Cultural Curiosity: Thirteen Stories about the Search for Chinese RootsJosephine M.T. Khu This anthology of autobiographical essays reveals the human side of the Chinese diaspora. Written by ethnic Chinese who were born or raised outside of China, these moving pieces, full of the poignant details of everyday life, describe the experience of growing up as a visible minority and the subsequent journey each author made to China. The authors—whose diverse backgrounds in countries such as New Zealand, Denmark, Sri Lanka, England, Indonesia, and the United States mirror the complex global scope of the Chinese diaspora—describe in particular how their journey to the country of their ancestors transformed their sense of what it means to be Chinese. The collection as a whole provides important insights into what ethnic identity has come to mean in our transnational era. Among the pieces is Brad Wong's discussion of his visit to his grandfather's poverty-stricken village in China's southern Guangdong province. He describes working with a few of the peasants tilling vegetables and compares life in the village with his middle-class upbringing in a San Francisco suburb. In another essay, Milan Lin-Rodrigo tells of her life in Sri Lanka and of the trip she made to China as an adult. She describes the difficult and sometimes humorous cultural differences she experienced when she met her Chinese half-sister and her father's first wife. Josephine Khu's lively afterword provides background information on the Chinese diaspora and gives a theoretical framework for understanding the issues raised in the essays. This intimate and rich anthology will be compelling reading for all who are seeking answers to the increasingly complex issue of ethnic and personal identity. |
Contents
| 1 | |
THROUGH A WINDOW | 20 |
TRAVELS AFAR | 39 |
IN SEARCH OF LIN JIA ZHUANG | 58 |
NO ROOTS OLD ROOTS | 77 |
MY FATHERS LAND | 95 |
EARS ATTUNED TO TWO CULTURES | 111 |
GUILT TRIP TO CHINA | 128 |
A YELLOW AMERICAN IN CHINA | 160 |
ONE FAMILY TWO FATES | 173 |
IN MY FATHERS SHADOW | 187 |
COMING HOME | 201 |
EPILOGUE | 225 |
NOTES | 251 |
GLOSSARY | 261 |
REFERENCES | 267 |
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Common terms and phrases
able American ancestral village asked aunt became Beijing Belitung born brother Cantonese Chan Chinatown Chinese community Chinese family Chinese identity citizenship clan Communist cousin Cultural Revolution Deng Xiaoping diaspora Du Yuesheng English ethnic Chinese father feel felt Filipino finally foreign Fu Zuoyi grandfather grandfather's grandmother Guangdong Guangzhou Hakkas heritage hoan-na Hokkien Hong Kong Hubei husband immigration Indonesia Japan Japanese knew lan-lang language later learned lived looked mainland China Mandarin married maternal Meixian mother nephew nese never overseas Chinese Pakistan parents Philippines political realized relatives restaurant return to China Richard Chu roots seemed Shang Shanghai sister speak Chinese spoke Sri Lanka stay stories Taiwan talk Tham things thought told trip to China uncle's wife understand United University wanted Zealand Zengcheng
Popular passages
Page 233 - Nothing perhaps more precipitated this search, nor made it more fruitful, than print-capitalism, which made it possible for rapidly growing numbers of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to others, in profoundly new ways.
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Page 260 - Second, print-capitalism gave a new fixity to language, which in the long run helped to build that image of antiquity so central to the subjective idea of the nation.
Page 260 - Third, print-capitalism created languages-of-power of a kind different from the older administrative vernaculars. Certain dialects inevitably were 'closer' to each print-language and dominated their final forms. Their disadvantaged cousins, still assimilable to the emerging print-language, lost caste, above all because they were unsuccessful (or only relatively successful) in insisting on their own print-form. 'Northwestern German...
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Page 210 - China has shown good economic performance (perhaps 7 percent per annum) in undisrupted years— that is, outside the periods of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Gang of Four. But these latter periods were disastrous in economic terms. In February 1978, Chairman Hua announced the well-known ten-year economic development plan that emphasizes steelmaking, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Page 259 - March 28, l909, claimed as a Chinese citizen every legal or extra-legal child of a Chinese father or mother, regardless of birthplace.
Page 230 - ... would argue however that the conceptual gap between liminal hybridity and ethnic syncretism Naficy proposes here is in fact not so: rather, they are inextricably intertwined, precisely because, as I have noted earlier, the ethnicization of subjects in diaspora signals the impossibility of their complete nationalization within the dominant culture of the adopted new country.5* The 'ethnic' subject highlights the fact that s/he does not (quite) belong to the 'host country' — or at least, s/he...
Page 227 - ... models and ignored the economic base. But the more important reason for the renewed interest in economic activities may be found in the astonishing growth rates in some parts of East and Southeast Asia, especially in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. The question began to be asked as to whether the role of Chinese enterprise in the rapid economic development in Southeast Asia had any connection with, or more specifically, any effect on, Chinese identity.