Regarde les Chinois : Derrick Chang 張道恩
2008-12-08 | Cedric Sam
Lors de ma dernière journée à Hong Kong en début mai, j’en ai profité pour m’asseoir avec Derrick Chang à nouveau, mais cette fois pour une entrevue pour Regarde les Chinois. Peut-être mieux connu pour Mask of China, d’abord un blogue de sa vie à l’étranger et aujourd’hui son site de photographie, Derrick vit maintenant à Hong Kong, travaillant comme enseignant d’anglais dans une école publique spéciale. Est-ce qu’il aime ça là-bas? On a bien sûr posé cette question, qui semblait revenir avec tous les Canadiens-Chinois que j’ai rencontré en Asie. On a évidemment parlé de photographie et de son travail d’enseignant, et on a même eu une leçon pour prendre un portrait avec la bonne lumière au crépuscule, juste à l’entrée du centre commercial Festival Walk de Kowloon Tong.
On my last day in Hong Kong in early May, I met with Derrick Chang again, but this time for an interview for Regarde les Chinois. Perhaps better known for Mask of China, first a blog that he wrote while living abroad and now his photography website, Derrick is currently living in Hong Kong working as an English teacher in a public special school. Does he like it there? We talked about this question that seemed to recur with many of the other Canadian-born Chinese that I met in Asia. Obviously, I asked him about photography and his teaching work, and got a lesson for taking this portrait with the appropriate lighting at sunset, just outside Kowloon Tong’s Festival Walk shopping mall.
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Comme les Chinois: So, where are you from originally?
Derrick Chang: I’m from Toronto, Canada. Born and raised. Went to University of Toronto, and now I live in Hong Kong.
CLC: So, what brought you to Hong Kong?
A job, a teaching job. My parents are from here, originally, so I decided to come here and stay a few years and see how it is. So I enjoyed it and I stayed.
CLC: How long have you been here?
Two and a half years, in Hong Kong.
CLC: And before that, you were in China.
China, Dalian.
CLC: What are you trained in?
Trained in?
CLC: What were you doing before in Canada?
I studied Chinese history and politics. It was one of my majors. And my other major is city planning, urban planning. And after graduation in… 2001, I worked two years at Bell Canada. I didn’t like the corporate life, so I decided to go to China to rediscover my roots I guess, if you can say that!
CLC: … Did you rediscover your roots?
No. I found an alien culture and one that I didn’t really get along with, after a while. But I enjoyed my time there and I’m glad I went. I’ve no regrets.
CLC: What shocked you?
Well, how different Chinese people are, the Chinese people I knew from Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese people. It’s quite different.
CLC: How different are they?
Ah their mentality, the way they do things… everything! The way they dress, the way they eat, you know, and being brought up in Canada, Chinese to me meant Cantonese culture, Hong Kong culture, so… That’s all I knew about China, until I actually went there. My first time in Mainland China was in 2000. And it was very interesting.
CLC: What did you see?
My first trip to China was Guangzhou. I have an aunt there, who is also an expat. She lived for many years in Australia and went back with her husband to work in Guangzhou. It’s quite different.
CLC: So you went to Guangzhou and traveled around…
Yeah, I just traveled and I just traveled around Guangdong province. My second trip was when I actually moved to China. Went to Northeast China. In the West, it’s known as Manchuria. Northeast China close to North Korea.
CLC: You’ve been to North Korea?
Uh, officially yes! There’s a border city called Dandong. D-A-N-D-O-N-G. Right along the border between China and North Korea. And ah, you can… It’s not really protected because there’s a river and you can kind of like walk on the other side for (inaudible).
It’s guarded by sentries, but you won’t get shot if you jump on the other side for a few second! So yeah, I can say I’ve been to North Korea! (laughs) For a few minutes, seconds… It was interesting.
CLC: Now you live in Hong Kong, work in a school…
Yep, work in school, I’m a teacher, special ed. teacher.
CLC: Do you like what you do?
I like what I do. It’s meaningful. And ah… I dunno, I’m the kind of guy who likes to do work that, you know, makes a difference somehow, to somebody. And it’s not only for money. I also freelance as a photographer. And I’m starting to move towards humanitarian causes for a bit.
I was actually contacted by a friend of mine from primary school. He’s also in Hong Kong and he’s a lawyer now in Hong Kong. And he’s working with a group of lawyers who are helping refugees and they need photography done. So I’ll do some pro bono with them. Yeah, so I think it’s a worthy cause. I’ll tell you about it when I do it, in the next few weeks.
CLC: How did you start (doing) photography?
I always… Actually, since I left Canada, you know, I had the point-and-shoot camera and did not know what the hell I was doing, and it’s quite funny, because… How I got in into photography seriously, I was back home in Canada, three years ago, almost three years ago, and I had my point-and-shoot Canon in my pocket, and I was fishing. And when I got up to pick up the fish out of the water after I caught it, the camera fell out of my pocket into the water! (laughs)
So that was the summer before I moved to Hong Kong, and then I had… got on to Flickr, Flickr.com, and then I just admired a lot of photographers there and I said, you know, this is my opportunity there: I lost my camera…
CLC: So you bought a new one?
Yeah, got a pretty good-paying job now and I bought a SLR camera and I haven’t looked back. It’s more than a hobby right – obsession maybe. I treat it like work now, so I’m very serious about it now…
CLC: You’re self-learning (eh).
Yeah, self-taught, self-learning… I have some friends who are very good photographers. I have a friend who is a photographer in Hong Kong. I met him last year – he’s world-famous. And he’s done photography for Time, National Geographic, Newsweek… So yeah, he helps me a lot.
CLC: What’s you advice for… say, people like me, who are… I’m just taking pictures for leisure and I want to improve my style.
Well, what you say was interesting, “Improve your style”. The first thing to improve your style is figure out your style that you have, that you’re interested in. There are many types of photography – there travel, portraiture, humanitarian – like I want to do, sports, fashion, landscape, architecture. You have to find out what you’re good at.
Um, since I self-teach myself and… All of these resources are on the Internet. So, the best thing to do is to learn by yourself, get books, go on free websites, learn, ask people, look at photos and just go out and take photos. Look at what other people are doing and then ask yourself why this is a great picture. And then, study it and keep it in your mind to practice on your own.
My mentor, the biggest thing he said was find out your own style and then work at it. He said generally it takes for a working pro five years before they can… five years of development of their own style before they can become a good pro, so. I’ve been shooting for two and a half years now, and I’m half-way there! So, I’m happy with my progress, and I’m not going to brag about it – I’ve been published quite a few times, online…
CLC: Where?
Asia Sentinel, and then some other smaller newspapers and magazines. (Editor’s note: but also one of China’s most read/respected newspapers, the Southern Metropolis)
CLC: I read about Asia Sentinel in the newspaper (SCMP) today… I heard that they were a news source for something that happened in Shenzhen today. Somebody jumped and… (it turned out that the story was something else…)
… extinguished the torch, yeah.
CLC: I mean in Hong Kong, the torch relay was… I don’t know if the word “peaceful” is correct!
… somewhat peaceful, yeah! (laughs) But ah, I just like how photography reaches more people. I used to have a blog and I wrote it for the benefit of my family and friends. It got quite popular, well not very very popular, but…
CLC: That’s how I knew you!
So you met me, and that’s how I met a lot of people. And from what I wrote, I try to be honest and just tell people what I saw and felt and my experiences, so. It was a good experience to write that but those days are over. I like taking photos now.
CLC: What do you think of Hong Kong today?
What do I think of Hong Kong today? (laughs)
CLC: Loaded question!
Loaded question! Since the handover, I am not too optimistic about what’s happening. There’s a lot of government policies… Basically, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and it’s like that in China as well. But the statistics say that the gap between the rich and the poor in Hong Kong is among the worst in the world.
CLC: Worse than the States?
Worse than the States, worse than China. If you look at the Top 5 worst, there are always countries in Africa and Asia and then Hong Kong is up there, which is very disturbing. It’s called the Gini coefficient. If you look it up, Hong Kong is one that has one of the biggest gap between rich and poor. And it’s getting wider.
The problem is that government here has two masters: the People and Beijing. And the people and Beijing’s interests are not always the same. So, that leads to self-censorship of the media. This past week with the torch coming through in Hong Kong, there’s been… activists who were not allowed into Hong Kong territory and there was no reason given. So, you know, you have to be vigilant… Hong Kong people have to resist this… communist scourge! (laughs) Nah, just kidding!
CLC: (laughs) Some will say that as long as the economy goes well…
Well I mean, that’s the thing. Uh, money is the cure-all for Chinese people, isn’t it…
CLC: Well…
As long as people make money, they’re happy. It’s not always the case. Now, middle class in China are fighting back because they realize that they have rights and properties. And we’re seeing it all the time. For example, the mini-protest on Nanjing Road in Shanghai? Because the Shanghai government wants to extend the Maglev, the high-speed rail, through neighborhoods?
CLC: When was that?
This was… Christmas? January? It was quite a big story.
CLC: I heard about a protest last week about a protest in Chengdu. 200 people walking in the street to protest, I think, againstthe building of a plant.
Yeah, sure and Xiamen, in Fujian province.
CLC: That was pretty big.
Yeah, the PX project. I know people who covered that story. So, people are starting to figure out that they have rights, and that they are not going to be pushed around.
CLC: Well, in a sense… The economy has to be developed before more political freedom is given to the people.
Well, that’s certainly what’s happening… You know, I don’t care about what happens, politics-wise, as long as everyone gets a chance to jump unto the economic train. So I think the more you travel to China, the more you speak to ordinary Chinese people, you’ll feel it more.
CLC: Tell me about your job more?
My job now?
CLC: Yeah.
I work with emotional behavioural problem children. All of them are from low-income families, broken families mostly. Some of them have learning disabilities and they have pretty much been kicked out of their original school. So our school is kind of a reform school. We’re more strict than regular schools, mainstream schools, and we’re trying to modify their behaviour so that they can be re-integrated into the school system.
CLC: It’s an elementary school?
Yeah, primary school, elementary school. And there’s only a couple of school in Hong Kong that are like this. So, it’s quite challenging, especially teaching English, because they pretty much have no English ability! (laughs) But I get along with them, I try to play the good friend angle with the (students). A lot of the teachers quite strictly yell at them, whereas I’m more of a buddy.
It works and doesn’t work sometimes. But I enjoy it, and I can say that if things stay the same, I’d spend my career there. Like, if the principal stays the same, you know, doesn’t come out with any wacky policy… Because working in schools in the public system in Hong Kong is hit-or-miss. The principals run the schools like their own little kingdom. I don’t really rate the Hong Kong education system, I don’t like it at all.
I mean it’s better than the Chinese one, the Mainland Chinese one, but compared to the West, it’s not so…
CLC: So, you like Hong Kong enough to stay there?
Yes, that’s a good way to put it. I like Hong Kong enough, I can tolerate. (laughs) I don’t have that many Hong Kong friends. Um, I find that I am not a hyper-consumer, I don’t like to show off my clothes, and you know, car, watch and shoes. I live my own life among the commercialism here. And I have my own set of friends. I don’t have a *lot* of friends here, but the friends that I do have are quite close.
I don’t mind. It’s comfortable here. I can’t complain. I’m paid very well for what I do and I have most of the rights and freedoms that I would back in Canada… So, no complaints!
CLC: So, to wrap this up, how do you define yourself? If I ask you “who are you?”, how do you answer that?
Um… Who am I… I’m kind of like a nomad. A cultural nomad maybe. Since I left Canada, I realized that there’s a world out there; you shouldn’t stay in one place for too long. And I chose teaching because I like teaching, but also because it has a lot of holidays and it allows me the freedom to learn and visit other places, learn other cultures and get to understand the world. I have low attention span, so if I stay at one place, I get bored. So I just have to keep moving, meeting new people, seeing new things.
CLC: Well, you’ve traveled around China, seen twenty provinces.
Yeah, over twenty provinces. From this year, I am going out to see more of the world. You know, I’m not that kind of academic person who like to sit down and read books, too much. I’d rather go out and meet people and see things and interact with other people.
CLC: Thanks Derrick!
Ok, thank you!
