I went to watch Shinjuku Incident today. That movie is absolutely fantastic, and really thought provoking. Illegal migrant workers and that sort of thing. My father works in the construction line, so I have had plenty of brush ups with workers who don't have permits, or illegal workers. It really made me think, me as a chinese whose ancestors came to Malaysia just 3 generations ago, what it was like to be living that far away from home, away from your family trying to make a living in a foreign country. What happens when the local population discriminates against you, and considers you as something that is inferior. It's been more than half a century since my grandparents/greatgrandparents have migrated to Malaysia. What was it like for them to come here. Why did they come, was life really bad back in China? I remember my father telling me my grandfather came here because the family was being harrassed by tu di. I think that means some sort of gangsters back then. We've come a long way since then...
I guess this must be quite really relevant to the chinese people in China, although even I can relate slightly to what it must have been like. What it's like to bow your head and be treated like that. I suppose chinese people tend to have a lot more sense of pride. We don't like to lose. That might be one of the reasons why the chinese as a whole have been successful.
Hah... It feels like nationalism, except it's for another country. I guess when you have policies in a country that directly discriminates against you, you tend to have less feeling for it. Although I think even if the chinese people in Malaysia would go back to China, as most politicians here seem to want us to. China wouldn't welcome us, because we just aren't it's citizens anymore.
It also makes me appreciate people who don't discriminate against other people. People like Kiang I suppose, he does some pretty stupid things, but his the sort of guy who would never discriminate against other races, it's the sort of thing that I've never seen in anyone else, it's funny because if anyone was in the position to discriminate against somebody of lower class, it would be him.
