Panel 1: Ethnicity, Community, and Identity
Exclusion and a call for justice: The Lambing Flat banner
Karen Schamberger
Deakin University
The Lambing Flat riots were a series of violent riots led by European, American and Australian-born miners against Chinese miners from 1860 to 1861 on the Burrangong goldfields in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. They led to anti-Chinese immigration legislation in NSW enacted in 1861. After the British colonies on the Australian continent united to become the nation of Australia in 1901, the national government introduced the Immigration Restriction Act, which became known as the White Australia Policy. However, legislation and government policies were not enough to create a shared sense of national identity. After 1901, individual and collective memories of the Lambing Flat riots were re-imagined as a national foundation myth, the “Birth of White Australia.”
During the riots, the European, American and Australian-born miners carried a banner with the words “Roll Up, No Chinese” as they attacked Chinese miners. The banner was kept by an Irish-born miner and passed down through his family before being sold to the Lambing Flat Folk Museum in Young, NSW in 1964. The Museum has displayed the banner ever since.
Once able to proudly lay claim to being the mythological “Birth of White Australia”, this country town and its local museum have struggled to understand themselves and their past as part of a modern multicultural nation. Increasing interactions with Chinese Australians who also want to be acknowledged as having a major role in the formation of the Australian nation complicate the riots’ and banner’s meaning for the museum and the town. This is particularly so in recent years when some Chinese Australians used the 150th anniversary of the riots in 2011 as an opportunity to call for an apology for anti-Chinese legislation and the White Australia policy.
Using a combination of object biography (Kopytoff 1986) and assemblage theory (Latour 2005) to trace the life story of the banner, this paper will explore the ways in which the Lambing Flat Folk Museum and the town of Young have dealt with their “difficult heritage” (Macdonald 2009). I also use the concept of identity relations (Yuval-Davis 2010) to explain the ways in which this object mediates relations between people of Chinese and non-Chinese descent in the town of Young and at the local museum in the past and the present, subconsciously continuing the processes of exclusion in today’s multicultural society.
Race and Community: The Experiences of the Chinese Population in Post-war London
Desmond Cheung 張海浩
Portland State University
A 2009 report on the problem of racism against Chinese in the United Kingdom found substantial levels of racist abuse, ranging from name-calling, to damage to property and businesses, to physical attacks that sometimes resulted in hospitalization and even murder. Yet despite this level of violence against them, Chinese in Britain have been relatively ineffective in protecting their communities against discrimination. The researchers from three British universities who authored the report explained this situation as partly a result of the Chinese community’s distrust and lack of confidence in the criminal justice system, but also as a product of their weak self-organization, segregation, and dispersal across the country – characterizing them as a community ‘hidden from public view’.
While attention to the problems confronted by Britain’s minority communities today is welcome, there is a need for a historically informed understanding of the experience of Chinese in Britain that goes beyond singular stereotypes. For one, although there is certainly some truth in the relative invisibility of Chinese in today’s Britain, there is no homogeneous community. Place of origin in China, geographical location in Britain, and immigrant generation and degree of integration into mainstream British society are all factors that shape the lives of Chinese in Britain.
This paper examines the challenges faced by Chinese in the postwar period, which saw a rise in the number of Chinese immigrants to Britain, notably from the New Territories of Hong Kong. While there are similarities with the present in that postwar Chinese immigrants mostly worked in the ethnic economy of catering and food suppliers, a sector continued by many Chinese today, the experiences of Chinese in postwar (and today’s) London differed from the stereotype of the community ‘hidden from public view’. Not only was the public discourse about race and immigration in postwar Britain different from today’s, the growing concentration of Chinese in London at a time of large-scale immigration of peoples from across the British Empire produced a diverse social milieu that needs to be understood in its own historical context.
This paper analyzes the formation of the Chinese community in postwar London and its relations with both indigenous British and other immigrant groups. It will also examine how racially informed images of them as well as their self-images as Chinese influenced their social lives and economic opportunities in the metropolis.
This research makes use of a wide range of sources, including: central government reports from the Home Office and the House of Commons; London-wide local authority records; English and (beginning in the 1970s) Chinese newspapers; and especially Chinese community archives held at the London Metropolitan Archives. Especially notable are the personal recollections and photographs of Chinese in Britain obtained from two major oral history projects completed in 2005 (over 30 interviews) and 2015 (over 90 interviews).
Rethinking the Position of Ethnic Chinese Indonesians
Wu-Ling Chong 钟武凌
University of Malaya
This article examines the position of ethnic Chinese Indonesians from the Dutch colonial period to the post-Suharto era and analyses the factors that shaped their position. This article will focus on the position of ethnic Chinese Indonesians in the aspects of economy, socio-cultural sphere and politics. Under Dutch colonial rule, which began in the seventeenth century, the colonial regime enforced the divide-and-rule policy that deterred the interactions between the Chinese and the indigenous population. The Dutch allowed the Chinese to form ethnic-based organisations, establish Chinese-language presses and open Chinese-medium schools as they wanted the Chinese to maintain their “Chinese-ness” in order to keep them as a distinct ethnic group. Moreover, the Dutch used the Chinese instead of the indigenous population to fill most economic niches in order to prevent the rise of an indigenous merchant class that might challenge their position. This had further widened the economic disparity between the Chinese and the indigenous people. During the Sukarno years (1950-1965), the Chinese continued to enjoy freedom to establish and operate Chinese organisations, Chinese-language presses and Chinese-medium schools because Sukarno was close to China and hence was relatively tolerant to the Chinese in Indonesia. The Chinese were also allowed to actively getting involved in politics. However, the Sukarno regime introduced a few discriminatory policies to reduce Chinese economic interests and assist indigenous businesspeople. During the Suharto’s rule (1966-1998), due to the anti-communist politics associated with the Cold War, the Suharto regime perceived the ethnic Chinese as the potential ‘fifth column’ for China and introduced forced assimilation policies to curtail Chinese culture as well as control the Chinese. The Chinese were also discouraged from actively getting involved in politics and were only given opportunities to get involved in business activities. In the post-Suharto era (1998-present), the position of ethnic Chinese Indonesians has improved considerably as they are now allowed to openly express their ethnic and cultural identities as well as actively participate in politics. This article argues that the reversal of attitudes toward the Chinese was catalysed by capital flight and the ‘exodus’ of Chinese after the anti-Chinese riots in May 1998. It was also due to the rise of political leaders who were open-minded and sympathetic to the situation of the Chinese such as former presidents Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri. Besides that, the rise of China as an economic power also indirectly changed the attitude of post-Suharto governments towards Chinese Indonesians. This article concludes that the position of ethnic Chinese Indonesians was shaped by not only the interests and agendas of the power-holders but also the anti-communist politics associated with the Cold War, the rise of open-minded Indonesian political leaders and the globalisation of the economic position of China.
Polynesian Hakka : An Elusive Search for Core Values ?
Leopold Mu Si Yan
University of French Polynesia in Tahiti
Descendants of the earliest Hakka sojourners who arrived to Polynesian islands 150 years ago have tried to commemorate the event by highlighting both the contribution of the Chinese community to indigenous socio-economic development and the harmonious mingling of cultures in this erstwhile colonial society where Jack London’s Chinago was a most memorable racial figure as well as – from the Chinese perspective – a martyr who allegedly sacrificed himself for the sake of his fellow countrymen. But even founding myths seem to fade away. Faced with the lack of interest of the French-speaking and localized younger generations and in the midst of a supposedly multicultural environment, the celebrations were initiated as usual by cultural association leaders intent upon preserving or recreating the sense for community. Are their efforts mere tokens of a sentimental attachment, the reinvention of a long-lost genuine heritage, a response to one of the multiple Pacific versions of modern multiculturalism, or the unmistakable sign of a deep-rooted, immutable identity that lives on through time, history, geopolitics, the local politics of identity and geographic isolation ? Whether members of this community are pure Chinese or of mixed ancestry, they are not stateless as they are French nationals. They seamlessly cross cultural boundaries and international borders and can claim a wide diversity of backgrounds. Not all of them feel themselves part of the huaqiao. Nor do they feel threatened by the revival of the native Tahitian language which they take for granted. And yet, even as the teaching of Mandarin is being revived, calls for retaining and perpetuating Hakka language and customs are coming from different quarters. Are Hakka in French Polynesia more Chinese than others or actually more hybrid than others ?
Potter v. Minahan 1908: A Legal Challenge to White Australia
Kate Bagnall
University of Wollongong
In November 1908 the High Court of Australia ruled in the case of Potter v. Minahan. Ten months earlier James Minahan had been arrested as a prohibited immigrant under the Immigration Restriction Act when he returned to Australia after twenty-six years overseas. Although born in Melbourne to a mother of Irish heritage, Minahan had lived in rural Guangdong with his Chinese father from the age of five. During his long absence, Australia’s restrictions on the movements of non-Europeans in and out of the country had tightened, and Minahan’s ‘Chinese’ appearance and his lack of English rendered him suspicious in official eyes. Despite presenting his Victorian birth certificate as proof of his Australian origins, on his arrival Minahan was made to sit the Dictation Test, which he duly failed, seemingly making him a prohibited immigrant by law.
When the Australian colonies had federated in 1901, the Commonwealth took over responsibility for immigration, yet neither the new Australian Constitution nor the new federal immigration law clearly defined what ‘immigration’ meant. Could a person like James Minahan, who was born in Australia and therefore a British subject by birth, be considered an immigrant, and therefore a prohibited immigrant? This question was at the heart of Minahan’s High Court case, one of the many legal challenges Chinese Australians made in the early years of the twentieth century against the harsh restrictions of the Immigration Restriction Act. In this paper I will discuss the Potter v. Minahan High Court case and consider what it tells us about ideas of Australian identity and belonging in the early White Australia period.
Panel 2: The Fluidity and Complexity of Identity: Contemporary and Comparative Perspectives Revisited
Forging National Identity in Post-1997 Hong Kong: The Institutional “Paradoxical Factors”
Sun Wenbin
University of Hong Kong
The rapid rise of “native soil” sentiment in Hong Kong in recent years has tilted a health balance between local distinctiveness and national identity. Polling results show that over the years since Hong Kong’s return in 1997 the identification with the Chinese nation among local people has not been gradually strengthen. This is particularly the case among the younger generations, who are educated and grew up after the return of Hong Kong to China. Much research has been devoted to this phenomenon from cultural and political aspects. Based on these, this study attempts to provide an institutional angle to decipher the puzzle. The policy of “One Country, Two Systems” is designed to maintain the effective institutions and life style of Hong Kong so as to ensure a smooth return and the stability of the city. While this far-sighted policy does achieve most its goals, some of the institutional arrangements have also paved the way for the rise of strong localism inadvertendly, for instance, the impact of political elections (which are bound to give a rise to local interests against the national one), the flexible application of the national Nationality Law in Hong Kong, some of the preferential policies given to Hong Kong which are not inductive to the sense of citizenship, and so on. This paper is hoped to contribute to the understanding of the formation of national identity and particularly the key elements of it in the context of Chinese culture and tradition. It is also aimed to have some policy implications by comparing the similar preferential policies the Chinese Central Government given to other provinces and the outcomes of them.
Neither Chinese nor Japanese, She is Pangcah
Tsaiman Ho
Chung Yuan Christian University
Neither Chinese nor Japanese, Kolas Yotaka perceives herself as a Pangcah (also known as Amis), one ethnicity of Taiwan’s indigenous groups. The blood lines from her parents reveal a vivid picture of identification. From her mother side, the intermarriages of Japanese and Hakka were once adopted by the colonial government as a political measure for governance. However, when Japan was defeated, and obliged to leave the island, her predecessors decided to hide their Japanese blood and were adopted by her own Hakka mother, and thus inherited a Hakka surname until 2003. On the father side, Kolas’ father, Kacaw, a very popular name among Pangcah, was born in the colonial period with Japanese name as Yoshinali Yotaka. Growing into the era of Kuomintang (KMT) authoritarian regime, he was forced to adopt a Chinese name: Yeh Fung. Kolas’ identification discloses a complex process in which the past was carried over to the next decades, and of democratic Taiwan.
To perceive oneself and being perceived is related to a configuration of power. But this is not enough, we also have to historicize the protagonists, and examine what frames the struggle or conflicts over identities. The logics of the scheme of the state, individual response, social recognition and social affiliation constitute one’s identity formation. The colonial regime and the historical emergence of ethnic and political identification with mainland China and the formation of a semi-autonomous Taiwanese identity within the general delineation of the Japanese empire continue to form and inform not only the definition of a strictly “Taiwanese” identity, but also the historical role that Japanese colonialism has played in the constitution of that identity and its differentiation from mainland China. The interesting point that strategic case we used here illustrates the dominant discourses of both colonial oppression and the Chinese nationalist manipulation, in their ideologically different but structurally similar compulsions, had insisted on prescribing and solidifying exclusive identities to serve their respective political means. Kolas Yotaka grew up in a very rich yet complex culture among Japanese, Hakka and Pangcah. Her story provides us with an opportunity to rethink the issue on the emergent of identity. Is it possible that we hold a radical consciousness that insists on the contradiction and multiplicity of identity formation and refuses a finalized and holistic affirmation of “Japaneseness”, “Chineseness” or “Taiwaneseness”?
Returned Overseas Chinese in Hong Kong: Comparing Identities Between the Indonesian and Malayan Chinese Communities
Kok-chung Ong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Despite the rush of refugees away from China following the collapse of Kuomintang regime in 1949, a reversed trend of migration could also be seen in the early 1950s when pro-communist Chinese youngsters in Southeast Asia willingly or unwillingly ‘return’ to China. Among these ‘Returned Overseas Chinese’ (guiqiao), some were keen to serve the new Chinese regime, others intended to continue their education there, while the remaining of them might simply be deported back to China by their Southeast Asian governments respectively. The returnees’ ‘foreign connections’, nevertheless, had become a liability in their career advancement in China during the 1950s and 1960s. Thus a significant number of them opted to apply for yet again a ‘return’ to their birth countries when policy allowed since the early 1970s. Most of them eventually settled down in Hong Kong instead of returning to Southeast Asia.
This research focuses on the two largest sub-groups of guiqiao in Hong Kong, namely those who originally came from Indonesia and the British Malaya (i.e. from today’s Malaysia and Singapore). These are people who had been continuously discriminated against by the mainstream societies in Indonesia/Malaya, China and Hong Kong. Given their intricate life experiences, what is their national identity and/or their sense of belonging today? Do they by and large still regard Indonesia and Malaya as their ‘homeland’? Is there any difference between the two communities in terms of their identity? And if this is the case, why?
This is a less ambitious research which based primarily on a certain number of in-depth interview cases. It is intended to serve as a supplement to the existing research in the field while trying to explore the contemporary social and political implications from the discussion in the context of a rising China.
Identity and its Reflections: Comparing Malaysia’s Henry Lee with Hong Kong’s Robbie Ho
Victor Zheng
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
In the twentieth century, Hong Kong’s Robbie Ho Shai Lai (1906-1998) and Malaysia’s Henry Lee Hau Shik (1900-1988) were well known in their respective societies. Because they were so removed from each other’s worlds, people may not feel that there was any connection or relation between them, or that they reflected any unique social phenomenon. But digging deeply into family histories and social change, it is not hard to discover similarities in the trajectories of advancement of these two men and their families. There were even many overlapping or intertwining points which witnessed the dramatic changes took place in both societies in that century. Simply put, these two men were closely associated with the governments of both the empire of Great Britain and the Republic of China, from which both received honours, awards, and titles. There were also a great many similarities in their personal lives. For instances, both Henry and Robbie were students at Queen’s College, and later studied in London. Upon graduation, both returned to mainland China—one to work in the customs, the other to join the military, thus establishing close ties with the Nationalist government. During the Sino-Japanese War, both Henry Robbie fought on many different battlefields. After the defeat of the Nationalists and their retreat to Taiwan, and the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the two men and their families became the core of the pro-Taiwan camps in their respective localities, because of their close ties to the Nationalists. In the 1980s and 1990s, the descendants of both families gradually changed their relationship with the government in Taiwan and resumed contact with the government of the PRC, with such contact increasing after the 1990s. In combing through the histories of these two men and their families, it is clear that the rich network capital they had built brought them great benefit, influence, and more importantly, their own legacies in their respective societies. Their stories not only reflect the turbulent history of modern China, intricacies of personal connections, but dramatic changes of identity of Chinese in Malaysia, Hong Kong and overseas.
Repatriation of Chinese Cultural Relics as Site for Identity Negotiation
Cangbai Wang
University of Westminster
The past two decades witnessed a ‘huaqiao (Overseas Chinese) museum fever’ in the PRC. The Chinese party-state has constructed over 15 museums, at both national and local level, exhibiting the history of huaqiao and their contributions to the motherland. At a time when cultural heritage is high on the agenda of China’s political and economic policies, it is urgent to investigate how museumifying huaqiao is becoming an integral part of China’s new nation-building project and various ways the Overseas Chinese respond to it. In this paper, it looks at a huaqiao museum at Taizhou, Jiangsu province. Unlike the museums built at traditional qiaoxiang (the hometown of Overseas Chinese) that tend to emphasize historically-formed Overseas Chines connections, being a city that does not have a strong overseas migration tradition, it resorts to innovative practice to tap into diasporic resources for city-branding and patriotic education. Based on fieldworks at Taizhou and London, it examines the complicated collaborative process between the local qiaowu (Overseas Chinese affairs) apparatus and a UK-based Overseas Chinese, who was born in Shanghai but originally from Taizhou, in the building of a museum to exhibit the Chinese relics he purchased in the UK and donated to his hometown. Through this case study it seeks to answer the following questions: how the repatriation of dispersed Chinese cultural relics is becoming a new form of diasporic heritage making, involving simultaneously manipulating the old notion of ‘place of origin’ and the new notion of ‘museum’, and to what extent it provides a site for the negotiation and renegotiation of diasproic Chinese identities in the context of China’s global rise. It is hoped that this paper could shed some new light on the study of emerging Chinese identities from a heritage perspective and through the lens of museum.
Panel 3: Carving an Identity as a Chinese Canadian
The Contested Meanings of Being Chinese in Vancouver, Canada
Lisi Feng
The University of British Columbia
Since the late 1990s, China has emerged as the top source country of immigrants to Vancouver. It accounts for 25 percent of recent immigrants (between 2001 and 2011) to the Vancouver metropolitan region, and 17.4 percent of those who immigrated prior to 2001. Immigration flows from urban centers in China converge with those from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries, making ‘Chinese’ the largest ‘visible minority’ in Vancouver. In the context of significant diversity in terms of place of origins and migration histories, this paper argues that the ethnic category of ‘Chinese’ is no longer capable, if at all, of capturing the internal tensions within groups identified as Chinese in a hyper-diverse region in North America. It challenges the assumption in public discourses and policy debates that ‘Chinese’ or ‘Chinese identity’ is an ontologically stable object with fixed cultural boundaries. Instead, my paper calls for greater attention to place-based transformative processes in which groups resort to different notions of “Chinese culture” in defense of their political actions.
My arguments are based on a comparative case study of immigrant groups originating from three Chinese cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Zhongshan located in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong Province. By disaggregating the broad-brush category of Mainland Chinese into groups based on their places of origin, I intend to highlight how urban processes in Chinese cities shape group capacities and their distinctive relationships with the China State. When urban residents from one city in China arrive in Vancouver, they draw upon strategies and resources unique to where they come from, and develop strikingly different senses of being Chinese in a multicultural place in Canada. The three Chinese cities I chose for my case study are significant sources of immigrants who were admitted into Canada as entrepreneurs, business investors, skilled immigrants, international students and family reunions rather than temporary workers or refugees. They contrast with each other with respect to the trajectories of political economic development and the nature of global linkages. For example, Beijing is home to the headquarters of China’s largest state-owned enterprises, whereas regional headquarters of multinational corporations mostly concentrate in Shanghai. By contrast, Zhongshan lacks these components, but has more than a century-long migration history to Hong Kong, Canada, Australia and the United States. Zhongshan local government has mobilized long-established migrant networks primarily with Hong Kong to develop export-oriented manufacturing industries and private enterprises. These place-based structural differences can be translated into different types of opportunities and networks, for example with state-owned enterprises in Beijing or the well-integrated Zhongshan communities in North American cities, that shape one’s relations with the immediate environments in Vancouver. Ultimately, such networks and social relations help to define one’s sense of identity and belonging in Canada. My case study employed primarily qualitative methods including life story interviews, analysis of archival documents, policy reports and scholarly publications from both Chinese and English sources. I supplement qualitative data with descriptive statistical analysis.
Integration and Identity among Second-Generation Chinese-Vietnamese in Canada
Belinda Ha
Ryerson University
Statistical data from the large scale Ethnic Diversity Survey report second-generation visible-minority immigrants as having the lowest rates of integration amongst young people in Canada. Canadian media reports about disproportionately high rates of school drop-outs among some ethnic groups, ethnic youth gangs, and the arrests of alleged “home-grown” terror suspects in Toronto have added immediacy to the question of just how far children of immigrants have integrated in Canadian society (Ali, p.89). There appears to be a considerable irony then, considering the existence of a multiculturalism policy that has been celebrated as a unique success by Canadians and touted across the world as Canada’s ideological model for less enlightened liberal democracies (Chariandy, p.818). Kobayashi (cited in Wong and Simon, p.7) notes that members of the second-generation see themselves and are seen by others as a cultural bridge between their parents’ ways of living and a new way of living that is thought of as Canadian. As they are agents of socio-cultural change, they are a “prime locus” for understanding the complexities of a multicultural society. Issues of the second-generation essentially capture the success or failure of the dominant society in achieving its multiculturalism policy aims (Wong and Simon, p.7).
While a substantial amount of research has concentrated on first-generation immigrants with regards to their psychological adjustment and labour market integration, the body of work addressing the experiences of second-generation youth in Canada is relatively recent. Using a Social Construction Framework (SCF), this conference paper seeks to examine the social construction of second-generation Chinese-Vietnamese youth and how it affects their integration in Canadian society. How does social construction affect their negotiated identity in terms of nationhood and immigration policies? Zhou (1997) writes about a research gap in the knowledge of how second-generation immigrants have negotiated their identity, particularly in the presence of racial discrimination. They may feel Canadian, yet be exposed to racism and prejudice that situate them as outsiders. Romero (2008) writes about the incentive of the 1.5 generation and second-generation to disengage themselves from families and ethnic community, erasing any features of their immigrant past. This is “in an effort to eliminate the likelihood they will be humiliated and deprived of their civil rights in being racially profiled by police, teachers, and employers” (Romero 2008, 33). The crucial components of alienation and racialization will thus be explored in relation to identity formation. The paper will also address how Chinese-Vietnamese youth negotiate their fluid identities amidst intergenerational relationships with family members who may emphasize more adherence to their traditional culture.
Evolution and Diversity of Cultural Identity of Chinese in Toronto – From the 1960s to Present
Jack Leong
University of Toronto
Before the 1960s, the Chinese in Canada formed a segregated community, usually centred around Chinatowns in major cities, including Toronto. With this physical, cultural, social, and political segregation, the identity of Chinese Canadians had remained unchallenged, which was Chinese. By the Canadian society, they were perceived as Chinese, or foreigners, living in Canada. In China, they were considered sojourners—Huaqiao—Chinese living temporarily outside of China.
Beginning with the 1960s, the identity of Chinese Canadians started to get more complex. With the Japanese and civil wars concluded and followed by a few years of peace, Mainland China, from the 1950s to the 1970s, experienced severe economic hardship caused by social, cultural, and political unrest. Together with the possibility of family reunion and a more liberal environment in Canada, most Chinese in Canada had gradually realized that Canada was their home.
The acculturation of identity of both immigrants and Canadian born Chinese in Toronto since the 1960s merits in-depth examination. The literature review depicts a gradual institutional improvement for Chinese Canadians in the acculturation process. With the repeal of the Exclusion Act in 1947, the adoption of point system in immigration policy in 1967 and the introduction of multiculturalism policy in 1971, Canada seems to be a country that welcomes immigrants and has attempted to remove the social and political barriers for immigrants of ethnic minority origins, to fully participate in Canadian society. After more than 40 years of implementing this policy, what social effect does it have on Chinese immigrants and their younger generation?
The author draws on the data from the Ethnic Diversity Survey of Canada (2002) and the 2011 Census to investigate whether Multiculturalism enables Chinese-Canadians to embrace the identity of Chinese and Canadian at the same time. Using results of a series of individual and group surveys on integration and cultural identities that the author and his research teams conducted from 2010 to 2015, the author explores the validity of the general findings and further analyzes the cultural dynamics of East-Meets-West among first and second generations of Chinese in Toronto on the issues of language, identity, political participation, media perception, fashion consumption and education values.
Tracing the Transitions to Post-Secondary Education of Chinese and other Asian Youth in British Columbia
Robert Sweet
Lakehead University of Ontario
Karen Robson-Mckay
McMaster University
The British Columbia post-secondary education (PSE) system has seen significant change in the last decade. A greatly expanded student population has become increasingly diverse with many minority language students in attendance — principally Chinese speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin but also students whose first language is Gujurati, Hindi, Korean, Vietnamese, or Tagalog. Many of these are first or second generation immigrants. PSE is seen by minority language youth (and their parents) as an essential means of economic and social mobility that underlies broader social integration goals. Equitable access to PSE is thus a major public policy concern.
The purpose of this paper is to extend existing research on the academic performance and attainment of Chinese-speaking high school graduates of the BC school system in relation to other minority language groups as well as native English speakers. At the present time, ‘Asian’ students are perceived to be well-represented at PSE but there is marked variability in the educational trajectories of the various language groups. Students compete for admission to different levels of the PSE hierarchy defined by vertical distinctions between colleges and universities and, more recently, horizontal distinctions within the university credential tier. The latter reflect organizational reforms that differentiates Teaching Intensive Universities (TIU’s) from Research Intensive Universities (RIU’s). Admission to PSE is primarily determined by personal academic achievement but appears to be significantly influenced by the intersection of socio-economic status, gender, and ethnicity. School policies and practices also play a role. For example, English as a Second Language support is offered and widely adopted by minority language students. While PSE expansion aims to enhance the economic and social opportunities of all language groups, continued institutional differentiation in the form of TIU’s and RIU’s may undermine equality goals and contribute to further ethnic stratification.
We sample a 1990 birth cohort all of whom attended grades K-12 in the ethnically diverse Metro Vancouver area (n=22,634); and model their transition to PSE from 2009 to 2013 in order to identify factors associated with particular college or university choices. We employ longitudinal administrative data linked by individual student identifiers that include information on students’ PSE planning and preparation through grades K-12, school and community data that describe the K-12 socio-demographic environment, and additional linked files on subsequent PSE program and institutional choice.
We adopt an intersectional approach in conceptualising the transition process and in analyzing ethnic variation in educational attainment. The results inform the growing public interest in and debate about PSE admissions practices in a multicultural environment. ‘Asian’ youth are part of this discussion and are generally assumed to be well-represented in the BC post-secondary system. However, it is important to recognise that these students identify with various cultures and languages and vary widely in their educational trajectories. For example, Chinese-speaking youth follow paths to PSE that differ markedly from those of Tagalog speakers. Moreover, the achievement and attainment of all language groups is qualified by intersecting social structures and by school composition features. PSE policies also are consequential — our results suggest that continued institutional differentiation operates to constrain broad equality aims by reinforcing stratification across ethnic lines.
Home: A Transformation of Identities
Xiong Gu
The University of British Columbia
Early Chinese immigrants landed on the shores of Canada with the hopes of making enough money to return home and support their families, seeing the new land as a “Gold Mountain”, ready to be excavated. Unfortunately, their dreams were crushed; not only did they lack the wealth to ever go back home, the only thing that was sent back were their bones after they had died in the foreign land. Although these early immigrants spent a large portion of their lives in Canada, their home was perpetually across the Pacific Ocean and they were only able to return after their deaths.
For Chinese immigrants of the late 80s to 90s like myself, migration was not a choice. I was forced to flee China and subsequently had to construct a new life in Canada. Many immigrants during this time faced a similar situation; Chinese scholars and students who studied here could not return home due to the unstable political situation in China. My family had to go through culture shock and was forced to learn the new language and subsequently construct new identities. Through this process, my understanding of home changed from the place where I was born to the place where I felt comfortable in.
There are also Chinese immigrants who see Canada as an investment and a temporary home, only living here due to their insecurities about China. These immigrants do not try to fit into society; they take their new home for granted, making no effort to adapt to their new surroundings. For them, the only necessary contribution is money, which they are pouring into the Canadian economy. They struggle to fit into mainstream culture so they remain within their communities that only speak Chinese. To me, this hinders their ability to become Canadian. Isolation is not a good solution as it limits their language abilities and their knowledge. They can only be spoken through the Chinese news media and the Church to understand current events in Canada, unable to receive unfiltered news.
As we can see, Chinese immigrants have constructed different identities depending on their situations and understanding of home. Early immigrants as well as new immigrants had difficulty adapting to their new surroundings as their home was always across the Pacific Ocean. Other immigrants like myself were able to adjust to the new environment and finally accept it as a home. Through my panel, we will understand how the concept of home is intricately linked with identity and how these ideas are vital to the migratory experience.
Panel 4: Highly Skilled Chinese Transnational Migration in the Pacific Rim
Transnational Migration, Globalization, and Chinese Female Students 1880s-2010s
Huping Ling 令狐萍
Truman State University
In 1881, the first recorded Chinese female students arrived in the United States. Since then, the trickle of Chinese female students into the United States has continued. Although their increasing visibility over the years has attracted some scholars’ attention, a number of fundamental issues concerning their socioeconomic backgrounds in China, their experiences in the United States, and their contributions to the Chinese American history still remain unexplored. A comprehensive and systematic study of Chinese female students is therefore needed. This paper is a step toward providing such a comprehensive work on Chinese female students in the United States. It exams the impact of the U.S. immigration policies on Chinese female students in the United States from the late-19th-century to the present by studying both Chinese official policies on study abroad and the evolution of American immigration regulations. It also exams the various aspects of Chinese female students, including their cultural, socioeconomic background in China, and their academic, political, and social lives in the United States. The sources of the work are drawn primarily from archival documents, immigration records, government records, census statistics, contemporary newspapers in both English and Chinese, oral history interviews, surveys, and secondary works.
The history of Chinese female students is an integral part of the Chinese transnational migration. It is evident that Chinese female students from different periods had primarily different means of emigration, reflecting the impact of the evolving U.S. immigration policies on Chinese immigrants: when the Chinese exclusion prevailed, female students connected with American Christian missions had easier entry, whereas when American immigration policies turned less restrictive, female students sponsored by Chinese governments and private funds started to arrive in America in large numbers. Furthermore, the education and professional training of Chinese female students prior to their emigration did not spare them from difficulties and hardships experienced by other Chinese immigrants. Despite hardships many enjoyed success in their careers in the United States and assimilated into the local American communities.
Intellectual Migration and Implication: Evidence From Chinese Student Migration
Wei Li
Arizona State University
There is an accelerated “global race for talent” due to globalization and the growing importance of knowledge-based economy as the changing nature of the global economy has prompted the demand for a more educated workforce. This demand can be satisfied by increasing the size of the college-educated population domestically or by attracting foreign students and skilled migrants who have already obtained the necessary training overseas. Despite a growing literature on international students and skilled migrants, there exist a number of under-addressed questions. For instance, among college students in sending countries, who go abroad to study as potential skilled international migrants vs. those who decide to study in their home countries? Once going abroad and upon obtaining their degrees in a foreign country, who stay as skilled international migrants vs. who return to their home countries as returnees? What motivate them to come or to leave? What are the major factors behind such decisions?
This paper presents a preliminary analysis of a pair of cross-country surveys among degree-seeking Chinese students, including three cross-sectional groups: 1) and 2) Chinese students in a PRC university without or with intentions to study abroad (respectively called NIM/non-international migrants and the potential international migrants, PIM) versus 3) those already at a U.S. university (actual international migrants, AIM). We examine both macro-structural situations (e.g., policies, socioeconomic and political situation) and micro-individual characteristics (e.g., demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, academic training, perceptions of working/studying environment and networks, family background, ties and dispositions); and investigate their effects on intellectual migrants’ migration intentions and actions. We conclude that Chinese students’ intentions to study in the U.S. and possible return to the PRC are significantly influenced by their socio-demographic background, academic training, funding sources, work experience, motivation to study overseas, attitudes towards PRC, attitudes towards incentive policies, perceptions of immigration constraints, and current immigration status.
Pursuing Transnational Mobilities in the Education-Migration Nexus: Mainland Chinese International Students in World-Level U.S. Universities
Wai-chi Chee
University of Hong Kong
China has emerged as the leading source of international students, accounting for 14% of global total. The number climbed dramatically after 2000, with an annual growth of about 30%. Chinese international students aim first and foremost at universities in the United States. Since 2010, Chinese students have become the largest international student population in the United States. Their number increased to about 275,000 in 2013/14, constituting nearly 31% of total international student enrollment in the United States. Although the number of Chinese returnees has increased significantly in recent years – from about 30% a few years ago to more than 50% most recently, the return rate of highly-skilled professionals remains low. Prestigious U.S. universities have attracted the best students from China. They are the cream of the crop that both China and the United States want to absorb. As such, they are potential migrants but still closely tied to China and simultaneously open to global opportunities. This group of students provides a significant lens for us to further our theoretical understanding of highly-skilled Chinese migration. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Mainland Chinese international students studying in two world-level universities in California regarding their motives, experiences, and aspirations, this paper seeks to elucidate how the return-migration decision-making process of these students is shaped by the desire for transnational mobilities.
Canadian Immigration Policy and Chinese Students’ Mobility, Settlement, and Migration
Yixi Lu
University of Saskatchewan
In globalization context, two interrelated trends, competition for skilled workers and the internationalization of education, have become critical to a successful knowledge economy. As a result, many developed industrial countries including Canada have experienced a dramatic inflow of scholastically-skilled immigrants. A good portion of these immigrants received their advanced education in the host country and often, decided to become permanent resident in that country. In Canada, it is clear that international students have been viewed as a main source of qualified skilled immigrants by policy makers. This article provides a brief review of the recent trends and changes in Canadian immigration policy which are relevant to international students. By using secondary data provided by the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), the Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE), and the University of Saskatchewan, the analysis examines the impact of the recent trends and changes in immigration policy on the migration patterns of Chinese students in Canadian universities, and also explores their settlement and adaptation experiences. The discussion raises a number of implications and issues related to the politics of student mobility transitioning to migration. The conclusion challenges the assumption that the subsequent settlement and integration of these students does not require the provision of social support services.
Points Test: Policies, Strategies, and Dilemmas on the Journey to Permanent Residency among Young Chinese in Australia
Linling Gao-Miles
Washington University in St. Louis
As much as skill migration has become the mainstream for immigration to Australia, the “points test,” defined by the Australian government as “a transparent and objective method of selecting skilled migrants with the skills and attributes needed in Australia,” is the supreme guideline for the majority of young college students from Mainland China who seek permanent residency in Australia, at times even prior to arrival. This paper will explore the evolving policy of the points test in Australia since the 1990s. The elasticity of credentials that define the “needed skills and attributes” constantly shapes a series of decision-making strategies among young Chinese, for whom the first stage of choosing a major at college could determine their future, from the country of residency to citizenship. By examining both statistics and ethnographic data, this paper investigates various maneuvers that young Chinese adopt in response to Australian immigration policies, as well as their flexible negotiations with intuitional decisions and state power of the foreign territory in which they wish to invest an entire life under multiple motivations. This paper will argue that the points test is ultimately a metaphor by which the state exercises its institutional and territorial power over non-natives, and, as rhetoric, it is reminiscent of many restrictive immigration laws in classifying who are indeed welcome to this country.
Panel 5: Transmitting Chinese Culture Through Literature
Rescaling Islands and Continents: Wang Anyi’s Literary Vision of Translocal Connectivities in the 1990s
Cheow Thia Chan 曾昭程
Yale University
Since the 1990s, scholars of Malaysian Chinese literature have tried to situate the subject within a broader history or a less ethnic-based interpretive frame in order to account for its unique significance. While some propose to expand conceptual space so as to include works composed in other languages and classical forms by self-identified Chinese writers, there are others who emphasize the trait of geographical fluidity and foreground the achievements of Malaysian-born writers in Taiwan. Nonetheless, primarily because it remains contested whether “Malaysian” functions as a geographical, aesthetic and/or national marker, the shape of this larger interpretive context is still an open question. What has gathered momentum in the critical landscape lately is the orientation to depart from treating Malaysian Chinese literature as a diasporic offshoot or an overseas edition of mainland Chinese literature.
It is against this discursive backdrop that my presentation grapples with the fundamental issue of evaluating the literary intersection between China and the Nanyang region (primarily today’s Peninsula Malaysia and Singapore) through the case of Wang Anyi. One of the most prolific writers of current-day mainland China, Wang’s artistic practice was heavily inflected by her travels in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, which included a 1991 root-seeking trip to Nanyang where her father was born and raised. I read Wang’s 1993 novella “Sadness of the Pacific” (傷心太平洋) based on her visit as manifesting a “worlding consciousness” articulated through a literary tropology of islands and continents. Driven by a recurring notion that “on a map, continents are also drifting islands,” the narrator imagines places denoting geographical entities of disparate sizes to be connected through their common reliance on the ocean that plays host to bodies and ideas in motion. Featuring characters including Chinese literati displaced to the south, roving members of the Chinese Communist party, passionate literary youths native to Singapore and Malaya who either stayed on or chose to “return” to China, as well as curious root-seeking descendants from the mainland, the novella assembles discrepant typologies of Chinese migration to express a thought-provoking range of translocal human agency. I contend that such depictions, whereby Nanyang can qualify as a point of origin for displacement in its own right, allow Singapore’s and Malaysia’s Chinese literary history to perform a reverse move to claim some of Wang’s fictional works and non-fictional essays as diasporic writings of the Southeast Asian region. “Sadness of the Pacific,” in particular, offers a precious opportunity to re-consider the value of commonality in discourses on Chinese mobility, and therein embodies an epistemological thrust that dialogues with approaches accentuating diversity and differences.
The Overseas Transmission of Chinese Tea Mythology and Culture in Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain
Cheng Fai Goh
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
This paper explores the significance of Chinese tea in the transmission of Chinese identity and culture overseas through Chinese tea mythology and culture by examining Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng’s first novel, The Gift of Rain. The protagonist of the novel, Philip Hutton, whose father is British, had a Chinese mother, whose own father “joined the mass exodus to Malaya from the Hokkien province in China in search of wealth and a chance to survive”. He moved to the town of Ipoh in Malaya and became wealthy from his tin mines there. At his invitation, Philip goes from Penang to Ipoh to visit his estranged grandfather, and here discovers a part of his identity that he has never known.
In the novel, the reader is introduced to one of the myths of the origins of tea. In the narrative, the founder of Zen Buddhism, Bodhidharmo, is not only mentioned, but the story of his meditations in the cave, and how he founded Zen Buddhism, and his relationship to the origins of the tea plant, are thoroughly described by Philip’s grandfather, a man who once served in the Imperial Palace as a tutor to the fictitious prince Wen Zu, who briefly (for a short moment, between the death of emperor Guangxu and his own death) ascended to the throne before the tumultuous reign of Pu Yi, the last emperor of China. Philip’s grandfather acts as a gateway for him to discover his own Chinese heritage, which was mostly ignored by Philip up to that point. Philip’s ambivalence towards his Chinese identity is revealed in the beginning of the novel. He says that he “felt no connection with China, or with England”, and calling himself “a child born between two worlds, belonging to neither”. He also calls Penang, the island in Malaya where he was born, his home, and the place where he wants to die in. His ambivalence toward Chinese culture can be explained by the death of his mother when he was at a very young age, and also by growing up in a mostly English household. However, his ambivalence stretches towards England as well. He says that even though half of him is English he has “never hungered for England”, and that “England is a foreign land, cold and gloomy”.
This paper will examine the significance of incorporating these Chinese legends and mythologies in the narratives of Malaysian Literature in English, and also the role of tea as a transmitter of Chinese culture to the overseas Chinese living in Malaya (now Malaysia). The novel examined here is not a Chinese novel, but a Malaysian one, as can be seen in the sensibility of the characters and the ambivalence of the protagonist towards his own mixed-Chinese identity. The multi-cultural character of the novel adds to the rich corpus of literary works written by overseas Chinese writers, and brings to light the cultural connections and unique identity that overseas Chinese still retain many generations later after migrating to places outside China.
Being Ethnic in the Bicultural Nation: Intimate Translations in Chinese New Zealand Fictions
Yuting Huang
Amherst College
This paper takes as its subject the emergent literature by Chinese immigrant authors in Aotearoa New Zealand, and inquires how non-White immigrant belonging is narrated in a nation that is foremost preoccupied with the bicultural negotiation between European settler and Indigenous Māori sovereignty. Foregrounding Chinese immigrants’ doubled position in New Zealand as, one the one hand, marginalized ethnic minority and, on the other, participants of settler political order, this paper will contend that Chinese New Zealand fictions are sites of inevitable translation: not only of literal translations between immigrant, Indigenous, and colonial languages, or the stylistic translations between genres and narrative conventions, but also of the figurative translation of immigrant bodies into the legal and political terrain of the settler colonial society and Indigenous sovereign lands.
Contemporary bicultural reconciliation in Aotearoa New Zealand is already tangled with problems of linguistic and legal translations between settler and Maori sovereignties: particularly as the bicultural national identity is conceptualized around a bilingual document, the Treaty of Waitangi or te Tiriti o Waitangi, signed between the British Crown and roughly five hundred Māori chiefs in 1840. Chinese immigration, being absent from the bilingual treaty, thus demands additional acts of narration, and Chinese New Zealand authors frequently act as translators involved in triangulated linguistic, cultural, and ideological translations. This paper will read three Chinese New Zealand texts—Alison Wong’s As the Earth Turns Silver, Ann-Marie Houng Lee’s “Chinese Arrow,” and Tze-Ming Mok’s “The Beach”—and examines how each author conceptualizes Chinese belonging through different interpretations of the nation’s settler history and bicultural present. Alison Wong’s 2009 historical novel, being the first and to date the only published novel by a Chinese New Zealand author, enlists the genre of historical novel to criticize past racial discrimination and to project recognition and acceptance of Chinese ethnic minority particularly in relation to the White settler mainstream. As such, Wong seeks to translate Chinese difference into a national vision of liberal multiculturalism that is however potentially conflictual with Māori sovereignty. In contrast, Houng Lee’s short story, written in the realist strain but focusing on contemporary Māori-Chinese relation, explores the instances of convergence, conflict, and solidarity between Māori and Chinese minority political consciousness. Houng Lee’s story thus comprehends Chinese belonging in relation to ongoing Māori struggle for the realization of sovereignty. However, both Wong and Houng Lee’s narratives idealize intimate translations between two parties of exchange—be it Chinese and Pākehā or Chinese and Māori—and are both unable to capture the triangulated acts of translation that trouble the nation’s bicultural formulation. I will therefore turn to Tze-Ming Mok’s metafictional short story at the end of the paper, examining how Mok’s story not only unsettles the meaning of Chineseness but also questions current interpretations of the bicultural construction of New Zealand national community.
Digital Culture in the Formation of Hong Kong Canadian Identities: Literary Analysis of Yishu’s Novels
Jessica Li
York University
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have a great impact on the construction of Hong Kong Canadian identities. Migration and diasporic studies in relation to ICTs have received increasing attention from scholars in a variety of disciplines. This aspect, however, is underdeveloped in Chinese Canadian studies and requires further investigation. Hong Kong immigrants to Canada traditionally had to suffer from physical and psychological barriers due to geographic boundaries and communication obstacles. Since the 1990s, Hong Kong Canadians have significantly employed ICTs in their daily lives, which have improved the flow of information, mobility of people, transactions of commodities, and their social networks between Canada and their hometown.
With the advancement of digital technologies, Hong Kong Canadians can maintain close connection with their hometowns and other parts of the world, which enables them to participate in transnational activities through digital communications. In this paper, I will analyze some of the novels by Yishu. I argue that her novels regarding the Hong Kong Canadian experience has presented the transformation of the agency of Hong Kong Canadian via information and communication technologies. These new technologies have shattered the national and geographical boundaries, thus constantly changing and shaping the sense of Hong Kong Canadian individual and collective identities, which will need up-to-date analysis.
Han Suyin on Contemporary Asian Literature (Malaya, c. 1960)
Chris Lee
The University of British Columbia
Amidst the revival of interest in the life and work of Han Suyin (1916-2012) following her death in 2012, her career in Malaya during the Emergency period has received increased critical attention. As scholars such as Zhang Xinghong and Fiona Lee have shown, her writings during this period, particularly her novel And the Rain My Drink (1956), marked a crucial shift in her political as well as literary imagination as her firsthand experience with the violence of colonialism led her to articulate a global vision of decolonization against the backdrop of the ideological polarization engendered by the Cold War. In this context, the notion of “Asia” emerged as a key concept in her literary thought as a means conceptualizing the emerging Third World in cultural as well as historical terms. This paper considers how Han Suyin’s political and aesthetic commitments informed her work at Nanyang University, which was founded in 1956 as a Chinese-language institution in Singapore. Her work at “Nanda,” first as a doctor then as an instructor, placed her in a community in which heated debates about language, culture, and politics were taking place against the backdrop of epochal social change in the region. In this context, Han taught a series of courses on literature and politics. Based on recent archival research, my paper focuses on her unpublished lecture outlines for a 1961 course on “Contemporary Literature.” While providing a wide-ranging survey of literary and linguistic traditions from around the world, Han sought to integrate a Marxist/materialist framework in order specify the relationship between language, literature, and her vision of contemporary history.