the Phenomenon (not the movie)

Arnie, make way for John So!

If you thought Arnie’s diction of the English language was bad enough that the makers of the Simpsons decided to immortalise it, well, they obviously at the time hadn’t heard of our very own Melbourne mayor.

I’m taking the Australian’s word for it, claiming the Melbourne mayor as “THE PHENOMENON”, as we, who live upstate, don’t get to see other Premiers' gob too often a time, so really we are not really under his charm, you may say that.

To sum up the Phenomenon, it’d suffice to say that the Mayor of Melbourne, John So, has the following characteristics – not too dissimilar to those of Arnie’s :

1. émigré who’s resided in his adopted country for … God knows how long.

2. charming with plenty an X-factor in tow, John So is described as a man who enjoys life!

3. speaks English … badly. Far from speaking it fluently, he bludgeons the pronunciation system to pieces, stresses at the wrong places, and more often than not you can barely make a single sentence out of him. I don’t mean to discredit the mayor, but in all honesty, even a 2^nd year student of English as a foreign language would have a better chance at grasping the language with confidence. Well, one can be assured John So does not lack in confidence, in the tongue business, he just lacks the rest.

There was a couple of times my housemates and I were left beguilered, watching him on the late night news, announcing what must be an important news for the city of Melbourne, only to find ourself commenting «What did he say? That’s a terrible accent, no hang on, it’s not his accent, He can’t even speak English properly.»

3. brings a wind of change to the people. John So reportedly snatched business deals for the state of Victoria through his connection in China.

Only thing is, His Mandarin is apparently bad enough, he is still learning and attempting to perfect it, rendering his Cantonese useless in business negotiation with Chinese delegates.

So how did He, John So, Mayor of Melbourne of the last five years – the Phenomenon - pull his trick, then?

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So easy to warm to
Everyone in Melbourne is talking about Lord Mayor John So, scratching their heads trying to explain a cult phenomenon, writes Stuart Rintoul

April 03, 2006

HE is the most popular lord mayor in Australia. Every time his name was mentioned during the closing ceremony of Melbourne's Commonwealth Games, there was a deafening roar of approval that washed over Ron Walker, standing at the microphone, on its way to John So.

…

He was also profiled on New Zealand television, where the TVNZ program Close Up described him as "the mayoral equivalent of a rock star" and "as far removed from the stereotypical Australian as you could imagine". It said in a city swelling with superstars, So had emerged as a cult figure and a classic Australian success story, the immigrant made good. It said at the Games closing ceremony So overshadowed even the PM, with the crowd "just going nuts over him".

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When it is put to him that he is the nation's most popular mayor, he does not disagree, but says: "Ahh ... I enjoy doing what I'm doing. All these years, I always work hard. Ever since I was a boy, I was brought up to try your best, whatever you're doing, and enjoy because you've only got one life."

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Last October, So led a trade mission to China. He says the exposure the city received was phenomenal and the business connections invaluable.

An example of how large even a small slice of the Chinese pie might be, he says, can be seen in the $36 billion China is spending on infrastructure for the 2010 Asia Games in Guangzhou.

Also on that mission to Beijing and Tianjin (a Melbourne sister-city) was George Pappas, chairman of the Committee for Melbourne. "I think he's terrific," says Pappas.

"I think Melbourne is very lucky to have him as mayor."

While some of those who have accompanied So on visits to China say it has been no disadvantage having a Chinese-born mayor, Pappas says it was revealing that So applied himself to improving his Mandarin to talk to Chinese officials in their preferred language. So's mother tongue and the language he still speaks in the privacy of his home is Cantonese. He speaks Mandarin less fluently.

John Chun Sai So was born in Hong Kong in 1946. His father died when he was five. He was sent to boarding school, at a strict Catholic Salesian boys' school. He arrived in Melbourne in his late teens to complete Year 12 at University High School, leaving his mother and two brothers in Hong Kong.

He went to Melbourne University, became a science teacher and then a restaurateur, leaving behind a dream of becoming a scientist.

In 1976, he opened his first restaurant and then a chain of highly successful Dragon Boat restaurants. He advised others on how to improve their businesses, for a share of the action, leading him to being called "Mr 10 per cent". He became wealthy and a political force in Chinatown.

In what might be a metaphor for Australia's cultural evolution and his own Darwinian philosophy, he told an interviewer three years ago: "I cannot use the same old chop suey of the '60s. [When] I came here everyone going for the chop suey ... you have to change, you have to adapt."

So was elected to the Melbourne City Council in 1991, at a time when the Town Hall was known as "clown hall". He ran for office because "the city was dying".

Ten years later, in 2001, he became Melbourne's first directly elected lord mayor, defeating higher profile candidates including Australian Democrats founder Don Chipp, after all of his opponents underestimated him and gave him their preferences, while So hit the hustings.

It would be said he bought the lord mayorship, spending more than $100,000 on a publicity blitz that included flying reporters around the city in a helicopter and papering Melbourne with the slogan, "So active, So responsible, So Melbourne, Make it So".

But if there were those who begrudged him that victory, there was no denying the force of his re-election in 2004, when he faced off 20 candidates, all of whom preferenced against him, and won in a landslide with nearly 50 per cent of the primary vote.

He also saw off Peter Sheppard, a shoe retailer, who was forced out of the mayoral race in a storm of protest after saying So's diction was an embarrassment, that he could hardly speak English and was "about 20 consonants short in his alphabet".

So shrugged it off, just as he had shrugged off other controversies. In 2002, he snubbed the Dalai Lama during an Australian visit, as other political leaders did, in a nod to Beijing. He gave character evidence for corrupt former immigration minister, Andrew Theophanous, the first federal MP to be convicted and jailed for corruption while in office, and said he was honoured to be asked.

In 2004, he said a rare Aboriginal possum-skin cloak, which he had been given by Aboriginal elders, would leave the Town Hall with him if he was defeated.

None of these things dented his popularity. Instead, it has grown, exponentially it would seem, until So is now viewed as an irrepressible optimist who laughs at his shortcomings, of which he is sharply aware, and opened the Big Day Out concert with the words "Let's rock".

Fox FM breakfast presenter Matt Tilley regularly impersonates So on air, making fun of his tentative grasp of the language. Rather than being offended, So invited Tilley and co-host Jo Stanley to lunch at the Town Hall. Tilley says their conversation was like something out of Get Smart.

After the Games opening ceremony, So was asked what he thought was the best part. His response was recorded in a Herald Sun column as "the tram fry" - with the punchline "Gotta love the guy".

So, is it all that hard to understand? Walking in the streets of Melbourne with John So suggests he has more celebrity than most politicians, but less probably than a Big Brother or Australian Idol contestant.

"John So, he's my bro," a young bloke calls out while his mates fall about laughing. Photographs are taken with mobile phones, hands reach out to be shaken. No one can point to anything that he has done for Melbourne, but everyone likes him: "He's just so friendly".

It is a view that spills into the letters pages of Melbourne's newspapers, where a Herald Sun reader, fed up with all the analysis of the So phenomenon, said it wasn't hard to understand at all.

"What matters is that this bloke is happy; he loves life and he appears to love Melbourne," wrote Andrew Clarke of Aspendale. "His glass is half full, or bubbling over, and that is what we like ... John So stands out in a sea of political blandness."