“Quo vadis, Terra Australis?”: Don'o Kim's The Chinaman

Abstract

Don'o Kim's The Chinaman is an Australian jeremiad lamenting the Australia still shadowed by the self-privileging White Australia policy and making a plea for a more pluralist society. A powerful narrative firmly rooted in the sociohistorical context of white-East Asian encounters in Australia, it recalls symbolic moments of interracial conflict such as the 1854 anti-Chinese race riots at Bendigo and the 1980 bombing of a Japanese resort project at Yeppoon. Kim also interrogates Anglo-Celtic Australia's espousal of cultural whiteness as the heart of national identity from his firm belief that Australia is not only an extension of the British cultural tradition but also a significant departure from it. He ultimately criticises white Australia's self-identification as a transplanted Europe through dissociation from their neighbours in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. The Chinaman is the Korean-Australian writer's arduous and sustained rumination on the future direction of multiracial Australia, eloquently expressed in the “Quovadis”, the name of the white yacht on which most episodes of the narrative take place.