A common but painful New Zealand dilemma is explored in a new documentary. MARGARET AGNEW talks to Roseanne Liang, the woman behind Banana in a Nutshell.


Banana in a Nutshell, despite its rather flippant title, is a true portrait of a Chinese-European couple in New Zealand and their struggle to gain a blessing for marriage from traditional Chinese parents.

The film's creator and star, Roseanne Liang, is a first-generation New Zealand-Chinese director, based in Auckland. Secretly in love for the past eight years with a white guy she met at her university fencing club, her aspiring fiance had to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese well enough to impress her dad.

A scarily honest, unavoidably one-sided, first-person account of the challenges of a cross-cultural relationship, Banana in a Nutshell was originally a project that Liang says she devised to distract herself from the emotional events she was going through earlier this year. "The camera was something to hide behind."

In the film, Liang says: "The generation gap has grown so wide I've given up shouting across the chasm."

She is torn between her devotion and duty to her parents, whom she still lives with in the posh (predominantly white) Auckland suburb of Remuera, and her love for her partner.

She thinks the biggest issue is generational, "exacerbated, I guess, by culture".

Her last three short films have won national and international awards, taking her to prestigious film festivals in London, Berlin and Sydney.

However, she reckons her chosen career as a freelance filmmaker is a disappointment to her doctor father and former nurse mother, who worry about her future. Both her elder sisters are doctors, but warned their baby sister to only study medicine if she was passionate about it.

Seeing as her parents sent her to speech and drama lessons, and made sure she learnt various musical instruments, were they really surprised that she sought a career in the arts?

"I think they wanted me to be well-rounded, and not just academic, but as soon as I hit fifth form, they made me stop all extra-curricular activities."

Liang says that since she and her boyfriend Stephen "came out", she has been surprised by how many people have contacted her "saying that they're in the same situation. It's not just between Chinese and Europeans – it's between all cultures. Like Maori, Pacific Islanders, Croatian."

Liang seems to have touched a nerve. This isn't an uncommon story and affects many New Zealand families, "except their kids probably don't go and make films about them", Liang laughs.

The film is so frank and rawly honest, that you feel you've met the gently self-mocking and sweetly ambivalent Liang. You want to know how things are going with Stephen and whether her parents have seen her film, yet.

"My parents, as you may have guessed, aren't exactly that happy about it. I don't know what's going to happen.

"A lot of the stuff I'm doing is quite selfish – I'm doing it for myself, to further my career as a filmmaker. And I really do understand where my parents are coming from. They're not very happy."

Liang's ambivalence about her situation shows in how she sympathises with the rigid views of her parents, claiming they're not being racist, yet moments later saying: "I think they need to grow up".

How's her relationship with her parents right now?

"It's fine, so long as we don't talk about Stephen."

They're planning to wed in summer next year, and Liang hopes both her parents will attend. While Liang still lives at home, she spends her days at her "studio", aka Stephen's place.

She admits she has had a somewhat prolonged teenagehood because of her parents' insistence that she stay at home until she marries.

"It's quite extreme. As soon as I get married, I'll be free to move. It's not that bad living at home," says the 28-year-old, whose mother makes her breakfast every morning. "It's really nice, actually. I get to fund my films and don't have to pay any rent."

The first Chinese New Zealander to have a film accepted into the New Zealand International Film Festival, Liang has become increasingly aware of the portrayal of "Asians" as a homogeneous group.

"The thing is with the film festival, I'm preaching to the converted – people who are interested in Asian culture to begin with.

"I'm starting to realise that the representation of Asian groups in New Zealand is becoming important to me as a filmmaker and artist. Especially as I watch TV and get really angry at the mainstream representation of Asians. I saw (local TV series) Outrageous Fortune the other night and it had all this two-dimensional stereotyping of Asians." She was also unimpressed with the focus of Expose and Campbell Live on Asian crime.

This new awareness has made her re-evaluate the way she works. "Previously when I made short films, I only cast white people because I didn't want them to stand out or to point to me as an Asian filmmaker or Chinese filmmaker. I just wanted to make human stories. But then I realised I needed to represent who I am."

The term "banana" is an offensive one: it means Chinese people that are considered to be too westernised, ie: yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

"I've been called a banana since I was very, very young. And it's not a nice term. It's always by other Asians. 'You're not Chinese enough' is what's meant when you call someone a banana. Well, I am Chinese and how can I be anything but Chinese if I look like this? Banana isn't a nice term, but I think we've reclaimed it, kind of like 'queer', or something like that.

"We're not just two-toned people. Humans are always categorising each other. I never wanted to be white."

The film festival is likely to be one of the only chances for people to see Banana in a Nutshell, especially since Liang is reluctant for it to screen on television, afraid to open something so deeply personal and confessional to the wider New Zealand public. "I feel safe in the film festival."

Thanks to Margaret Agnew and The Press for granting permission to republish this article online.