...

2. 'All Children must bring an Asian food dish'...

and...

3. 'Children with the best costumes can enter the 'Best Asian Competition'...

My Australian school was extremely rural so 97% of students were 'white' (mostly the children or grandchildren of British, Italian, Greek, and Slavic immigrants) and the other 2% were Aboriginal (native) Australians or put in the box labelled as 'unknown or ambiguous parentage'.

The awkward issue (plenty of *awkward*) here was that all of the 11-year-olds in my class (including me) had not yet had the chance to meet an Asian student or have an Asian friend, and none of us had heard of Singapore or Hong Kong or even Bali.  There was perhaps only one Chinese family in our town at that time, and they operated a Chinese restaurant named 'The Oceania'...(which has since been closed down and boarded up...).

My mother was extremely competitive about my school events/projects...so she spent a whole week sourcing and researching the best Asian traditional dresses so that I could enter the 'BEST ASIAN COMPETITION'... (OMG OMG)...

When ASIAN DAY arrived... all of the young students attended school with some kind of strange noodle dish (probably not related to Asia at all...) or some sweet and sour pork...

The students were also wearing the weirdest ninja/geisha/chinese pyjama combinations you have ever ever seen in your life... (*cringe*).

My Mum decided to dress me as an old Chinese man...

(I don't have any pictures since this was in 1996...and well...cameras probably didn't exist in Australia back then...);

I can't recall what my exact costume consisted of...but I recall that it was sort of a mix between these two costumes (omg omg omg...sorry to all my Chinese readers out there...) ;

I can guess that the overall objective of ASIAN DAY was probably to give Australian students some insights into Asian culture...

...but on the whole the theme looked mostly shameful and derogatory... as everyone tried to focus on some kind of Samurai or Chinese noodle vendor image...

The fact that our teachers were seemingly 99% white was also challenging... as they also had no insight into Asian culture either...

My Mother has always been a bit aggressive... so my Asian food dish (cannot recall what it was) as well as my 'Asian' costume were completely OTT... and in the line-up of white faced kids with geisha make-up and ninja masks I was voted as...

 'BEST ASIAN IN CLASS 6'...

I really felt like I deserved this award...as I really thought that I embodied the character of a Chinese man as best as I could (even while never having met a Chinese man in my life...)...

The more unfortunate point was that another girl in my class was one-quarter-Malaysian (I believe so... long time ago now...), and she was wearing legitimate traditional dress from Malaysia, but it wasn't as pimped out and joker-esque as my Chinese man costume so she didn't win the contest...  (I still think I stole the award...)

This whole ASIAN DAY event was not really a great way to authentically promote and discuss REAL Asian people... but rather, it became a day where kids ate noodles and dressed up as mock Sumo wrestlers and put on some kind of awful 'Asian-accent' (?!? whatever that is...South Park seems to mock fake-Asian accents often enough -.-; )

While Australia keeps trying to push the 'Multicultural-country-idea' while encouraging some kind of cultural integration...

...a number of cultural education programs and campaigns come off as being contrived, shameful and ridiculous...(although I am sure there have been some policy improvements since the 90s)...

...I hope that my primary school in Broken Hill has changed its policy and I hope that they don't still celebrate ASIAN DAY by trying to make children dress up as some kind of Asian stereotype or characerture... because that is probably the worst way to develop respect and understanding for other Asian countries...

That said, I still believe I could pass as a Chinese man if given the chance...