The Notion of ‘Chinese-ness’
“What culture do you belong to?”
My friend, Andrés asked me this question as we were floating in the ocean of Puerto Princesa, Philippines.
I was taken aback. Of course over the years of wandering, I’ve been asked plenty of times where I am from. My answers vary, depending on who’s asking. Over time, I find it easier to give an answer that is more relevant or familiar to the people asking. When I am in South East Asia, I say Indonesia, which by country of birth and passport I indeed am. If I was asked by passers-by in Europe or USA though, it’s much easier to say Australia, where I spent 10 formative years in.
My background is not rare. There are around 2 million ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, and stats reveal that by the end of June 2017, there are 82,490 Indonesian-born people living in Australia. We are Australia’s nineteenth largest migrant community. Yet sometimes it’s difficult to decide where we feel most normal in.
The Prologue: the story of Chinese-ness
Having grown up in a small town in West Kalimantan, Indonesia (population of almost half a million — size is relative indeed. We are the 4th most populous nation in the world, after all), I was grateful to be growing up in one of the most Chinese populated regions of the country. In most of Indonesia, ethnic Chinese are in the minority. After Soeharto’s assimilationist policy in the 1970s, this segment of the population was encouraged, if not forced to abandon their Chinese roots. During this time, the Chinese living in Indonesia had to adopt non-Chinese names, cease going to Chinese schools or reading books in Mandarin, stop publicly celebrating Chinese festivals, etc.*
The people in my hometown, Pontianak, along with other Chinese populated areas like Medan or Batam have the luxury of being geographically separated from the capital city of Jakarta in Java. Here, our Chineseness is tolerated, encouraged even, in midst of the loss of Chinese heritage everywhere around the country. This hometown of mine is so small that it takes 30 minutes from the centre to the most secluded landmark of the town, the airport. In such a small town, everybody knows everybody, so the notion of where you are from is obsolete. Instead, you are identified by your relations, i.e. your parents and extended family, “Oh, this is so and so’s (daughter, niece, cousin), the guy who sells (fishball, noodle, soybean)”. In this environment, one never needed to explain his/her background since most people would know everyone’s family history all the way back to the grandparents’ generations anyway.
While I don’t have to explain where I was from, I did have to justify my non-Chineseness growing up. Having a Dayak babysitter who spoke only Indonesian meant that I didn’t have to communicate in the family dialect of Teochew. As a result, I grew up being able to understand the basic command of the language but unable to speak it. My early recollections were of aunties (biological ones and friends of my parents) asking how come I could not speak Teochew. So in my early years, I was already deemed lacking in my Chinese-ness.
All around Indonesia, I didn’t realize your amount of Chinese-ness** mattered. Many among the younger demographic in areas where ethnic Chinese is not the norm, think it’s ‘uncool’ for others to be to able to speak Chinese dialects or Mandarin — which is fair, given that they may have grown up being bullied for having tiny eyes and fair skin, and therefore wanting to be a ‘true’ Indonesian.
It’s ironic however, when Chindos mock each other for being ‘Chinese’ when they themselves still gladly accept angpao (red pocket money) during Chinese New Year. My decision to accept a scholarship in Beijing was met with disgust by a friend (whom by the way had never stepped foot in China – guess the Sinophobic policy worked after all).
Considering how economically influential China has been, it’s foolish to ignore the country altogether. The more language you speak, the more circles you are seamlessly granted entry to. Many European Jewish families in the 20th century spoke 3 languages at the very minimum. If we don’t mock them for knowing French and German on top of Hebrew or Yiddish, why would we mock Indos who can speak Chinese on top of English and French?
It needs to be noted while some South East Asian Chinese can speak their mother tongue dialects, they are not necessarily fluent in Mandarin. There are many Sinitic language-families, of course, everyone in China now speaks Mandarin. However, most of the Chinese migrants who left to South East Asia (and all over the world) in the past few centuries such as the Hakka, Teochew, and Hokkien predominantly converse in their dialects at home and amongst their communities. Mandarin is very rarely spoken at home, perhaps only studied at schools such as in the case of Singapore and Malaysia.
Among the older Chinese family members though, it is often important to be ‘Chinese’: to pour teas for the elders and let them take the first bite of each dish when eating together. I’ve always thought these were just polite gestures to do for elders, common in many culture.However, for those who grow up in the West, they are deemed to be forgetting their roots. It sure ain’t easy to be swimming in this fluid expectation. Is there really a right recipe for the amount of Chinese-ness one can have (or not have)?
Too fitting to be foreign, too foreign to be fitting
I only noticed the significance of “where are you from” questions after my move to Australia. In lands built of immigration like Australia, these questions are thrown around so casually. Unlike some of my friends who were actually born here, I was glad to have a straightforward answer about my Indonesian home. My answer usually leads to which part of Indonesia (no, not Jakarta or Bali or Medan, just a little town that you probably have never heard of, but is one of the few in the world that lies right on the equator), but very rarely people ask me about ethnicity or looks.
I do feel for my non-white Australian friends who are born here, especially if they have never lived anywhere else. This is the only home the know yet they are often caught in a tangled web of questions like “where are you really from” or “where are your parents from”. Most Australians I know are not so touchy about the subject and will proudly share the origin of their heritage, but if you insist on asking such questions, aren’t you a bit of a ‘cunt’***?
In my second year living in China, I still felt like China because I got mistaken for a local. A passerby asks me questions in Chinese; faces screw up in confusion when I take some time to reply or ask them to repeat what they had just said. Bargaining gets me local prices. Strangers ask me to translate when I walk around with white friends when they don’t ignore me altogether. The most memorable incident was when we were in Pingyao, a Chinese town where no other white people were around, locals would ask whether I was a tour guide for my friends — which they think are offensive but I find utterly hilarious. Regardless, locals here feel comfortable speaking with me because my appearance is more familiar, more approachable.
Assimilation has its setbacks. I’m often judged according to local standards; my inability to understand some people earn plenty of scowls from frustrated aunties and uncles****. In fact, the worse Chinese I speak from the beginning of the interaction, the more likely they are going to be friendly. I must say, it’s not a great incentive for East Asian looking person to polish his/her Mandarin. I am also not automatically granted the leeway or privileges white foreigners receive. However, in a way, I feel like I belong. Yet at the same time, I’m never going to be Chinese. This is the only place where my answer about being Indonesian is almost always followed up with questions about my looks, “How come you look Chinese?” or “Whoa, I didn’t know Indonesian looked just like us”, which presents another discussion about my grandparents’ histories.
While no country can be described singularly, China’s multiple identities are mindbogglingly complex. It is multifaceted by ethnic cultures, geography and socio-economic circumstances. If you are not physically in the country though, you can begin to understand this country’s multiple identities through these Chinese movies.
Where We Actually Belong
Over the years, I have learnt that one’s sense of belonging does not necessarily mean a physical place. If you are from a country with high inequality, for example, you may be comfortable thrown into a certain section of the society but not in the other, despite it being in the same geographical location. Heck, even at social gatherings, you can gauge whom you can feel normal with — and I have less and less of that in Indonesia, my own home country by birth, which is why I struggle to return for now. The same goes for Chinese friends who return to China – They get frustrated at how things are not the same back ‘Home’. However, your sense of belonging can also come from a mental space: a culture or ideology you feel comfortable with. Looking for a place that can be normal in this era of rapid change can be difficult, but hell, our sense of normal is constantly challenged anyway.
This is one of the reasons why travel means a lot to me. Travelling to different parts of Indonesia and China gives an opportunity to challenge what is familiar. I discover new places like Eastern Indonesia and Yun Nan where the alternative cultures among the prevalent Javanese culture in Indonesia and Han culture in China, defy a perspective about a homogenized nation.
Traveling to the unknown and unfamiliar also present itself with plenty of new discoveries. There are thousands of different cultures, different languages, different people in the world. We live on an incredibly diverse little planet, one where you can find a completely different culture by driving for two hours in any direction (if you are in Europe) or flying over 7 hours (if you are in Australia, okay I will stop making fun of how vast this continent/country is).
Yet, despite the diversity, it’s the similarities that I notice the most. From discovering that Dutchies also sing as shamelessly in the karaoke as I do, to seeing Vietnamese enjoy their coffee as much as the Italians, I realize, at the most basic level, people around the world are the same–not different. Despite differing customs, lives, and languages, we are all just humans.
Notes:
*Granted, Soeharto’s assimilationist policy was supported by a few ethnic Chinese groups themselves as they believe this distancing from the old home in the People’s Republic of China is needed for Chinese-Indonesian communities to really integrate into their new home in Indonesia. Of course, this could be argued as a fair price to pay for newcomers to be better integrated into the new society. Isn’t this what many immigrants in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia do anyway? As a result of Soeharto’s Basic Solution to Chinese Problem policy, most Chinese in Indonesia no longer speaks Chinese dialect or have any affiliations towards China. It’s a success story of assimilationist policy.
The problem is, this segment of the population is still seen as non-native and to this day, segregated. For example, the prestigious public university Universitas Indonesia imposes informal quotas that limit the enrolment of ethnic Chinese students. You can also count the Chinese faces in the public office. Jakarta governor Ahok’s imprisonment definitely served as a deterrent for Chinese Indonesians looking for a career in the government institutions. What is then the point of abandoning the old culture if you are still not accepted in the new culture? Besides, I would argue against the complete abandoning of one cultural identity since hybrid cultures such as the peranakan, enjoys a high level of acceptability (being simultaneously identified with Malay, Chinese and Western cultures) and grows to be a new cultural identity.
**What does the quality of Chinese-ness even mean anyway? Does it depend on your genetic makeup? Or the ability to speak Mandarin or the dialects? Who is more Chinese then, I, someone who is ethnically fully Chinese but speaks meager Mandarin and Teochew, or my Singaporean friend who is only half Chinese but is much more proficient in Mandarin and is well-versed in Confucius study.
Just like any culture, not everything about Chinese culture is great or awful, like most people like to polarize. For example, yes Confucianism is designed for family and society governance, especially great for the welfare of elderlies but adopted literally, it is in conflict to gender equality.
***Cunt is one of Aussie’s favorite swear words, it does not have the same indignations as in the USA.
*** The locals’ frustrations might be due to my limited Mandarin, but hey it could also be their accents. People outside of China think everyone in this country speaks the same Mandarin but if Britain has at least 8 accents (Let me try this: Cockney, Yorkshire, Geordie, Scouse, northern Irish, Scottish, and … posh?), how can China, a country almost 40 times its size not have varying accents? Even though I live in Beijing, I still struggle to understand the people speaking in the Beifang accent — the accent of the North. With words melting into each other, they sound like they are either singing or gurgling as they speak.
For more of Life in China series:1. China Survival Guide
Apps that will make your Chinese experience a whole lot better2. China Through Films
Cinematic trips into the voyage of the breathtaking world of traditional and contemporary China, and whatever lies in between.3. Obscure Parks of Beijing
This city that may seem barren at first, hides within it, plenty of picturesque green pockets.
