| Irish Born Chinese |
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| What\'s On | |
| Wednesday, 13 September 2006 | |
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I came across Dim Sum, and contacted Sarah Yeh to ask if there were any sister sites based in Ireland. The answer in short, no. She suggested that I should start up my site. After much thought, I decided to go for it. The excitement of it all - I even printed out business cards for the site, passing them to anyone I know. Initial visitors were family of course, from my area. Such humble beginnings! The main objective of my site was to share my experiences with other Irish Born Chinese, and anyone who would visit my site. Share our thoughts, information of what's happening around Ireland (unfortunately, most activities are happening in Dublin), and general chit-chat with each other. Who would have thought experiences as a banana in Hong Kong can be so similar? Who would have thought that most of the Chinese commenting on my site are from the same region in Hong Kong, the New Territories? The second goal was to get in contact with my relatives in other parts of Ireland, whom I have not seen for a long time. The latter picks up now and again, but at least the former is growing. It has been a great experience to set up the website, consisting a weblog (or blog) and a forum. To be a webmistress was something I would not have imagined. The power! Soon this power was getting me bogged down, the main reason, spammers: from free-for-all postings in the blog and forum, to complete removal of commenting system and trackbacks in my blog, and obligatory registrations to the forum. Even so, the onslaught continued, in drips and drabs in the forum. Tighter registration methods were only implemented recently. The freedom of people who visit my site has been spoilt by spammers and their bots. How I despise those spammers ruining things for everyone. Aside from these issues, I get to do a bit of programming for the site, from modifying the styles by hand in my blog to generating the feeds from latest posts in the forum. I am currently undertaking a site overhaul, but finding time for the redesign is quite hard, since I am the only one looking after the site. I tried enticing others, but after initial flurry of activity, it just did not work. I am still thinking a way to encourage more folks to participate. After all, it's all voluntary. Through the site, I have been contacted by various people from the media, even got a mention in 2 local magazines, although I did turn down a radio interview (yes, I'm a bit bashful). But it's not that hard to find the site, just type in "Irish Born Chinese" in any of your favourite search engines. There is still not enough information for Chinese who moved to Ireland, or for overseas born Chinese who feels alienated, or just want to know if there others like them in Ireland. Dublin is the only city I know that has Chinese school. I feel jealous of others who are lucky enough to attend these classes, I don't know how to read/write, okay, maybe a little, but I learned a thing or two from my aunt over a summer back when I was around 10/11 years old. My interest really picked up in fifth year in secondary school, where I met a girl from Hong Kong (who is my best friend now). I was awed by her style of Chinese and English writing skills, and still am. From then on, I wanted to perfect at least my own Chinese name. Since I moved up and worked in Dublin, I really noticed the growing Chinese population, mainly from Mainland China. Coming from a Hakka background, and speaking only in Cantonese, I felt really lonely, and wondered what happened to the 2nd generation Chinese. I know the 1st generation are very close-knit, and originated from Hong Kong. But what about their kids? So here I am with my site: http://irishbornchinese.com. I still meticulously check all comments and mails on a daily basis after all this time. The visitors to the site, as far as I can tell, are all relatively young. Friendly debates happen, but never get nasty. It's always a pleasure for me to read what others think on subjects in the forums. Although the main thing that no-one really agree on is the Cantopop music. I think many who have the Chinese channels would be subjected to the music videos, but for someone like me, I wouldn't have a clue. I only just know the older stuff like the Four Heavenly Kings but I suppose I am more attuned to punk rock music or electronic music from the west anyway. But I realised that many of us have the same curiosity about Hong Kong, such as, how Hong Kong locals perceive us bananas heading over there on our holidays? Or, how do we see ourselves in the Irish community? The questions are endless, debates, limitless. I don't think we think we are truly Irish or Chinese, but we all do appreciate both cultures. Even for those that were born in Hong Kong or China and moved to Ireland when they were really young, western customs are picked up by them, so they would have the similar opinions as the second generation Chinese. For me I feel really lucky to have two cultures. One thing for sure from the forum, we all love our video games. In the future I hope to link up to other overseas born Chinese sites, and have a large community amongst ourselves of like-minded individuals. So my thanks to Dimsum for inspiring me. You can find out more about Vicky’s site at http://irishbornchinese.com. |
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