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(School of Chinese Languages in Melbourne and Sydney)
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From our newsletter (Vol8No1):
THE ACCS STORY & LUO JIAN GUO
ONCE UPON A TIME.........
This is our first editorial to greet
the millenium. As Confucian Chinese, it is appropriate therefore
to remember the past in order to begin the new century. Once
upon a time, on a warm summer day in June 1989, the city of Beijing
was splattered with blood. In that momentous few hours as Chinese
students, intellectuals, poets and ordinary people were mowed
down with guns and tanks, we in Australia stood by helpless.
Soon after that fateful event, they started to trickle, then
to pour into Australia, the Chinese who managed to escape. Their
stories were chillingly familiar in the decades of the 20th century:
tyranny, bloodshed, exile, re-construction of lives lost somewhere
between the cracks of ideological differences. As I listened
to their stories, the need to do something was most urgent. I
began classes in English using Accelerated techniques to teach
these Chinese refugees how to speak Aussie/English fast so they
could take jobs appropriate to their training. Many were scholars,
doctors, engineers and teachers. But their English skills equipped
them only for factories and restaurants in Melbourne. It was
my job as a first year Sociology subject co-ordinator that led
me to Luo Jian Guo (James). He came to us at Monash as a PhD
student, a modern Confucianist gentleman and scholar. A bi-lingual
translator and interpreter, a journalist and a scholar holding
post graduate degrees in his chosen field, he was working part-time
in a factory. Jian-gou's real story is for another time and for
him to tell. Not me. To continue with my story, he came to help
me teach English in a small room tucked away in Flinders Lane
courtesy of my Chinese guanxi. Together we worked to accelerate
the students' English skills and in doing so, I had a brainwave:
why not teach Chinese to Australians using the same methodology
and rescue Jian-guo from the mind deadening and body-killing
work he was doing in a factory in Melbourne. More to the point,
he could actually say he had a full time job so that he could
apply for permanent residency in Australia. The rest as they
say is history. ACCS was born out of a need and in the first
class we ran, twenty nine people turned up: amongst them a journalist
from the Age, and a well known university professor who specialised
in dinosaurs: Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich. Jian-guo became
the first academic director of our Centre and six months later,
left to take up a position in RMIT as a communications lecturer.
At the end of the year, the Australian government granted permanent
residencies to all Chinese who ecaped the Tiananmen massacre.
I wanted to close down the Centre as I was still teaching full
time at Monash. Even before I could say zaijian, another Chinese
turned up at my doorstep, an ex-anchor man in Beijing television
who was seen to be sympathetic to the students at the Tiananmen
square. An actor and film director, Jin Yi became an odd jobs
man in Melbourne, climbing under houses to drag out dirt, washing
dishes, anything that would earn him some money. He taught with
our Centre for many years and occasionally fell asleep in class
through sheer fatigue. His real story? I hope he will tell it
one day. Story-ing an event gives it its soul. Story -ing cleanses
and heals us so we can begin again. And again. That is why story
telling is universal and everyone loves a story. Today in the
new millenium, our ACCS stands proudly alone without government
grants, subsidies and all the concessions that go together with
a non-profit organisation. ACCS' spirit is communal and its success
is due largely to people who work behind the scenes for the occasional
meal and a smile or yell from me as well as our loyal students
who continue to re-enrol each semester in spite of poor heating
and ghastly parking problems. I tell our story but the players
are many: Jeff, who can never understand why he is working so
hard for peanuts (as the monkey god's adopted son, he should
consider himself well fed), Shirley Lo, our quiet achiever behind
the scene and who does not get paid. She slaves each term to
get the newsletter out in time and our Lingsea whose Chinese
soul is so pure that she cannot leave our Centre for fear she
does not fulfill the rite of obligation and duty. And me? Why
do I do it? Sometimes, there are greater things than just money,
fame and praise. It is part of being human. This is our story
and we have played and worked with great joy and deep love and
will continue to do so to bring Chinese language and studies
to the Australian community using Accelerative Learning principles.
Love & light
In Australia? |
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