Panels 21-25

Panel 21: Religion and Transformation

 

The Chinese Christian Community in Japan: A Case Study of Japan Chinese Christian Centre

Albert Cheng

Waseda University

This paper is aimed to investigate the current Chinese Christian community in Japan by focusing on a case study of Japan Chinese Christian Center (JCCC). Due to the rapid growth of Christian population in Mainland China, obviously, the population of Chinese Christian settlers in Japan also increase significantly. Firstly, this paper introduces the background of Chinese Christians community in Japan after the WWII, mainly related history of Chinese Churches in Japan that related to Kuomingtang and Presbyterian church of Taiwan. Secondly, it continues by a discussion of the development of Chinese Christian community in Japan since 2010, the year that China overtook Japan as the World’s second-largest economy. Third part determines the case of Japan Chinese Christians Center (JCCC) and the revival movement among Chinese Christians throughout Japan.

 

Chinese Canadian Women: An Investigation Through Their Religiosities

Terry Woo

York University

The study of traditional Chinese Religions in Canada—including Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and popular beliefs and practices—is still in embryonic stages. When considered together, scholars like Paul Crowe, David Lai, André Laliberté, Tannie Liu, Alison Marshall, Jordan Paper and Henry Shiu have made remarkable and encouraging progress recording and analyzing Chinese religiosities across the country.  Chinese Canadian Women adds to this growing field by concentrating on the religiosities of women through a brief history of their beliefs and practices, and a limited and focused study of their religiosities in contemporary Toronto.

Where Chinese religious attitudes continue, there is a familiar ethos of “live and let live” that is generally tolerant of differences and has characteristically encouraged a “diffuse” network of religious beliefs and practices (Yang, 1961) which is strikingly different from monotheistic organizations, forms and structures.  The resulting religious landscapes, both historical and contemporary, have been prototypically “post-modern”: that is, they have primarily been pluralistic and de-centered and consequently, have been expressed as mosaics created from an endless array of beliefs and practices.  As such, they have more in common with modern, contemporary western religions/religiosities than traditional ones.  This unfamiliar pattern through the early histories of contact between East and West may in part explain why Chinese religiosities have remained largely “unrecognized” (Paper et al in Bramadat & Seljak, 2009) and misunderstood by Canadian scholars and practitioners of religion and lay citizens alike.  This lacunae in the study of religion appears to reinforce Lily Cho’s contention that diasporas “emerge in relation to power” (2007: 15); and the historical and current status of Chinese Canadians may in part explain why Chinese religion(s)/religiosities are often neglected in the study of religions in Canada.

 

From the Goddess Guanyin to Señor Santo Nino: Understanding Filipino Canadian Restaurants Through the Chinese Cafe

Alison Marshall

Brandon University

Filipino restaurants have emerged in Canada in the last 50 years as Chinese cafes have dwindled. Both venues are in some ways the product of institutionalized racism. Canada’s Filipinos arrived in the late 1880s. They were part of North America’s first wave of Asian immigration, which consisted mostly of Chinese.

Unlike the thousands of Chinese who also arrived in the 1880s, Canada’s earliest Filipinos didn’t usually work on railways or in laundries or cafes, and they didn’t reside in Chinatowns. Occasionally, Filipinos lived down the street from Chinese and Japanese labourers. When they wanted Asian food, Filipinos went to Chinese cafes that had opened throughout the Canadian West by 1895.

Like Chinese cafes, Filipino restaurants provide a way for newcomers to employ family and other co-ethnics, and transition out of temporary work as labourers into the merchant class.  Instead of Chinese altars with the Goddess Guanyin and the God of War, Filipino altars are filled with green and red-robed Senor Santo Niño, Padre Pio, and Mother Mary who greet customers at the cash register or as they fill their plates with items from the buffet.  Filipino eating establishments prominently display an attitude of segurista and need for divine assurances in an uncertain migrant world. Restaurant tables are set with a spoon and fork not chopsticks.  The absence of knives, as well as the decor, flavours, ingredients and religious iconography, speak volumes about the intertwined Filipino and Chinese colonial experience in Canada and the Philippines.

 


Panel 22: Traditions and Change: Death Rituals and Chinese Cemeteries in Southeast Asia

 

 Chinese Tombstones in the Philippines as Sources of Historical Information

Teresita Ang See 洪玉华

Executive Trustee, Kaisa Heritage Foundation

Secretary-Treasurer, International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas

Tombstones and grave markers as permanent record of the deceased are important sources of primary data.

Kaisa Para Sa Kaunlaran, the Institute of Modern History of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and the Philippine National Historical Institute (now the Philippine National Historical Commission) conducted a two year-study to gather primary documentary sources on the study of the Chinese in the Philippines in 1992 to 1993. The preliminary output of the study was published by Go Bon Juan and presented in a forum at the Academia Sinica in 1994.

Part of the study was to gather data from tombstones of Chinese buried in Chinese cemeteries throughout the country. The preliminary output of this study has been published in 1997 as an essay in the third volume of The Chinese in the Philippines: Problems and Perspectives. Data include the accurate distribution of origins of early Chinese immigrants, the percentages of top surnames, the further breakdown of hometown of origins in Fujian and Guangdong.

Before this project, however, Prof. Chinben See, an anthropologist, had already done a study on Chinese burial and mourning customs and had written about extant tombstones and other stone tablets in Manila while historian Go Bon Juan did a paper on the tombstones discovered at the Parian gate in Intramuros, Manila.

This paper presents more data and analysis from the study and put in additional information on other tombstones, especially those in the Parian gate and the churches nearby Binondo, or the Chinese quarters.

In addition to the data from tombstones, a preliminary descriptive study on the burial traditions and ancestral veneration is offered. It is hoped that a more complete picture about the Chinese-Filipino community, its beliefs, culture and tradition as reflected in burial practices, tombs and cemetery, can be obtained.

 

Straits Chinese Outside the Straits — Baba-ness Reflected in Epitaphs of the Baba Cemeteries in Thailand

Tatsuki Kataoka

Kyoto University

It is usually known that Baba is a category of localized Chinese immigrants specific to the former Straits Settlements. It is also widely known that the Baba culture flourished as a distinct set of cultural mixture of Chinese, Malay, and European traditions under colonial settings. Hence, the Baba category has been regarded as a uniquely colonial product.

However, Baba communities are also found in Thailand, a country with no experience of colonization. Here arises a question concerning the very definition of Baba-ness. In Thailand, as well as in Malaysia, cultural mixture of Baba is often narrated in terms of blood, or intermarriage of Chinese men and local women. Although this hypothesis is not supported by historical studies of the former Straits Settlements, the legacy of mix blood is stressed even among the locals themselves.

This paper examines these two determinants of Baba-ness, namely colonial settings and mixed blood, by focusing on epitaphs of Baba cemeteries in Bangkok and Phuket. Research results will show that cultural assimilation in terms of language used on the gravestones has occurred very recently, and the majority of the couples buried consist of Chinese men and Chinese women. These findings lead us to conclude that the Baba category in Thailand is a matter of cultural import rather than mixture.

 

Severing Ties and Mobile Bone: An Interpretation of the Cremation Practices Among the Diasporic Chinese in the Philippines

Gyo Miyahara

Osaka University

This essay is an interpretation of the cremation practices among the Diasporic Chinese in the Philippines. The interaction between the worlds before and after death is one of major topics in anthropological researches specifically on Chinese ancestor worship (Ahern, 1973; Wolf, W.P. (ed.), 1974; Ahern & Gates (eds.), 1981).

However, it is not all times that anthropological study on Chinese could successfully describe the “lived space” of Chinese overseas, in the continuum of the worlds before and after death. Anthropological studies on diasporic Chinese usually describe the migrant’s social world in the actuality of their lifetime experiences. Most of researchers assume that Chinese overseas are living in a space, which is given a form by the involved nation-states. They also tend to describe migrants’ actuality by just focusing on their lifetime experiences. For them, movements of migrants are definitely movements beyond nation-states. “Falling Leaf Returns to Root” (shù ɡāo qiān zhànɡ, luò yè ɡuī gēn)and “Put down root” (luò dì shēng gēn) are usually understood when the political identity of Chinese overseas in a nation-state is discussed. However, the social world is formed based not only on the migrants’ lifetime experiences but also on their views on the world after death. What turns geographical space into “lived space” is the migrants’ actuality acquired through their experiences, which is formed both by their individual lifetime movements, productions, consumptions, reproductions and imagination of the world after death.

In this paper, I will illustrate by focusing on cremation, the various burial practices among Diasporic Chinese in the Philippines, and discuss the “lived space” or the “diasporic space” which Chinese migrants have created and imagined. An alternative perspective on Diasporic Chinese movements through this reconsideration of their “lived space will hopefully emerge from this analysis.


Panel 23: Temples: Roles and Rituals

 

Chinese Temples and Joss Houses in the 19th Century Diaspora – Hubs of Transnational Communal Identity

Paul Macgregor 麥保羅

Melbourne Chinese Studies Group

Wherever Chinese migrated to in the 19th century, joss houses, or temples, were established as key centres of communal activity and culture maintenance. Usually called joss houses by Western observers at the time, and even now regarded by many historians as purely religious institutions, this paper will argue that they usually served a wide range of secular purposes as well as sacred ones. This paper will survey temples 廟, huiguan 會館, gongsuo公所, gongsi公司 and citang祠堂in Australasia, Southeast Asia, North America, Hong Kong and Guangdong, and explore how the concepts of the village temple and clan hall in China were transformed to serve new purposes in a variety of overseas and translocal contexts. Most commonly, Chinese overseas organised themselves according to either alliances of district-of-origin in China, sworn brotherhoods with political goals, clan surname or commonality of profession. These organisations became major political, economic and social institutions in disaporic environments. The halls they built in ports, mining towns and agricultural regions, while including altars, shrines and statues of gods, also served as meeting facilities, orientation centres, court houses and welfare hubs. They were often designed on a grand scale, keepers of the cultural flame, yet also nodes of transnational transformation.

Chinese settlers were mostly males without their families, who lived in plain habitations with little furnishing or personal effects, working as miners, agricultural workers or contract labourers. By contrast, the community temples created in the emigre environment were rich with decorative objects, full of symbolism and meaning – community displays of emotion, moral values and spiritual guidance. On an individual level, life for the Chinese worker was frugal and emotionally sparse, yet on a communal level, the affective environment was one of exuberance and splendor. This paper explores this conundrum, considering how the sublimation of personal and family desire in the Chinese diasporic private sphere could find outlet in the expression of collective desires, locating the individual’s trajectory within a wider moral universe.

 

Tin Hau in Hong Kong: The Micropolitics of Ritual Performance

Khun Eng Kuah

Monash University Malaysia

The Heavenly Empress, commonly known as Tin Hau by the Cantonese speakers, has been a central figure within the popular Chinese religion in Hong Kong society. From being the goddess worshipped by the fisher-people in the 19th century, Tin Hau has transformed into a goddess of the metropolitan Hong Kong society, catering to people from all walks of life. Every year during the 23rd day of lunar 3rd month, Tin Hau’s birthday was celebrated in all Tin Hau temples. In Hong Kong, some local communities and their identities revolved around Tin Hau and ritual performances during the Tin Hau birthday celebration. This paper will explore the micro-politics and reproduction of communitas that constellate around the ritual performances of Tin Hau in Hong Kong.

Through this study, we will demonstrate the centrality of Tin Hau to the local community and the complexity  of identity building at different levels namely at the individual-to-individual level, lineage vis-à-vis the outsiders, indigenous Chinese versus non-indigenous Chinese villagers, inter-ethnic between Chinese and other ethnic groups within the community. It points to the micropolitics among the villages within the district that is marred by cooperation and rivalry at the same time.

 

On the Globalization of Modern Daoism

Jean DeBernardi

University of Alberta

In China the Daoist religion is recognized as heritage and framed within historical narratives for the benefit of tourists. But it also is a living religious tradition whose practitioners are increasingly linked to a global network of supporters. These include diasporic Chinese in Taiwan and Southeast Asia but also an international network of scholars, artists, martial artists, and European and American converts. In this paper, I focus on official Daoism in China, and consider the ways that the Chinese government has reformed and modernized it, including developing the religion’s global presence. I focused on documenting the renewal and expansion of the Daoist temple complex at Wudang Mountain and in particular on the impact that a modernized form of the Daoist religion has had on temples and religious practitioners in Singapore and elsewhere.

Modern Daoists undoubtedly are involved in creating new forms of Daoism in what can be described as a syncretism of modernity and tradition. The Chinese government has sought to promote Daoism through a variety of modernist projects, including historical exhibits, the acquisition of UNESCO World Heritage status for Daoist sacred sites like Wudang Mountain, the promulgation of national lists of intangible cultural heritage that include Daoist musical and other traditions, non-religious cultural performances of Daoist music and ritual, the identification of talisman writing with calligraphic art, and health preserving practices, from Taijiquan to tea drinking. Three International Taoist Forums held in 2007, 2011, and 2014 exemplify the government’s support for these and other aspects of the religion, which they seek to enlist in their quest to protect China’s social harmony. These changes are having a profound influence on the practice of Daoism outside China, and in particular have transformed educated Chinese perspectives on popular religious practices.


Panel 24: North American Chinese Immigrants

 

Expanding Chinese American Studies Through Chinese Americans: The History and Culture of a People

Jonathan Lee

San Francisco State University

This paper reflects on the culmination of Chinese Americans: The History and Culture of a People (2016). The publication offers in-depth historical analysis that highlights the enormous contributions of Chinese Americans to the professions, politics, and popular culture of America, from the 19th century through the present day.

While the number of Chinese Americans has grown very rapidly in the last decade, this group has long thrived in the United States in spite of racism, discrimination, and segregation. This comprehensive volume takes a global view of the Chinese experience in the Americas. While the focus is on Chinese Americans in the United States, author Jonathan H. X. Lee also explores the experiences of Chinese immigrants in Canada, Mexico, and South America. He considers why the Chinese chose to leave their home country, where they settled, and how the distinctive “Chinese American” identity was formed.

This volume is organized into four sections: historical overview; political and economic life; cultural and religious life; and literature, the arts, and popular culture. Detailed essays capture the essence of everyday life for this immigrant group as they assimilated, established communities, and interacted with other ethnic groups. Alphabetically arranged entries describe the political, social, and religious institutions begun by Chinese Americans and explores their roles as business owners, activists, and philanthropic benefactors for their communities.

 

Chinese Immigrants and Immigration Policy in North America

Wei Yi

Long Denggao

Tsinghua University

Retrospective study of history and immigration status of overseas Chinese has great historical significance and practical significance. The history of Chinese immigrants in turn is closely related with the immigration policy. In different historical periods, changes in immigration policy largely affected the quality of Chinese immigration and integration. To understand the immigration policies and the full range of research, is the study of the history of emigration and immigration status of theoretical basis, is concerned about immigration in an objective understanding of overseas Chinese identity and living environment of different historical periods, is positive analysis  of the development status of Chinese immigrants retrospective and social identity, and thus play a positive role in promoting the internationalization of the Chinese economy, while providing a reference for the further improvement of overseas Chinese investment environment and the development of relevant policies.

Chinese emigration should be influenced by at least two aspects of the conditions. The first one is the local living environment, and the second one is the immigration policy and destination environment.  At present, research on migration in North America, is mainly focus on the early colonial studies, immigrant culture and the literature. Recent studies are focus on the North American distribution of Chinese immigrants, occupation, income and other factors. In fact, the Chinese immigrants in the United States and Canada suffered immigration policy restrictions. This paper is considering the after immigration social integration, identity, history and related general issues. Furthermore, some previous studies are focused on North America overall immigration policy, and the paper intends to investigate the changes of immigration policy for Chinese immigrant applicants and the underlying causes. In addition, the American and Canadian immigration policy is also influence the Chinese government diplomacy policy, such as long-term visas for overseas Chinese, long-term residence permits, and other policies to further promote the overseas Chinese investment, trade, and cross-border business.

 

Taking Stock: Chinese Concepts and Beliefs among Immigrants

Bonnie Lee, University of Lethbridge

Mary Fong, Chinese Family Services of Ontario

Traditional Chinese concepts have been largely transmitted across generations through popular sayings, aphorisms, proverbs, and practices. Many first generation immigrants draw upon these implicit beliefs and values that have shaped their consciousness to help them weather the challenges of life as immigrants. This paper presents an analysis of these values and beliefs reported by Canadian immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China drawn from the secondary analysis of two qualitative immigrant-related studies. Prominent among them are an intergenerational view of life, relationship and reciprocity, striving and an entrepreneurial ethic, and belief in the invisible realm. While these values function to promote resilience, they are also limiting when adhered to rigidly at the expense of attending to changing relational and emotional dynamics in a foreign cultural context. Cases of problems in mental health and gambling illustrate the insufficiency of traditional cultural values and beliefs in meeting the challenges of post-migration life stages and losses. The practice of congruent and deepened family communication and the resolution of unfinished earlier life knots and trauma are necessary to breathe new life into old concepts.This paper leads towards an appraisal of cultural beliefs and their relevance in the overseas context of immigrant lives. It is proposed that cultural values need to be vivified through transformative processes such as that informed by contemporary psychotherapy and the healing arts.


Panel 25: Chinese Migrants and Forging of New Lives

 

Re-migration Narrative of the Tsinoys in Canada: Adaptation, Accommodation and Transformation

Teresita Ang See 洪玉华

Executive Trustee, Kaisa Heritage Foundation

Secretary-Treasurer, International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas

Majority of the post-war generation of Tsinoys (colloquial term for Chinese Filipinos or Tsinong Pinoy) were born and grew up in the Philippines and have established their roots in Philippine soil. They are well integrated into mainstream society.

Starting in the 1980s, especially after the economic difficulties spawned by the martial law regime of the late former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, the mass migration of overseas Filipinos happened. This OFW phenomenon includes the Chinese Filipinos who went abroad to study and never came back to the Philippines or Chinese Filipinos who decided to pull up their roots to relocate abroad. Canada is one favorite destination, especially in the last two decades.

The paper presents an exploratory study on the re-migration narrative of the Tsinoys in Canada — their experiences in adaptation and accommodation and their identity transformation or lack of transformation in their new environment.

The narrative is obtained through personal interviews and administration of a survey among members of Chinese-Filipino-Canadian associations, church members and well known Chinese-Filipino businesses. To be elicited in the survey are answers to questions on when, why and how they migrated to Canada, how they compare their lives in the Philippines and in Canada, the reasons for their migration and their immigrant experiences, and how they identify themselves after living in Canadian society for sometime.

From this re-migration narrative, the paper hopes to find common lessons in the shared experiences among these new migrants and elicit new insights on developments in modern day migrations.

 

Spacing Citizenship and Evicting “Chineseness”: The Chinese Maternal Hotel and Birth Tourism in California

Yidan Zhu

University of Toronto

n recent years, “birth tourism”—the practice that expectant Chinese mothers give birth in the US in order to acquire US nationality for their newborns and circumvent China’s one-child policy—has become a controversial issue and has raised heated debate among Americans. While media and scholarly discussion focuses on the legal dimension of what they view as the ‘stealing of American citizenship,’ this paper explores how these Chinese mothers, their families, agents, and local contacts jointly constructed the space they give birth in during their journey to the new world.

The data collected here are primarily from Southern California. Using a case study on a Chinese maternal hotel in Chino Hills and in-depth interviews with 10 Chinese birth tourist mothers in Southern California, this paper analyzes how these maternal hotels as racialized spaces have been socially organized and differentiated.

As this paper argues, the construction of the space contains a series of racializations and identity demarcations. The experiences of Chinese birth tourist mothers provide an excellent window for observing how social, cultural, and racial relations are spatially constructed. My theoretical framework has been inspired by Razack (1998)’s work on her arguments about the contemporary context of the “war on terror” (p. 6). She examines Muslim women in Western society, and argues that “the denial of a common bond of humanity between people of European descent and those, who are not, remains a defining feature of the world order” and the “‘colour-lined’ world is one increasingly governed by the logic of exception and the camps of abandoned or ‘rightless’ people it creates” (p. 6). In my paper, I address the problematics of the motel for birth tourism owned by Chinese American in south California. I discuss how the Chinese maternal hotel has been organized by the Chinese logic and knowledge became a “state of exception” and has been portrayed as unsafe, unhealthy and uncivilized space in the “war on terror” North America. Utilizing Razack’s notion of ‘eviction’ (1998), which emphasize the spatial racialization has been taken places through evicting the racialized body from the public space and local community, I argue that the exclusion of Chinese maternal hotel and the eviction of Chinese birth tourist mothers’ body exemplify the ideology of American citizenship and the hegemony of white and male-dominated society.

This paper not only enriches the scholarship on spatial racialization, but also shows how Chineseness as an identity has been politically, racially, and socio-culturally constructed and “excluded” by local communities, Chinese birth tourists, and the state. I conclude that a racial thinking could deepen our understanding on the practice of current protest against Chinese birth tourism in California, and suggest a social justice for every human being in the American society.

 

New Chinese Migration in Thailand Since 1978: The Formation of New Chinese Communities

Sivarin Lertpusit

Thammasat University

This paper aims to explain the factors why New Chinese decided to immigrate to Thailand in the period of 1978 to 2014 and how they formulated their New Chinese Migrant communities. I use qualitative research methodology  in analyzing, and framing the critique under the theory of Soft power and Transnationalism. The sources of data are collected by interviewing relevant person, statistic data from state bureau and reviewing the former works.

The finding of this paper is divided into two parts; the factors of immigration and the formation of community. There are three main factors that attracted New Chinese Migrants to locate in Thailand. First of all, push factors within China; the high competition in living in China due to the population density and increasing living expenses. Another push factor is the trend of going abroad whether to go out to study, work or invest. Secondly, pull factors in Thailand; the business opportunity, Thailand is still a low invest country, but an expandable market and hub to ASEAN. The regulations and bureaucracy system are not flexible, but there is a gap to corrupt, which is an opportunity for some to gain interest. Most of all, the living cost is lower compared to other countries in ASEAN. Lastly, the supporting factors; the healthy relationship between China and Thailand is getting better in political, economic and cultural issues. It is tightened by the emerging of ASEAN plus three and China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement. To summarize, there are push factors, pull factors and supporting factors that influenced the decision making of the New Chinese Migration.

The community formation for New Chinese Migrants in Thailand is in different patterns with the Former Oversea Chinese who located in Thailand for centuries. The core of Former Oversea Chinese society is Gongsi system, not only the supportive and job guarantee system, but also the social welfare provider within Chinese society. While, the New Migrants are quite individually supporting themselves. Some New Migrants have connections with the former migrants, some, however, don’t have. Even there are some differences between the former and the new one, there are also some similarities. They set up in an area called Huaykwang district, which is known as the new China town. Furthermore, they organize associations on their own to connect and cooperate among their members.

According to the increasing Chinese arrival statistic, the main purpose of around 95% is traveling. The growing income from Chinese travelers leads to the expanding of Chinese companies, entrepreneurs, traders, banks and language schools. These are the occupations of the New Chinese Migrants. From interviewing, some are legally employed as teacher, officers, technicians and bankers, while some are not, especially the undocumented tour guides. A huge group of them invests in small and medium size enterprises such as retail and wholesale shops, traders, service providers and export-import company, etc. Within these entrepreneurs, there are both legal and illegal business activities. For example, some retail shop owners do not register as entrepreneurs, but nominating Thai citizen instead. They stay in the country by using tourist visa to avoid tax payments. Recently, the emerging of New Chinese Migrants in Thailand has practical effects to local people, especially the job seizing and market share scrambling. The situation would be worse if there is no proper managing organization to deal with this phenomenon.

 

Documenting Chinese ‘Return Migration’ from Burma to China: The Layered Contexts of News Clippings in Overseas Chinese History

Tina Chen

University of Manitoba