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September 17, 2008
Samantha Day, reviewer
The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Kevin Taing returns to Cambodia to indulge in his family's heritage and culture.
Kevin Taing returns to Cambodia to indulge in his family's heritage and culture, where his usual diet of meat pies and sausage rolls is replaced with fried tarantulas and crickets.
Seemingly open to the new experience, he has reservations. When things take an unexpected and dramatic turn, Kevin is moved from the village of Chhlong to a five-star resort, making these family footsteps more like a tourist's footsteps. Back out on the streets of Phnom Penh, however, he tries to make up for lost experiences and unites with family members he has never met.
This interesting episode of a fascinating program gives great insight into how prejudices have the potential to overshadow a rewarding overseas experience.
Kevin Taing returns to Cambodia to indulge in his family's heritage and culture, where his usual diet of meat pies and sausage rolls is replaced with fried tarantulas and crickets.
Seemingly open to the new experience, he has reservations. When things take an unexpected and dramatic turn, Kevin is moved from the village of Chhlong to a five-star resort, making these family footsteps more like a tourist's footsteps. Back out on the streets of Phnom Penh, however, he tries to make up for lost experiences and unites with family members he has never met.
This interesting episode of a fascinating program gives great insight into how prejudices have the potential to overshadow a rewarding overseas experience.
18 comments:
Only stupid Australian TV producers would choose a Chinese to "retrace"(?) his footsteps in Cambodia. And only a non-Khmer speaking Chinese would be so paranoid as to misunderstand a conversation and think that his Chinese hosts in Chhlong (Kratie province) wanted to kidnap him and demand a ransom when their identity and whereabouts have been recorded on camera. And the scriptwriter kept on going on and on about Kevin's Khmer culture when the guy did not even know how to greet older people the Cambodian way. This ABC program is a joke!
Both a very bad reflection on ABC and those who got this guy Kevin on to the program - a disgrace to all Khmer living in Australia.
If you (ABC) want to make joke about Khmer people here in Australia, at least try to make it a bit more believable.
Hey, your comments - a bit discriminative toward khmer-chinese ethnicity. Though they are Chinese-cambodians, they survived the hardship during the KR time like many of us. For me, Kevin has obtained a great experience while tracing his roots. If you were him, you probably could not even have courage to do that. Well done Kevin and you chose the right response to the possible kidnapping. For me this film shows the real Cambodia life though. I can imagine the great lost you were in, when stepped into the country of your native place. Mr. Commentator, think about khmers who live abroad who do not speak the language of the country very well. You are just a specy who only seee things around you. Many khmers living abroad - was it their choice or their fault to be abroad, the answer is NO, big NO, it is because of the complexity of the cold war result. Even you (I don't know whether you experienced it or not) or me or others who were in the KR regime could not find out why wer were tortured nearly to death and the two millions who were killed, and this is how the KR Tribunal is setting up there, for us, though it is hard to find the answer, but at least it represent a bit of the rule of law has been established.
7:09 you are pointing out your finger to other as stupidity, but how many fingers pointed to yourself, count your tongue 10 times before evaluating others.
Khmers unity is the best recipe for peace, stability and prosperity at this stage. We should learn to live in harmony, no matter their roots, religious or political tendencies, as long as they declare they are khmers, help to build the country. The world today has changed, man. The place so-called home does not mean the place where they were born, let's help making Cambodia a place for living in harmony and strengten the rule of law, though it takes time, but we will be there at the end, I am very optimistic. Stop provoking discrimination, my countrymen!
Mjule Petche
Kevin was a bad SELECTION for the role in portraying The "Family Footsteps" television documentary.
ce type n'est pas khmer il est d'origine chinoise, je me demande pourquoi les journalistes du KI média s'intéressent ils tant à ce type alors que nos compatriotes khmers au pays souffrent énormément des violences vietnamiennes et thailandaises de la part de A Hun sen et sa bande de meurtriers. Rithy Komar
Oh please! This is just a TV show and it is not even close to the real reality of Cambodian society!
Well! If Kevin Taing is so successful in his endeavor in living in Cambodia with only a pair of cloth and a little money to become the next Cambodian millionaire then dirt poor Cambodian people have something to learn from him! Maybe Kevin Taing can write a new manual in how to live in Cambodia which will help him reach his goal to become Cambodian next millionaire!
Let be fair for once toward dirt poor Cambodian people! For dirt poor Cambodian people to become successful after living through 30 years of war and still have to deal with the painful memory mentality and physical torture and the lost of love one is a miracle!
I don’t know what this TV producer with Kevin Taing has in mind! As far as I am concerned Cambodia is emerging from the year of zero! Cambodia is behind at least 50 to 100 years behind all of the South East Asian country due to war! So to take Kevin Taing back in time to live in Cambodian Stone Age society and trying to prove that he too can survive and excel in such harsh environment is just fucking ridiculous! The fact is Kevin Taing received world class education and knows how the world is operated and has wealth of information to achieve anything and there can be no comparison!
For me this TV show is to show the superiority of the Chinese people over Cambodian people and to stereotype Cambodian people as the low scum of the Earth! Talking about go back in time to live in the past and I would rather watch back to the future star by Michael J. Fox! Ahahhahhahhaah
Just want to give credit to the fact that he wanted to discover and understand the place where he was born and his parents' homeland. The ones I don not like and trust are the ones who pretend they never had any connection to Cambodia. A litlle disappointment with his paranoia and the assumption that everyone in Cambodia was after his yuppied Australian wealth. But, it should be an eye-opening experience that he will forever treasured.
well, at least, he is waking up to his roots. he learns to play chapey. his wife still has khmer name - dany. beautiful name, indeed.
I am a great fan of Family Footstep and have been watching the show every week with my wife. We made it a mission to catch the episode about Cambodia because like Kevin, Cambodia is a country of our origin and of our birth. I left Cambodia when I was seven in 1978, after living through the infamous Khmer Rouge regime. I am now working as an architect in Melbourne and living in the heart of this Marvellous city- a life a world away if my parents had not made the decision (out of necessity) to leave Cambodia. I returned to Cambodia in 2000, after putting it off for so many years. By that time the last of my grandparents had just passed away. I had lost the strongest link I had to the land.
As I left Phnom Penh airport in a Taxi to my hotel, I saw a world I could not recognise, but felt so profoundly connected - my heart throbbed with anticipated sadness and joy. I saw a man with no legs paddled across the road in front of the taxi and I started crying, a million things ran through my head. I was stricken with joy that I finally took the first step back.
After watching this week episode of Family Footstep, I was so disappointed that I could not sleep! I spoke to a few colleagues at work and they all agreed with my reaction. The episode felt so contrived from the start, especially with the choice of Kevin as the central role and with little explanation of Kevin’s background. Kevin, as a character brought up so many wounds to the surface. I have so many friends like Kevin, but I felt Cambodia deserved better or at least a small explanation.
Kevin’s family are pure TeCheow (chinese) migrants who fled China to find a better life in Cambodia when Cambodia was a prosperous country. His family are the kind of TeCheow who are hard working and are proud of Chinese heritage and live very much in an insular life with little connection with other non-Techeow Cambodians. They don’t consider themselves Cambodian and reject most Cambodian cultural aspects as inferior at best and with xenophobic contempt at worst.
I had my heart broken twice by two Techeow Cambodian Australian girls because their parents thought I was a ‘pure’ Cambodian and not Techeow enough to deserve their daughters (I am one eight Techeow – the rest are Cambodian and Australian). Both these girls are very similar to Kevin. Their family left Cambodia and came to Australia when they very young. Their parents forced them to speak Techeow and English and would hit them if they speak Khmer (Cambodan)!!! Sadly, like Kevin both have forgotten the Khmer language or culture.
To average Cambodians, Kevin is a kind of pseudo ‘red neck’ who had been brought up to fear and to shut out that part of the world his family has ‘migrated through’ on their way to Australia. Whilst it is perfectly acceptable to choose a central character with little knowledge or appreciation of Cambodia; the producer should choose someone with some strong tie to the country.
I'm so relieved that there are people out there who are just as disappointed with the Cambodian episode as I am!
I have been an avid fan of Family Footsteps since Series 1 and coming from a migrant background, the show truly resonates with me.
Kevin's actions - annoying, absurd, insensitive, insulting to his Cambodian host family - and truly NOT in the spirit of participating in the Family Footsteps experience.
I have to wonder why ABC even aired this episode.
I suppose it's because ABC spent so much additional money accommodating Kevin in 5 star luxury at the Raffles, that NOT to air the episode would have been a bigger waste of money.
For Joanna, Laetitia and Andrew who all perservered with their culture shocks, I watched in amazement and respect. I cheered and wept with them on their journeys. They all turned their experience into a deeply meaningful and positive life-changing one. More power to them!
For Kevin, he copped out; couldn't hack it and wasn't prepared to.
He should have had more trust in the program's producers - AS IF they and the ABC would not have thoroughly researched the credentials of his host family; AS IF the ABC would have deliberately placed him in any danger; AS IF the ABC is interested in sponsoring 5 star holidays with all included room service meals and guitar lessons.
Personally I suspect Kevin couldn't face the prospect of sleeping with Rhitt and holding his hand for an entire fortnight; and having to use a squat toilet to boot. As for the relentlessly hard, manual labour of working in the ice factory - let's just not go there.
Disappointed, annoyed, insulted - that's how I was left feeling at the end of this episode, marring for me a much loved TV series.
In future ABC, please choose someone worthy.
To the posters above, please give Kevin some credit. I do believe that he genuinely feared for his life - it appeared that his parents did not share enough of the background thus, he was not relly prepared to let loose and be absorbed. Perhaps, he was fed
with more negative information about the place and people than positive one.
There always have been two sets of feeling with many of the mixed Khmer-Chinese people - the two cultures intertwine to produce a unique experience which is both Khmer and Chinese, but not of either one in its completeness.
In the end, the experience was memorable for Kevin. I appreciate the show becuse it presented the "real" human experience that Kevin, as who he is, had through the journey. It would not be real, if every show has to be about people who always fit our own perception of whom they should be.
The show was underwhelmed and unenthralled, and yet disrespectful to the overwhelming majority of Cambodians -- suffice to say.
Too many Chinese Khmers denied they were were Khmer, proud to be only Chinese. Only wanted to be do business when Cambodia was prosperous but when the country was ruined by war, most of them shunned cambodia and the dark khmer people as dumb, idiot, poor, bumpkin, on and on.
In Sydney, have they ever mixed with the local Khmer community ? I gusess most of the time NO. At work they would brag they are Chinese instead.
But i give some credit - Kevin wanted to know more and more Khmer culture. First step, in his awakening. Please give him a chance3, not be too hardon him. it was not his fault, it was his parents fault who brpught him up to detest anytyhing Khmer ( i only assume from genral observation of most chines khmer here, maybe I am wrong).
He considers himself as Khmer-Australian or Chinese-Australian?
After i go through all your comments, it makes me recall about Ms. Somaly Mam's writting on her biography (Le Silence de l'innocence). She told us about Chinese-Khmer discrimination on pure Khmer.
I also heard about it when i was 15 year old during my shopping at Olympic market with my mum.
I am also Techeow-Cambidian because of long derivative from my grand father but all the time i am very proud to be Khmer i never consider myself as Chinese at all.
Hope that all the Chinese-Cambodian will live peacefully with the Cambodian!
Hello 12:26 p.m.
In France and in the US, these people are exactly the same as Kevin and his parents. They insist on speaking Teo-Chew at home, learning Mandarin and upholding Chinese, not Khmer culture.
Especially the older people look down on "pure" khmers and would prefer that their sons and daughters not marry "pure" Khmers, as mentioned by the gentleman from Melbourne whose heart was broken by two young Chinese women from Cambodia, because of the parents' opposition.
In the family footsteps of "stupidity!"
The Khmer cultural identity has be robbed by foreigners' exploitation as shown on the so-called "Familiy Footsteps."
no matter how inaccurate, we should be thankful ABC had a ducumentary about Cambodia.
although Kevin may not know his culture and traditions completely, this documentary is showing the world that another group of Cambodians (product of Killing Fields) who may not know their roots, but the very least is making an attempt at rediscovery.
Those of you who "know", please help to enlighten those of us who may not "be fully aware". Us younger generations who like you do care for Cambodia's suffering want to be learn. Please teach us.
Respectfully,
Young, not lost, but want to be enlightened!
If more and more of this types of documentaries are shown on TV, more and more Chinese Khmers will wake up and accept their roots, the country andpeople who gave them life after they escaped from China.
My mother had some chinese blood too, but I only grew up to see love all things Khmer. Except her name and skin, she abandoned anything Chinese, but totally immerseed herself in Khmer culture.
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