Glen Waverley library is hosting a genuine “Ching Chong China Girl” next Tuesday.

Helene Chung, a former ABC Beijing correspondent and the first non-white reporter on Australian TV, will give an author’s talk on her memoir, Ching Chong China Girl.

She reflects how the once-offensive term has changed. “Things have changed so much that I can laugh at myself,” she said. “New arrivals in Australia – Chinese arrivals – don’t even know what Ching Chong means.”

Much of the focus is on her difficult childhood as a young Chinese girl in Hobart, which was a small, isolated city in the 1950s.

“It’s not just my life story, but a reflection of the changing times in Australia and around the world, moving from an era of assimilation right through to the era of multiculturalism.”