2. Sins of the Father

"Harmony Without Uniformity"

This Confucian ideal underscored 2025's 11th Nishan Forum on World Civilizations in Qufu, Shandong. The Forum's theme of "Beauty in Diversity: Nurturing Understanding Among Civilizations for Global Modernization" additionally resonated with me as a panel participant (in one of the many attendant sessions) due to my birth country Australia's multicultural emphasis on "diversity as a strength" (despite its current problematization for political purposes). Arguable naivety of the slogan aside, while attending the Forum, I wondered silently whether perhaps Australia can also consider Confucian merits and find, in mutual learning, a civilizational dialogue that would also seek "harmony without uniformity" and a partnership built on trade, rather than AUKUS adversarial readiness for potential military conflict over Taiwan. In optimistically wondering such, however, perhaps I was the naive one.

Some 9 months later, Australia's foreign minister Penny Wong visited China and chaired the 8th Australia-China Strategic Dialogue with Chinese FM Wang Yi, later posting a recorded message via her X account. A key, promising highlight in this speech concerns educational and cultural exchange: in 2026, the Australian government doubled the number of scholarships for young Aussies to study in China under the New Colombo Plan (NCP). With nearly 10,000 Australian students already having come to China under NCP over the past decade, it templates a practical facilitation of Senator Wong's posture on Inter-Cultural Exchange in Education that is both pragmatically supportive and bidirectional, conceiving of such mutual learning ("people-to-people links") as a stabilizing, interest-advancing tool. It is reciprocal in rhetoric: Chinese students in Australia become cultural ambassadors, while Australian students in China build expertise and friendships. So too, it is explicitly tied to national interest, cooperation and understanding to help "manage differences", consistent with Labor's post-2022 "stabilise" China policy.

In particular, immersive NCP study by Australians in China also aligns well with the post-pandemic reforms in Inter-Cultural Communication [IC] pedagogic practice emerging from Shanghai International Studies University [SISU]. In particular: Chi, Zhang & Kulich's (2022) collaborative autoethnography exploring the development of a "'Cultural Stories' exercise" in facilitating Inter-Cultural Communication Competence [ICC]. The autoethnographic paper 1) examines how ICC is taught in Chinese EFL higher education, particularly through experiential, reflective methods that adapt Western ICC theories (e.g., competence models focused on knowledge, attitudes, skills) to Chinese cultural contexts; 2) posits foreign EFL teacher action research into education design methodology so as to facilitate best IC pedagogic practice.

Australian NCP students would hence engage directly with SISU-style ICC practices including experiential reflection, cultural narrative-sharing, and mutual ambassadorial roles, collaboratively curating the very "cultural self" and relational competence the paper advocates. In enhancing genuine inter-cultural understanding, Australian NCP core principles are thus pedagogically compatible with Chinese higher-ed approaches: prioritizing practical, personal narrative and story-based competence-building alongside theoretical discourse analysis translating Western ICC frameworks (individualistic) into China's relational, harmony-oriented educational environment.

However, this evidently authentic IC initiative operates within the broader AUKUS foreign policy ecosystem of Australia's Defense sector role within US Indo-Pacific strategy. It is concerning this in particular that the recent Australia-Japan $7 billion frigate deal, and deepened defence cooperation with a rapidly re-militarizing Japan, signaled to Yusha & Wenxin (2026):

Australia's role as a reliable US partner (and enabler of Japan's remilitarization) is hence the geo-political reality wherein the educational "inter-cultural exchange" discourse is "strategic ambiguity" tactic, a parallel track arguably masking what is considered US strategic proxy positioning of Australia against China in the advent of military conflict (over Taiwan), as was expressed to me in an interview with former Australian Deputy Ambassador to China (circa 1974-1978) John Lander:

This ambivalent duality, of such as appeasing warm mutual educational rhetoric alongside hard-power adversarial alignment with evident US hegemonism, is evidently thus the core of Australia's current China policy as expressed by Senator Wong in representing the Australian government under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Or, again, as John Lander put it:

AI Graphic rendering of the paradoxical nature of Australia's foreign policy dealings as offering greater trade and friendship with China on one hand but strengthening anti-Chinese, pro-US "deterrence" alliances on the other hand.

Geo-Politicizing Personal Positionality

TESOL Quarterly = status: the flagship TESOL journal published an introductory guide to TESOL Autoethnography in Yazan, B. (2026). Autoethnography as a research methodology in TESOL. With auto-ethnographic methodologies now officially validated / sanctioned, this paper will undoubtedly inevitably be widely cited in future by salivating grad students embarking on their formative pedagogic practice. It's an invited primer for newcomers, demystifying autoethnography’s “auto-ethno-graphy” triad (subjectivity/reflexivity + cultural understanding + compelling representation) and provides concrete TESOL examples, emphasizing rigor, vulnerability, criticality, and social justice. Being introductory rather than innovative, it synthesizes existing literature without advancing new theory or methods. So too, a US/transnational focus dominates the examples and author’s perspective, there being only surface-level engagement with decolonial/Global South issues. Most problematically, this paper is US-centric: there is not one acknowledgement of TESOL autoethnographic research in China and its contributions.

Yet, China represents the single largest EFL (English as a Foreign Language) market in the world and a dominant force in global TESOL. With (at last research anyway) English compulsory from Grade 3 through university and a key component of the Gaokao national entrance exam, China has an estimated 150–180 million K-12 students studying English, plus tens of millions more at tertiary and adult levels. Total active English learners in China are routinely placed in the hundreds of millions, making it a cornerstone of the global ELT industry (British Council estimates and MOE data, 2023–2025). Market size remains enormous despite regulatory shifts (e.g., the 2021 crackdown on for-profit tutoring). Recent 2025–2026 projections include a growth of USD 187 billion (2025–2030) China historically accounted for over 60% of Asia-Pacific digital English learning revenue and continues to drive demand for online, blended, and vocational English platforms. It is a major exporter of international students, importer of native-speaker teachers (despite tightened visas), and influencer of global TESOL materials, teacher-training curricula, and research output. In short, Chinese EFL is not peripheral to TESOL, it is a core economic, policy, and pedagogical engine shaping the field’s scale, innovation (especially digital), and intercultural focus.

Within Chinese TESOL literature autoethnographic methodologies began to be integrated during the Covid-19 pandemic "lockdown", but fledgling studies pre-date it. For instance: drawing on the same initiating researcher Yazan (2026) cites, Canagarajah (2012), and the specific conception of teacher development within EFL as a “global profession”, Liu, et.al (2015) posited as a research field the methodological implications of the auto-ethnographic mode of inquiry on educational design reforms in China: i.e. establishing foreign teacher participant-observation praxis as a new core “globalized” pedagogic best practice educational research design principle in China’s National EFL Curriculum Reform Agenda. Liu (2020) thus sought an autoethnographic study “to make a case for the recognition and legitimization of a new discourse of methodology as a lived experience in the classroom” (p.1). In this:

However, Liu (2020) also isolated a dilemma in applying autoethnographic lived experience methodologies into pedagogic practice:

Autoethnographic research in Chinese EFL (again within Inter-Cultural Communication pedagogy in particular) has advanced considerably since this origination. However, unaccountably, in TESOL Quarterly: not only is the paradigm-shifting influence of autoethnographic methodologies on Chinese EFL specifically within Inter-Cultural Communication pedagogy unacknowledged (ignorance of the literature... or?), there are no mentions of the marketplace significance of China, Chinese English education, EFL in the PRC, Chinese international students, or any China-specific TESOL policies/practices (e.g., no reference to the National English Curriculum, Gaokao, or intercultural communication pedagogy in Chinese universities). Without intention to self-aggrandize or compromise humility, this body of Chinese autoethnographic research in conjunction with ongoing China-Australia geopolitical ambiguity specifically informed the research process that led to my panel presentation at the 2025 11th Nishan Forum.

AI Graphic rendering of the systematic process of my autoethnographic EFL-IC research in the use of cultural storytelling since its trial during Covid-19 China through to incorporation into the Nishan Forum panel presentation.

Yet for all the policy rhetoric and academic discourse on “diversity as strength,” Australia’s multicultural reality remains deeply personal and historically grounded. My own birth country’s post-war immigration story is not abstract: it is embodied in the lived experience of my father, Jiri, a Czech “New Australian” displaced person. His childhood in the small Bohemian village of Podělusy was shattered by occupation / eviction for the SS-Truppenübungsplatz Böhmen under Himmler’s Generalplan Ost and "The Butcher of Prague" Heydrich’s administration and implementation of the Nazi's greater Lebensraum agenda, mass extermination of up to 50% of the total Slavic population,. Heydrich's policies towards the Czechs, this agenda meant intended health and rationing measures that reduced Slavic mortality, a basis for Lemkin's definition of "genocide".

As a Czech Slav, my father was classified as Untermenscsh (sub-human). He endured direct SS occupation, Germanized schooling, statelessness, and post-war DP camps before migrating to Australia via the IRO quota system and Australian "selection" progress. His existing records / data are preserved in both the Arolsen Archives and the USHMM collections.

Although not the site of a major massacre or reprisal like Lidice (which was ~30–40 km northwest and destroyed in June 1942 as direct retaliation for Reinhard Heydrich’s assassination), Podělusy exemplified the systematic, bureaucratic displacement of Czech civilians under Nazi occupation policies in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Beginning a first wave of resettlement, including Podelusy, on 1 September 1942, SS-Truppenübungsplatz Böhmen forced the resettlement of 71 villages around the market town of Neweklau, a total of 17,647 people had been expelled by then for the creation of the 44,000-hectare military area. In September 1943, the military training area was given the designation SS Military Training Area Bohemia. A total of 65 communities with 144 settlements were evacuated and 30,986 people were displaced. The eviction affected 5682 houses and 8619 families.

In addition, various labor camps were gradually established on the site, which were originally intended to accommodate only Czech or German prisoners who were needed as workers at the training site, but later this restriction was lifted. Among others, the following institutions were established: some "special education camps" for (male) adults who refused to work; some "special camps" for prisoners who were descendants of mixed Jewish families or spouses of Jewish women; Prison camp for SS members who have become criminals and for political prisoners as well as other "special labor camps". Výcvikový prostor Waffen-SS na Benešovsku — explicitly lists Podělusy among evacuated villages and SS-Höfe. So too, SOkA Benešov (Benešov District Archive) holds Podělusy’s municipal chronicle (1930–1980), which records the emotional impact of the first family’s departure. In Lemkin’s genocide framework (as discussed earlier), Podělusy illustrates the non-lethal techniques he documented against Slavs: economic dispossession, forced relocation, and cultural/national erosion to weaken the group “as such,” without requiring total physical extermination. It was mundane bureaucratic terror that affected tens of thousands quietly while Lidice became the international symbol.

The SS-Truppenübungsplatz Böhmen primarily served as a central hub for the combat preparation of Waffen-SS units, facilitating intensive field exercises and tactical drills essential for frontline deployment. The site accommodated multiple Waffen-SS divisions and kampfgruppen, such as elements of the SS-Kampfgruppe Wallenstein, for division-level exercises simulating combined-arms assaults and defensive positions. From about 1943, some of these camps were converted and expanded into outposts of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Due to catastrophic conditions, for example, about half of the prisoners in the concentration camp in Vrchotové Janovice died in 1945 as a result of a typhus epidemic. The most notorious camp was located in Hradischko, where numerous prisoners were shot at the end of the war. Properties were expropriated, with owners compensated at reduced values, underscoring the operation's systematic disruption of civilian life to prioritize SS training infrastructure. The human toll was profound, as families faced abrupt relocation, property loss, and integration into broader wartime displacements within the Protectorate.

This is the concrete face of multicultural Australia: a nation built in significant part by Europeans fleeing the very ethno-centric racial hierarchies that the contemporary March for Australia "patriot" movement arguably seek, in sanitised form, to revive. It stands in quiet but profound contrast to the Anglocentric monocultural nostalgia now circulating in these same “patriot” social media echo-chambers — and to the assimilationist rhetoric that Jocelyn Chey (2026) rightly critiques:

For me then, being in China but from this multicultural heritage fragments my cognitive perception. Like Billy Pilgrim, but not unstuck, an identity stoic in the silent fortress of my psychic flow: immersed in the solitary mainline of China, place memory and pedagogy as being in time. And, defining my time, is a statement my father made when I interviewed him in Australia, when last I saw him alive and finally asked him "what was it like under the Nazi occupation?":

VIDEO 4: "Being in Time" - the first of my experimental autoethnographic films to be publicly screened online (in the USA) as published by The Autoethnographer journal.

Confessions of an Anonymous Auto-ethnographic Filmmaker

Screenshot of an X Post clearly demonstrating the angry polemics characterizing Australia's current Anglo-Celtic Ethnocentrism & Anti-Migrant Rhetoric: this post (a quote reply to a satiric comment on Australia's convict heritage and alcoholism) defends Anglo-Celtic identity while mocking non-Anglo-Celtic critics and linking them to foreign (Chinese) influence.

Auto-ethnography, blending personal narrative with cultural analysis, offers a powerful lens for exploring inter-generational trauma as disability within multicultural, intersectional identity (Ellis, 2004: Richards 2008: Smith & Sparkes, 2008: Denzin, 2014: Burrows, 2024). Rooted thus in my meta-cognitive lived experience of inter-generational trauma, auto-ethnographic film praxis, to me, situates this disabling inter-generational trauma as lived experience within Australian multiculturalism. Australia/China trans-cultural hybridity informed by this inter-sectional context is hence the framing prism to my narrative analytical reflexivity, exploring how my personal, subjective lived experience of inter-generational trauma shapes a cumulative trans-media performative praxis. Personal narrative, as a reflective framework, leverages this lived experience to explore complex phenomena through a subjective lens. In my transmedia praxis, personal narrative, rooted in the epiphanic discovery of my father’s Arolsen Archive and USHMM official documentation as a non-Jewish victim of Nazi persecution, serves as an analytical and interpretivist prism in rendering a lived inter-generational trauma perceptual-cognitive phenomenology which parallels schizophrenic self-disturbance (Uhihaas & Mishara, 2006: Thoma et.al, 2022) .

Inspired by Russell’s (1999) auto-ethnographic subject as a “stranger in a strange land", my trans-media project’s branding, sparked by my first cinematic encounter with China via Nicholas Ray’s film 55 Days at Peking (1963), inter-sectionally frames my identity as a first-generation Australian of Czech descent, with lived experience of inter-generational trauma, navigating multiculturality through an Australia/China trans-cultural perspective. My film work positions this inter-sectionally in relation to multiculturalism’s centrality in Australia’s national identity construction (Moran, 2017: Levey, 2018: Ballantyne, 2024: Ozdowski, 2024) from an auto-ethnographic lived disability experience perspective, grounded in my National Film & Sound Archive (NFSA) research as a SAR Research Fellow (Cettl, 2010). The experimental film component to this performative praxis, however, aesthetically utilizes a shared Australian and US avant-garde derived videographic, montagist methodology to interpretively render inter-generational trauma's (meta-)cognitive / perceptual phenomenology as a three-fold process of self-disturbance - dissociative identity dissolution, re-orientation and reconstitution / reconstruction.

My personal lived experience of this phenomenology of inter-generational self-disturbance informs my videographic work, begun some 15 years ago, collectively stressing the importance of constructing a coherent self-narrative to stabilize a self-reflexive identity phenomenologically characterized by narrative fragmentation and the struggle to reconstitute a coherent self-narrative. This is the case also in my personal lived experience of, specifically, an existential (even epistemic) destabilization / reorientation as phenomenologically that of an epiphanic moment. In autoethnography, this epiphanic moment is defined by Denzin (2014) as an identifiable turning point that reshapes understanding of self and the world of inter-generational trauma (Kien, 2013). Hence, my personal narrativized reflective component, while anchored chronologically in successive epiphanic moments from 2007 to the present day, analyzes not only my lived phenomenological experientiality but also how I sought to render this in transmedia.

Thus, as auto-ethnographic inquiry, this transmedia approach seeks to relate my personal lived experience not only to the broader socio-cultural factors qualifying it, but specifically to the evolution of my performative praxis. This ostensibly began when I was awarded a SAR Research Fellowship at Australia’s National Film & Sound Archive [NFSA] to complete the research representations of disability in Australian film, with full database and collection access. In this, my consequent narrativized epiphanic reflection on performative praxis also seeks to contextualize how my initial research findings progressively refined this praxis in alignment with what is now termed the Next Wave of Disability Cinema. My personal positionality as an autoethnographic filmmaker is consequently also within this Next Wave, formalized in the first public release / online screening of one of my films: Being in Time: China, Place Memory & Pedagogy – From Xinjiang To Shanghai (2024) as published / hosted online by The Autoethnographer journal (Video 4 above). In China now, this personal positioning continues through experimental auto-ethnographic videography, including an ongoing, if irregularly updated, vlog series also on Chinese social media - RedNote / Xiaohongshu.

VIDEO 4: Second vlog attempt located the stream-of-consciousness recording format to a contemporary film vlog set, the balcony to my campus apartment, to introduce the us of diary film in autoethnographic vlog reflections.

NEXT: The Men from Bolshevik Gully