Class of Differentiation

“So how’s the dating going on?” I asked while chewing a beef jerky and holding a nice cold beer.

Kuan sipped his beer and reluctantly answered, “Aiya...don’t talk about it lah...”

“Why? What’s wrong? Come on man...tell me....”

A long time friend, Kuan, came to Melbourne recently for a holiday and we met up one night to have our buddy beer session and he poured out his latest dating experience in which he’d hit the wrong type of girl described as a entirely different class altogether.

Six months ago Kuan got a job as an office assistant after quitting his previous job as a DVD salesman. He thought he would head no where if he stayed in his previous job and decided to upgrade himself for a better future and society standing. He fell for Melissa, a marketing executive in the company, who was friendly and nice to him. Kuan believed that she genuinely treated him as a friend.

“I thought I had a chance loh”, Kuan explained, “She was very nice to me and we even went out for a few times for lunch and dinner. Not only nice but pretty too. The whole package is very different from my previous girl friends. She’s like an angel!”

“Sure or not?”

“101% guaranteed!”

“Why extra 1%”, I asked in jest but with a deadpan face, “Anyway...and then what happened?” Another beer bottle I sat and listened to his story attentively.

“So I tried kaoing (courting) her loh but got rejected saying that I am not her cup of tea. Actually I know why wan...because I am like an Ah Beng (Bogan) mah....” he sighed and drank up his half bottle of beer.

I could empathise with Kuan’s story as it wasn’t just a failed love story but more of a class distinction that is getting increasingly prevalent in the urban centres of Malaysia, especially among the Chinese population. Five years ago I wrote an article on the phenomenon of a segment of Malaysian society which I called it the “The Rise of Anglo-Malaysians”, a group of Malaysians who adopt the English Language as their lingua franca instead of their native tongues. It is not difficult to find Malaysians of Chinese, Indian and to a limited extent, Malay heritage who speak English primarily in their daily lives.

Very much like in Singapore the Chinese Malaysian population is generally divided into two groups – Chinese speaking and English speaking of which the latter is more prevalent in the larger cities and the former in the smaller towns and rural areas. In the cities, the Chinese speaking group is still the majority but the younger generation, who are increasingly becoming English speaking due to higher education and the internet, are fast catching up in numbers.

Kuan and Melissa is a classic story of the distinctions of the two different groups of Chinese Malaysians. The heart of the differentiation lies with the perceptions of each group has for each other. The Chinese speaking group views their English speaking brothers and sisters as being snobbish and bananas (Caucasian wannabe). This group hold great pride in their Chinese language ability and take themselves as champion of Chinese culture.

Uncultured, rude, loud and unsophisticated are some of the impressions hold by the English speaking Chinese for the Chinese speaking counterparts. There are some like Jed Yoong who go at great lengths to give cause to close down Chinese schools entirely. While reading her blog I suddenly discovered that I am an inner city ghetto member just because I came from Bukit Bintang which many associate it as a Chinese speaking heartland littered with Chinese hawkers stalls, triads, pirated DVDs and prostitution.

The above, I must emphasis, are just some of the very general examples of the contrasts but are nonetheless valid starting points for comparisons.

Whether Melissa and Kuan failed or managed to work it out because of their different backgrounds should not be the main cause for such prospective relationship. A relationship, I believe, should be the domain of matching compatibility and personality. But the pressures from society are increasingly influencing younger Chinese Malaysian girls to look for English speaking Chinese Malaysian boys as their partners, which they believe are better in terms of ability to provide material comfort, status and have more mutual respect for ladies.

It would be nice if people could remove general stereotyping but that is the reality in which perception is king. It doesn’t matter if you a very nice Chinese speaking person but the initial impressions the person is likely to conjure are loud, uncultured and unsophisticated and among others not because they really are but the general stereotype imposed by society.

Sometimes I wonder whether such gaps exist because of inferiority complex. For instance the Chinese speaking group being viewed as loud and crude because Chinese dialects are colloquially spoken as such, but there are many English speaking peers who do not view and in fact even embrace the Korean language which is also sound very loud and crude. Is this because Korean entertainment is cool and hip? Could be as we can see how American media and entertainment influenced youths around the world. Madonna was Goddess, Micheal Jackson was King, McDonalds preferred over Char Siu Bao and etc.

I remember in the Singaporean movie, ‘I Not Stupid’, Fiona Xie played a snobbish teenager who openly declared in her essay that she wants to be a Caucasian and despise being a Chinese. I was once in the shoes of that teenager. I loved GunsNRoses, hated learning Chinese and spoke with an American accent as a very young boy. It wasn’t until I was 13 that started to embrace my Chinese heritage and even picked up the Hakka dialect to communicate with my grandparents. Today I still can’t read and write Chinese but could speak fluently.

For many years I was being called as an Ah Beng or Chinaman (Hokkien-Chinese term for a Bogan) just because of the area I came from. “What? You do not know how to read Chinese? Come on! You were from Bukit Bintang!” are some of the remarks I get occasionally and I got this remark because I do not know how to sing Chinese songs during a Karaoke session recently. They even thought that I was acting and trying to be ‘English speaking’. Once perceptions deeply ingrained are hard to remove from one’s head.

With already half a dozen of beers downed, I advised Kuan “Look at you. Look at your style and honestly you are not super lengchai. The way you speak and the stuff you like. So Ah Beng! If you want girls like Melissa you have to do something about yourself, brother. Girls like her will get turned off, you know?”

“Then how?” he asked.

“Put your leg down from the chair and eat your peanuts nicely. We are out of the DVD days on the street. Unless you find someone who is on your level”

“But I am very nice to her leh and not like other guys who play play outside”

“So what face the reality man...” and I downed the last bottle of beer.