My name is Xiaowei Guo. I came to Ireland on 23 January 1997 from Shenyang, a very industrial city in China’s north-east. The first day I arrived here I walked past St Stephen’s Green in Dublin and saw beautiful flowers growing in the gardens. I was very surprised, as I come from a place with a very cold climate, and also spent time in Sweden before moving to Ireland, so I wasn’t used to such sights in winter. I got a nice first impression of the country that day, and noticed that Irish people were very friendly too.
When I first came, I worked in a restaurant as a waiter. I was the only Chinese guy in the restaurant; the rest were all Irish at the time. In fact, back then there were only a few hundred Chinese people in Ireland, mostly UCD and Trinity students from Beijing and Shanghai.
Initially I went to a language school and was one of the first from my city to go there. It was expensive but the quality was good. Since then, some language schools have only been set up to offer student visas and not really to teach English.
I later attended American College Dublin, before taking a Master’s degree in business studies at Dublin City University.
Lots of opportunities have arisen for me, maybe because I came at the right time and caught the economic boom. It was possible to get work and save some money for study. I also met my wife in Dublin: she is Chinese as well, and arrived on St Patrick’s Day 1998. She’s from the same city as me, although we didn’t know each other back home. She knew my sister, though.
The longer you stay in Ireland, you start to know a bit more about the country, to know it inside out. Overall, my first impressions haven’t changed too much, but something happened to me in 2008 that has left a mark on me.
One evening after work I was stopped by a garda in Dublin and told that he suspected me to be an illegal immigrant. I’d been pulled up on a traffic offence and thought I might get a ticket, or possibly be let off with a warning.
I’m a naturalised Irish citizen, and told the garda I could go with him to my accommodation to show him this documentation. But instead I was put in a cell for two-and-a-half hours. There was no reason to suspect I was an illegal immigrant other than, obviously, my Chinese face.
We need to prevent this type of trauma happening to other people who look ‘different’. I know others who’ve been asked for their passport by gardaí while out shopping. Who carries their passport with them when they’re out and about? There is no legal requirement to do so.
I feel there is something against immigrants in this recession. It seems there are enough gardaí with bad feelings towards Chinese people and other immigrants.
What do I miss about China? Everything – parents, friends, weather, food. In fact, I am planning to go home to China for good; that’s my long-term plan. As much as I like Ireland, I don’t think people from immigrant backgrounds have the same career opportunities as Irish people. I work in the corporate sector and really need to move up the ladder.
In conversation with Catherine Reilly
