"Stop this--this humbugging," he explained.

She held out her hand, ticking off her fingers one by one: "We have slides, we have TV, we have cassette tapes, we have video . . ." "Humbugging," is what Devan Nair, the former president, called this dabbling in Confucianism.

This story, however, is counter-balanced with that of racism and exploitation which is presented as endemic to the entire Australian social fabric, be it in the form of taxation without equal rights, his framing as anthropological curiosity in the minds of his admirers or the humbugging by his extended family.