Will moving to the UK fix my problems?

SBS Australia

3 days ago

I'm looking forward to exploring what it means to be a Chinese Australian, both in Australia, but also elsewhere as well... Where people kind of look at me and see Chinese, but hear me and hear Australian? Mark Yin, co-host of Chinese-ish Season 1 and PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge
Credits:
Hosts: Wing Kuang, Bertin Huynh, Dennis Fang
Producers: Wing Kuang, Bertin Huynh, Dennis Fang
Art: Joanna Hu
SBS Team: Joel Supple, Max Gosford, Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn, Philip Solomon and Max Banyat
Wing Kuang
This podcast was recorded on the land of the Cammaraygal people and Wurundjeri people. We'd like to pay our respects to elders past and present, and recognise their continuous connection to Country.
Wing Kuang
Welcome to Chinese-ish, an SBS podcast about what is it like to be young and Chinese in today's Australia. My name is Wing. I'm a former Chinese international student.
Dennis Fang
And I'm Dennis, a second-generation Chinese Australian.
Bertin Huynh
And I'm Bertin, a Vietnamese Chinese Australian. And this is our last episode of Chinese-ish Season 2.
Wing Kuang
Time flies. In our first episode, we talk about living in a chaotic world right now, or quoting a recent Chinese Internet slang, "We are living in the garbage time of history". The economy sucks, war and climate change, and then we hit the mysterious 27-year-old curse, which in the West happens to be the age that many rock stars died.
Dennis Fang
Oh boy, yes, I've heard about this 27 curse. Have you found a way out?
Wing Kuang
Yes, I think moving to the UK could help.
Bertin Huynh
Wing Kuang
I don't know. I feel like in Australia, everyone who hits the late 20s just moved to the UK. Last year, I knew at least four friends in Sydney had moved there.
Bertin Huynh
Yeah, that's actually me. I just came back from the UK. Was living in Birmingham for two years on the youth mobility visa. It was super fun. We'll do it all over again. But I don't know if it's gonna kill any curses, Wing.
Dennis Fang
And my twin brother has also been living in the UK, so I can definitely feel you, Wing. And to prove it's not just Bertin and my brother, we have a very special guest to join us. Mark Yin, the co-host of Chinese-ish Season 1.
Mark Yin
Hello. Thanks for having me, or thanks for having me back.
Dennis Fang
Hi, Mark. Firstly, oh my gosh, what have you been up to? I've heard you've been doing a PhD in Cambridge in the UK.
Mark Yin
Yeah that's right. So I moved up to Cambridge in October 2023 and I've been up there for about a year before coming back to do field work.
Wing Kuang
How do you find a difference between universities in the UK and Australia?
Mark Yin
I think in the UK there's just more universities. So you're a lot more spoiled for choice in terms of where to go, in terms of where there are academics, in terms of where there are like, academic things happening, whereas in Australia, it's kind of like, you know, you've got your Group of Eight, and they're all really far apart, because Australia is a really big place, and so it's a very, very different university environment here. I think my specific experience of going to Cambridge is kind of like, everyone there is quite aware of what it is as an institution. And people are kind of quite like...
Bertin Huynh
Mark Yin
Yeah, yeah. Like, people are aware that it's posh. So people try and compensate. Whereas I think in Australia, there's a weird thing of, like, if you go to an elite university in Australia, it's like you're still not quite there on, like, the global scale. So people try to almost compensate upwards. And so there are some universities in Australia where, like, that is a little bit of the culture among students. So if anything like that, part of it has come as a little bit of a relief.
Bertin Huynh
I definitely didn't go there to study. The soul of my experience was to travel, to be close to Europe and go to Florence on the weekend. But, you know, I was all the way in Birmingham, not even London, so I wasn't really even there for the UK. And I found that in the periphery of the country, I was quite a rare person. I was probably the only East Asian in many teams, in many buildings I was in, and I quickly found out I was not really Asian anymore. Like Asians in the UK are Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, because they are the largest majority there. I even caught Oriental on my first day of work. But did you find this difference in the culture of multiculturalism in the UK?
Mark Yin
I think it definitely did a little bit. But here, I think there's a very specific vibe of, like, no matter how long your family has been here, you're still kind of hypervisible as, like, newly arrived, because there are a lot of you know, East Asian people who are kind of coming quite regularly, right? So there's that pattern of, like, recent migration, which I think for whatever reason, means that in Australia, you're kind of always seen as different, no matter how long you've actually spent here. Whereas I think in the UK, there are histories of migration. And if we're going to talk about migration, we have to talk about colonialism, like, those kinds of histories go back quite a bit further. There's a lot more kind of quite ingrained migrant populations, and so I think it's less that like you're seen as other, and more that just like they're not used to people who look like you, but like it's not kind of assumed that you would be.
Bertin Huynh
I'm gonna disagree with you there, I felt that Chinese Australians felt more Australian than Chinese British felt British. And I feel like that's because in Britain, the native culture is white culture, whereas here other if you're not Aboriginal, you you are. You have come here from somewhere else. So I felt that myself, my family, has bought into the idea of being Australian more than if they might have been if they were in Britain.
Mark Yin
Your point of view, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think I was just thinking generally about how we're seen. But I think, personally, yeah, I feel really, really Australian when I'm there, actually, and I don't know exactly why that is, but, like, I really lean into being Australian over there, you know, say "Good day" to people and things like that, like stuff I would never say here, because, yeah, I don't know. I just, I think that's a more identifying and more meaningful point of difference, or part of my identity there, than it is here, where everyone is Australian, to some extent.
Dennis Fang
I do want to add, I'm not actually sure whether Chinese Australians actually feel more Australian than BritishChinese feel more British because in Australia, in my experience, at least a lot of first generation Chinese actually just live within their own communities, within their own diaspora. I haven't lived in the UK. Do you both feel that first-generation Chinese British people, do they integrate well better than Chinese Australians in their new homes?
Mark Yin
I think what I'm thinking of is just that, like in the UK, there's probably a lot more pressure to kind of go out of your own kind of diasporic group, because there's so many there, whereas here, like because there's such a large Chinese Australian community, it's very easy to kind of stay within that kind of language and cultural group, especially like things like families and stuff. Your family friends are all Asia, like that kind of thing. Whereas in the UK, it's like there are fewer Chinese people. There are fewer East Asian people, perhaps. And so you kind of have to go out of your way if you want, like, a rich social life.
Wing Kuang
But how about that understanding of being Chinese doesn't mean that you all belong to one group, like the understanding of being Chinese could mean you are Vietnamese Chinese, could mean you are from Hong Kong. Could means you are mainland Chinese. Which country do you think have a better understanding of it?
Bertin Huynh
I think Australia definitely, because here we have Vietnamese Chinese, people from Shanghai, people from Sichuan, we have, we have all these different types of Chinese diaspora because we're so close to Asia, like Malaysian Chinese, Laotian Chinese, Thai Chinese, just by the sheer number of people we have in Australia compared to the UK, you know, We have a better understanding because of the more people we have here.
Mark Yin
Yeah, I think that's true. I think certainly, if we're talking about, like, yeah, the different kind of the richness within Chinese, or even, like, East Asian culture in general, I think there's definitely a lot more of it to be kind of enjoyed here in Australia. I think it does sort of just boil down to, there's a more diverse Chinese community here. I do think it's interesting, like, if we're thinking about language groups in particular, like, I mean, just the other day, the UK Government was like, we're gonna increase the English language requirements for a visa. This is like, sort of weird kind of insistence and rigidity about like the language requirements there. And I'm like, if they can't even recognize and acknowledge linguistic plurality within their own country.
Wing Kuang
I find it very interesting, because, Mark, you live in the UK, and the UK and Australia do have this common history. Australia used to be colonized by the UK, and the famous, as well as notorious, British Museum is where you can find all the exhibits taken by UK colonisers from China and other Asian countries. It just made me wonder that, as a young Chinese Australian now living in the UK, does this experience of watching the Chinese community and thinking about diversity make you feel more about Australia as a country, especially when we actually don't have multiculturalism as a policy until like five decades ago? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think first, just on the first note, I think people in the UK aren't good at talking about racism and colonialism. They're not good at acknowledging the role that the UK historically had in colonialism. And so that was, yeah, very much like, not something that people talked about, you know, even, like, I study a social science field, right? That's something, if you were studying that in Australia, you basically can't escape the topic of colonialism. And that's what should be the case because it's such a formative part of our history here. But in the UK, it's like, not really talked about that much. And so if anything, like coming back here a little bit for my research, is really re-radicalised me. I'm like, Oh, my God, they did some stuff. You know, they did some horrible, horrible stuff, and that all gets kind of swept under the rug in the UK. People who I talked to who grew up in the UK say they pretty much don't learn any history outside of their borders, even when the most kind of violent parts of British history happened outside of British borders. And I think it's also interesting, because I've talked to people who grew up in the UK. These are ethnic people now, not white people, but, oh, this is, I don't know if the phrase white people is super kosher. This is ethnic people now, not Caucasian.
Bertin Huynh
I think you can say white people.
Mark Yin
White people in Britain get very up in arms about that, and I know that because of what happened with Sam Kerr I don't know if that. I don't know if people are following that news piece either, but she was, like, taken to court because she called a police officer, stupid and white and like, she was charged with, like, racially aggravated, whatever it was. And I thought that was a really interesting incident, because it's wild that that would be considered racist.
Bertin Huynh
Yeah, those charges were dropped in the end. But there was another case where a protester was charged for using the term "coconut". She was called. Being a British Indian politician a "coconut" and in the end, she was not in trouble. But, like, is that aligned of discussion that makes them very uncomfortable?
Mark Yin
I think coconut is a very different word to white in general. The conversation around that isn't as, I guess, progressed as it is here, even though, like, here, I feel like it's not super progressed either. Like, I think Australia still has certain discomforts around talking about multiculturalism and racial diversity and stuff. But I think I also wanted to say, before I went on this sort of, like little rabbit hole about the term "white" I think I was talking about how non white people in the UK view Australia as quite a racist place as well. I think they'd like to know about, if not, the White Australia Policy in those terms. And they know that Australia, you know, is a place that historically has discriminated against people of colour for a very long time. And so that's ingrained in the perception of British people, even at the same time as, like, that is a result of British colonisation. So yeah, those dynamics are all things that I think about when I move back and forth between the two countries.
Bertin Huynh
So you know, were you there during the riots in the UK when you know these two girls who were murdered by a Welsh man who was generations ago from somewhere other than the UK? It caused massive far right riots across the country. You know, migrant hotels are burnt. People were attacked in the street. It was a tense time for a few weeks. And I feel like something like that is a summation of how a society deals with racism or its race issues. We haven't had something like this in Australia since Cronulla. Do you feel like we are better at dealing with race in Australia then?
Mark Yin
I think so. I think something like that is very, very unlikely to happen in Australia, although, like, it didn't seem very likely to happen in the UK either, until it happened, right? So it's a very hard thing to predict anymore, and I think the conversation around race, I feel like has been shifting in the West, generally, for a while to, like, almost like a point of mistrust with white people, right? Because it's sort of like, I can't tell if you're individually racist or not. But that's kind of the problem is, like, I can't tell, right? We're not in a society where it's just like everybody is not racist, unfortunately. And when things like that bubble away beneath the surface, I guess those riots are sort of what can happen. And again, like, it's interesting that the riots are something that would happen in the UK, and then months later, Sam co would call somebody white, and then, you know, everybody would be up in arms about that. But where was the kind of rage about the fact that those riots happened, and those riots, you know, had a horrible impact on things in the UK, like it overfilled their prisons. It was like it was that sizable of an impact. I think the riots is an example where it's like something really, really bad happened in the UK that is probably quite unlikely or very difficult to imagine happening here in Australia, but at the same time, like, I don't think that also excuses some of the things that we do in Australia that are really, really bad as well. I think a big example that comes to mind is like our offshore detention regime for immigration, right? And like, the fact that the UK is also learning from us in that regard. Like, that's something that they're or they were at some point talking about implementing their, you know, like the whole Rwanda kind of scheme that they were talking about. So, like, I also think that, you know, that it doesn't let Australia off the hook. It's not like a completely one sided kind of one is better than the other. I think both have their issues to deal with.
Bertin Huynh
Is there a difference between a way a government deals with race or race issues and how society feels about it?
Mark Yin
Yeah, that's a really, really good question. I guess there is.
Bertin Huynh
Because, context, Australia's offshore detention program, set up by conservative government; UK's Stop the Boats program, Conservative government. In Australia, it has been a wedge issue for a while, a culture war issue. Labor hasn't been able to kind of make its way there until Biloela, right? So do you feel like the way that power and politicians have a relationship with race and race issues is different to a society, because, you know, a people might feel differently compared to its leaders? Yeah, it's a great question. I think those feelings exist. There's a relationship between those feelings and I think they're completely independent, right? Because I think the way society responds to what politicians do says a lot about like, or there's a response there, which means that I think one affects the other, like, I think the race riots in the UK is probably comes from a perception from society that politicians aren't doing enough to limit migration, which explains a lot about the current government and the previous government, but the current government as well, whereas in Australia, I think it's almost the opposite. It's like a complicity for a long time, that sort of a feeling that it's okay for the government to limit immigration this way, and for them to hide it. And I think the average sort of person doesn't go out of their way to do research into it either. It just sort of doesn't touch the day to day lives, whereas there are people in the UK, yes, who feel like it is something that affects them day to day.
Dennis Fang
Mark, now you are back. So my brother has recently just come back from the UK after about a year, and my parents are begging him to stay. They're even threatening to sort of cut off financial support and other stuff like that.
Wing Kuang
Dennis Fang
I know it's pretty hard, especially since a lot of us live off a bank of mum and dad right now. So that is a big threat. What are your parents' reactions? How do they react to you moving to the UK, or were they just really, you know, proud that you were there to study at Cambridge.
Mark Yin
Yeah, I'm really glad you asked me about this, because I was like, I haven't had a chance to talk about this so far, but my parents were really, really critical to me making that move. Actually, they really, really encouraged me. Yeah, it's, I don't know if I expected it, because what you said is right as well, in terms of, like, I think your parents want to be close to you, especially thinking long term, right? Like you don't want to be separated, because there's already the kind of experience of separation through migration that they've experienced with their parents, maybe. But my parents were really, yeah, encouraging for me to go to the UK. They were sort of, I don't know, they gave me this whole spiel about, you know, life gives you, you know, a big adventure sometimes.
Dennis Fang
Did your parents bring up any sort of what I could say concerns about the UK? I know that my parents told my brother about all the phone snatches and all the race problems they have up there. Did your parents bring up anything?
Mark Yin
Not at the time that I left, I think they were kind of, I think they and I were probably too caught up in the fact that I was about to go study at Cambridge to kind of really think too much about that. But since I've been there, pretty much, like, every single week, my mum will send me a video on WeChat of somebody getting robbed, if not in the UK, then in Europe. Like it's a constant kind of I hear more about petty theft in the UK from my parents over WeChat than I do by being in the UK.
Bertin Huynh
For me, moving to another country really taught me, like what it was like for my parents. My parents were refugees, and, you know, they came to Australia with the clothes on their backs and their passports, and they, you know, managed to create quite a good life for themselves, despite the fact they had nothing. I went over with a bank account and a nice apartment and a cushy job, and I still found it difficult. So I guess I really appreciated the migrant experience, and I kind of understood how someone like Wing moved here in her youth to pursue a different life. What lessons do you find that moving to the country has taught you?
Mark Yin
I think it a lot, because, I mean, this is the first time that I've actually moved out of home in general, like I was living with my parents all the way up until I left to go to the UK. So it was very cold turkey for me to kind of go to a new place by myself, even though I did speak the language, and I think that made it a lot easier. Like that part in particular, kind of made me reflect on what the migrant experience must have been like for them. But I think the main kind of learning for me, it was just about like, whoa. I have this opportunity now to set up a life for myself and to kind of do things I wouldn't have gotten to do here. I, you know, a lot of, like, little lifestyle things, like, do I want a car or a bike? Like, how do I want to get around? Where do I want to go? Where do I want to settle? Like, it's just questions that I've never had to think about before.
Wing Kuang
Do you feel that it's also because, like, you're now 26 and you make this big move, like, at a time when you're in your late, early 20s? For me, like when I came to Australia, I was just 17, and I find Australia very charming. In my first year, from the second year, third year, I just started to suffer from depression, because it's been a really tough time for me to accept that, oh, I left home that early, and I don't have a home in Australia.
Mark Yin
Yeah, I think I probably did benefit from leaving a little bit later, because I feel like even though I hadn't moved out until then, I'd sort of come to kind of, you think about more things the older you are, like when you're 17, you may not necessarily think about a lot of the practicalities of like, day to day life in a completely new place, in terms of just simple things, like, where to get food, how to cook the food, how to look after yourself, how to make friends, like you don't kind of think about those things. I think a lot of the life experience that you get in your late teens and early 20s kind of sets you up to think about that a bit more. Like, yeah, where are you gonna it's those questions like, Where are you gonna make friends? What are you gonna do to look after yourself? What kind of things do you wanna try or not try? I think knowing
Dennis Fang
yourself a bit better helps you mark thinking about your experiences in both the UK and in Australia. If you felt that, just imagine if your parents decided to settle in the UK instead, because we're currently seeing a lot of people in the UK moving to Australia and saying that it's so much better. Do you think you would be in a similar position? Do you think that simply, the grass is greener on the other side, or does the UK actually have some genuine advantages over Australia?
Mark Yin
I think it's quite possible that the grass is just greener on the other side, because there's a lot of pros to Australia as well, like, you know, the weather, a lot of things to do with the culture, the pay. I think Australia's got a lot going for it. And I think a lot of people leaving the UK for Australia are drawn to those things specifically, like the weather and the pay.
Mark Yin
Yes, yeah, a fair bit as well. So there's, yeah, there's, there's, there's green grass everywhere. I think both countries have a lot going for them. But it's a hard hypothetical, like, if I if my parents had moved there, whether I would want to come to Australia or not, because the other specific one, in terms of academia as well, is, like I said earlier, there's more universities in the UK like that is in a lot of ways, a more academically, like rich and varied place to be. Not that Australia has bad academia. Australia's academia is quite good, and it's what set me up to kind of make the move. But it's and it's also the place that I want to kind of come back to professionally as well. Yeah, but yeah, there's, there's a lot.
Bertin Huynh
And I guess traveling Europe. Have you been traveling much?
Speaker 1
It's fair to say there are more academia jobs in the UK. I mean, there are more media jobs in the UK because of the sheer population, right?
Wing Kuang
And that's why I have so many friends who are actually moving to the UK, or who have moved to the UK, because they are all working in the media. And the thing about this, though, is our media industry is still not diverse enough to give enough jobs to young, diverse people, and as a result, they feel that I have to go and find somewhere, and I will move to the UK, because I have this two year visa. And once I come back with that UK experience, bingo, I will be successful in the industry. Do you see this sort of moving like in between UK and Australia - of course there's this theory that the grass always greener - but it's also like a reality, especially if you're like young Australian, that life is probably not that good here, and you just have to find a way out and convince yourself that maybe a move would be better?
Mark Yin
I think that's a hard question for me to answer, because...
Wing Kuang
Mark Yin
Yeah, I felt like I was giving up, actually, a lot of professional kind of avenues here in Australia, or, you know, taking a big chunk out of what could have been like, essentially three years of progress in where I was, but I think I was, yeah, very lucky in my profession to have gotten to the point that I was before I left. I think, yeah, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of industries, as you said, like the media, that aren't perfect in Australia. I think, I think anytime anybody from anywhere, but, like, if we think about Australia, anytime any Australian looks at somebody somewhere else and thinks the grass is greener, is a sort of reflection or a lesson for things that are still missing here, right? Or things that we don't do well enough.
Bertin Huynh
guess the lesson is, you know, moving to a country won't solve your issues. You gotta that work happens within you.
Mark Yin
Yeah that is true, I guess, like, it kind of depends.
Mark Yin
Like, if you're a bad person, you know always, like, moving to another country is not gonna make you a better person. Okay, that's true, yeah?
Bertin Huynh
Bertin Huynh
Like, if you don't have a purpose in life, like, yes, moving to a country might help. But like you, that work needs to be done internally. It's not by virtue of being overseas.
Mark Yin
No, that is true, yeah, especially because, like, if you, if you, yeah, really romanticize the idea of moving abroad. You haven't thought about the details, right? Like, how are you gonna make friends there? You're leaving behind all of your friends, all of your professional contacts. What are you gonna do to set those up there? Yeah, it's very you can't look at a big decision like that through kind of raised in the glasses. Yeah. You do have to introspect.
Wing Kuang
You do plan to come back. And I want to ask you, if you have ever been concerned that even with a degree in Cambridge, when you come back to Australia, your experience there, or qualification there might not be helpful for you to move forward in your career?
Mark Yin
Yep, I'm worried. I think a lot of my worry comes from the fact that I'm switching industries as well, because I was a public servant before I went and started the PhD, right? I think part of the reason why I was like, I need to go is because that is a really, like, cushy industry where you can stay there for a very, very long time if you just move around a little bit. But academia here, I am concerned about the academic job market here. I don't think it's, I mean, the UK has more universities, as we've said, but I think also there's just, yeah, there's only, there's only so many options that you have here. And I feel like I do worry that moving has, like, led me to miss out on some of the things here, like, I've been back for a couple of months to do field work, and I hope that that's kind of enough time spent here, but there's, you know, like, networking opportunities that I don't get to kind of go to here, things like that, a sort of, yeah at the back of my mind as well, thinking about my job prospects after this.
Dennis Fang
So you're turning 27 next year, aren't you? Is there anything left you want to kind of achieve during your time there?
Mark Yin
Yeah, before I hit the 27-year curse.
Dennis Fang
You're not a rock star, so I think you'll be safe from death.
Mark Yin
Good, good. In terms of things that are still left. Yeah, there's, like, loads more travel that I want to do there while I'm still up there. I've got a couple of things sort of planned or penciled in, if not actually, then, like, mentally, I've got, like, a little bit of a list that I want to get back through while I'm up there, because it is a limited time that I'm up there in the UK, yeah, a bit of travel, a bit of all concerts and stuff as well, because we often have quite a limited range of international artists that come to Australia, like there's a lot of, you know, fun little things like that. I guess that I'm really looking forward to it.
Wing Kuang
Mark, just like what we did in Season 1. Here is my final question to you, what does it mean to you to be young and Chinese in today's Australia?
Mark Yin
This is a hard question, and I think the reason it's a hard question is, because I'm not as young as I was when I recorded the first season. A lot of time has passed, and I, yeah, I'm conscious of getting to my late 20s, but I think I don't know, like, it's, it still feels like, I mean, just based on…
Bertin Huynh
Are we becoming white adjacent?
Mark Yin
I still feel like there's a lot of kinds of issues out there that we face. There's a lot of still, just like, uphill. Those are still like, yeah, we've talked about, like, comparing Australia to the UK, and, like, even though Australia can look favorable in a lot of ways when compared to the UK, there's still a lot of progress that we need to make here. Things like that. This is like, suddenly becoming extremely more serious. It's like taking a real turn. But I don't know. I'm looking forward to exploring what it means to be a Chinese Australian. I mean, both in Australia, but also elsewhere as well, right? What does that mean to kind of carry both of those in a place like the UK, where people kind of look at me and see Chinese, but hear me and hear Australian.
Bertin Huynh
Well, you were saying you feel more Australian than you do Chinese while you're in the UK.
Mark Yin
Yeah, yeah, leaning into that, I guess.
Bertin Huynh
Wing Kuang
Mark Yin
Dennis Fang
you've been listening to Chinese-ish, an SBS podcast about what it's like to be young and Chinese in today's Australia.
Bertin Huynh
This episode is hosted by wing Kuang, Dennis Fang and me, Bertin Huynh, produced by the three of us and with support from Joel Supple and Max Gosford, Max Spaniard and Philip Solomon. The artwork is by Joanna Hu.
Wing Kuang
follow Chinese age on your favourite podcast platform, or head to sbs.com.au/audio or the SBS Audio app.