As they prepare to celebrate the Year of the Rooster, Rosita Boland asks members of the Chinese community about their lives in Ireland
The Year of the Rooster
The Chinese new year begins on February 9th. The word for "rooster" has the same pronunciation as "luck" in the Chinese language and is the 10th in a 12-year rotation on the Chinese lunar calendar that begins with rat and ends with pig.
Festival Fever
The Dublin Chinatown Festival runs from February 9th to 13th at the National Museum, Collins Barracks. Among the events will be a crafts and clothes market; a food market will feature Beijing and north-eastern Chinese food. There will also be dragon dancing, the Red Poppy Precussion group from Beijing, a lion dance, craft workshops for children, and talks on Chinese culture. www.chinatown.ie
The takeaway delivery driver
'Five times the windows were broken'
Every night when Li Dan (24) goes out to work as a delivery driver for an inner-city Dublin Chinese takeaway, three or four of her friends come with her in the car. They're not there because they'll be getting paid. Or because they like spending their nights sitting in a car, driving round Dublin. They come with Dan, on nights they're not working, to offer her company - and protection.
"Five times the windows were broken when I was in the car on a delivery," she says. The last time was a fortnight ago. When attempting to deliver a takeaway to an inner-city flats complex, the passenger window was smashed with a golf ball. The golf ball hit Dan on the back of the neck and the glass shattered all over her terrified friends. "My neck still hurts," she admits. "I was angry, angry."
The owner of the take-away warned her that if anything happened to the car on the job, she would have to pay for the damage. The last window cost €60 to replace. "It's always teenagers, usually boys." She's also had money and takeaways stolen.
Dan is from Shen Yang, in the north-east of China, and has been in Dublin for five years. She came here to study English in a central Dublin language school. In 2000, the fee of €8,000 was for the airfare from Beijing, 24 weeks' tuition and one month's accommodation. "It was a lot of money, and the classes were not so good. I didn't learn much there, because everyone was speaking Chinese."
After tuition, Dan worked in the kitchens in Fadó at the Mansion House and then in Kelly and Ping, at Smithfield. The hours wore her out eventually. She took some more English classes after her restaurant work. Even now, after five years in Ireland, we both have to work hard to understand each other.
Home is a shared house with four Chinese friends. "We mostly cook Chinese food, it's cheaper. The friends I live with only stay around other Chinese people, but I know some Irish people. Except for the teenagers and the small children, Irish people are nice." The small children? "They say Ni Hao to me to get attention, and then very bad dirty words in Chinese. Terrible words! I suppose Chinese people must have taught them." She is too embarrassed to tell me what the bad words are.
None of her friends will be getting a day off for Chinese New Year. "Irish bosses don't know about it."
Dan has travelled all around Ireland. Her favourite part is the Aran Islands. "Oh, I would love to live there," she confesses, looking out on to the Westmoreland Street traffic.
The software developer
'I'm more Irish than Chinese'
Raymond Cheung (32) came to Ireland from Hong Kong when he was five. His father had a relative working in one of the first Chinese restaurants in Dublin, the Lotus House. His father came to Ireland first, followed by his mother. Cheung and his younger sister stayed in Hong Kong, being cared for by their grandmother. When his parents had put some money together and organised somewhere to live, they sent for the three of them.
"I remember vaguely stuff from Hong Kong, but being Chinese is only half of my life. There is a lot of things I don't understand about the Chinese culture. I grew up in Dún Laoghaire, so I feel more Irish than Chinese."
There was an Indian family living close by and the Cheungs spent some time with them as children, as they were the only other Asian family in the area. "Most of my friends were Irish. I had the usual taunts, but was never really exposed to anything bad. Our house was never attacked, for example."
Cheung works as a software developer. Three years ago, on a holiday to Hong Kong, he met Lucy. They got married and she moved over to Ireland. Their son, Alex, is seven weeks old. Was it important for him to marry someone within his own culture? He laughs. "If you ask my parents, they would say it was important. It wasn't in my own mind. I was dating Irish girls before I met Lucy. I think I was just lucky. She has adjusted very nicely to Ireland."
Virtually all Cheung's friends are Irish. He rarely socialises with the Chinese community here. He thinks it's a combination of not making the effort and that the newly arrived Chinese keep to themselves. "It's a pity I don't know more Chinese people. Since Lucy arrived, I've been meeting a few more people, because she has made contacts here." Home is a house in Bray, where the entire family lives: his grandmother, father, mother, sister, wife and baby. "It is the Chinese way; families live together. So I am keeping some of my culture.It is a very good way of living."
The student learning English
'The younger people are very bad here'
Wang Yuan (21) arrives panting and out of breath, her pony-tail swinging. She has been rehearsing Chinese dances at DIT for the Chinese New Year celebrations there, and has run all the way from Aungier Street to St Stephen's Green, where her language school is. Yuan is from Harbin and has been in Ireland for four months. She came here to learn English.
"English is very, very important to learn in China for a good job," she explains over coffee. She is studying English 20 hours a week. "But in school English is narrow so I must be seeking work so I can improve."
Yuan is an only child; one of the single-child policy generation. Her parents paid for her flight, fees, and accommodation. She is currently sharing a house in Ballinteer with seven Chinese friends, which they rent between them for €2,000 a month, and which the school helped them to organise.
"I pay for my living, for my food and my bus ticket. The bus is very expensive; €15 a week! In China is very cheap." Yuan had a job as a chambermaid in a hotel, for which she got €7 an hour; the minimum wage. "It was very tiring," she says. Yuan is tiny.
She now works in a health club, where she looks after the towels and distributes fresh ones to the members. For this, she gets €7.50 an hour. "And sometimes people give me €1 when they bring their towel back."
Yuan and her friends speak only Chinese at home together. She knows this isn't the best way of learning English, but so far, none of them has any friends outside the Chinese community. "Sometimes I watch TV in English and that helps." She hasn't been out of Dublin yet.
Yuan misses her friends in China. And her parents, her mother in particular. She talks and e-mails regularly, but there is no immediate money or plan to go home for a visit. "I will be away three years." She misses the food too. "Dumplings. Noodles. Beef noodles . . ." She does cook Chinese food at home in Ballinteer, "but not very well." Her mother had done all the cooking in Harbin.
She likes the sea at Dublin Bay and the weather. "The wet is good for the skin." And she is very fond of Temple Bar.
"Irish people are very hospitable, especially the elders. Nothing bad has happened me yet, but Chinese people living here told me when I came that the younger people are very bad here."
What does she mean by bad? She tries hard to think of the right word in English and can't. She fishes out an electronic device from her bag, which is a Chinese-English dictionary. You type in a word and the simultaneous translation appears on the miniature screen. Yuan types a word and shows the translation to me. It's "abusive".
Why does she think younger people are abusive to Chinese? Yuan shakes her head and laughs, embarrassed. "I don't know why. I don't think they like Chinese people."
The university lecturer
'There's more to China than human rights'
"I wish Irish people would realise there is more to China than human rights stories. It's like when Irish people went abroad for years and all anyone knew about was the fighting in the North. China is so big and yet people here know so little about it."
Sun Wei (33) has come from teaching her regular Chinese class to MBA students at the Smurfit Business School in Dublin's Blackrock. She also teaches Chinese to first and third-year science, engineering and commerce students at UCD.
Wei is from Jiaxing in China. She met her Irish husband, Lorcan O'Neill, eight years ago in Hanzhou, where he was working for Ericsson, and he brought her home to Wexford for Christmas in 1997. It was her first time out of China.
What were her first impressions of Ireland? "It was very, very quiet. Very few people. The whole population of Ireland would be just one small district in China. And there were almost no Asian faces on the streets even a few years ago."
Wei has been living in Dublin for six years. "For me it was not a big problem to move. I can be happy anywhere, but I do miss my family and friends. And I missed the food, especially at the beginning! I thought Irish food was so boring and that brown bread was horse food. Now I love brown bread." At home, they now cook half Chinese food and half western food.
Wei loves the fresh air in Ireland and open spaces. "China is so polluted. You rarely see a blue sky." Has she found Irish people racist? "At the beginning, people were extremely friendly. In the last three years, there have been a few incidents." Teenagers shouting explicit sexual insults.
A month ago, at a Blackrock bus-stop, the driver refused to let her on. "I was at the front of the queue and he let people behind me on, but wouldn't let me on." I asked him: 'What are your criteria for letting people on the bus?' but he closed the doors and drove off."
As her husband is Irish, Wei has lots of Irish friends and family. But she has noticed that it is a lot harder for her Chinese friends without personal contacts to break into Irish society. "When Irish people meet each other, they nearly always know someone in common. That starts the conversation. But with someone from another country, there is no 'in' like that . . . and they don't know what to ask you about your country, because they usually know nothing about it. The knowledge here of foreign countries is very limited . . . I think Irish people have culture shock the other way around: they are culture-shocked about the foreigners who are coming to Ireland."
The restaurant owner
'People know little about our cusine'
Win Tang (47) commutes between London and Dublin every week. He owns three Chinese restaurants; one in Bromley, London and the others in Clonee and Ashbourne in Co Meath. From Hong Kong, he went to London to be educated and has lived there since 1968.
"The Chinese community in London is long established; they have been there since the 1950s and 1960s," he explains. "In Ireland, it is very new."
Three years ago, Tang decided to open two restaurants in Ireland because "it seemed like a good business opportunity". How did he fare? "Dealing with buying property is fine. Dealing with builders is horrendous," he says drily.
The restaurant in Clonee serves standard fare, but the Ashbourne restaurant is "cuisine", and four of the chefs were brought over from Hong Kong. The manager previously worked on the QE2. The restaurant is called Eatzen - "healthy eating". "I don't think Irish people know much about Chinese cuisine. They seem to know about politics in China, but they know very little about our food."
Does he know much about the Chinese community in Ireland? "There are different kinds of Chinese people in Ireland than England. The majority of Chinese in Ireland come mostly from the northern part of China, and they come here to study. They are all young. In London, the majority of Chinese are from Hong Kong. People from Hong Kong speak Cantonese. Let me put it this way - they are better educated."
A lot of Chinese people visit Eatzen. The Chinese Ambassador to Ireland has been twice. "Professional Chinese. Restaurateurs, shop-owners, computer-operators." Tang's wife and two children live in London and have been to Ireland only once, when Eatzen opened.
From what he has seen in the last three years, how would he describe the Chinese community in Ireland? "They are very hard-working and they keep to themselves."
