A selection of Tze Ming Mok's weekly opinion columns for the Sunday Star-Times, New Zealand's largest Sunday
newspaper. The column ran between April 2006 and September 2006
and covered issues ranging from New Zealand's local Asian pop-culture to the
Chinese democracy movement. As the newspaper's Fairfax website www.stuff.co.nz does not archive its content, some of the newspaper's
alterations to original headlines are unknown to the author.
September 2006
10 September: Smile and the whole world steps on you
On the political pitfalls of exoticising 'friendly locals' in the developing
world
3 September: Hot Asian Politics
On the third dimension of 'Asia', after food and money
August 2006
27 August: Not all expats paedophiles; many
just rugbyheads
Getting freaked out by white guys in a Bangkok expat rugby bar
23 August: 'Easy multiculturalism' isn't
enough
On the pitfalls of self-congratulatory celebration of diversity
6 August: Brash's 'bedrock values' are rocks in
his head
Bludgeoning a doomed leader of the Opposition
July 2006
23 July: NZ gets free ride from healthy
migrants: Karetau case is payback
In which the author unwisely criticises her own newspaper's front page coverage
of migrant health 'bludgers'
16 July: NZ & Asia's common ground:
inequality increasing, poor people screwed
In which the author actually reads the UNDP Human Development Report and the New
Zealand Ministry of Social Development's Social Report
7 July: Shortland Street's ethnic cleansing is a
relief to us all
New Zealand's national medical soap opera puts its Asian doctor/whore character
out of her misery by killing her off in an Avian Flu pandemic dry-run.
June 2006
11 June: We can be heroes. Superheroes.
Reflecting on Tiananmen, meeting Wei Jingsheng, and speculating upon alternative
characters for the DC 'Great 10' Chinese superhero team
25 June: Who's afraid of big bad baby Lee?
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong gets twitchy on his visit downunder
May 2006
28 May: Mao's head lost in translation
Chinese international students in New Zealand misinterpreted a few harmless
jokes in the student media and got hideously mad. Ultimately, they
probably had good reason to.
14 May: Walking in migrants shoes by buying them?
A tribute to Hong Kong shop Mofe Fashion's 8-year reign in the Mid City Mall.
April 2006
30 April: Burn, Chinatown, Burn
The Chinese residents of Honiara should have been consulting their Chinese
Diaspora Emergency Survival Kit during the April riots
24 April: Who killed Wan Biao?
They fished the kid out of the Viaduct harbour, folded up in a suitcase.
Fingers are pointed.
9 April: Tiananmen Generation rises - so Wen's the
Party?
PRC Premier Wen Jiabao visits New Zealand. Will he be late again? |