FAITH IN ONESELF, AND FAITH IN BEING HUMAN
This one thing Ms. Yang knew for sure: her daughter was to be moved to the class next door. She stood at the classroom entrance, watching her daughter receive praise from the teacher. She knew her daughter’s skills were beyond this class, and too often she was the template example set for other students. Hannah was feeling too good about herself – that was dangerous.
Her mother’s strategy worked well. Hannah’s grades in class climbed in a staggering manner: she went from anonymous to the notable few. A certain happiness does in fact come with success. It’s the feeling of love from strangers, respect from the snobbish, and a sense of security in such an uncertain world. If there was one thing Hannah could believe in, it was that she could achieve the advantages of life by appealing to certain authorities - her parents, her school or her social hierarchy - she knew that to have a good life, she would have to plot her line carefully between these dots. This line would so influence her, that ten years later, when she is fourteen-hours away from her parents, she would still unconsciously fulfil their hopes. It was by no means painful, until she realised it. By then, she was twenty-five, living in Melbourne, alone.
1
You are my mother, as Hannah cried out, you will always have too much faith in me. From here, there would be a new life not only for Hannah, but for Ms. Yang as well. (Faith in oneself, and faith in being human) Recently, I have come to think of the human condition very intimately. On reflection, it strikes me as to how much I enjoy observing the human, as a subject of problems, from both the self and from the outskirts. The age-long polemic against the nature of humans came to new realisation for me when Mr. P, with the effects of a little aperol and too much techno, insists humans are naturally good. Why is that so? Mr. P smiles, and answers: because we cannot afford otherwise. This sense of ‘faith in humans’ was revisited as I undertook a design study of Melbourne Zoo under the supervision of Dr. Emma Jackson. There, I looked at how the ways in which we examine ‘others’, animals in this case, naturally inform our humanistic desires for survival.
2
HANNAH ZHU
Ms. Yang knew too well that the pleasure of elevation was a short-lived delusion. She knew this when she followed her husband - a poor student just like herself - to a foreign continent on the other side of the world. She knew nothing about Australia then, and now she had lost any interest. She had moved from job to job, life to life, for many years: starting off at drama school, and then getting carried away with this ‘going overseas’ trend. When she realised she had obtained nothing but disappointment, her daughters were already old enough to argue with her. She loved children, really did, and she was a good mum. She knew she needed to exercise some discipline with her two daughters to bring out their thirst for success. Her daughters would not make the same mistakes she did.
There is more for Ms. Yang and her husband to worry about now - their daughter is again, fourteen hours away, but on a different side of the world. From the fifty-square-metre childhood home in China to their daughter’s laptop in Amsterdam, the latest instructions on hand-washing and mask-wearing are imparted. Their love follows, wherever she may be. Still, it came as a great shock when she revealed to them her plans. You want to go with this man, whom you’ve just known for a semester, to Berlin? What is more dangerous for them: a pandemic or a stranger - a white man? The answer is obvious. Their precious daughter is out there, somewhere far away… like a kite drifting about in the starry night. The string of the kite attached to their guts, it pulls with every move she takes. The children leave, and it is the parents who need to grow up - wise words Ms. Yang had always told others, but it would still take time for her to let this one go.