During William Yang’s childhood, his family owned a farm in far north Queensland and were respected members of the community. While his parents were multilingual — his father spoke Hukka and his mother Cantonese — only English was spoken at home. Yang and his siblings were encouraged to assimilate into the Australian way of life and did not learn either of his parents’ native languages.

When Yang began to embrace his Chinese–Australian identity, he characterised it as ‘coming out’ as Asian. As part of this process, he travelled across Australia collecting stories, seeking to capture nuanced accounts of the Chinese–Australian community. Chinese New Year Party Year of the Rabbit resulted from Yang’s activism with the LGBTIQ+ Asian community and his commitment to tell stories of people from marginalised backgrounds. Of this time, Yang has observed:

In the early nineties, I initiated a group called Asian Lesbian and Gay Pride. At a seminar, we discussed the politics of desire, and how, because of social conditioning, Asians were not considered sexually desirable. Our group gave Asians a higher profile in the wider LGBTIQ community.