9 NEIGHBOURHOOD THEME MUSIC www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 Welcome to New Lynn. This is a community of contrasts, from long-term older residents to first-home buyers and young migrants, many from Asia. In fact, here in the heart of New Lynn almost 50% of the residents were born overseas. What used to be a tired old town is partway through a $400 million facelift complete with a transport hub, entertainment, new housing, schools, a community centre and lots of lovely open spaces. My family identify as Malaysian Chinese. My ancestors moved from China to Malaysia, but I was born here, so I'm a bit of a mix. I have lived here my entire life. So come along with me as we discover what makes this community so diverse. In this episode of neighbourhood, we'll savour some Turkish party treats. In our culture, all the girls know how to cook. All mums teaching them, I think. Or we have to. It's different culture, not like here. It's not very equal, I think. A group of elderly Chinese rally round to keep New Lynn beautiful. The initial idea of building up this garden is trying to make New Lynn` this small dumping ground to become a lovely resting area for people. We'll discover the treasures of NZ's only lesbian museum. I think it's really important to preserve the history of lesbians, particularly the activism in the '70s. Some of those women have died, and their stories go with them. And the objects that they might have are probably getting lost. And a young man finds synergy in the music of Sri Lanka and Latin America. I define myself culturally as a bit of a vulture or a bit of a chameleon, right? I... I absorb a lot of things. I'm Stephanie Lai, and this is my neighbourhood. LYRICAL PIANO MUSIC When I was 19, I was lucky enough to win Miss Asia International here, and then I went to go represent NZ at the big pageant in China. Suddenly, I had to scrub up on my Mandarin and Chinese history, and all the other girls there were very Chinese, and I felt really different because I was the only one that spoke English. But I kinda reckon with my Kiwi upbringing I was more independent. Overall, it was a really incredible experience spending time with the girls and finding ways that we were similar and different. Sometimes real magic happens when cultures align like that. BIRD SING ATMOSPHERIC SYNTH MUSIC I guess what's really inspiring to me in West Auckland and particularly New Lynn is the vibe that I get in the afternoons. So I go to work; I come home, put my running shoes on, headphones on, run down Great North Road towards the mall, and, uh, just come back home after a good 40, 45 minutes' run. End of the day, that kind of vibe has a really ` I don't know ` very uplifting sort of an effect on me personally. So that's why I love doing that. I would say I regard both NZ and Sri Lanka as home, because I was quite lucky in the sense that I was able to travel back and forth quite a bit. So I kinda have both places in my heart. And, uh, what New Lynn, West Auckland and NZ at large, sort of, does to me creatively and musically is a different thing to what Sri Lanka does. Because Sri Lanka's like a memory. It's a distant place, right? You have to, sort of, draw within yourself to go back to that place and pick memories, so to speak. (PLAYS GENTLE ACOUSTIC TUNE) About the civil war in Sri Lanka, I remember quite a bit. Obviously I grew up hearing radio and TV, newspaper. Every day there was something happening somewhere, you know? A bomb going off somewhere or a suicide bomber killing a number of people somewhere else. (CONTINUES PLAYING) I guess the civil war impacted my family in the sense that they saw that they needed to find a better future for us. I have two other siblings as well. So my parents made the decision to move to NZ. I would describe my music as a fusion sound. I'm drawing from quite a number of traditional sounds ` particularly from the Caribbean and also West African, and quite recently from my own country of birth, Sri Lanka ` um, with more urban, electronic sounds. So I would call it a fusion` urban fusion sort of sound. CRUISY ELECTRONIC MUSIC I define myself culturally as a bit of a vulture or a bit of a chameleon, right? I... I absorb a lot of things. It's a great thing to be able to, sort of, belong to everywhere, or belong to a lot of places. because place, to me, is stories. So Latin America's got a story, West Africa's got a story, South Asia's got a story, Polynesia has a story. And me being able to absorb all these different bits of stories, I think it's an amazing experience. So here we are today at Arch Hill Records, Grey Lynn, with my main man John on the drums right there. Thank you, John. And also Savi right there on the keys. Let's do this session. BASS GUITAR PLAYS REGGAE INTRO # You give me freedom # I'm feeling like an eagle high in the sky. # Yes, I'm flying. # Just one of those ones when you walk into a place, # you get the strange feeling that you've been in that place, # like you've been transported to this psychedelic space. # I got the chills when I saw your face for the very first time. When I'm behind the mic, I'm in the zone. I feel like I'm right there where I'm supposed to be. And this space is fantastic, it's amazing, so I'm right here. # Long, long time ago. # Yes, I know # I fell in love with you. # You give me deja vu # Oh, you give me love. I guess I'm really proud of being able to work with a lot of very very talented people from around the world. Um, like I say, the highlights would've been Cuba and Brazil. So I'm really really proud of being able to go to different places, connect with people as I knew them all along, and have really great experiences musically. # Supernatural love. # Deja vu. # Deja vu. Deja vu. I see myself in five or 10 years' time possibly doing exactly what I'm doing, but in a more` in a bigger scale. Being able to create at your own pace, in the comfort of your own home, is` I'm enjoying that. So, yeah, in five or 10 years' time, I would love to have a lot more content out, a lot more music, and, um, that's the plan. REGGAE BEAT ECHOES, FADES REFLECTIVE GUITAR MUSIC My parents came here from Malaysia with almost no English skills and $1000 between them. They worked so hard. They waited at restaurants and worked any job that they could find. By the time I was born they were running a laundromat, a video rental store and a restaurant all at the same time. Dad was really proud of everything they were achieving, so it was really sad when the council needed to buy the land to build a transport hub just over there, and they were forced to sell. The restaurant had been such a huge part of our lives. But these days a wide range of ethnic eateries give locals a taste of the world without ever having to leave New Lynn. MEAT SIZZLES When they're all cooked we'll take them out of there. Mm-hm. < Almost there. Another one. I come to NZ at 2001 by myself. It was for the better opportunity of the life in here. My name is Nigar Ivgen. I'm born in Turkey, in Ankara. Uh, my husband came to NZ about seven months after me. He was doing his compulsory in army. While he was busy, I came to NZ. (CHUCKLES) There we are. One more. Our first business, we opened three and a half years after we arrived in NZ. It was in New Lynn. Still there. About 12 years old now. Mozaik Caffe. We have about 18 restaurants and cafe shops at the moment. And some of them franchised. We are not running all of them, of course. It is keeping us really busy. Uh, but still we are enjoying doing it. And... It's hard, but it's about love as well. I'm one of eight ` four girls, four boys ` and I'm the youngest girl. This one just after I arrived in NZ. And this one I was working in a restaurant as a chef in Takapuna. If I stayed in Turkey, I don't think I was going to be that successful. Yes, I'm sure I was going to be good, but not like in here. LAID-BACK MUSIC Our latest restaurant is Bodrum. It's in New Lynn ` Lynnmall Brickworks. It's more like Turkish and Greek fusion. Tonight's occasion is my husband's birthday. It's a surprise party. I'm doing a traditional Turkish borek with spinach and feta. Yeah. He loves that one all the time. You can eat that any time ` in the morning or for dinner. This is a water, milk and olive oil mix. This is the mix it will make it a little bit airy in the pastry. Then you will see it's soft, but at the same time it will be crunchy. In our culture, all the girls know how to cook. All mums teaching them, I think. Or we have to; it's different culture. Not like here. It's not very equal, I think. (CHUCKLES) So we are all know how to cook. But here, of course, I learn more. I used to work in a kitchen about 10 years as a chef. Still cooking, still helping, doing the menus. And at home I have young kids; I have to cook every day. This one is yogurt I'm putting on top. Um, egg` whole egg and two spoons of yogurt. That's all. Done. We're gonna have some finger foods for tonight's function. It will be falafels, little kebabs, all sort of kebabs. Borek, some dips. Yeah, that sort of stuff we will have for tonight. Sorry. Sorry about that. PEOPLE CLAP ALEX: Supposed to say something? Yeah. Surprise. (LAUGHS) I like living in NZ because lifestyle is different. It's not too formal. Very casual. How many people can go with their slippers to the restaurants in Europe? No one. In here, everyone can do that. Doesn't matter what their, uh, title is and what's their age is. It's very casual, and that's what I like, actually, about here. I'm proud of ourself, but it's not only me. We are really good team, me and my husband, I think. For the future, I like to spend most of my time with my family. Yes, we are working, but now I think slowly. I just wanna make it slow down and take your time with your kids. FUNKY MUSIC My parents worked so hard when I was a kid that I ended up doing a lot of after-school activities like Girl Guides and dance. I wanted the Kiwi lifestyle that my friends had. Sometimes I felt really different, being Chinese. I remember I wanted blonde hair and blue eyes. Even at shared lunch day, my mum had made me barbecue pork, and I remember sitting there watching all the other kids avoid it. I was probably around 17 before I realised that I was genuinely proud of being Chinese. And ever since then I've tried really hard to celebrate the things that make me who I am. RELAXED MUSIC We have lost so much history in the past. My life would've been so much different growing up in the 1940s and '50s if I had known more about the women who lived together in the high school, if I'd known` Even the word lesbian would've been a great help. But knowing that it was possible. And I think it does make a difference in people's lives. I think it's really important to preserve the history of lesbians, particularly the activism in the '70s. Some of those women, they'll die, and their stories go with them. And the objects that they might have are probably getting lost. Family don't really know what to do with them or do not understand them. I believe that the Charlotte Museum is the only lesbian museum in the world that's exclusively lesbian. GENTLE PIANO MUSIC My daughter put this book together. It's photos of my childhood. It's me as a baby and then, um, growing up. We didn't have much of a camera, so of course there's not many family photos. I grew up thinking that I knew I was homosexual. And I looked up an encyclopedia and it said homosexuals had arrested development. I thought they were all short. And I went through that period of feeling I was an absolute freak because I grew so big. I was married for 14 years and have five children, and we all have family dinners together, so it's` and nine grandchildren. Yes. A very productive lesbian, you might say. (CHUCKLES) Like the family tradition of production. I had left him before I got involved with anybody, so it was a clean break at the end of '75. I'd had attractions to women, of course, all over the years, but finally I went to a conference. And after the conference, coming back on the Silver Star, um, I got together with one of the other psychologists. And I wrote a very lovely poem about getting together, you know? Once I came out, I really started to collect things. I liked women things. Like on a mug. Women on mugs, women's pictures and faces, and many books. It was hard, to start with, to find a book that had a happy ending. And I really wanted to read stories with happy endings. It makes a difference to your sense of pride to be able to read about love between two women. Cos it was not available. So, uh, with collecting these things, that got me thinking about a museum. The museum gives a place for lesbians to come and feel a sense of being proud. There's also parents can have the opportunity to come and ask. And they say, 'Oh, well, these famous women had relationships with women. 'Well, I don't feel so bad about my daughter. I think she'll be all right.' I loved being out. It was such a relief to be out. So of course, I wore T-shirts that were fairly out and outrageous. Um, 'better gay than grumpy' sort of type things. And so once they started to get old I didn't want to throw them away. And so my drawers piled up with piles of old T-shirts. And so I thought, 'Well, I should put the T-shirts in a quilt,' so that's how it started. And I'm not even a good sewer, so it's pretty shonky sewing, but it hangs` it hangs well enough. The T-shirts all had meaning for me. They all had logos. They weren't all mine but mostly mine or other family members. Yeah, they all had lesbian significance. Probably the one with the biggest story for me is the 'don't die wondering' T-shirt. It's very hard sometimes to get out of those roles. Can be very painful for people and for families. So I think that's why the T-shirt's so important to me. It's` I worked for a long time in organisations like Spinz to prevent suicide. For me, personally, I think it's a treasure. A lot of` A lot of hard work went into trying to make it. Um, and... we've carried` This one we took around the South Island with a pop-up museum to seven different venues round the South Island. So, um, the Charlotte Museum doesn't always stay in one place. It can travel. Everyone says, 'What's the police doing there?' Well, my lover for five years was a policewoman. And that's when I learnt to speak in code, cos they were not out in the police force then. So everything has a little lesbian story. Many people come for many different reasons. Hard to pinpoint` There's no one type of visitor who comes to the museum. It's all about education and helping people understand that it's not the end of the world if two women fall in love with each other. GENTLE PIANO MUSIC WATER BURBLES SOFTLY I believe Kiwis these days are more open to different cultures and ideas. But I would like it if people recognised just how hard-working Asian migrants are and that we've actually been around for a really long time. I'm on the committee of the Asian Chamber of Commerce and a young member of NZ Asian Leaders. Both organisations do excellent work in supporting Asian people in business. It's great being a part of a group of people working towards a common cause. I'm the only child of the family, so that's why I have to support my mum and dad when they get old. It's also the culture and the tradition. My name is Susan. I was born in a city in China. I came to NZ for, obviously, good education. And when I finished my degree, double major, I settled down here, got a job. I'm quite happy about Auckland. When I was in NZ for the period of study, the whole family missed me quite a lot. And that's another reason for them to move to NZ as well. (SPEAKS MANDARIN) TRANSLATOR: When I first came to NZ, I was really happy about the environment. And the people were really friendly. There was so much to learn about the culture and everything else. But once I settled down, that's when I really started to love NZ. The whole society here treats me well, and I thought I should return the favour. I noticed that throughout NZ everywhere is really clean. But still, here and there it is not perfect. So I thought why not organise friends to just bend their knees and clean up rubbish on the streets, give something back to the community. So that was the initial idea. And later, more and more people joined my group, and we formed as Auckland Environmental Protection Association. The local board suggested to assign a project to the group. And then this project can be transformed to a friendship garden. It's the back of the New Lynn community centre. MAN SPEAKS MANDARIN TRANSLATOR: When we first took a look, we decided to make the garden in three layers. First is fruit trees, then a flower layer, and a third is a veggie garden. Today we are in Friendship Garden in New Lynn. This garden has been built two years ago. You can see in my background the members from the Auckland Environmental Protection Association doing the maintenance of the garden. The initial idea of building up this garden is trying to make New Lynn` this small dumping ground to become a lovely, um, resting area for people to have fun and, um, doing some leisure activities. (SPEAKS MANDARIN) TRANSLATOR: I'm not only making friends within the group but also getting in touch with the community. I have made lots of local friends, Kiwi friends. Also council members, local board members and even politicians. So it really provides the group opportunities to get to know NZ society and the community. Making the garden is quite simple. Maintaining the garden is the hardest part, especially during the summer, when it is dry. The group has to assign people five days a week to water plants regularly and also cut and maintain trees and veggies. ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC They are really happy about what they've achieved so far. And also they want the garden to go for, like, the long run rather than just a one-off project. So they are proactive and quite happy to do this day-to-day maintenance. And also no one complained about it. They are all happy. So they can do a little bit to give to the community, to the society. It's an oasis of green in an otherwise intense urban environment. You might have heard that New Lynn is an up-and-coming metropolitan centre, so along with the hard development of the train station and high-rise buildings, we have this wonderful community garden right in the centre of all of that. BOTH SING OPERATICALLY (SPEAKS MANDARIN) She said it means a lot to her and also to the members. This garden basically provides a platform for them to know each other, to work together, and also she mentioned it was good exercise. 'He is very happy to be involved with this project. And also he mentioned' this one gives Chinese elderly an opportunity to do a bit of contribution to the wider community. (SPEAKS MANDARIN) TRANSLATOR: There are quite a lot of local people that visit the garden. They sit and have a rest. They can enjoy the flowers and the pergola. When we are doing maintenance, we have seen a lot of Kiwi seniors bow to us and say thank you. It really moves me. So no matter how hard it is, I am never going to give up. UPBEAT MUSIC Over the coming years, New Lynn will be the site for thousands of new homes all close to public transport, places to work and places to hang out. So the community will spend less time travelling and more time enjoying what the neighbourhood has to offer. I have so much history with this place, and I think we're on our way to creating a truly diverse community here. It's a little glimpse into the future of NZ happening right before our eyes. Captions by Tracey Dawson. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016