Origins

For as long as I can remember, I have loved interacting with people from all different cultures and backgrounds: perhaps it's my insatiable curiousity to learn or my extroverted personality.

There are possibly innumerable other factors that lead me to proactively search for meaningful conversations with people whom I seemingly might have no commonalities with at all.

Growing up as a second-generation Chinese-Australian myself, I know some of the struggles involved with the immigrant experience.

I have wanted to start this project for a while yet but never had the opportunity or time until the whole COVID-19 pandemic. Seeing the subsequent rise of anti-Asian discrimination and xenophobic ideas being discussed in social discourse has only convinced me that now is the opportune time to launch this idea.

This project, inspired by Humans of New York, is the culmination of all my thoughts and ideas about living in a multicultural environment.

I hope that as you read through the individual posts, you start to realise that despite all the superficial differences we may have as human beings, be that age, sex, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic level, political views etc, there exists a shared experience within all of us.

Don't judge a book by its cover.

The idea is simple: I seek to interview those who were born overseas and then emigrated to Sydney (Australia) at some point in their lives. They preferably have stayed in Sydney for at least 6 months so they can make valid, eye-opening comparisons between their homeland and their new home, the Land Down Under.

This is by no means going to be an easy task, and I acknowledge that. This project wasn't supposed to be a piece of cake: nothing is.

The important thing in life is not to triumph but to compete. - Pierre de Coubertin

If any of you know someone (including yourself!) who would like to be interviewed, shoot me a message on this site, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn!

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: All posts are personal opinions and perspectives of the interviewees and are not a perfect representation of the whole country/experience.