Meet Your Vendor
Chairman Mao had a bit of a power struggle and started the Cultural Revolution. It was mayhem; the whole country was anarchy. That’s when I was born, 60 years ago, in Guilin, Guangxi, China. It was a war zone where I was living, so I spent four or five years with my grandmother.
I started learning English when I was 12. I always wanted to run away, to just get onto a train – wanderlust, you know. I passed the entrance to tertiary education examination when I was 17. I was the best in the province in English, the top student.
I went to uni in Fujian Province, studying English language and literature. In the 80s in China, there was singing of campus music, student protest. I wasn’t part of the protests, I was an onlooker, a rubber-necker. I started to learn how to play Spanish guitar, and later alto saxophone.
I became a national tour guide from 1986 to 1990. After 1989, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, there was some tourists, but not as many.
Then I got into rock music. I quit my job as a tour coordinator, which was quite risky, and I worked as a DJ in the discotheque back in my home town. I met a Tassie woman there, and that’s how I got a sponsorship to come over to Australia in 1992. We broke up after four years.
I continued to do music while I did post-graduate studies in interpreting and translating at Deakin. I worked as an interpreter and translator in the courts. I went to forensic centres, prisons, murder trials. It was stressful, so I got back into writing poetry and I played in bands.
In the late 90s in Sydney, I started work as a journalist for The Aus China Daily. I was living in my Valiant V6 – the pay was lousy. I hit the road and went up to Nimbin and travelled the east coast. I formed a band called DBL, it’s an improvised noise band, like trippy stuff.
Then I got sick of Sydney – it’s too expensive – and I moved back down to Melbourne. My plan was to work hard as an interpreter and translator to get a mortgage, which hasn’t materialised. I became homeless, and I met vendor Wayne. He asked me to come over to his community housing. I started selling The Big Issue in 2010. Then I got enrolled in Vic Uni, another honours in Creative Arts. I did quite well, but I didn’t get a PhD scholarship.
I become homeless again. I was squatting for two years, I was like a kangaroo, living in the bush. Squatting is a skill. It isn’t easy. I don’t want to squat again – I’m currently in a sharehouse.
My father passed away in 2018, my mother passed away in 2023. My mother was lonely. I visited her in 2019. She was okay, but after I left, she became very ill.
I haven’t done interpreting for 20 years. I couldn’t do any more. I have drunk too much booze, and played too much music. It’s different modes of life.
I came back to The Big Issue in 2022. I like to be out there, engaged with other people. I’m saving money to travel: to Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Maluku Islands in Indonesia. Life should have a meaning, right? Selling The Big Issue, writing poetry, playing music.
Gabriel sells The Big Issue at the corner of Spencer and Collins Streets, Melbourne
Interview by Amy Hetherington
Photo by James Braund
Published in ed#742
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