Part 1
The narrator brings about a controversial of the color between Chinese and white Australia. After establishment of the White Australia policy there was change that took place in Australian social discourse. Though the narrator had argued previously that the image of the Chinese as the diseased, vindictive, and dirty and attacking others. This was sustained in popular Australian and Anglo-Australia fiction but this remains the true that in the work of monitory of writers the image of the Chinese was different. Also the Chinese environments had been inferior to that of Australian (Gibson, 1973).
The ethnocentric attitude lies at the bases of the much writing of that period where Chinese appear to praiseworthy human beings because of the loyalty to the white masters as proved by two Chinese stories. The stories were Tragic Comedy by Lawson and while the other story was from Mrs. Aeneas Gunn where she narrates a story about parent who was kind of Chinese gardener who was injured when his cart was involved in an accident. Years later, the gardener's son repays the kindness when he discovers that the narrator is in financial difficulties.
In conclusion Mrs. Aeneas Gunn and Henry Lawson were different writers in taste and nature. However in Chinese character they had similar approaches. After the establishment of White Australia policy the writers’ works show a recommendable sympathy and tolerance towards the Chinese (Gibson, 1973). However, due to their positive orientalism, or ethnocentrism, they tend to favor low class Chinese of subservient nature who were obsequious and loyal to their musters
Part 2
In the Yu’s poem titled Moon over Melbourne, uses moon as persona to compare the Australian moon with the moon renowned in his country China. In another poem, Songs of the Last Chinese Poet, Yu expresses the persona inform of anger that is as a result of pain and injustice of racism. Also in the poem titled, Two Emperors Met in Melbourne, Yu’s persona is the Chinese Businessman/emperor exposing his own colonial ignorance and involvement with white Australia’s culture and history. In his scholarly work such as Lawson, Gunn and the ‘White Chinaman”: A look at how Chinese are Made White in Henry Lawson and Miss Aeneas Gunn’s Writing, the persona is Yu expressing the survival and movement between Australian culture and Chinese culture (Ouyang Yu, 1998).
Yu has used anger, discontent and alienation as aspects of language to define hid his features in his poetic voice (Entwistle, 1953). The Yu’s poems have voice that contains same feeling of not belonging. He believed that he had not only landed on the wrong country but on the wrong planet. He felt like an outsider in his homeland and he had to move to Australia to realize that he was a Chinese.
However, the aspects of language that Yu has expressed make it hard for the readers, especially Australian to make a conclusive judgment. This is because of the fact that their mono-culture, mono-lingual background does not allow them to make authoritative judgments about work based on poetic tradition, language and cultural knowledge of more than one country. He has a affinity of exaggerating the cultural independence of the Australian literary establishment.
The real Ouyung Yu became an Australian citizen in 1998 following his membership of the growing community of the Chinese writers in the country. He is currently residing in Melbourne where he had published 61 books by the year 2012.
References
Entwistle, W. J. (1953). Aspects of language. London: Faber and Faber.
Gibson, O. (1973). "Chinaman or white man, which?”. Reply to Father Buchard delivered in Platt's Hall, San Francisco. Mar. 14, 1873. San Francisco
Lawson, Gunn, White Chinaman, & Ouyung Yu (2003). A look at how Chinese are Made White in Henry Lawson and Miss Aeneas Gunn’s Writing. Linq, 30(2).
Ouyang Yu: The Angry Chinese Poet (1998). Not for the Faint-Hearted. The Asia Issue, 57(3).
