Do we dare show our yellow faces at auctions or open homes?

After I read the NZ Herald’s “special investigation” into Chinese home buyers, I stayed up until 2am trying to write on the topic.

Words failed me, which is odd because I write for a living.

I know how to report facts and figures but what Labour did, by singling out Chinese sounding names to make claims about foreign investment, unearthed some feelings within me.

Others have done a good job explaining the flaws in the data, analysing whether this is an Orewa-type political strategy and so on .

But I am back at my laptop again, because I want to tell you how it felt.

When I first read the article, I was enraged at the party I voted for and felt frustration toward the journalist, who is a person I respect.

But that's not the worst part.

I am a born and bred New Zealander, and for the first time in my life I doubted whether the society in which I grew up actually wanted me.

Why? Because my last name sounds as if it could be Chinese.

It’s not because I'm too immature to have a discussion about foreign investment, and I don't entirely oppose a ban on foreign ownership.

But Phil Twyford, by releasing this data in this way, has made me uncertain about how welcome we almond-eyed black-haired folk are.

Words cannot encapsulate the unsettling feeling that perhaps the country you love and adore, and is your only home, doesn’t actually want you, or at least views you as the cause of a major social problem.

I’ve been called a ching-chong once when I was a child, and some kids in Taumarunui yelled at my family once when we were on holiday. Whatever. That stuff rolls right off.

This behaviour, from a senior politician, has planted doubt in my mind. It has made me wonder how many out there agree that the Chinese are the problem but won’t say it out loud.

I don’t own a home but my boyfriend (who just so you know was born in the US but is Taiwanese and a New Zealand citizen) put a deposit on a yet-to-be built apartment before we left for our UK OE.

Unfortunately, the developer raised the price and so my boyfriend cancelled, ironically a victim of the rising Auckland house price inflation we people with Chinese sounding last names are said to be the cause of.

When we do come home with our hard-earned pounds, euros and dollars, after exploring the world as Kiwis do, we will want to buy a home.