Dating While Asian: Fun, sexy, sobering times in modern New Zealand

Dating While Asian director Maggie Shui.

A new docuseries tells the funny, messy and intimate stories from Pan-Asian New Zealanders — this time, on their own terms. With the help of animation, it’s a deep dive into dating as they go through situationships, breakups and mediocre hookups. Director Maggie Shui reflects on her own personal experience and inspiration behind Dating While Asian.

Two years ago, I went on a few dates with this guy called Charlie (name changed for his privacy). He was tall, sometimes had a moustache (I’m inexplicably really into moustaches) and made the effort to use em dashes in his text messages, which I thought was hilarious.

I met him while I was trying to have a post-breakup casual dating spree — an era of fun, sexy, carefree womanhood. Finding the right casual dating partner turned out to be almost as hard as finding a serious partner, but Charlie and his moustache were just right (even though he’d shaved his moustache for most of the time we were seeing each other, and his stubble once gave me Sharon from Kath & Kim levels of pash rash).

The great lockdown of 2021 put a halt to our time together and then I started seeing someone else, but I always thought fondly of Charlie. I felt proud, even empowered, that I could pick and choose exactly what I wanted in my dating life. I could enjoy casual sex as well as satisfying conversations over pasta. I could have it all.

But whenever I think I’m having a fun, sexy, carefree time as a modern gal in the big city, there’ll come a moment that sobers me right up.

I’ve spent the last six months directing a documentary series called Dating While Asian, where five Pan-Asian New Zealanders tell stories from their love lives. During filming, my friend showed me a message that one of Charlie’s friends had sent her. My little series had come up in conversation, and Charlie’s friend said he’d joked to Charlie that I was making a show about him, “as a white boy who loves dating Asians”.

I laughed. And then I pondered. And then I felt a bit gross and embarrassed.

Many Asian people will know the sinking, half-disgusted feeling you get in your stomach when you have the inkling that the person you’re dating has a thing for Asians.

Maybe you learn that lots of the people they dated before you were Asian as well, or you snoop through their following list on Instagram and see a string of Asian influencers.

Dating While Asian tells the funny, messy and intimate stories from Pan-Asian New Zealanders - this time, on their own terms.

You think: do they like me as an individual? Because I like them as an individual. Or are they attracted to me based on preconceived ideals of how an Asian person behaves and looks? Am I, God forbid, a fetish?

Charlie’s friend was making an offhand joke, and we can never know for sure if it was based in truth. But it gave me a peek behind the Grey Lynn, Green voting, natural wine-sipping, Toni Morrison-reading curtain; it gave me a taste into what white bros laugh about when we’re not in the room.

It reminded me that I am first and foremost an Asian woman, and men will always be perceiving and rating me. And sometimes, my Asian-ness will factor into how attractive they find me. Or they’ll at least think it’s funny to joke about that being the case. And for some reason, I’m the one who ends up feeling embarrassed.

I once wrote an article on the travesty of heterosexual women orgasming way less than men during sex. All the hetero women in the article happened to be Asian. It was so invigorating, fun and affirming to talk candidly about sex and dating with fellow Asian women. None of them felt the need to be anonymous for the article; they were happy to share their experiences when somebody asked.

It made me think that a big part of why “yellow fever” or the fetishisation of Asian people exists is because it’s rare for us to be telling our own stories about sex and romance. We’re often either desexualised or hypersexualised. Either way, ideas of sexuality are projected on to us. I realised I was hungry for open, genuine, nuanced stories of Asians as romantic and sexual beings, from Asians themselves.

So, I set out to tell those stories myself.

Across Dating While Asian’s five online episodes, we get an intimate vision into the way identity and culture are wrapped up in the romantic lives of these young New Zealanders. We see how being Asian can filter into what we desire, who desires us and the kind of love we think is possible for ourselves.

To be clear, not everything about dating as an Asian person needs to be problematised. Much of the series consists simply of stories from people who happen to be Asian.

And when their Asian-ness is part of the story, it doesn’t have to be tied to something traumatic or negative. The first episode explores the joys of revelling in your culture in your love life. Grace learns that her upbringing, how her ancestors lived and her Chinese heritage plays a role in what she needs in a romantic relationship – for example, sitting down to share a meal together most nights a week.

There are as many ways to be dating while Asian as there are Asians in the world. The more we get to see depictions of the inner lives of Asian people, the less likely we are to see them in a dehumanising, fetishising way.

And the less likely I’m going to have to deal with some yellow fever nonsense the next time I try to live out my Sex and the City dreams

Dating While Asian is available to watch on renews.co.nz from February 18.