It is no wonder Chinese don’t understand NZ culture

Looking and being the respondent to the presentation of “the representation of Maori in local Chinese language news Media in NZ” by Liangni Liu, the research shows the evident lack of positive Maori representations and lack of detail understanding of national affairs which leads to misunderstandings and misinterpretations of Maori people and NZ culture.

Looking at the recent “Chinese Herald” and “Mandarin Pages” (4.6.16), there is barely any articles related to NZ, there are mostly international and Chinese-related articles, and mountains of advertising. In my count:

Chinese Herald- 24pages

·         There were only 4 counts of NZ related articles

·         4 full A2 pages of Classifies

·          Approx. 16 pages worth of advertisements

·         One full page for (Chinese) celebrity gossip

Mandarin Pages – 46 pages

·         An extract newspaper (24pages long), containing 4 articles related to NZ

·         Around 13 A3 pages worth of Classifies

·         14 pages of advertisements

·         And many international articles  

From these graphs of ratio of advert: articles: classifies: NZ articles. The predominant ratio is for adverting while NZ article as a minimal of only 4 articles. The results for this issue of Chinese newspapers in writing on NZ current affairs is very low, or maybe it is a slow news week, but is it really any different any other time of the year?

In Liu research suggest it isn’t any better, indicating “Chinese media has little interests in Maori-related issues”, only reporting in the negatives/ or eye-catching media titles, and using stereotypes, has led NZ-Chinese readers to know very little in NZ/ Maori culture, and even within their little pockets of knowledge of NZ- they are usually full of stereotypes and misunderstandings. Asking my mum today about her understanding of Waitangi Day. Her answer was short, “the Treaty signing”, I further ask her of why it is protested? Did you know there were 2 treaties? She could answer because she didn’t know the deeper historical meaning behind the treaty of Waitangi, and I don’t think many other Chinese speakers do; especially if they are relying on information from NZ/Chinese newspapers.

Liu also includes the radio in her research, which again provides the same results from newspapers, the minimal/ “non-existent” portrayal on Maori. I want to tell my experience with NZ-Chinese radio: it is full of advertisements and (annoyingly) catchy jingles. The talk shows, indeed, mainly discuss affairs about China, rarely discussing NZ matters. But the situation I want to express is the one time I felt the NZ-Chinese radio was acting unprofessional- the radio announcer spent an hour of the talk show shunning a hit-and-run driver (that crashed into the announcer’s car), announcing over the radio the drivers plate number, model and colour car, and pressuring the driver to “turn himself in”; at that moment I felt the unprofessionalism in listening to such personally stories on a national talk show, and using his “power”/ “authority” over the radio to bully a driver, when other more interesting and useful news can be reported in that time- news related to NZ.

Essentially, NZ-Chinese media are too lazy to delve more deeply into NZ matters, care only in the Chinese interest on Chinese stories, and making as much money out of the advertising as possible; NZ-Chinese journalist and radio hosts lack the knowledge and willingness to write/talk about NZ related articles; resulting in NZ-Chinese people to rely on the little information on Maori/NZ culture in the newspaper to develop their understanding of that culture, leaving many loop-holes and mistakes that results in a misunderstanding and misinterpretation.

One positive thing I would mention about NZ-Chinese newspapers is that it is free; So to balance the newspaper production costs, the need for funding from advertising, the ratio of advert: articles is semi-understandable.