Jinghua Qian

Thinking about Immortality & Kindness

From 5 August 2020—

Taking Lisel Mueller's poem ‘Immortality’ as the starting point, writer and poet Jinghua Qian has written a letter to a friend entitled ‘May’, reflecting upon the topics of immortality and kindness in the context of our present socio-cultural circumstances. They have then made a voice recording of their letter and spent a further two minutes in reflection, by way of a second letter entitled ‘June’.

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May

by
Jinghua Qian

If you prefer to read, please refer directly below.

May

by
Jinghua Qian

Dear friend,

It seems we’re forever trapped in the same sticky discourse: once again, the prevailing image of Chinese people in Australia is that we’re disgusting, suspicious, selfish and disloyal. We bring disease. We hoard supplies and ship them overseas. We, our obscene bat-chomping culture, and our inscrutable, authoritarian homeland, are to blame for the epic tragedy consuming the world.

It’s understandable, in the face of this onslaught, that we might try to disprove these allegations. We might point out that travel to the USA accounted for more than twice as many COVID-19 cases in Australia as travel to China did. We might argue that we cannot be held responsible for the actions of an unelected foreign government. We might feel obliged to show our wounds, to cite the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes over the last few months.

But I fear these responses miss the point. They answer the wrong questions. They’re still trapped in that old trajectory, where we let dumpling-fed racists decide who deserves to speak in this violent, stolen country.

Two things strike me when I think about racism in this pandemic. One is the way that it ripples outward (Wuhan residents shunned across China, Chinese mainlanders vilified throughout Asia, Asians attacked around the world) and then circles back (black residents harassed and abused in Guangzhou). Often, reason does little to interrupt. The undertow is too powerful.

The other is how replaceable we are in logic of Australian racism. In late February, I witnessed a racist attack in my neighbourhood—a white woman hurling abuse at a Muslim family until they ducked into a side street. I froze, silent and afraid. This happened in a week when two media outlets had contacted me, wanting to report on growing Sinophobia. I didn’t know how to respond.

I thought about how Pauline Hanson’s parliamentary maiden speech in 1996 claimed that we were in danger of being “swamped by Asians” who “have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate”. Twenty years later, she recycled the same words for her second maiden speech in 2016, replacing Asians with Muslims.

Sinophobia never went away in Australia. Colonisation never ended. Racists might sometimes shift their focus but it’s the same lens. Maybe now it’s our turn in the crosshairs again. But we’re in all the water, treading furiously while trying to turn off the tap, here, there, and everywhere.

In strength and solidarity,

Jinghua Qian

June

by
Jinghua Qian

If you prefer to read, please refer directly below.

June

by
Jinghua Qian

Dear friend,

Time has been curving lately. Molasses slow then liquid quick, gushing, frothing and overflowing. I hope it’s a sign that something broke. Something woke up that can’t be put back to bed.

I would hate for things to return to how they were, just slotted into place like so many pieces of empty luggage. We deserve more than an interruption.

Friend, I’m writing to you from a day already past. This project started in one moment, in the first flush of the pandemic, and now we are in another, with Black Lives Matter lighting up the world. By the time you read this, things will be different again. I’m not sure what to say to your world.

I would love for you to be baffled and amused because you’re reading from a world that has abolished police and prisons. That has abolished borders and capitalism and gender. I would love for my words to sound quaint and absurd like a description of bloodletting from a weathered medical volume.

But I suspect things won’t have come so far as that. I’ve been digging in the archives a lot lately and it’s always a reminder that change takes constant mothering. Nothing happens by itself. Are we up to the task?

What do I need to do today so you read this letter in another world?

Biography

Jinghua Qian is a Shanghainese writer living in the Kulin nations, fluent in prose, verse, and sharpening complexities without simplifying them. Jinghua has written about labour movement history for Right Now, performed dirges of diasporic grief in a seafarers’ church for Going Down Swinging, and discussed the racial politics of cosmetic surgery on Radio National.

Ey founded people of colour performance night POC THE MIC (2010-2012), and was a presenter and producer on 3CR Community Radio’s Queering the Air from 2012 to 2015.

Currently serving on the board of Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine, Peril, their words have appeared in The Guardian, Overland, Peril, Cordite, Autostraddle, and Melbourne Writers’ Festival.