Can One Say No to Chineseness?

Pushing the Limits of the Diasporic Paradigm

Ien Ang
W
illiamYang was born in s, and grew up in Dimbulah, a small mining
town in northern Queensland, Australia. 1odaya celebrated photogra-
pher working and living in Sydney, he is presentedclassiedas a third-
generation Australian-Chinese. in an autobiographical account o his lie,
he recounts.
One day, when i was about six years old, one o the kids at school
called at me Ching Chong Chinaman, lorn in a jar, Christened in a
teapot, la ha ha. i had no idea what he meant although i knew rom
his expression that he was being horrible.
i went home to my mother and i said to her, Mum, im not Chi-
nese, am i: My mother looked at me very sternly and said, Yes you
are.
ler tone was hard and i knew in that moment that being Chinese
was some terrible curse and i could not rely on my mother or help.
Or my brother, who was our years older than me, and much more
experienced in the world. le said, And youd better get used to it.
1
1his is a classic tale o revelation that can undoubtedly be told in count-
less variations and versions by many people throughout the world, articu-
lating the all-too-amiliar experience o a subjects harshcoming intoaware-
ness o his own, unchosen, minority status. Chineseness here is the
marker o that status, imparting anexternally imposed identity givenmean-
ing, literally, by a practice o discrimination. it is the dominant cultures
classicatory practice, operating as a territorializing power highly eective
inmarginalizingthe other, that shapes the meaningo Chineseness here as a
curse, as something to get used to. Yang reveals that or most o his lie, he
has hadnegative eelings about beingChinese. lut what does his Chinese-
282
.
ien Ang
ness consist o : Ve were brought up in the western way, explains Yang.
None o us learned to speak Chinese. 1his was partly because my ather,
a lukka sic], spoke Mandarin, whereas my mother, a See Yup sic], spoke
Cantonese, and they spoke Lnglish at home. My mother could have taught
us Cantonese but she never didrankly she couldnt see the point.
2
1his
glimpse into one ordinary amilys history indicates the apparent lack o
interest Yangs parents had in transmitting their Chinese roots and cultural
traditions to their children. 1his would have been a dicult thing to do in
Australia in the orties and ties, when the ocial ideology was still one o
white Australia and required the ew nonwhite people in the country to
assimilate. lut at the same time, Yangs amily obviously never lost a sense
o certainty about the sel-declared fact o their Chineseness. lut are they
indeed Chinese: Vhat makes them so: And how do they know:
. . .
Scholars have always been bewildered by China. 1he intricate empiri-
cal multiariousness and historical complexity o the country is hardly con-
tainable in the sophisticated (inter,disciplinary apparatus and theoretical
armory o Vestern researchers. Language, culture, civilization, people,
nation, polityhow does one describe, interpret, and understand China,
that awesome, other space that has never ceased to both ascinate and in-
uriate its dedicated scholar: 1he diculty has grown exponentially, how-
ever, with the emergence o a so-called diasporic paradigm in the study o
Chineseness. 1he booming interest in what is loosely termed the Chinese
diaspora has unsettled the verydemarcation o China as an immenselycom-
plex yet ontologically stable object o study. 1he view rom the diaspora
has shattered the convenient certainty with which Chinese studies has been
equated, quite simply, with the study o China. China can no longer be
limitedtothe more or less xedarea o its ocial spatial andcultural bound-
aries nor can it be held up as providing the authentic, authoritative, and un-
contested standard or all things Chinese. instead, how to determine what
is and what is not Chinese has become the necessary preliminary question
to ask, and an increasingly urgent one at that. 1his, at least, is one o the
key outcomes o the emergent view rom the diaspora.
Central to the diasporic paradigm is the theoretical axiom that Chi-
neseness is not a category with a xed contentbe it racial, cultural, or
geographicalbut operates as an open and indeterminate signier whose
meanings are constantly renegotiated and rearticulated in dierent sections
Can One Say No to Chineseness?
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283
o the Chinese diaspora. leingChinese outside China cannot possiblymean
the same thing as inside. it varies rom place to place, molded by the local
circumstances in dierent parts o the world where people o Chinese an-
cestry have settled and constructed new ways o living. 1here are, in this
paradigm, many dierent Chinese identities, not one. 1his proposition en-
tails a criticism o Chinese essentialism, a departure rom the mode o de-
marcating Chineseness through an absolutist oppositioning o authentic
and inauthentic, pure and impure, real and ake. 1he anti-essentialism o
the diasporic paradigm opens up a symbolic space or people such as Yang,
a distant member o the diaspora, to be Chinese in his own way, living a
de-centered Chineseness that does not have to live up to the norm o the
essential Chinese subject.
3
i amenteringintothis discussionromthe perspective o cultural studies,
where the newtheorization o diaspora has most energetically taken place.
4
One o the distinctive characteristics o cultural studies is its recognition
o the positionality o any mode o intellectual practice or style o knowl-
edge production. Sucha recognitionimplies a de-universalizationo knowl-
edge and an emphasis on the particular historical and cultural coordinates
that inorm the enunciation o discourse and the ormation o knowledge.
Ior cultural studies, as Lawrence Grossberg puts it, there can be no sepa-
ration between theory, at whatever level o abstraction, and the concrete
social historical context which provides both its object o study and its con-
ditions o existence.
5
importantly, this is both a political and an epistemo-
logical statement. 1hus, any intellectual investment in an object o study
say, Chinesenessis not the innocent reection o a natural reality that
is passively waiting to be discovered, rather, the very quest or knowledge
actively brings into being, in the knowers experience and understanding
o the world, slices o reality he or she then calls and classies as Chinese.
Iurthermore, there are stakes involved in the ongoing ontological conr-
mation o Chineseness, just as nineteenth-century Vestern science had a
stake, beyond the noble one o scientic progress, in producing the exis-
tence o distinct, and hierarchically ordered, human races. 1his analogy
should provoke us to interrogate the political and ideological signicance
o the ongoing currency, as well as shiting currents, o discourses, claims,
and disclaims to Chineseness in the modern world. low Chineseness is
made tomeanindierent contexts, and whogets todecidewhat it means or
should mean, is the object o intense contestation, a struggle over meaning
with wide-ranging cultural and political implications.
284
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ien Ang
i also have a personal investment in this interrogation o Chineseness.
Like Yang, though along a rather dierent historical trajectory, i am inti-
mately amiliar with the injunction to get used to being Chinese. i was
born into a so-called leranakan Chinese amily in indonesia, a country that
has always had a problem with its long-standing and economically signi-
cant Chinese minority (as, o course, is the case throughout Southeast Asia,
except Singapore,.
6
inindonesia, romthesixties tothepresent, i haveound
being Chinese a prooundlyambivalent experience, raught with eelings o
rejection (by the majority o indonesians, and alienation (rom an identity
that was rst and oremost an imposed one,. 1he need to come to terms
with the act o my Chineseness remained a constant ater i relocatedin
a peculiar diasporic itinerary inormed by the historical connections estab-
lished by Luropean colonialismto the Netherlands, where i spent my
teenage and young adult years, and later, ater i transerred to Australia
(where i live now,. in these dierent geocultural spaces, the meaning o
being Chinese was both the same and dierent, shaped by changing spe-
cic contexts, yet enduringly ramed by the act that i could not take my
Chineseness (or lack o it, or granted. in short, the status o Chineseness
as a discursive constructrather than as something naturalis a matter o
subjective experience to me, not just a question o theory.
7
Conceiving Chineseness as a discursive construct entails a disruption o
the ontological stability and certainty o Chinese identity, it does not, how-
ever, negate its operative power as a cultural principle in the social constitu-
tion o identities as Chinese. in other words, the point is not to dispute the
act that Chineseness exists (which, inanycase, wouldbe a utile assertionin
a worldwhere more thana billionpeoplewould, toall intents andpurposes,
identiy themselves as Chinese in one way or another, either voluntarily or
by orce,, but to investigate howthis category operates in practice, in dier-
ent historical, geographical, political, and cultural contexts. As Stuart lall
remarks, the act that race is not a valid scientic category does not under-
mine its symbolic and social eectuality. 1he same could be said about Chi-
neseness. Vhat highlighting the constructed nature o categories and clas-
sicatory systems does, however, is shit the ocus o theoretical attention
rom the categories in themselves as repositories o cultural meaning] to
the process o cultural classication itsel.
8
in other words, how and why
is it that the category o Chineseness acquires its persistence and solidity:
And with what political and cultural eects:
Vhat i call the view rom the diaspora, which will be my starting point,
Can One Say No to Chineseness?
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285
is necessarily unstable. Ater all, the spirit o diasporic thought, motivated
as it is by notions o dispersal, mobility, and disappearance, works against
its consolidation as a paradigm proper. Contained in the diasporic perspec-
tive itsel, thereore, are the seeds o its owndeconstruction, whichprovides
us with the opportunity to interrogate not just the dierent meanings Chi-
neseness takes on in dierent local contexts but, more undamentally, the
very signicance and validity o Chineseness as a category o identication
and analysis.
. . .
1he process o de-centering the center, which is so pivotal to diasporic
theory, has beenorceullyarticulatedintherecent inuential collectionThe
Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today, edited by 1u Vei-
ming, proessor o Chinese history and philosophy at larvard.
9
in this col-
lection, 1u elaborates on the contours o a symbolic universe he calls cul-
tural China,
10
a newly constructed cultural space that both encompasses
and transcends the ethnic, territorial, linguistic, and religious boundaries
that normally dene Chineseness.
11
Ior 1u, the project o cultural China
is one designed to de-center the cultural authority o geopolitical China,
an intellectual eort to redene the periphery as the center in current
engagements with what it means to be Chinese.
12
1his project is critical in-
soar as it aims to break with static and rigid, stereotypical and conventional
denitions o Chinese as belonging to the lan race, being born in China
proper, speaking Mandarin, and observing the patriotic code o ethics
(preace, vii,. instead, 1u wants to explore the uidity o Chineseness as a
layeredandcontesteddiscourse, toopennewpossibilities andavenues o in-
quiry, and to challenge the claims o political leadership (in leijing, 1aipei,
long Kong or Singapore, to be the ultimate authority in a matter as sig-
nicant as Chineseness (preace, viii,. 1he impetus or this intervention
is a certain disillusion, i not despair, about the political reality o mainland
China, the leoples Republic o China. As 1u observes, Although realisti-
cally those who are on the periphery . . . are seemingly helpless to aect
any undamental transormation o China proper, the center no longer has
the ability, insight, or legitimate authority to dictate the agenda or cultural
China. On the contrary, the transormative potential o the periphery is so
great that it seems inevitable that it will signicantly shape the intellectual
discourse on cultural China or years to come (Cultural China, ,,,,.
13
it is important to note the political implications o 1us project. lis posi-
286
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ien Ang
tion is known to be explicitly neo-Conucianist and largely anticommunist,
which we need to keep in mind when assessing his critiques o the center.
llaced in the context o Chinese cultural history, however, the assertion o
the periphery as the center is a radical one. 1he notion o a single center, or
cultural core, romwhichChinese civilizationhas emanatedthe so-called
Central Country complexhas been so deeply entrenched in the Chinese
historical imagination that it is dicult to disentangle our understandings
o Chineseness rom it. Yet the very emergence o a powerul discourse o
cultural China enunciated rom the periphery and ormulated to assert the
peripherys inuence at the expense o the center is a clear indication o the
increasingly sel-condent voice o some Chinese intellectuals in diaspora,
such as 1uVei-ming himsel. 1his growing sel-condence has much to do
with the historical and economic state o aairs in global modernity at the
endo the twentiethcentury. As 1uputs it, Vhile the peripheryo the Sinic
world was proudly marching toward an Asian-lacic century, the home-
land seemed mired inperpetual underdevelopment (Cultural China, sa,.
indeed, it is precisely the homelands seeming inability to transorm itsel
according tothe ideal image o a truly modernsocietyanimage still hege-
monically determined by the Vestthat has led to the perceived crisis o
Chineseness, which the project o cultural China aims to address.
Central to the intellectual problematic o cultural China is what one sees
as the urgent need to reconcile Chineseness and modernityas the twentieth
century draws to a close. 1here are two interrelated sides to this challenge.
On the one hand, the question is how to modernize Chineseness itsel in a
way that will correct and overcome the arguably abject course taken by the
existing political regime in China, a course almost universally perceived as
wrong and, provocatively, as somehow having a debilitating eect on the
ate o Chineseness. According to1u, the Chinese diaspora will have to take
the lead in the modernization o Chineseness. Vhile the overseas Chinese
may seem orever peripheral to the meaning o being Chinese, he writes,
in an implicit attack on the center, they can] assume an eective role in
creatively constructing a new vision o Chineseness that is more in tune
with Chinese history and in sympathetic resonance with Chinese culture
(Cultural China, ,,.
On the other hand, there is also the reverse question o how to sinicize
modernityhow, that is, to create a modern world that is truly Chinese
and not simply an imitation o the Vest. 1he radical iconoclasm o the
May Iourth movementwhich was based on the assumption that Chinas
Can One Say No to Chineseness?
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287
modernization could only be realized through a wholesale process o
Vesternization and a simultaneous renunciation o Chinese cultureis
now regarded as completely outdated. instead, inspiration is drawn rom
the economic rise o Last Asia to look or models o modernityChinese
modernitywhich pose challenging cultural alternatives to the Vestern
model. 1u reers specically to 1aiwan, long Kong, Singapore, and the
Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. 1he experiences o these countries
suggest or 1u that active participation in the economic, political, social,
and cultural lie o a thoroughly modernized community does not neces-
sarily conict with being authentically Chinese, signaling the possibility
that modernization mayenhance rather than weaken Chineseness (Cul-
tural China, s,.
1he privileging o the peripherythe diasporaas the new cultural
center o Chineseness in 1us discourse is an important challenge to tradi-
tional, centrist, and essentialist conceptions o Chinese culture and identity.
Yet i want to suggest that the very postulation o a cultural China as the
name or a transnational intellectual community held together not just by
a common awareness but also by a common ancestry and a shared cul-
tural background, . . . a transnational network to explore the meaning o
being Chinese in a global context (Cultural China, a,,, is a move that is
driven, and motivated, by another kind o centrism, this time along notion-
ally cultural lines.
An important element here is the continued orientation o, i not ob-
session with, the sel-declared periphery-as-center in the discourse o cul-
tural China in relation to the old center, even i this center is so passion-
atelydeniedits traditional authorityandlegitimacy. Vhat mainlandChina
eventually will become remains an overriding concern or all intellectuals
in cultural China (Cultural China, ,,,, writes 1u, and in this ongoing
preoccupation with the center, the periphery not only reproduces uninten-
tionallyits ownprooundentanglement withthe ormer, it also, bythis very
preoccupation, eects its own unwarranted internal homogenization and
limits the much more radical potential that a diasporic perspective allows.
inother words, while the aimwould seemtobe torescue Chineseness rom
China, to de-hegemonize geopolitical China, which is ound wanting in its
own, heavy-handed politics o modernizing Chineseness]sinicizing moder-
nity, the rescue operation implies the projection o a new, alternative cen-
ter, a de-centered center, whose name is cultural China, but China never-
theless. it is clear, then, that the all-too-amiliar obsession with China,
288
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which has been a key disposition in the work o Chinese intellectuals in
the twentieth century, remains at work here with undiminished intensity.
14
1his obsession, which is so prooundly inscribed in the psychic structure
o a wounded Chinese civilizationalism, privileges Chinas problems as
uniquely Chinese, which lays absolute claim to the loyalty o Chinese in all
parts o the world.
15
According to Leo Ou-an Lee, who came rom 1aiwan to the Lnited
States as a graduate student more than thirty years ago and who describes
himsel as a voluntary exile situated orever on the ringes o China, the
excessive obsession with their homeland has deprived Chinese writers
abroad o their rare privilege o being truly on the periphery. Ior Lee, it is
only by being truly on the periphery that one can create a distance su-
ciently removed romthe center o the obsession, allowing one to subject
the obsession itsel to artistic treatment.
16
Irom this point o view, cul-
tural China denitely does not occupy a truly peripheral position at all. On
the contrary. An overwhelming desirebordering, indeed, on obsession
to somehow maintain, redeem, and revitalize the notion o Chineseness
as a marker o common culture and identity in a rapidly postmodernizing
world is the driving orce behind 1us conception o cultural China. Vhile
the meaning o Chineseness is dened explicitly as uid and changeable,
the category o Chineseness itsel is emphatically not in question here. in-
deed, the notion o cultural China seems to be devised precisely to exalt and
enlarge the global signicance o Chineseness, raising its importance by im-
buing it with new, modernized meanings and heightening its relevance by
expanding its eld o application ar beyond the given spatial boundaries o
geopolitical China.
1he Chinese diaspora, as we have seen, is posited as one o the key pil-
lars o the imagined community o cultural China. it is noteworthy that 1u
persistently accentuates the quest or Chineseness as a central moti in his
wide-ranging discussion o variant diaspora narratives. in the case o South-
east Asian amilies o Chinese descent remigrating rom Malaysia or Viet-
nam to North America, Vestern Lurope, or Australia, he sees the irony
o their not returning to their ancestral homeland but moving arther away
romChina with the explicit intention o preserving their cultural identity
(Cultural China, a,. in mainland Chinese intellectuals decision not to
return to China ater the 1iananmen event in ss, he reads a conscious
and, or some, impulsive choice to realize ones Chineseness by moving ar
away rom ones homeland (Cultural China, a,. lut isnt 1u being too
Can One Say No to Chineseness?
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289
insistent in oregrounding the salience o Chineseness in the conguration
o these diasporic ows and movements: Doesnt this emphasis undulycon-
ne diverse strands o the diaspora to the narrow and claustrophobic shat
o a projected, i highly abstract, obsession with Chineseness:
1he organic metaphor o the living tree todescribe cultural China pro-
vides us with a clear insight into the problem i am hinting at here. A living
tree grows and changes over time, it constantly develops newbranches and
stems that shoot outward, in dierent directions, rom the solid core o the
tree trunk, which in turn eeds itsel on an invisible but lie-sustaining set o
roots. Vithout roots, there would be no lie, no new leaves. 1he metaphor
o the living tree dramatically imparts the ultimate existential dependence
o the peripheryonthe center, the diaspora onthe homeland. Iurthermore,
what this metaphor emphasizes is continuityover discontinuity. in the end,
it all ows back to the roots.
in thus imputing an essential continuity and constancy in the diasporas
quest or Chineseness, the discourse o cultural China risks homogenizing
what is otherwise a complex range o dispersed, heterogeneous, and not
necessarilycommensurable diaspora narrativesa homogeneity or which
the sign o Chineseness provides the a priori and taken-or-granted guar-
antee. lut in this way, the hegemony o China (cultural, i not geopoliti-
cal, China, is surreptitiously reinorced, not undercut. As 1u rightly notes,
legemonic discourse, charged with an air o arrogance, discriminates not
only byexcluding but alsoby including. Otenit is inthe act o inclusionthat
the art o symbolic control is more insidiously exercised. (preace, vii,. 1u
reers here to the coercive manner in which the leoples Republic includes
a variety o others (such as the non-lan minorities inside the borders o
China, within the orbit o its ocial political control. lut a wholesale incor-
poration o the diaspora under the inclusive rubric o cultural China can
be anequally hegemonic move, whichworks totruncate and suppress com-
plex realities and experiences that cannot possibly be ullyand meaningully
contained within the singular category o Chinese.
ironically, 1u recognizes the act that not all members o the diaspora
would eel comortable with their inclusion in the grand design o cultural
China. indeed, he writes, learning to be truly Chinese may prove to be too
heavy a psychological burden or minorities, oreign-born, non-Mandarin
speakers, or nonconormists, or such people, remaining outside or on the
periphery may seem preerable (preace, viiviii,. Lets ignore the surpris-
ingreturntocultural essentialismthe ghost o the trulyChinesehere.
290
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Vhat we must start to question is the very validity and useulness o the
spatial matrix o center and periphery that is so constitutive o the conven-
tional thinking about the Chinese diaspora, we must give the living tree a
good shake.
. . .
1he condition o diasporaliterally, the scattering o seedspro-
duces subjects or whom notions o identity and belonging are radically
unsettled. As james Cliord puts it in his very useul discussion o contem-
porary theorizing on diasporas, Diasporic subjects are distinct versions o
modern, transnational, intercultural experience. in this sense, diasporic
subjects are exemplary cases o the multiple and hybrid subjectivities so
avoredbypostmodernandpoststructuralist theory. interestingly, however,
as i have discussed above, a dominant tendency in thinking about the Chi-
nese diaspora is to suppress what Cliord calls the lateral axes o diaspora,
the ways in which diasporic identities are produced through creolization
and hybridization, through both conictive and collaborative coexistence
andintermixturewithother cultures, inavor o a hierarchical centering and
a linear rerouting back to the imagined ancestral home. Such a conceptual
ocus on the center, Cliord notes, inhibits an understanding o the signi-
cance o diaspora cultures in the late twentieth century. As he puts it, 1he
centering o diasporas around an axis o origin and return overrides the spe-
cic local interactions (identications and ruptures, both constructive and
deensive, necessary or the maintenance o diasporic social orms. 1he em-
powering paradox o diaspora is that dwelling here assumes solidarity and
connection there. lut there is not necessarily a single place or an exclusivist
nation.
17
indeed, or Cliord, the most important aspect o diasporic ormations
is the multiplicity o heres and theres, which together make up de-
centered, partially overlapping networks o communication, travel, trade,
and kinship that] connect the several communities o a transnational peo-
ple.
18
1he metaphor o the living tree is not at all suited to capture the
eatures o such dispersed, discontinuous, ractal cultural ormations. inter-
estingly, laul Gilroy has chosen the image o ships as a starting point or
his groundbreaking work on the Arican diaspora. ships in motion across
the spaces between Lurope, America, Arica, and the Caribbean as a cen-
tral organizing symbol or the particular diasporic ormation that has de-
veloped historically as a result o the transatlantic slave trade, a ormation
Can One Say No to Chineseness?
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291
he calls the black Atlantic.
19
Vhat is highlighted in this image is a vir-
tual space o continuous mobility, o crisscrossing ows and multiple hori-
zontal exchanges between dierent sites o black diasporic concentration,
in which there is no center. i am not suggesting here that a similar image
should be adopted or the Chinese diasporaindeed, the image o the ship
is particularlyappropriate in Gilroys context or its evocation o the Arican
diasporas ounding moment o the Middle lassagebut this comparative
note might serve to illuminate the act that the metaphor o the living tree is
by no means ideologically innocent. it could encourage us to problematize
the predominance o centrist and organicist conceptions o Chineseness,
Chinese culture, and Chinese identity in diaspora.
20
Leo Lee, with his claimed desire to be truly on the periphery, comes
close to embodying the diasporic Chinese subject who has renounced the
debilitating obsession with the center. ly virtue o my sel-chosen mar-
ginality i can never ully identiy mysel with any center, he writes. le
denes his marginality in relation to two centers, China and America. On
the peripheries o both countries, i eel compelled to engage actively in a
dialogue with both cultures. Ireed rom the usual obsession with China,
Lee declares himsel unbounded by his homeland. instead, he advocates
what he calls a Chinese cosmopolitanism, a cosmopolitanism that em-
braces botha undamental intellectual commitment toChinese culture and
a multicultural receptivity, which eectively cuts across all conventional
national boundaries.
21
Cosmopolitanism, o course, is an idea warranting
a discussion o its own (which i cannot provide here,, but what is the sur-
plus gained in the addition o the wordChinese to cosmopolitanismhere: And
what does Lee mean by a undamental (that is to say, a priori, undamen-
talist, intellectual commitment to Chinese culture: Vhat makes Lees van-
tage point so interestingly contradictory is that while he places himsel on
the margins o both China and America, he does this rom a position
o unquestioned certainty about his own ontological Chineseness and his
(inherited:, proprietorship o Chinese culture. Once a Chinese, always a
Chinese:
OuyangYu, a poet and a specialist in Lnglish and Chinese literature, who
moved rom mainland China to Australia many years ago, actively resists
such ethnic determinism. Vhere is the way out or people such as me:
he asks. is our uture predetermined to be Chinese no matter how long
we reside overseas: Ouyang expresses a desire to contribute to his present
cultureAustralian culturemore than as just a Chinese. lut, he tells
292
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ien Ang
us, he has been prevented romdoing so. My eort to Lnglish mysel has
met with strong resistance rom all sorts o people ever since i came here.
Lven i i wanted to be Lnglish, they wouldnt let me be. i would nd my re-
quent criticism o China was not appreciated. On many occasions, i ound
people preaching that i should be proud o being a Chinese. . . . i was made
to eel uneasy with my disloyalty.
22
1his story highlights how dicult it can be or people like Ouyang to
embrace a truly diasporized, hybrid identity, because the dominant Vest-
ern culture is just as prone to the rigid assumptions and attitudes o cul-
tural essentialism as is Chinese culture. in other words, there seems to be a
cultural prohibition o de-sinicization, at least or intellectuals rom main-
land China or 1aiwan, such as Ouyang Yu and Leo Lee, who have moved
to the Vest. it would be interesting to speculate why this should be so. it
would be easyand perhaps too simplisticto suggest the antagonizing
work o racismor Orientalismhere, their capacity as orces that perpetuate
and reinorce essentialist notions o the Chinese other should not be under-
estimated. lowever, the important point to make here is that Lees ideal
o being truly on the periphery is inherently contradictory, i not a vir-
tual impossibility, because his notion o the periphery is still grounded in
the recognition o a center o sorts, the de-territorialized center o Chinese
culture or, perhaps, o Chineseness itsel.
Vhile Lee andOuyangnowlive indierent parts o the (Vestern, world,
their diasporic Chineseness is still clearly linked to their obvious biographi-
cal rootedness in the cultural ormations o the territorial center. More-
over, even though they no longer live in the center, their subjectivities are
still steeped in Chineseness. leing rst generations migrants, they possess
the linguistic and cultural capital that is generally recognized as authenti-
cally Chinese. Lee and Ouyang know that they are Chinese, and they are
known by others as such. Vhile both express a desire to go beyond their
Chinese identities (Lee, by staking a claim to a Chinese cosmopolitanism,
and Ouyang, in wanting to be more than just Chinese,, their bottom-line
Chineseness is not in doubt. 1heirs, in other words, is a relatively straight-
orward narrative o (sel-,exile rom the homeland, and as such they are
still easily incorporated in1us cultural China and rmly attached to one o
the branches o the living tree.
Vithout wanting to devalue the de-centering discourses articulated by
intellectuals such as Lee and Ouyang, i would nevertheless argue that there
are other narratives that tell o much more radical, complicated, and check-
Can One Say No to Chineseness?
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293
ered routes o diasporic dispersal. in these narratives, the very validity o
the category o Chineseness is in question, its status as a signier o identity
thrown into radical doubt. it is in these narratives that the diasporic para-
digm is pushed to its limits, to the extent that any residual attachment to
the center tends to ade.
1he leranakan Chinese in Southeast Asia are oten mentioned as one
distinct group o Chinese people who have lost their Chinese cultural heri-
tage and have gone native. 1he leranakans are an old diaspora. Iromthe
tenth century onward, traders, mostly men romSouth China, visited vari-
ous Southeast Asian ports. At rst they remained temporarily and rarely
established permanent Chinese communities, but between the sixteenth
and nineteenth centuries, Chinese trading quarters in cities such as lang-
kok, Manila, and latavia became large and permanent, aided by the ascen-
dancy o Luropean colonialism in the region. Over the course o centuries,
they intermarried with local women, began to speak the local languages,
and adapted to local liestyle (while selectively holding on to some Chinese
traditions,. 1his is not the place to enter into a detailed historical discussion
o this important diaspora, the question to ask here is, Vhy are they still
called Chinese: As David Yen-ho Vu observes, Vhile the pure Chinese
mayquestionthelegitimacyo the peranakans claimtobeingauthentic Chi-
nese, the peranakans themselves are quite condent about the authenticity
o their Chineseness. 1hey are oten heard reerring to themselves as we
Chinese.
23
laving been born into a leranakan amily mysel, i can tes-
tiy to the correctness o this observation. 1here is an instinctiveness to our
(sometimes reluctant, identication as Chinese that eludes any rationaliza-
tion and dees any doubt.
24
Yet it is a raught and ambivalent Chineseness,
one that is to all intents and purposes completely severed rom the nomi-
nal center, China. in contemporary indonesia, or example, where the state
deploys a strict assimilation policy to eradicate Chinese dierence within
the national culture (or example, by banning the use o Chinese charac-
ters rom public display,, leranakan Chinese are said to see themselves as
indonesian rather than Chinese, but] recognize their Chinese origin, albeit
knowing very little o Chinese culture and tradition.
25
And or many ler-
anakans, China has no relevance at all in their lives, sowhat meaning does
the notion o Chinese origin still carry:
26
Vuargues that twosentiments identiythosewhosee themselves as Chi-
nese. 1he rst, a culturalist sentiment, is a eeling o connectedness with
the ate o China as a nation, a patriotism associated with a sense o ulll-
294
.
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ment, a sense o being the bearers o a cultural heritage handed down rom
their ancestors, o being essentially separate rom non-Chinese.
27
lut it is
clear that this sentiment does not apply to those in the diaspora who not
only have lost most o their cultural heritage, language being chie among
them, but also do not have a great attachment to the ancestral homeland
at all, while still identiying themselves (and being identied, as Chinese.
1he leranakans in indonesia are a case in point, but so, or that matter, is
Villiam Yang, the Australian-Chinese photographer, with whose story i
began this essay.
Yangs story illuminates the precarious meaning o Chineseness at the
outer edge o the diaspora. i Yang, brought up the Vestern way in small-
town Australia, can be described as Chinese at all, then his is a Chineseness
that is stripped o any substantial cultural content. 1his, o course, is the
casewithmillions o ethnic Chinese throughout theVest, thosewhohave
settled in all corners o the world in a checkered history o several centuries
o dispersal rom the original homeland. 1o undersand Yangs Chinese-
ness in terms o his imaginary and subjective relationship to this imputed
homeland, which can only be an extremely tenuous relationship anyway,
would be missing the point altogether. As his own account o the orma-
tive event shows, he came to knowabout his Chinese identity only because
someone else, arguably a non-Chinese, labeled him as such, to Yangs own
initial surprise and to his later chagrin, when his mother conrmed that
he was, indeed, Chinese. in other words, Yangs identication as Chinese
took place in a context o coexistence and copresence with others, others
who were dierent rom him. Yangs Chineseness, then, is undamentally
relational and externally dened, as much as it is partial. its boundaries are
uzzy. its meaning, uncertain. Yang both is and is not Chinese, depending
on how he is perceived by himsel and by others. lut what is it, we might
ask, that still ultimately determines the possibility o Yangs categorization
as Chinese in the rst place:
1his brings us to the second sentiment, which, according toVu, is com-
mon to those identiying themselves as Chinese. 1his is the sentiment that
Chinese share o seeing themselves as members o the Chinese race or
the Chinese people.
28
Ve are returned here to a concept that, as i re-
marked earlier, reuses to go away romsocial discourse despite its repudia-
tion as a scientic concept in the Vest. race. So when Yangs mother a-
rmed sternly that he was Chinese, his brother adding insult to injury by
Can One Say No to Chineseness?
.
295
inorming him that hed better get used to it, the only tangible markers
o distinction could only have been those associated with race. 1he glee
with which the schoolkid, most probably white, could yell Ching Chong
Chinaman at Yang was based on the ormers dominant positioning within
the prevailing social network, which gave him the power to oend in this
way, but it also depended on the availability o some clues that enabled him
to single out the guileless Villiam as an appropriate object o such an at-
tack. Vhat else could it have been but his yellow skin and slanty eyes,
the key racial markers or Chineseness in the Vest:
Vhile scientic racism has long been discarded, then, it is in situations
like these that the notion o race continues to thrive in everyday lie, where
race theories operate inpractice as popular epistemologies o ethnic distinc-
tion, discrimination, and identicationwhich are oten matched by more
or less passionate modes o sel-identication. 1he idea o being part o a
race produces a sense o belonging based on naturalized and ctive notions
o kinship and heredity, in Chinese discourse, o course, this is eminently
represented by the enduring mytho the unityo the Chinese people as chil-
dren o the Yellow Lmperor.
29
Vhat Rey Chow calls the myth o consan-
guinity
30
has very real eects on the sel-conception o diasporic subjects,
as it provides them with a magical solution to the sense o dislocation and
rootlessness that many o them experience in their lives. Yang describes it
this way. ive been back to China and ive had the experience that the ex-
patriot sic] American writer Amy 1an describes, when she rst set oot in
China, she immediately became Chinese. Although it didnt quite happen
like that or me i know what Amys talking about. 1he experience is very
powerul and specic, it has to do with land, with standing on the soil o
the ancestors and eeling the blood o China run through your veins.
31
in this extraordinary narrative o return to the imposing center, Yang
constructs himsel as a prodigal son who had lost his way, a allen lea that
has blownbacktothe soil where the livingtree has its roots. inthis narrative,
racebloodoperates as thedegreezeroo Chineseness towhichthedias-
poric subject can resort to recover his imaginary connectedness with China
and to substantiate, through the ction o race, what otherwise would be
a culturally empty identity.
lut, as Chow has rightly pointed out, the submission to consanguinity
means the surrender o agency
32
. 1he ction o racial belonging would
imply a reductionist interpellation (in the Althusserian sense o the term,
296
.
ien Ang
that constructs the subject as passively and lineally (pre,determined by
blood, not as an active historical agent whose subjectivity is continuously
shaped through his or her engagements within multiple, complex, and
contradictory social relations that are overdetermined by political, eco-
nomic, and cultural circumstances in highly particular spatiotemporal con-
texts. Race, in other words, provides a reductionist, essentializing discursive
shortcut, in which, to paraphrase Stuart lall, the signier Chinese is torn
romits historical, cultural and political embedding and lodged in a biologi-
cally constituted racial category.
33
in the imagining o the Chinese race,
dierences that have been constructed by heterogeneous diasporic condi-
tions and experiences are suppressed in avor o illusory modes o bonding
and belonging. Recently, i had a taxi ride in Sydney with a driver who was
rom mainland China. Ve mutually recognized each other as Chinese, but
i had to tell him that, unortunately, i couldnt speak Chinese. Vell, he
said, it will be easy or you to learn. Ater all, you have Chinese blood.
As i my imputed racial identity would automatically and naturally give me
access to some enormous reservoir o cultural capital!
As lalibar has remarked, 1heracial communityhas atendencytorepre-
sent itsel as one big amily or as the common envelope o amily rela-
tions.
34
indeed, there is an equivalence between the organicist metaphor
o the living tree and the lineal notion o race-as-amily that is prooundly
problematic i we are to interrogate Chineseness eectively rom the dias-
poric point o view. inhis work onthe Aricandiaspora, Gilroy has criticized
the dubious appeal to amily as the connective tissue o black experience
and history, as it disables black intellectuals rom developing alternative
perspectives on black lives in diaspora, which, in Gilroys view, must be
grounded in explicitly disorganic, hybrid, and synthetic notions o identity
and community, not in some cozy, amilial notion o blackness.
35
Similarly,
lall has arguedagainst reachingoranessentializedracial identityo which
we think we can be certain as a guarantee or political solidarity or cul-
tural unity. instead, the very category o black needs to be interrogated.
llackness as a sign is never enough. Vhat does that black subject do, how
does it act, how does it think politically . . . being black isnt really good
enough or me. i want to know what your cultural politics are.
36
in the same vein, i we are to work on the multiple, complex, overdeter-
mined politics o being Chinese in todays complicated and mixed-up
world, and i we are to seize on the radical theoretical promise o the dias-
Can One Say No to Chineseness?
.
297
poric perspective, we must not only resist the convenient and comorting
reduction o Chineseness as a seemingly natural and certain racial essence,
we must also be prepared to interrogate the very signicance o the cate-
gory o Chineseness per se as a predominant marker o identication and
distinction. Not only does the moment o pure Chineseness never strike,
there are also momentsoccurring regularly in the lives o those truly on
the periphery, in Leo Lees wordsin which the attribution o Chinese-
ness does not make sense in the rst place. 1he liberating productivity o
the diasporic perspective lies, according to Rey Chow, in the means it pro-
vides to unlearn that submission to ones ethnicity such as Chineseness as
the ultimate signied.
37
1his will allow diasporic subjects to break out o
the prisonhouse o Chineseness and embrace livespersonal, social, politi-
calmore than as just a Chinese (Ouyang,, to construct open-ended and
plural post-Chinese identities through investments in continuing cross-
inuences o diverse, lateral, unanticipated intercultural encounters in the
world at large. As it happens, Yang, who now calls himsel bicultural,
does occupy such a position in his public lie. lis celebrated photographs
o riends suering romAiDS testiy to his identication withVestern gay
culture, which he represents as entangled with, but also distinct rom, the
cultural identications derived rom his ethnicity, and articulate a hybrid,
disaggregated, multiple identity that is uncontainable, in any meaningul
sense, by the category o Chinese.
38
As i have put it elsewhere, i i am inescapably Chinese by descent, i
am only sometimes Chinese by consent. Vhen and how is a matter o poli-
tics.
39
1he politics involved here reaches ar beyond the identity politics o
individual subjects, in diaspora or otherwise. Vhat is at stake are the possi-
bilities and responsibilities o these subjects to participate, as citizens o the
world, in the ongoing political construction o world utures. As we enter
the twenty-rst century, we ace ever greater challenges in light o growing
global economic disparity, continuing environmental degradation, rapid
technological change, increasingly massive transnational migrations, and
shiting geopolitical (im,balances o power. 1here is nonecessaryadvantage
in a Chinese identication here, indeed, depending on context and neces-
sity, it may be politically mandatory to reuse the primordial interpellation
o belonging to the largest race o the world, the amily o the Chinese
people. in such situations, the signicant question is not only, Can one say
no to China: but also, Can one, when called or, say no to Chineseness:
40
298
.
ien Ang
Notes
s VilliamYang, Sadness (St. Leonards, Australia. Allen and Lnwin, so,, o,.
a VilliamYang, Sadness, o,o.
, See Stuart lalls similar critique o the notion o the essential black subject,
or example, in his essays New Lthnicities and Vhat is 1his llack in llack
lopular Culture: reprinted in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies,
ed. David Morley and Kuan-lsing Chen (London. Routledge, s,,, s and
o,,,.
Ior some examples o the wide-ranging emergent body o work on the Chi-
nese diaspora along these theoretical lines (which can be described loosely as
inormed by postmodern, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theory,, see, or
example, Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cul-
tural Studies (lloomington. indiana Lniversity lress, s,,, ien Ang, On Not
Speaking Chinese. lostmodern Lthnicityand the lolitics o Diaspora, NewFor-
mations a (winter s,. sss, Aihwa Ong, On the Ldge o Lmpires. Ilexible
Citizenship among Chinese in Diaspora, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique s,
no. , (winter s,,, Allen Chun, Iuck Chineseness. On the Ambiguities o Lth-
nicity as Culture as identity, boundary a,, no. a (summer so,. sss,s, and
Yao Souchou, looks rom leaven. Literary lleasure, Chinese Cultural 1ext
and the Struggle against Iorgetting, Australian Journal of Anthropology s, no. a
(s,,. soao.
, Lawrence Grossberg, listory, lolitics, and lostmodernism. Stuart lall and
Cultural Studies, in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David
Morley and Kuan-lsing Chen (London. Routledge, so,, s,,.
o Ior a recent discussion on the position o Chinese in Southeast Asia, see, or
example, Leo Suryadinata, ed., Ethnic Chinese as Southeast Asians (Singapore. in-
stitute o Southeast Asian Studies, s,,.
, See my On Not Speaking Chinese.
s Stuart lall, Ior Allon Vhite. Metaphors o 1ransormation, in Stuart Hall:
Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ,oa.
1u Vei-ming, ed., The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today
(Stanord, Cali.. Stanord Lniversity lress, s,. 1his book is a reprint (with
some additions, o a special issue o Daedalus sao, no. a (spring ss,.
so 1he emergence o a discourse on cultural China, as launched by 1u, is closely
related to the growing prominence o the discourse o Greater China. 1he
latter is the most commonly used term, in Lnglish at least, or the system o
interactions amongmainlandChina, longKong, 1aiwanandpeople o Chinese
descent around the world (larry larding, 1he Concept o Greater China.
1hemes, Variations and Reservations, China Quarterly s,o s,]. os,. larding
distinguishes three key themes in the contemporarydiscourse o Greater China.
Can One Say No to Chineseness?
.
299
the rise o a transnational Chinese economy, the (prospect o a, reunication o
a Chinese state, and the emergence o a global Chinese culture, to which 1us
discussion o cultural China is an important contribution.
ss 1uVei-ming, preace toThe Living Tree, v. Subsequent reerences to the preace
are cited parenthetically.
sa 1uVei-ming, Cultural China. 1he leriphery as the Center, inThe Living Tree,
s,. Subsequent reerences to this essay are cited parenthetically.
s, it should be noted that 1us paper rst appeared in ss, only twoyears ater the
crushing o prodemocracy demonstrators at 1iananmen Square in june, ss,
by the leoples Liberation Army. 1his event has arguably had a massive impact
on the ate o representations o Chineseness in the contemporary world and
has been o major signicance in the emergence o the dissident discourse o
cultural China.
s C. 1. lsia, Obsession with China. 1he Moral lurden o Modern Chinese Lit-
erature, in A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, ad ed. (New laven, Conn.. Yale
Lniversity lress, s,s,, ,,,,.
s, Leo Ou-an Lee, On the Margins o Chinese Discourse. Some lersonal
1houghts onthe Cultural Meaning o the leriphery, in1uVei-ming, The Living
Tree, a,a.
so Leo Ou-an Lee, On the Margins o Chinese Discourse, aao, a,a.
s, james Cliord, Diasporas, in Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twen-
tieth Century (Cambridge. larvard Lniversity lress, s,,, aoo, ao, Cliords
emphases.
ss Cliord, Diasporas, ao.
s laul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London.
Verso, s,,, .
ao Gilroy explicitly and passionately rejects Arica-centered discourses o the black
diaspora, which are highly inuential among some Arican American intellec-
tuals in the Lnited States (as in the idea o Aricentricity,.
as Leo Ou-an Lee, On the Margins, a,s, aa.
aa OuyangYu, Lost inthe1ranslation, Australian Reviewof Books a, no. (October
s,,. so, ,,, so.
a, David Yen-ho Vu, 1he Construction o Chinese and Non-Chinese identities,
in 1u Vei-ming, The Living Tree, sos.
a See my On Not Speaking Chinese.
a, Mely G. 1an, 1he Lthnic Chinese in indonesia. issues o identity, in Ethnic Chi-
nese as Southeast Asians, ed. Leo Suryadinata (Singapore. institute o Southeast
Asian Studies, s,,, ,s.
ao Suryadinata mentions a survey that reveals that most Southeast Asian Chinese
capitalists who have invested in mainland China are those who are culturally
Chinese. leranakan Chinese have, by and large, been prevented rom this re-
300
.
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turn or economic purposes because, having lost their command o Chinese,
they] are unable to communicate with the mainland Chinese (Suryadinata,
Lthnic Chinese in Southeast Asia, in Ethnic Chinese as Southeast Asians, so,.
Sadly, as has been made all too clear by the recent anti-Chinese mass violence
that erupted throughout indonesia in early ss as a consequence o a severe
economic downturn, which saw massive price increases, a rise in unemploy-
ment, and social chaos in the country, the meaning o being o Chinese origin in
this context can all too easily become related to ear and scapegoatism. i partly
address the complex and ambivalent positioning o indonesian Chinese in the
Chinese diaspora in a orthcoming paper entitled indonesia on My Mind. Dias-
poric intellectualism and the lolitics o lybridity.
a, David Yen-ho Vu, Construction o Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, s.
as David Yen-ho Vu, Construction o Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, s,o.
a See Ltienne lalibar, 1he Nation Iorm. listory and ideology, in Ltienne lali-
bar andimmanuel Vallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, Ambiguous Identities (London.
Verso, ss,, . Ior a discussion o Chinese conceptions o race, see Irank Di-
kotter,The Discourse of Race inModernChina(Stanord, Cali.. StanordLniversity
lress, sa,.
,o Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora, a.
,s VilliamYang, Sadness, a,.
,a Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora, a.
,, lall, Vhat is 1his llack in llack lopular Culture: ,a.
, lalibar, 1he Nation Iorm, soo.
,, laul Gilroy, its a Iamily Aair, in Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black
Cultures (London. Serpents 1ail, s,,, ao,.
,o lall, Vhat is 1his llack in llack lopular Culture: ,. 1he quotation on
blackness is attributed to black lritish lmmaker isaac julien.
,, Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora, a,, Chows emphasis.
,s Yangs book Sadness (which was originally presented as a one-man slide show,
alternately traces two stories o his lieone about his Chinese amily and the
other about his gay community in Sydney.
, ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese, ss.
o 1he rst question is posed by Rey Chow, Can One Say No to China: NewLiter-
ary History as, no. s (winter s,,. s,,s. On the second question, i amthinking
o, or example, the ideological role Chinese essentialisms and chauvinisms have
played in the rising power o ethnic Chinese business networks throughout the
Asia-lacic region and its exclusionary and potentially oppressive implications
or non-Chinese Asians. See Aihwa OngandDonaldM. Nonini, eds., Ungrounded
Empires: The Cultural Politics of ModernChineseTransnationalism(NewYork. Rout-
ledge, so,, and Ari Dirlik, Critical Reections on Chinese Capitalism as a
laradigm, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power ,, no. , (s,,. ,o,,o.