Guy Loussan, 30, returned to Tahiti for work after earning an M.B.A. degree in France. He looks just like any well-dressed, well-educated young person on the streets of Hong Kong or Taipei.

But he calls himself a "banana," meaning his skin is yellow but inside he's completely ignorant of Chinese culture.

He can speak a little Hakkanese and is studying Mandarin, but he finds both difficult. He worries that his nephews won't be able to speak Chinese either.

"When I was in my teens my parents wanted me to speak Hakkanese and study Chinese, but I said, 'Why should I? This is Tahiti, not China!'

"When I was eighteen I went to study in France. A lot of French people asked me if I was Chinese and tried to ask me a little about Chinese culture, but I didn't know anything. They didn't conceal their surprise. 'You really don't know anything about China, do you?' they'd say.

"I'd go to Chinatown and see Chinese people there, but if they took me for someone who could speak Chinese, I'd have to say, 'I can't. . . .'

"I've been all over doing business and have met a lot of Chinese from Hong Kong. We have the same skin and the same features, but we can't communicate.

"A lot of kids in high school on Tahiti don't think that's a problem. They have no way of experiencing what it means to know about Chinese culture or not.

"But many people find out that they're Chinese after all once they leave. Most Westerners don't think of you as 'French.' I've got friends here who have gone through the same experience I have and think the same way!"

The friends he means are mostly the members of a very special Chinese organization on Tahiti: l'Association Wen Fa, or the Chinese Cultural Association.

Wen Fa has 30-some members, 90 percent of whom once studied in France. They were all born and raised on Tahiti, and their average age is 35. They are also among the best-educated groups of people on the island, including several leading government officials, many successful business people and a number of high school teachers.

Not just anyone can join. Their ideas and ways of thinking have to be approved by the other members. They admit they are a little elitist.

Some have French wives, some have Tahitian blood and, like Guy Loussan, almost none of them can speak Hakkanese or read Chinese.

But for them that's not the main thing. The important thing is that they have joined together because they fee l that Chinese culture on Tahiti has gradually been disappearing. As Guy Yeung, director of the civil aviation office and the group's founder, puts it, Cantonese was absorbed by Hakkanese in the past, but now Hakkanese is being absorbed by French.

Another member, Roland Louis, calls himself an "Oreo." His parents' generation still preserved many Hakka traditions and his children are pure French, but it is his own generation that particularly senses the inherent contradiction.

L'Association Wen Fa was founded fifteen years ago as a result. The group meets every Thursday at lunchtime, year round, to discuss Chinese culture, to have older Chinese come and talk about Hakka customs, to look into the problems of the Chinese community on Tahiti, or to discuss important local developments and world events.

They have often made use of overseas business trips to buy books about China in French or English. Many of them have read the Journey to the West in French and have dipped into Confucian philosophy, and Linda Liu, one of the few female members, has collected all the books on China by the novelist Han Su-yin.

They envy people living on Chinese soil for being able to read Chinese and to obtain information on China so easily. They have put out a thick volume in French called Histoire et Portrait de la Communaute Chinoise de Tahiti, the most thorough book on the subject there is, and they are planning to set up a library in the Chinese Philanthropic Association so that others can share in the materials they have assembled.

Despite the best of intentions, not living on Chinese soil or being able to speak Chinese sometimes leads them to wasted efforts. One of them once asked Chen Juhng-chang, who is in his eighties, about the Hakka custom of grave sweeping. "After I talked to him for an hour, he told me he hadn't understood a word!" Ch'en says with some regret, but he considers them a fine bunch of youngsters.

Owing to French cultural policy, French is used in almost all the schools, television shows and newspapers on Tahiti. At the same time, native Tahitians, who are much in the majority, have begun paying more attention to their own cultural crisis in recent years, and classes on their language and history have been reintroduced in the schools.

Comparatively speaking, Chinese culture has fared the worst of three. There are many Chinese restaurants, where both French and Tahitians can be seen eating Chinese food with chopsticks, and there are dragon dances and lion dances every year at Chinese New Year, but what else is there besides that?

Understanding culture takes time, but what can certainly be affirmed is that some of the things the association has been doing, such as donating money to help young people study Chinese, have indeed been of assistance to the Chinese community.

Mixed in with the tourists, the copper-skinned Tahitians and the French soldiers under the deep blue sky of Tahiti are some young Chinese who insist on not forgetting who they are!

[Picture Caption]

L'Association Wen Fa members Guy Loussan (right) and Yang Wei-hua (center) talk about buying some books on China from France. (photo by Vincent Chang)

L'Association Wen Fa members Guy Loussan （right） and Yang Wei-hua （center） talk about buying some books on China from France. （photo by Vincent Chang）

When an elderly Chinese woman has a birthday, she is surrounded by grandchildren of mixed French and Polynesian ancestry.