Coming out to play (ra choi) is an expression young Indo- Chinese people use to describe the process of entry to and immersion in street life and culture. While conflict at home or school was often an underlying factor, for most young people 'coming out' was characterised by a gradual drift into street life. Ironically, while it offers a short-term solution to problems of family conflict, alienation and cultural subordination,'coming out to play' ultimately serves to reinforce their marginal status

tram, 19 year-old vietnamese-australian
i first came out to play around 1991
at that time we had heaps of family problems
adjusting to australia and all
and having a new father after many years of being just us

a lot has changed in my life since then
i have grown up a fair bit and am now wiser
sometimes kids that come out to play learn
much more than we should know at our age

we lose our childhood and our teenage years
on the street
when normal kids our age are planning
their futures

us, we did not see the future
we only saw the present
and the present was all we cared about

some of us have changed
cabramatta has also changed
a lot of people are losing their self respect
lost in the cycle of heroin 

tu, 22 year-old vietnamese-australian
i came to australia when i'm 15 years of age
i first come out to play in cabramatta
after nine months lived in australia
in that time i couldn't think what to do
i left school because i found it's too hard for me
because all the english
i can't do the homework
so i just came out and start to get know a lots of friends
that we're in the same sort of situation  [top]

melissa, 19 year-old vietnamese-australian
i thought it was cool to hang around the street
all i could think of that time was having fun and nothing else
but now drug is the main thing
everyone is on drug now
anyone that comes out to play at this time
will start using drug too.

lynda, 18 year-old vietnamese-australian
i ran away
because my mum
was getting really strict
at that time, she didn't want me to go out
she hate me going out
she didn't really understand
cause she's more like chinese culture
she didn't understand
this culture here
she thinks girls
should stay with their families

jessica, 17 year-old vietnamese-australian
being out here is really about running away
you have to run and then you have to
keep running
run from your family
run from the cops
run from 5T
seems like you're always running

anna, 16 year-old vietnamese-australian
like i know someone he's thirteen
and one day i saw him at the newsagent
he was buying, like little toys, little plastic toys
and i was going 'oh, is that for your little brother?'
and he goes 'no, it's for me, it's for me'
and i go 'oh, is it?' you know
i just realised that he didn't even have a childhood
to play around

quoc, 25 year-old vietnamese-australian
when i first came out to play
it was the best time of my life
none of my friends were on drugs
we always rang one another up
and went to parties
movies, fishing and going sightseeing in the city

now everything has changed
because we're all growing up
and most of us are either in jail
or screwing up our life on drug
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