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its ‘fixity’ and ‘phantasmatic’ mode of the old Orientalist stereotype (Ouyang Yu, 1995,
Women, 76-77). Minou conforms, notably with C. J. Koch’s Claudine Phan, to the
representation of the part-Chinese, part-European woman who, in Ouyang Yu’s view,
generally betrays ‘a streak of ethnocentrism that regards the white blood in them as somehow
stronger than the yellow, making them more likeable and possessible to whites’ (Ouyang Yu,
1995, Women, 84). Madame Phan fits this description perfectly, exposing Koch’s motives to
questions of racism. Minou meanwhile has no white blood in her, though she is half-blooded,
a mix of Vietnamese and Chinese which made her an ‘Other’ even in her homeland, and has
become thoroughly westernised, giving her special claim as an Australian metaphor. As she
provokes the wild, sexual excitement of Ambassador Hobday and fulfils dutifully all of the
other characteristics of the female Asian, Minou wears her ‘Otherness’ like a scarlet letter.
Yuan Fang Shen details the stereotypical presentation of Chinese women in Australian
literature in an analysis which can certainly be applied to non-Chinese Asian women as well.
Yuan notes how there are ‘very few fully drawn, individualized and memorable portraits’ of
Oriental women ‘until the late 1980s’, and that those which do exist, which he puts into three
categories, are ‘highly stereotyped’ and derivative from Western literature and media.
First, is the ‘nameless, mindless and emotionless “Oriental siren”’ (Yuan, 39). She is
self-sufficient and emotionally careless, and therefore able to attach herself to any man who
can buy her off (Yuan, 40). In return, she not only allows him the space to think, which a
white woman stereotypically would not, but provokes in him unparalleled sexual excitement.
That she is usually dainty and childlike reflects her metaphoric value, in the terms of Said’s
Orientalist thesis, of the East, which is irrational, depraved and childlike, and thus in need of
the West’s rational, virtuous, and mature direction.
Second, is the ‘tasteless political harridan’, quite the opposite to the seductive first type
(Yuan, 41). Unattractive and passionless, this woman is necessarily wicked ‘because of the
paternalistic belief that only wicked women seek power’ as she does. She is typically ‘a
nuisance, a tasteless but cunning woman who is expert at changing face and cheating people’
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