Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness: The Cultural Politics of Language and Identity in Globalizing China 9781800413832

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Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

ENCOUNTERS Series Editors: Ana Deumert, University of Cape Town, South Africa, Zane Goebel, University of Queensland, Australia and Anna De Fina, Georgetown University, USA. The Encounters series sets out to explore diversity in language from a theoretical and an applied perspective. So the focus is both on the linguistic encounters, inequalities and struggles that characterise post-modern societies and on the development, within sociocultural linguistics, of theoretical instruments to explain them. The series welcomes work dealing with such topics as heterogeneity, mixing, creolization, bricolage, crossover phenomena, polylingual and polycultural practices. Another highpriority area of study is the investigation of processes through which linguistic resources are negotiated, appropriated and controlled, and the mechanisms leading to the creation and maintenance of sociocultural differences. The series welcomes ethnographically oriented work in which contexts of communication are investigated rather than assumed, as well as research that shows a clear commitment to close analysis of local meaning making processes and the semiotic organisation of texts. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

ENCOUNTERS: 20

Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness The Cultural Politics of Language and Identity in Globalizing China Edited by

Shuang Gao and Xuan Wang

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/GAO3825 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Gao, Shuang, editor. | Wang, Xuan, editor. Title: Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness: The Cultural Politics of Language and Identity in Globalizing China/Edited by Shuang Gao and Xuan Wang. Description: Bristol, UK; Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2021. | Series: Encounters: 20 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book examines the complexity of Chineseness in China and the Chinese diaspora. Using critical sociolinguistic and discourse analytical approaches, the chapters uncover the power dynamics and ideologies underlying varied constructs of Chineseness”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021022370 (print) | LCCN 2021022371 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800413825 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800413832 (pdf) | ISBN 9781800413849 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Sociolinguistics—China. | Language and culture—China. | Chinese language— Social aspects. | Chinese language—Discourse analysis. Classification: LCC P40.45.C6 U57 2021 (print) | LCC P40.45.C6 (ebook) | DDC 306.44/0951—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022370 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022371 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-382-5 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2021 Shuang Gao, Xuan Wang and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd.

To Jan Blommaert

Contents

Contributors

ix

1

Introduction: Chineseness as Competing Discourses Shuang Gao

2

Chineseness in Diaspora: Multilingualism, Heteroglossia and Fluid Ethnicity Jing Huang

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When ‘Chineseness’ is Not Preferred: Accounts of Academically Elite Students from China in Singapore’s Schools Luke Lu

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Joseonjok YouTubers: Translating Vernacular Chineseness in South Korea Elaine Chung and Xuan Wang

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Framing Chineseness and Indonesianness on the Periphery Jessica Birnie-Smith

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Narrating the Future Self: Strategic Stylisation and Cosmopolitan Stancetaking in Chinese IELTS Preparation Classes 106 Eric S. Henry

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Coffee, Social Space and Middle-Class Romance: Customer Writings in an Independent Coffee Shop in China Shuang Gao

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The Authenticity, Cultural Authority and Credibility of Weibo Public Intellectuals 146 Mingyi Hou

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‘Foreigners’ in One’s Own Land: Analysing Touristic Representations of Chineseness in the New York Times Xiaoxiao Chen

10 Commentary Lionel Wee Index

167 189 200

Contributors

Jessica Birnie-Smith obtained a PhD in Linguistics from Monash University in 2018 and is currently working as a lecturer in Linguistics at La Trobe University. Her thesis examined how ethnic Chinese youth enacted chronotopically conditioned Chinese and Indonesian identities through linguistic practice in interaction. Her recent research investigates how members of marginalised and peripheral communities construct and negotiate belonging to local and translocal spaces. She is especially interested in exploring new approaches to studying how social meaning emerges from interaction between linguistic practice, the context in which practice is situated as well as speaker identities. Xiaoxiao Chen did her PhD in Linguistics at Macquarie University in Australia from 2009 to 2013. Before that, she had been a lecturer in English in the School of English and International Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Since 2013, she has been teaching in the School of Foreign Languages at Renmin University of China. From 2004 to 2005, she was a visiting academic at the Department of Linguistics at Griffith University in Australia. She was a Fulbright visiting scholar in the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy and the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University in the USA from 2008 to 2009. She has published in international journals such as Multilingua and Discourse & Society. Her research interests include sociolinguistics of tourism, critical discourse analysis and media studies. Elaine Chung is a lecturer in Chinese Studies at Cardiff University, UK. She recently completed her PhD at SOAS, University of London. with a project on transnational South Korean stardom in Chinese screen media. Her research interests lie in the transnational politics of East Asian popular cultures. Her essays on Chinese-Korean film and television co-production have appeared in various edited volumes, including The Rise of K-Dramas (McFarland, 2019), Asia-Pacific Film Co-Productions (Routledge, 2019)

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and Sino-Enchantment: The Fantastic in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). Shuang Gao is a sociolinguist working at the University of Liverpool, UK. Her research uses linguistic ethnographic methods to understand social change in contemporary China, focusing on tourism mobilities, ideologies of English, language and identity, and globalisation. She is the author of Aspiring to be Global: Language and Social Change in a Tourism Village in China (Multilingual Matters, 2019). Eric S. Henry is a linguistic anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada. His research is focused on the acquisition and use of global languages in contemporary China, particularly English. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the northeastern city of Shenyang, he examines the confluence of educational practices, discourse, neoliberal capitalism and modernisation in English language schools. His work has been published in journals such as City & Society, Anthropologica and Language in Society, and he is the author of The Future Conditional: Building an English-Speaking Society in Northeast China (Cornell University Press, 2021). Mingyi Hou is a lecturer in digital culture at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Her research interests include online culture, celebrity and fandom, gender studies and public intellectual studies. Mingyi’s research explores the intersection of digital media, globalisation and the transformation of modern Chinese culture. Jing Huang is a lecturer in TESOL at the Department of English Language and Linguistics, the University of Birmingham, UK. Prior to her current post, Jing has worked as a research associate at the University of Bath, for an ESRC-funded project on language policy and transnational families. She has also taught English and Chinese for general and academic purposes in China and the UK for some years. Jing is interested in using ethnographic methods combined with secondary data analysis to research sociolinguistic practices of individuals, families, schools and communities. She has particularly worked on everyday multimodal discourses to discuss ethnical identity, ideology in language education, and intercultural communication. Her latest publications can be found in the journals of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Language Teaching and International Journal of the Sociology of Language, as well as in several edited books including The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity and Translanguaging in Everyday Practices.

Contributors xi

Luke Lu is currently Lecturer at the Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Before academia, Luke was a secondary school teacher for five years. He has completed a Linguistic Ethnography of academically elite students in Singapore, examining how they discursively positioned themselves to wider structures and discourses in local spaces. His recent publications on this subject include articles in AILA Review and the Journal of Language, Identity and Education. He is primarily interested in approaches to interactional sociolinguistics and ethnography, pertaining to issues such as transnational mobility, education, language rights, language planning and policy, and ethnicity. Xuan Wang is currently a Lecturer of Chinese Studies at Cardiff University, United Kingdom. She received her PhD in Sociolinguistics from Tilburg University, the Netherlands. She has previously worked as a researcher at Maastricht University, the Netherlands and Lecturer of Chinese at University of Leuven, Belgium. She has more than 10 publications with major publishers of journals and books. Lionel Wee is a linguist in the Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore. He is interested in language policy (especially in Southeast Asia), the grammar of Singapore English, metaphorical discourse and general issues in sociolinguistics and pragmatics. He sits on the editorial boards of Applied Linguistics, English World-Wide and Multilingual Margins. His recent publications include The Singlish Controversy: Language, Identity and Culture in a Globalizing World (2018) and Language, Space, and Cultural Play: Theorizing Affect in the Semiotic Landscape (2019, co-authored with Robbie Goh), both with Cambridge University Press.

1 Introduction: Chineseness as Competing Discourses Shuang Gao

One can almost be certain that, once a new type of discourse gains currency among academics at large, academics working on China-related topics will sooner or later produce a ‘Chinese’ response to it that would both make use of the opportunity for attention made available by the generality of the theoretical issue at hand and deflect it by way of historical and cultural characteristics that are specific to China. Chow, 1998: 3, emphasis in original We should focus on the main problems in our society and the world, and aim to provide ideas, suggestions and solutions that reflect the Chinese stance, the Chinese wisdom and the Chinese value. . . . The emphasis on Chineseness (minzu xing) is not to ignore the intellectual and research achievements of other countries, but to compare, reflect, critique and learn, so that we can develop a Chineseness that suits contemporary China as well as the world. Xi Jinping, 2019 [2016]

In her seminal paper ‘On Chineseness as a theoretical problem’, Chow (1998) warns against unproductive scholarly practices within Chinese Studies in the 1990s, which she argues are based on ‘the logic of the wound’ (Chow, 1998: 6). She explains that this involves reacting negatively and casting doubt on everything Western and insisting on modifying discussions with ‘Chinese’. As scholars try to establish intellectual legitimacy through imaginary boundary-making, it can also take the form of cultural essentialism or Sinocentrism (Chow, 1998: 6). Chow’s observation was made at a historical point when nationalism was on the rise in a post-Cold War world. And Chinese intellectuals, especially those educated in the West, were the main driving forces in the rise of Chinese nationalism (Zhao, 1997). To a certain extent, emphasising Chineseness constitutes a political act: ‘a struggle for access for representation’ (Chow, 1998: 4). Yet paradoxically, ethnic labelling also means adopting ‘geopolitical realism’ (Chow, 1998: 4) and thus risks being considered ‘too 1

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narrow or specialized to warrant general interest’ (Chow, 1998: 5). Such a dilemma, Chow (1998) notes, is unfelt among scholars who conduct research in and about the West. A generic title is usually used in their work, thereby silently declaring its epistemological and theoretical universality (Chow, 1998: 4). While these may be seen as strong arguments, Chow (1998) highlights here the struggle of being heard as a non-Western voice and the politics of knowledge production (Bauman & Briggs, 1990; Heugh & Stroud, 2019; Kubota, 2019; Pennycook & Makoni, 2019; Perez-Milans et al., 2019; Rambukwella, 2019; Shi-xu, 2014). Strikingly, this habitual labelling of Chineseness does not exist in academic discourses alone, but also has its parallel in political discourses. With his reform and opening-up policy, Deng Xiaoping, known as the architect of modern China, famously coined the term ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ in the early 1980s: ‘We have stated repeatedly that we must continue along the path of Marxism and socialism. However, it must be a Marxism that takes into consideration the Chinese realities, a socialism with Chinese characteristics which suits Chinese realities’ (Deng, 1984). The stress on Chinese characteristics has continued over the years and has become even stronger and louder in the current era of globalisation. In the epigraph above, the current president of China, Xi Jinping, seems to indicate a Chineseness of a different kind. It is less about using the word ‘Chinese’ as a modifier or about adopting ‘geopolitical realism’ (Chow, 1998: 4), but more of viewing it as a noun or a verb. Xi made these remarks to a group of academics in 2016 at the Symposium on Philosophy and Social Sciences in Beijing. His statements now form a part of what he calls ‘Culture Confidence’ (wenhua zixin文化自信) (Xi, 2019). In other words, the highlighting of Chineseness by Xi here is not just descriptive, as referring to (features of) an ethnic group or nation-state, but is contrasted against other existing discourses on China, in the West in particular, as it seeks to provide a counter discourse with alternative perspectives for and interpretations of world problems which could potentially redefine a hegemonic discourse, if not generate a new discourse system. Indeed, some might argue that we have been witnessing another surge of nationalism during the past decade, and that there is now a new discourse of Chineseness, especially since the coming into power of Xi Jinping in 2012 (Bhattacharya, 2019; Lei & Liu, 2019; Simpson, 2020; Song & Gee, 2020). Notably, at the time of writing, the People’s Republic of China, as the world’s second largest economy, was marking the 70th anniversary of its establishment, having just celebrated the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening-up the year before, in 2018. These historical moments were celebrated through a variety of local, regional and national events

Introduction: Chineseness as Competing Discourses

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which endeavoured to showcase historical changes and achievements while envisaging a common future of prosperity and rejuvenation. In these moments of supposedly profound patriotism, the relationship between individuals (geren个人) and country (guojia国家) cannot be highlighted enough. Yet such heightened awareness of Chineseness generates different reactions. On the one hand, mainstream discourses articulate a new Chineseness as shown in popular patriotic movies and documentaries such as Amazing China and My People, My Country. On the other hand, the National Day in 2019 triggered another occasion of strong protest in Hong Kong with the national flag of China being burned, showing no signs of abatement after months of unrest. Internationally, China’s ambitious project of Belt and Road Initiative is shadowed by the US-China trade war. And then, the outbreak of COVID-19, first declared in China in December 2019, and then announced as a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation in March 2020, stimulated a new wave of anti-China attacks and anti-Chinese sentiments in many parts of the world (Chan & Strabucchi, 2020; Iqbal, 2020; Tavernise & Oppel, 2020; Yeh, 2020). This edited volume examines contemporary Chineseness against these bewildering national and international backgrounds. It suggests that the key for understanding Chineseness is to explore how Chineseness is caught up in the complexities and tensions of neoliberal globalisation, rising nationalism, persistent Western hegemony and shifting global geopolitics. This volume has two main purposes. First, it draws together a new generation of sociolinguists to present descriptively rich empirical studies of Chinese identity that do justice to the complexity of Chineseness under globalisation. In the relevant discipline of anthropology, existing research has come to the conclusion that Chineseness can no longer be understood in essential terms as based on cultural homogeneity and territory boundedness due to increasing mobility and new forms of social organisations and cultural practices, but instead should be understood in terms of the emergent and fluid ways in which Chineseness is being inscribed and represented under transnationalism (Appadurai, 1996; Chow, 1998; Nonini & Ong, 1997). These new ways of enacting Chineseness have also been examined by sociolinguists in discussions, for example, of translingual practices among the Chinese diaspora (Li, 2016; Li & Zhu, 2013) and of the so-called ‘cosmopolitan Mandarin’ in mainland China (Zhang, 2018). While these are important contributions to our understanding of Chineseness under globalisation, in particular with regard to diversity, fluidity and hybridity, contributions in this volume suggest that a systematic examination of Chineseness must also consider the persistence of old ideologies and their tensions with

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emergent and new ones. On the one hand, as authors in this volume show (see Chen, Chung & Wang, Hou, Lu), empirically, essentialist stereotyping and orientalist ideologies remain as strong as they used to be, and therefore should still form a key part in our theoretical conceptualisation of Chineseness today. On the other, whereas fluidity, flexibility and hybridity might be the observed reality for elite and middle-class Chinese (Li & Zhu, 2013; Ong, 1999; Zhang, 2018), for Chinese people who are not well integrated into the global order, such social and linguistic practices might only exist as imaginaries. Importantly, such imaginaries are not mere fantasies but have material consequences as they foster desires for globality while engendering pressures, struggles and tensions in their everyday lives. In other words, aspirations for global connectivity and expectations for better futures shape their activities, behaviours and decisions as well as creating tensions and struggles (Appadurai, 2013; Gao, 2019; see also Chen, Chung & Wang, Gao, Henry, Hou in this volume). Therefore, in order to understand and critique the complexities of Chineseness, we need to pay special attention to the historically enduring structures of inequality and uncertainty amid dynamic relationships between the dominant, the residual and the emergent at junctures of social change (Raymond, 1977). Second, for the reasons mentioned above, we also want to articulate an understanding of Chineseness that critically engages with the cultural politics of language and identity in China today. By ‘critical’, we mean that our research is guided by questions like: what is Chineseness, who defi nes it, in what ways, on what basis, and what political purposes or interests do such constructs serve? Contributors to the volume adopt various critical sociolinguistic and critical discourse analytical methods and, collectively, they demonstrate that Chineseness is more fruitfully understood not as a cultural, ethnic, linguistic or racial entity in its own right but as an ‘ideologically constructed variable’ (Holliday & MacDonald, 2020: 621) which is contentiously articulated by agents in different sociopolitical positions to produce competing defi nitions of Chineseness. In other words, chapters in the volume show that the representation, negotiation and contestation of Chinese identity emerge and evolve in multiple systems of discourses which represent different regimes of value and truth (Foucault, 1980). Through synthesising an understanding of Chineseness across various social, cultural and geopolitical contexts, the volume explores the multiple and varied ways Chineseness is shaped and re-shaped within complex social contexts and power relations – in other words, we attend to the cultural politics of Chineseness. Empirically, contributors examine Chineseness in

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various settings within China and the Chinese diaspora, including education, tourism, media and consumption. These studies pay attention to the historical and socioeconomic conditions under which Chineseness is constructed, thereby highlighting the tensions between different ideological constructs of Chineseness. This is certainly not an exhaustive list of the many possible domains and contexts wherein contemporary Chineseness can be seen and examined. We consider this volume as an unfinished project which hopefully will inspire more future work in this area. Below, we delineate what we mean by Chineseness as competing discourses by outlining four main themes that emerge in these contributions, namely (1) multiplicity of Chineseness, (2) aspirational Chineseness, (3) chronotopes of Chineseness and (4) cultural politics of Chineseness. Multiplicity of Chineseness: Contestation and Negotiation

Multiplicity here is used not only in its numerical sense, that is, the multiple ways Chineseness is represented, enacted, invoked and performed, though it is a very important descriptive step. Rather, the volume highlights how different constructs of Chineseness can constitute competing and contentious discourses in any instance of performing Chineseness. It pays attention to material conditions of various Chinese constructs, situating such constructs within power relations, tensions and ideologies. As contributors show, such discourses are often morally loaded, which articulate and (re-)produce certain regimes of value about language, identity and culture. We see, therefore, tensions in these various constructs of Chineseness, including tensions between authenticity and hybridity, Orientalism and Occidentalism, nationalism and transnationalism, and postmodern fluidity and sustained essentialism. Huang’s chapter highlights Chineseness as a heteroglossic and fluid entity as she examines language use at Chinese complementary schools in the UK. She shows that poems, one important aspect of traditional Chinese culture, are presented in the translingual form of a CantoneseEnglish rap. Such flexibility, she argues, seeks to redesign heritage and authenticity in hybrid forms through which traditional culture in the East (classic Chinese poem) and popular culture in the West (rap) are reconciled into the diasporic educational space wherein British Chinese teenagers perform their transnational identity. And yet, such translingual practices are increasingly in tension with the introduction of Mandarin Chinese as the new norm of language teaching and learning among the Chinese diaspora against the background of their changing demography and China’s rising economic and cultural influence.

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The heterogeneity of Chineseness is also seen in Lu’s chapter on Chinese migrant students in Singapore, in Chung and Wang’s chapter on Korean Chinese (Joseonjok) migrants in South Korea, and in BirnieSmith’s chapter on Chinese Indonesians. Here, the marginalisation of Chineseness is highlighted as diasporic Chinese struggle for identification and integration. In Lu’s study, being ethnically Chinese does not mean Chinese migrant students are easily integrated into Singapore, where the majority of the population are ethnically Chinese. They have to renegotiate their Chineseness to overcome the marginalisation of their Chinese national identity. Chung and Wang’s study emphasises Chineseness as agency and resistance among Joseonjok YouTubers in South Korea as they negotiate their Chineseness and Koreanness. Birnie-Smith similarly shows how Chinese Indonesians perform both Chineseness and Indonesianness via their choice of terms of address. Chineseness is also seen in varied imaginaries and representations of desirable and undesirable Chineseness. Hou’s chapter shows how Chinese public intellectuals construct Chineseness in online platforms by revoking a humiliating historical discourse of Chineseness in the past and yet at the same time claiming the superiority of formerly colonialised Chinese cities, thereby reproducing Orientalist ideologies and essentially denigrating Chineseness. The denigration of Chineseness can also be seen in representations of Chinese people in travelogues by international travellers to China. Chen’s chapter shows that Chinese people are exoticised, feminised, infantilised and sometimes even impersonalised through the tourist gaze. Chineseness here lacks agency and is powerless and non-threatening, and yet such stereotyping enables travellers to present what they believe to be authentic Chineseness. And in the context of preparing for educational migration, Henry shows that Chinese students are trained to speak from a transnational and cosmopolitan stance for their IELTS oral test. Strikingly, such a stance needs to be enacted through a language style that conforms to the cultural logic of a British examiner and therefore should be ‘explicitly non-Chinese’. Chineseness therefore is erased as incompatible and irrelevant for future success in the English-speaking world. In these very different empirical details, we see the rigidity of language norms and the persistence of purism on some occasions and yet the flexibility of language and identity on others. For example, whereas Chinese youngsters in Henry’s study are taught to show explicitly non-Chinese identities during English-language classes, children attending Chinese classes among the Chinese diaspora in the UK (Huang, this volume) are using language textbooks that adopt more fluid and hybrid linguistic repertoires which recognise their English identity. Outside the

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language educational contexts, Chineseness can be marginalised (Lu, this volume) or strategically explored and performed to resist stereotyping and marginalisation (Birnie-Smith, Chung & Wang, this volume). These contrasts and differences point to the multiple ways Chineseness is enacted, but more importantly demonstrate how hybridity is an ideology that can be deployed or discarded in different contexts to achieve different aims and political interests. Paying attention to these varied ideologies that inform the construction and negotiation of Chineseness is important in revealing the cultural politics of Chineseness. Aspirational Chineseness: Intersubjectivity and Identification

To the extent that language and identity are relational and intersubjective work (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004), it is important to note how Chineseness is constructed intersubjectively in relation to the Other, especially in the context of globalisation. One salient aspect of Chineseness highlighted in the volume is aspiration, which can be seen in various attempts to perform a desirable Chineseness characterised by globality. Aspiration or what Appadurai (2013 ) calls ‘the capacity to aspire’ is a key feature of contemporary Chineseness in a globalising China (Gao, 2019). Such aspirations for globality are motivated by the desire to connect with the wider world and the hope to be recognised in that context. Importantly, aspirations do not simply exist as will or wish but have transformative potential as they are enacted and materialised in various forms in Chinese people’s everyday lives. Henry (this volume) shows that to prepare for their future study abroad, Chinese students are trained in English-language classes to speak in a language style that erases Chinese ways of thinking and speaking so that they can pass as legitimate speakers of English. Lu (this volume) shows exactly the kind of marginalisation educational migrant students from China can experience when they visibly and audibly perform their Chineseness in a foreign country. Chinese aspirations for globality can also be seen in tourist encounters. Chen (this volume) shows that Chinese people display their knowledge about the wider world when engaging in small talk with Western tourists, but such knowledge could be discarded by tourists in their stereotyping of Chineseness. Similarly, Gao (this volume) shows that Chinese people re-semiotise coffee by constructing higher order indexicalities: coffee as a Western drink also indexes romantic middle-class life. Such re-semioticisation and re-imagination of coffee are observed in customers’ writings, often partly in English, in a coffee shop’s guestbook. However, a romantic Chinese identity based on Western

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coffee also leads to discomfort and even arguments when the incongruity and incompatibility between coffee and Chinese identity become salient, especially for the working class. And in public intellectuals’ discourse about desirable Chineseness, Hou (this volume) shows how an idealised image of the West is constructed as a model for desirable Chineseness. In these chapters, we see that interconnectivity and flows under globalisation have enabled many Chinese people to enact their aspirations for a desirable future and a desirable Chineseness, and yet aspirational Chineseness is often based on idealised imageries about the West. These new forms of Chineseness show how Western hegemony is recursively (Irvine & Gal, 2000) sustained for many Chinese people, as desirable Chineseness is arguably only achievable by acquiring and displaying symbolic markers of identity from the West (e.g. coffee, English, city infrastructure). In other words, new ways of enacting Chineseness are sometimes contentiously caught up in imaginations and desires for globality based on Western supremacy. Chronotopes of Chineseness

The above-mentioned multiplicity of Chineseness and aspirational Chineseness all point to time-space as an important aspect for addressing the complexities of Chineseness. In other words, Chineseness is always represented and constructed with reference to different time-space organisations under real or imagined global connectivity and mobility (Agha, 2007; Blommaert & De Fina, 2016). First proposed by Bakhtin (1981), chronotope highlights the inseparability of time-space in enabling character development and performance. Time-space, in other words, is not simply an objective and passive entity but has agency in shaping character and plot development (Bakhtin, 1981). Agha proposed the notion of ‘cultural chronotope’ to refer to ‘a semiotic representation of time and place peopled by certain social types’ (Agha, 2007: 321), highlighting the interconnectivity of ‘depictions of place-time-and-personhood’ (Agha, 2007: 320). Chronotope emphasises the material conditions under which identities are imagined, contrasted, contested and negotiated (Blommaert & De Fina, 2016). Specifically, for our purpose here, it highlights how Chineseness is constructed and evaluated in relation to social behavioural norms and moral judgements inherent in varied time-space configurations. Huang (this volume) shows how Chineseness is chronotopically structured in an exhibition event on Chinese food at a school in Birmingham, especially through the adoption of multiple semiotic resources linking to various time-space organisations. Hou (this volume) in her chapter shows

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that the critique of Chineseness by public intellectuals revolves around contrastive chronotopes between modernity and history, and China and the West (Germany in this case). Henry’s (this volume) discussion of the stylisation of English-language learners also demonstrates the link between language style, personhood and time-space (Agha, 2007), as students prepare themselves for their future study abroad. Birnie-Smith (this volume) shows how terms of address are used chronotopically to perform Chineseness and Indonesianness. These studies show the importance of addressing the time-space organisation of identity so as to reveal the underlying ideologies and power relations in various constructs and practices of Chineseness. Cultural Politics of Chineseness

Finally, chapters in the volume collectively demonstrate that Chineseness as an ‘ideologically constructed variable’ (Holliday & MacDonald, 2020: 621) is embedded in different socio-political contexts and reproduces certain regimes of value and truth. As mentioned earlier, the cultural politics of Chineseness, as an overarching theme, can be seen in the multiplicity and contestations of Chineseness, aspirational discourses around Chineseness and the chronotopic organisation of Chineseness. A complete understanding of Chineseness thus needs to examine the tensions in performing and negotiating Chineseness. In Henry’s chapter, we see that for English-language students in China, their future success is determined by not just being able to speak English, the global language, but also speaking in a style that is rooted in a Western logic (Henry, this volume). The legitimacy of knowledge is being contested and re-negotiated, in which Chinese culture and Chinese ways of thinking are considered inadequate or even simply irrelevant. Such erasure of Chineseness is a clear example of the power of knowledge production (Foucault, 1980). Also, for Chinese public intellectuals, their seemingly patriotic and nationalist critique of contemporary Chineseness is set against the normalised development criteria of the West and even the colonial past, highlighting the persistence of self-Orientalism and colonial mentality (Hou, this volume). And in Chen’s chapter, we see that Chineseness is represented and constructed by international tourists through a stereotyping, infantilising, and feminising tourist gaze, which reduces or simply ignores the complexity of Chineseness. Gao’s chapter shows that middle-class Chineseness is performed through the consumption of coffee which is romanticised in a process of re-semioticisation. These various constructs of Chineseness therefore show that Chineseness

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is deeply embedded in socio-political structures and persistent inequalities of the global economy. As studies in this volume collectively show, the key to understanding Chineseness therefore lies in revealing the ideological embeddedness of various practices and constructs of Chineseness. To address Chineseness as a theoretical problem (Chow, 1998), we need to highlight not just the struggles with being heard for both the researchers and the researched but also recognise how the process of knowledge production and arguments about the legitimacy and value of Chineseness can be ideologically embedded as well. Contributors to this book carefully attend to empirical details with critical insights from both Western and Chinese scholarly perspectives, enriching our understanding of Chineseness as an empirically and theoretically complex entity. Such dialogical critical approaches mean that we have adopted geopolitical realism without falling into Sinocentrism (Chow, 1998) and we have engaged with various empirical constructs of Chineseness with critical reflections on their socio-political embeddedness. In this collective work of unpacking Chineseness, we hope that we have challenged simplified understandings of Chineseness in either essentialist or hybrid terms and instead demonstrated an understanding of Chineseness as a complex variable situated amidst competing discourses in an increasingly bewildering world. Acknowledgements

This volume began as a panel at the ‘Sociolinguistics of Globalisation’ conference in Hong Kong in 2015. We would like to thank the panel participants for their contribution, though not all of them could contribute to this volume. We also thank Jan Blommaert and Lionel Wee for their helpful comments as panel discussants, and to Lionel Wee again for writing a commentary for the book. We are also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and helpful suggestions. Last but not least, we thank all contributors for their thought-provoking chapters, which have challenged our thinking on Chineseness in profound ways. References Agha, A. (2007) Recombinant selves in mass mediated spacetime. Language & Communication 27 (3), 320–35. Appadurai, A. (2013) The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. New York: Verso Books. Bakhtin, M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Bauman, R. and Briggs, C.L. (1990) Poetics and performances as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1), 59–88. Bhattacharya, A. (2019) Chinese nationalism under Xi Jinping revisited. India Quarterly 75 (2), 245–52. Blommaert, J. and De Fina, A. (2016) Chronotopic identities: On the timespace organization of who we are. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 153. Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. (2004) Language and identity. In A. Duranti (ed.) Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 369–94). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Chan, C. and Strabucchi, M.M. (2020) Many-faced orientalism: Racism and xenophobia in a time of the novel coronavirus in Chile. Asian Ethnicity. DOI: 10.1080/ 14631369.2020.1795618. Chow, R. (1998) Introduction: On Chineseness as a theoretical problem. Boundary 2 25, 1–25. Deng, X. (1984) Socialism with Chinese characteristics. See http://www.peopledaily.com. cn/GB/channel1/10/20000529/80783.html (accessed November 2019). Flores, N. (2013) The unexamined relationship between neoliberalism and plurilingualism: A cautionary tale. TESOL Quarterly 47, 500–20. Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972– 1977, ed. C. Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books. Gao, S. (2019) Aspiring to be Global: Language and Social Change in a Tourism Village in China. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Heugh, K. and Stroud, C. (2019) Diversities, affinities and diasporas: A southern lens and methodology for understanding multilingualisms. Current Issues in Language Planning 2, 1–15. Holliday, A. and MacDonald, M.N. (2020) Researching the intercultural: Intersubjectivity and the problem with postpositivism. Applied Linguistics 41 (5), 621–639. Iqbal, N. (2020) ‘They yelled Coronavirus’ – East Asian attack victim speaks of fear. The Guardian. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/16/they-yelled-coronavirus-fi rst-british-attack-victim-east-asian-man (accessed October 2020). Irvine, J. and Gal, S. (2000) Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In H.V. Kroskrity (ed.) Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities (pp. 35–84). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Kubota, R. (2019) Confronting epistemological racism, decolonizing scholarly knowledge: Race and gender in applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 1–22. Lei, L. and Liu, D. (2019) Research trends in applied linguistics from 2005 to 2016: A bibliometric analysis and its implications. Applied Linguistics 40 (3), 540–61. Li, W. (ed.) (2016) Multilingualism in the Chinese Diaspora Worldwide: Transnational Connections and Local Social Realities. London: Routledge. Li, W. and Zhu, H. (2013) Translanguaging identities and ideologies: Creating transnational space through flexible multilingual practices amongst Chinese university students in the UK. Applied Linguistics 34, 516–35. Nonini, D. and Ong, A. (1997) Chinese transnationalism as alternative modernity. In A. Ong and D. Nonini (eds) Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism (pp. 3–33). New York: Routledge. Ong, A. (1999) Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press. Pennycook, A. and Makoni, S. (2019) Innovations and Challenges in Applied Linguistics from the Global South. London: Routledge. Perez-Milans, M., Baquedano-López, P., Del Percio, A., Vigouroux, C. and Li, W. (2019) Language, Culture and Society – Editorial. Language, Culture and Society 1 (1), 1–7.

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Rambukwella, H. (2019) On hybridity, the politics of knowledge production and critical language studies. Language, Culture and Society 1 (1), 126–131. Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. (2001) Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach. Malden: Blackwell. Shi-xu (2014) Chinese Discourse Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Simpson, J. (2020) Ai Weiwei: ‘Too late’ to curb China’s global influence. BBC. See https:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-54321598 (accessed 29 September 2020). Song, J. and Gee, J.P. (2020) Slogans with Chinese characteristics: The political functions of a discourse form. Discourse & Society 31 (2), 201–217. Tavernise, S. and Oppel Jr., R.A. (2020) Spit on, yelled at, attacked: Chinese-Americans fear for their safety. The New York Times. See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/ us/chinese-coronavirus-racist-attacks.html (accessed 2 October 2020). Van Dijk, T.A. and Lazar, M. (2020) Special Issue: Political Discourses and the Global South. Discourse & Society 31 (1). Xi, J. (2019) Having culture confidence and building a strong socialist country of culture. Qiushii, December 2019. See http://www.qstheory.cn/dukan/qs/2019-06/15/c_112462 6824.htm (accessed November 2019). Yan, Y. (1997) McDonald’s in Beijing: The localization of Americana. In J.L. Watson (ed.) Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (pp. 39–76). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Yeh, D. (2020) COVID-19, anti-Asian racial violence, and the borders of Chineseness. British Journal of Chinese Studies 10. https://bjocs.site/index.php/bjocs/article/ view/117. Zhang, Q. (2018) Language and Social Change in China: Undoing Commonness through Cosmopolitan Mandarin. New York: Routledge. Zhao, S. (1997) Chinese intellectuals’ quest for national greatness and nationalistic writing in the 1990s. The China Quarterly 152, 725–745.

2 Chineseness in Diaspora: Multilingualism, Heteroglossia and Fluid Ethnicity Jing Huang

Introduction

Chineseness is an ambiguous term (Wang, 2009). It implies an everevolving process of identification with a constant update of defi nitions. Chun (1996) characterises Chineseness as ‘a cultural discourse’ that involves ‘not only symbols of national identity, icons of patriotic fervour … but also the authority of statements about shared values embodied in language, ethnicity, and custom, as well as shared myths encoded as genres of knowledge, such as history, ideology, and beliefs’ (1996: 114–115). During the past three decades, the economic-political changes and the neoliberal ideology stemming from globalising moves have seen their impact on the recent shift in Chinese diasporas around the world. Under such impact, Chinese people and Chinese culture in diasporic contexts have been constantly amalgamating, reconstructing, reinventing, and therefore are being reinterpreted with new normative features. Chineseness no longer merely implies the boundedness to a given community, nor does it remain stably harmonious within distinctive groups of people. In this chapter, I aim to provide an updated discussion on Chineseness by drawing empirical data from a doctorate study on the Chinese diaspora and its community schools in one of the major cities in England: Birmingham. The research is a sociolinguistic study with a critical ethnographic approach to people’s day-to-day multilingual interaction within, and around, a large Chinese complementary school (CCS) in the city of Birmingham. Viewing ‘multilingualism not simply as a product of migration but as a critical part of the process of constructing the diaspora discourses and identities’ (Li, 2016: 1), this study investigates the local practices of schoolteachers and other adult participants, such as school 13

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board members, funders, and volunteers. Theoretically, the study adopts Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981) as the overarching framework to highlight the heterogeneity, stratification and complexity of the local educational, intercultural and sociolinguistic practices. Methodologically, the research is a linguistic ethnography with methods of enquiry including fieldwork observations, interviews and document collections. The data collection constitutes a 10-month in-depth participant observation within the school, and subsequent observations on the Birmingham Chinese community in different settings. Following my earlier discussion with an emphasis on superdiversity of Chineseness in the diasporic contexts (Huang, 2018), this chapter explores how discursive multilingual practices from the Chinese diaspora reflect an evolving ethnic identification of Chineseness with an emphasis on fluidity. It presents a discussion on how the local heteroglossia ‘defreezes’ Chineseness from merely an ethnic identity and a cultural heritage affiliated with the past and the national homeland. Findings show that the cultural discourses of ‘who are Chinese?’ and ‘what counts as Chinese?’ are dynamically reconstructed and negotiated in, for example, classroom teaching, textbook literacy and school activities. In this chapter, I extract an Ancient poem in rap textbook literacy in a Chinese Cantonese teaching class to discuss diasporic Chineseness in terms of fluid ethnicity, in addition to ‘The Flavour of China’ school exhibition event to discuss the transnationalisation of Chineseness. This discussion on diasporic Chineseness as a heteroglossic social construct makes an innovative contribution to the literature of both sociolinguistic studies on the Chinese diaspora and cultural discussions on the topic of Chineseness. It also offers important empirical description for interpreting transnational exchanges between China and the UK. The following sections of this chapter include, first, a literature review on the Chinese diaspora, Chineseness and heteroglossia with an emphasis on the concept of chronotope (Bakhtin, 1981); then a brief explanation of the research context and methodology; and, fi nally, a data analysis and discussion section elaborating Chineseness in late modern time in terms of fluid ethnicity. Literature Review: Chineseness, Heteroglossia and Chronotope Chineseness in the diaspora

Globalising moves have changed the world into a complex web of cities, towns, neighbourhoods and settlements materially and/or symbolically connected in often unpredictable ways. The globalising world grows

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both unpredictably more heterogeneous and uniform under the influences of accelerating movements of peoples, messages and goods (Giddens, 1994). During the globalising process, the mobility of people also involves mobility of language use, cultural assemblage and ethnic identification. In considering Chineseness, I invoke Hall’s (1990) perspective on cultural identity as less a matter of ‘being’ than of ‘becoming’. Under the changing global conditions, the defi nition of ‘Chineseness’ is on the move (see Huang, 2018, for detailed discussion). Especially in diasporic contexts, Chineseness always involves complex and discursive topics that consist of intertwining issues of language, culture, identity and ethnicity. Twenty years ago, Chow (2000) suggested the idea of ‘unpacking Chineseness’ by arguing that ‘Chineseness [must] be productively put under erasure – not in the sense of being written out of existence but in the sense of being unpacked’ (Chow, 2000: 18). She argued that to rethink Chineseness means to shift from a homogeneous and fi xed understanding of this concept to a contested and dynamic (heterogeneous, fluid, negotiated and negotiable) one. Meanwhile, Ang also proposed that ‘Chineseness is not a category with fi xed content … but operates as an open and indeterminate signifier whose meanings are constantly renegotiated and rearticulated’ – an unfi nished and untotalisable, permanently evolving concept (Ang, 2000: 283). In this chapter, I adopt a similar perspective to Ang and Chow’s to unfold my discussion on the term diasporic Chineseness. Before I move on to talk about this term in detail, a brief review on the notion of ‘diaspora’ is provided. According to Li and Zhu (2013), diaspora originally meant ‘the scattering of people between, through, and across different geographical locations’ (2013: 43). For many centuries its main reference was the historical mass dispersions of the Jews, African slaves and the Chinese coolies (Clifford, 1994; Li & Zhu, 2013). It now has meanings in a larger domain that includes immigrants, expatriates, refugees, guest-workers, exile community, overseas community and ethnic community (Tölölian, 1991: 4–5). In cultural studies, diaspora remains an interesting topic to many sociologists. Brah defi nes diasporas as ‘the sites of hope and new beginnings’ (1996: 193); Morley refers to diaspora as ‘the victimization, uprooting and displacement of individuals’ (2000: 44) while Clifford interprets the diasporic consciousness as both negative and positive: it is negative for the racial and economic marginalisation and discrimination it engenders and positive for the skills of survival and the feeling of globalism (1994: 309). Tensions, negotiations and (possible) combinations between ‘loss’ and ‘hope’, ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ tend to be the key defi nitional norms of diaspora (Clifford, 1994: 308–9; Huang, 2018).

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Moreover, diasporas in the 21st century are dramatically changing into intrinsically superdiverse transnational social contexts. Individuals with different migration motivations and post-migration experiences, of different educational and socioeconomic backgrounds and statuses join in and then remain in the diasporic contexts. New migrants are intermingled with long-term settlers with nuanced (re)categorisations (Benton & Gomez, 2008, 2014; Huang, 2018; Li & Zhu, 2013). Speakers of different languages, dialects and accents are interacting with each other as part of a diasporic community, creating new hybridity and also confl ict, new images of the local diasporic world as well as new forms of negotiation over social inequality. Tsgarousianou (2004) suggests we frame diaspora in late modernity in terms of intense and constant interaction at a transnational level, rather than in terms of isolation and solitude. In the same vein, Aihwa Ong (1993) uses ‘flexible citizenship’ for people who shuffle in transnational movements of capital and improvise with striking differences of power and privilege. She explains her term in the speech of a Chinese investor who claims: ‘I can live anywhere in the world, but it must be near an airport’ (1993: 41). Ong (1999) also proposes to adopt the term ‘transnationalism’ to combine with identification of a ‘flexible citizenship’. With particular interests in Chinese diasporas in Britain, Benton and Gomez (2008, 2014) provide in-depth analyses on transnational phenomena in Chinese diasporas in relation to political and ideological policies in China. The history of the Chinese diaspora in Britain dates back to the 17th century in terms of coolie labour. The first sizeable settlement of Chinese people in Britain took place in the early 19th century, mostly of seamen (Benton & Gomez, 2008; Li & Zhu, 2013). After the Second World War, many people from Hong Kong and the southeast coast of mainland China migrated to the UK. The current British Chinese diaspora consists of these early migrants, their descendants, and new immigrants from various areas of mainland China and other regions of the world ever since the late 1980s. It is also worthwhile to investigate the significant shift within the Chinese diaspora in Britain during the recent three decades. After the transition of sovereignty of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997 and, more importantly, with China’s economic growth from the late 1990s to the 2010s, a fast-growing number of Chinese migrants from mainland China coming to the UK has changed the structure of the British Chinese diaspora. The previous dominance of Cantonese-speaking people is no longer the case. The neoliberal ideology spreading through globalisation has seen its pressure on the recent shift among the diversified Chinese diaspora. Blommaert and Rampton describe this change as ‘the balance

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of demographic, political and material predominance gradually shifting away from the traditional diaspora groups towards new émigrés from the P.R. China’ (2011: 2). New migrants from the mainland of China speaking Putonghua are becoming the new majority. This close link to the P.R. China in Chinese diasporas is also seen in Benton and Gomez’s (2014) discussion on ‘transnational networking becoming accepted wisdom in studies on Chinese new migrants and Chinese diasporas’ (2014: 1163). Under such global conditions, the seemingly ‘static’ Chinese culture in diaspora has been diversified and reassembled in a continuous changing process of assigning new meanings to the term of Chineseness. Either a superior Chinese culture myth (see Tu, 1991, for the conception of ‘Cultural China’) or any unobservable and unanalytical, locally frozen mysteriousness of Chineseness (Chun, 1996) would remain inappropriate and unconvincing. During the past 30 years, the enhanced flow of people, capital, technology and ideologies within the late modern cultural economy has, in effect, not only differentiated communities and places but also significantly connected them into tension-fi lled interactions, with transformations following (Huang, 2018). Chineseness does not only imply boundedness to a given community; neither does it remain stably harmonious among distinctive groups of people. Instead, diasporic Chineseness is always associated with various levels (individual, communal, ethnic or national) and domains (generations, business, education, economics or politics) of evolving cultural discourses. This chapter aims to provide one such discourse. Its aim is to update understandings of Chineseness in relation to recent global moves and flows. In my view, Chineseness in diaspora is by its very nature heteroglossic and fluid. A Sociolinguistic Study under a Heteroglossic Lens

Heteroglossia, as a translation of the Russian term разноречие [raznorechie], was coined by the Russian linguist and language philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin in his 1934 paper to originally describe the intralanguage variety within Russian. The paper became well-known after being translated into English by Emerson and Holquist and published as ‘Discourse in the Novel’ (Bakhtin, 1981). Recently, scholars in sociolinguistics have turned to reapplying Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia for better understandings of linguistic practices in diverse contemporary societies (e.g. Bailey, 2012; Blackledge & Creese, 2010, 2014; Blommaert, 2007, 2015; Jaffe, 2015; Jaffe et al., 2015; Jaworski, 2012; Rampton, 2011; Rymes, 2014). Using heteroglossia as a framing principle, these scholars share a common interest in the internal and external stratification of

18

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language and the inter-relationship between small semiotic (including linguistic) signs and the individual, community and society, as well as between the local or regional performance and the national and global structures. With its key concepts of dialogism, indexicality and chronotope, heteroglossia offers a useful framework for understanding social phenomena like migration, multilingualism and language shift. According to Bakhtin (1981), dialogism can be best understood as the epistemological mode of a world in which everything is seen as a part of a greater whole, and there are constant interactions between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others. For Bakhtin, dialogism acts as a refusal of closure; it opposes the fi xation on any particular monologue in novels. Moreover, dialogism is not simply multiple perspectives on the same subject; rather, it involves the distribution of utterly incompatible elements within different perspectives. It is ‘a struggle among socio-linguistic points of view’ (Vice, 1997: 50). In Bakhtin’s view, because language is primordially dialogical, words never simply communicate information in relation to other words in a neutral system, nor can a language relate lineally to an external world (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986). Rather, a social field of interaction always mediates the relationship between an individual speaker and the world. In such an interactive field, every type of language use is mediated by and affi liated to certain social ways of seeing, indexing to one type of ideology or identity in the irreducible plurality of belief-systems. The notion of indexicality, coined by Michael Silverstein (2003), can well capture Bakhtin’s dialogical perspective of the interrelationship between words and contextual attributes such as value systems and social positions. The meaning of words does not only constitute the denotational and propositional domains but also the indexical terrain during interpretation – the ‘connotational significance of signs’ (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011: 5). That is to say, in a multilingual setting, our focus of study should not only be the literal meaning of a bi/multilingual’s switching of codes, but, more importantly, it should be the indexed social meaning in the discursive code-switching and the social relations in play to shape such a switching. Another key concept of heteroglossia, chronotope, was generated by Bakhtin to emphasise the historical feature of language use and the inseparability of time and space in human linguistic actions (Bemong & Borghart, 2010: 4–5). Jan Blommaert (2015) has interpreted a chronotope as ‘a time-space’ within which time and space are blended in any event in the real world. Another interpretation of ‘chronotope’ can be seen in Blackledge and Creese’s (2014) summary of ‘multivoicedness’ in their interpretation of heteroglossia. According to Blackledge and Creese, multivoicedness emphasises the salience of

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chronotopic organisation of language use: there are always sets of sociohistorical conditions that make the words uttered in a particular chronotope represent particular voices which are often different than any other voices under any other chronotopes. These voices are also able to travel to another chronotope for circulation in another voice and create new meanings. These key concepts of heteroglossia offer sociolinguists a propitious lens for investigating complex language practices. In this chapter, by saying ‘under a heteroglossic lens’ I take heteroglossia as an epistemological stance and a philosophical perspective to understand sociolinguistic practices and meanings. A heteroglossic lens strengthens my focus on the complex stratification of meaning in this study on a diasporic Chineseness. In this discussion, a Chinese community school (CCS) is deemed as one kind of the community ‘whose discourses … are shot through with both mainstream and minoritized resonances’ and that provide ‘the multiple types of linguistic and cultural belonging as a source of heteroglossia’ (Jaffe et al., 2015: 135). The local practices in such a school are seen as indexically amplifying (indexicality) a heterogeneous dynamic of multiple frames, voices and stances that are (re)constructed during discursive interactions (dialogism) at certain times, in certain spaces, and under certain conditions (chronotopes). A heteroglossic lens helps me to understand and interpret social events in a more-than-unique way and to present and analyse the complexity and stratification of the whole. For example, it guides me in investigating how a Chinese migrant uses his linguistic repertoire to negotiate ethnic identities and the actual dynamic process of him doing so. It particularly lends a theoretical ground for me to innovatively look at the intra-Chinese-language diversity and stratification. More than that, a heteroglossic lens enlarges the scope and range of social conditions in my analysis and discussion by making the linkage and trajectory of meanings possible. With awareness of the heteroglossic nature of a Chinese diasporic context, considerations over the economic, political, historical and social conditions become fundamentally prominent in my discussion on Chineseness. In order to highlight the trajectory of meanings in my discussion on Chineseness as flow and flux, I employ the concept of chronotope in particular. Chronotope: Linking Time-Spaces

In the past few decades, sociolinguistic scholars have moved beyond the traditional approach with attention to fi xed temporal and spatial contexts with fixed groups of social actors and towards a historically informed perspective (for exemplary discussions see Block, 2014; Blommaert, 2010,

20

Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

2015; Coupland, 2003; Heller, 2002). One way to move forward the traditional approach is to focus on the flows – the circulation of objects, people and ideas, and to see the transformation emerging from the circulation (Appadurai, 1996; Marcus, 1995). In order to do so, sociolinguists look at the linkage across time and space to understand the relations of meaning, forms of speech and also the orders of indexicality in speakers’ daily language use. Bakhtin’s term of chronotope is readopted for such use. Chronotope was generated by Bakhtin as an instrument for developing a fundamentally historical semiotics (Bakhtin, 1981: 84). Bakhtin elaborates chronotopes as ‘mutually inclusive, they coexist, they may be interwoven with, replace or oppose one another, contradict one another or fi nd themselves in very complex interrelationships’ (1981: 252). Describing chronotope as ‘invokable chunks of history’ (2015: 111), Jan Blommaert argues that the chronotopic organisation of language provides availability of specific contextual universes across time and space for invocation in discursive work at the present. According to Blommaert, knowledge of such ‘invokable chunks of history’ is a cultural resource and an asset which allows us to construct, for precisely targeted effects, elaborate patterns of different sociocultural materials in our dialogical discourses. He interprets chronotopes as historically configured tropes pointing us to the fact that specific complexes of ‘how-it-was’ can be invoked as relevant context in a ‘how-it-is’ discourse. This discussion on chronotope is connected to Dell Hymes’s account of the speech community and repertoire. Hymes states: What is within a speech community in linguistic terms has begun to be understood better through recent work in sociolinguistics. Empirical and theoretical work has begun to provide a way of seeing the subject steadily as a whole. It suggests that one think of a community (or any group, or person) in terms, not of a single language, but of a repertoire. A repertoire comprises a set of ways of speaking. Ways of speaking, in turn, comprise speech styles, on the one hand, and contexts of discourse, on the other, together with relations of appropriateness obtaining between styles and contexts. (Hymes, 1996: 33)

A repertoire, either of a person or a group of people, comprises a set of ways of speaking. These ways of speaking are framed by indexical appropriateness in relation to speech styles and time-space contexts. The construction of such ways of speaking always involves rules and meanings from another temporospatial context, which means a repertoire in use for communication at present is by nature chronotopic. More recently, Brigitta Busch (2015) has proposed that the co-presence of different chronotopes in speech can be transferred to the linguistics repertoire. That is, to look at

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‘how we are constituted as speaking subjects by historical/political discourses’ (2015: 13). She explains that in a chronotopically layered structure of linguistic repertoire, a speaker does not only position herself in relation to what is immediately present in the here and now. Instead, she also implicitly positions herself in relation to what is absent, operating or resonating in the background. Therefore, the other relevant stances or voices will be intentionally or unintentionally drawn into presentation at the immediate present. In this way, a linguistic repertoire should not be interpreted as simply a kind of toolbox from which the speaker picks up the ‘right’ one to achieve competence. Instead, as Busch argues, the ‘multidimensionality of linguistic repertoire’ needs to be understood ‘as a heteroglossic realm of constraints and potentialities’, which means ‘different languages and ways of speaking come to the fore, then return to the background, they observe each other, keep their distance from each other, intervene or interweave into something new, but in one form or another they are always there’ (Busch, 2015: 14). A chronotopically structured linguistic repertoire reflects the linkage of different socio-historical time-spaces. This is how I apply the notion of chronotope as theoretically and analytically useful in my discussions on Chineseness in the multilingual diasporic context. For example, a complementary school member’s narrative at interview comes to be chronotopically meaningful as part of his structured repertoire, which also accordingly manifests his identification of Chineseness. In the next section, I discuss a food culture exhibition event called ‘The Flavour of China’, held in the researched school as a local event impacted by the ‘chronotopically-layered structure’ (Busch, 2015). At the school event, a big variety of semiotic signs including a calligraphic exhibition poster on the wall, images and labels in both Chinese and English displayed on boards, teenage students’ verbal reactions to the head teacher’s request for their attendance at the exhibition and teachers’ commentary on the exhibition all come under a spotlight in negotiating Chineseness. The small local signs index to new constructions of ethnic identities in diaspora. In the following subsection, a brief introduction on the researched city and researched Chinese diaspora is provided as the research context. Chinese People in the City of Birmingham

The ‘2001 Census Topic Report: Cultural Background Executive Summary’ states: Three quarters of the Chinese group were born outside the UK. A high proportion of the economically active are self-employed. Many Chinese residents are students, and a high percentage of the group had higher

22

Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

qualifications. A third of those in work are professionals, managers or senor officials; 12% are in sales and customer services. 10% of residents live in communal establishments. (http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/census)

The above quote reflects the current structure of the British Chinese community from a local level. The three-quarters of Birmingham Chinese who were born outside the UK were the new migrants from mainland China. Among these new migrants, a high percentage of people are professionals with higher qualifications, while the earlier group of Chinese who worked in the catering business with little formal education and knowledge of English no longer remain dominant. This reassembled structure of the Chinese group was also described in a BBC article entitled ‘Chinese People in Birmingham: A Brief History’ (authored by David Parker, 8 Oct. 2014) as: More students and migrants from mainland China have extended their stays, the long-standing presence of Chinese-descended students from Singapore and Malaysia has been consolidated. Restaurants and takeaways remain as visible markers of the Chinese presence, but a British born generation is seeking to make its mark in wider fields. (http://www. bbc.co.uk/birmingham/features/2003/01/chinese_new_year/chinese_bir mingham.shtml)

Along with the diversification of population in the Birmingham Chinese community, different Chinese migrants from various origins and speaking different language varieties have also reconstructed the group’s linguistic ecology. The older generations who originally came from Hong Kong and Guangdong province of mainland China speak Cantonese as their mother tongue. There was also a substantial Hakka speaking minority among these earlier migrant groups. Other common varieties among the Chinese in Birmingham include Putonghua (often known in the UK as Mandarin), Shanghainese, Fukienese, Chiao Chow and Toi Shan dialects. The Chinese in Birmingham also have a strong commitment to maintain their mother tongue (‘The Chinese in Birmingham: A Community Profile’, 1996). Chinese parents consider it important to keep up their children’s ability with their mother tongue, which is regarded as an essential link with Chinese culture, a crucial medium of communication in the larger family, as well as an asset for their future career. In order to maintain the mother tongue, parents who have time and resources extend their commitment beyond the domestic dimension to setting up community language classes or schools for group learning and practice. Currently in Birmingham there are three major Chinese complementary schools respectively established in the 1960s, 1980s and 1990s. For this study,

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I chose the one with the longest history and both Cantonese and Putonghua as targeted Chinese varieties as my researched case. Data extracts were collected in and around the researched school. I now provide a brief account of the methodology before the data analysis. Methodology A linguistic ethnography

As discussed previously, a heteroglossic perspective sheds particular light on the salience of context. I believe that, with all the features, heteroglossia aligns with Linguistic Ethnography (LE) on the key norm: the focus on complexity in social communication and the situated and particular interpretation of social meanings. Using a LE approach is to discover the everyday routine and to investigate the patterns that unfold in daily life. It is ‘making the familiar strange’ (Heller, 2011) with ‘the role of interpretation as central’ (Copland & Creese, 2015: 15). Within the well-established tradition of linguistic anthropology, linguistic ethnography stems from Hymes’s (1972) call for a new order in linguistic analysis – a call for a contextual-sensitive approach – within interpretive and anthropological traditions in the social sciences. During the past few decades in the UK, LE has been demonstrated to be an empirical approach which draws resources from the two disciplines of linguistics and ethnography, to conduct research with ethnographic observation and linguistics analytical tools (for leading discussions see e.g. Creese, 2008, 2010; Rampton, 2007, 2010; Rampton et  al., 2002; Tusting & Maybin, 2007). In this linguistic ethnographic study, I aim to observe and present the process during which participants perform and negotiate ethnic identifications of Chineseness. The research question I seek to answer in this chapter is: •

How do local multilingual practices reflect the ethnic identification of ‘Chineseness’ in and around the Chinese complementary school?

In order to answer this question, I adopted research methods which included intensive participant observations, audio-recordings of classroom interactions, interviews, and collections of documents to look at the small signs in interactive and narrative discourses, while applying a dialogic perspective for seeing these signs under socio-historical conditions. I have collected a dataset including fieldnotes, audio-recorded classroom interactions and interview narratives, as well as a wide range of various documents and photographs. My data analysis focused on adopting critically informed ethnographic discourse analysis to capture and understand

24 Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

the small semiotic (including linguistic) signs and forms in the context. Throughout the whole process of conducting the research, an ongoing reflexive role of me as the researcher has strengthened my capability to cope with emergent dilemmas and develop the field work into a remarkable learning journey. The researched Chinese complementary school

The school was established in 1965 by a leading member of the Birmingham Chinese community to teach a small number of children Cantonese. After three generations of development, it has developed into a large Chinese complementary school as a registered charity, with the longest history and the biggest enrolment of students in the West Midlands. At the time of my field work the school had 394 registered students studying in seven Cantonese classes and 18 Putonghua classes every Sunday afternoon from 1pm to 3pm. There were eight school governors, with various social and economic backgrounds, responsible for either the weekly school routine or fund raising. Classes running at the school start from three reception groups (teaching 5- or 6-year-olds to speak Putonghua or Cantonese) and up to two GCSE classes supporting teenage students preparing for their GCSE language exam either for Chinese Putonghua or Chinese Cantonese. Teachers working in the school have different backgrounds: some have been living in the UK for decades and working in the school for more than 15 years; some are newly-enrolled masters or doctoral students recently graduated from local universities. In Figure 2.1, I provide three exemplary photos of the school activities: the top left was taken in one key participant’s Putonghua class; the top right was a reception-level child doing the colourin activity on the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival theme day; and the one below was taken on the school annual ceremony at the end of the academic year. In general, the school is a dynamic social ecology within which four language varieties (English, Putonghua, Cantonese and Hakka) and different generations and groups of Chinese migrants interact and negotiate the ethnic identifi cation of Chineseness. Questions often asked, answered, negotiated and (re)answered among teachers, pupils, parents and other school members include: ‘Who are Chinese?’ and ‘What counts as Chinese?’ In the next section, I draw on three data extracts to elaborate Chineseness as a heteroglossic ethnic identification in diaspora.

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Figure 2.1 Photos taken by the author at the researched school during fieldwork

Analysis and Discussion An ancient poem in rap

First, I present a textbook dialogue for Cantonese teaching to discuss an ‘ancient poem in rap’. The data was collected from the classroom of one of the key participants, Paul. At the time of my fieldwork at the school, Paul taught a group of 14 teenage students Cantonese (Grade 4) with a set of textbooks called 齊来學中文 [Let’s Learn Chinese] newly published by the UK Federation of Chinese Schools (UKFCS) in Britain. These textbooks are designed in coordination with the British national curriculum. The textbooks are written and presented bilingually in English and Chinese traditional literacy, intended for Chinese learners in the UK with

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or without Chinese origin. With its traditional form of literacy, at the researched school these books are specifically used in Cantonese Chinese classes. They differ from the textbooks used in Putonghua classes, which are designed and published in, and then delivered from, China as a free governmental support from Beijing to overseas Chinese education. To use the 齊来學中文 [Let’s Learn Chinese] textbooks, the school needs to pay around £9 to £14 per book. It was only two years ago when the school decided to replace the original out-of-date Cantonese textbooks (which were printed in black and white with the old vertical graphic format). In these new Cantonese textbooks, English is broadly used for translation, explanation and instruction. This flexibly mixed literacy of both Chinese and English significantly differentiates 齊来學中文 [Let’s Learn Chinese] textbooks from the old Cantonese textbooks and the textbooks currently used for teaching Putonghua at the school. The latter were predominantly written in Chinese, with English only used for brief task instruction. Data extract 1

A dialogue sample in the Grade 4 Cantonese textbook (Left: original text in Chinese; right: the author’s English translation of the text) Theo: Guo-Wen, what was it in the Rap you just did? Huang-Guo-Wen: I was rapping a poem. I’m taking part in a Chinese poetry reciting competition. I’m doing a classic poem. Theo: What is a classic poem? Huang-Guo-Wen: classic poetry is poetry written by ancient poets. I found this poem very difficult to memorise, so I put it in a song, just like singing, and it’s much easier now. I was just reciting this poem, in the way that you called Rap. Theo: This song sounds awesome; I want to rap it too. Can you teach me? Huang-Guo-Wen: All right! I’ll teach you!

The above dialogue from the new Cantonese textbook used in Paul’s class stands as a typical sample of the 齊来學中文 [Let’s Learn Chinese] series. On the top-left corner of the page it marks this section of the textbook as 文化 (二) [Culture (two)]. The dialogue shown in the extract is conducted in Chinese between two teenage friends, Theo and 黄國文

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[Huang-Guo-Wen]. The dialogue is about Guo-Wen’s practice of a Chinese ancient poem for a Chinese poetry reciting competition. Below the dialogue there is a literal English translation (without the metrical pattern) of the poem. Overall, this culturally-embedded content in Chinese language and literacy textbooks is not new. Chinese classical poetry has been in use as a typical cultural icon associated with heritage for complementary schooling for a long time. The use of poetry, as observed in Paul and some other teachers’ classroom teaching, usually requires students’ acquisition of the specific rules for metrical pronunciations and tones with passionate cadence, as a sign of norm keeping of Chinese culture. However, in this dialogue, the heritage-embedded Chinese classical poem is not presented in the ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ Chinese way. Rather, it is combined with rap, a very modern Western musical form originating from the Afro-American society and later picked up by young generations around the globe. In ‘rapping the Chinese ancient poem’, the authentic heritage usually embedded in classical poetry is being, to some degree, released. In replacement of this embedding of authentic heritage, a flexible mix of different cultural elements, of the old and the new, the Oriental and the Western, is being creatively intersected in the local practice across chronotopes. This combination of different cultural elements in the new Cantonese textbook indexes to an important ideology in terms of flexibility and fluidity around identification of heritage and Chineseness. Under this ideology, the central focus of teaching poetry in the CCS shifts from the cultural heritage model into a ‘how to make it work’ model which refers to, as shown in the dialogue, how to make the ‘difficult’ poem memorisable to Guo-Wen, a British-born-and-raised Chinese teenager, for his competition. And, perhaps more importantly, how to make his talk on the Chinese ancient poem understandable for his non-Chinese peer Theo. While the traditional ‘appropriate’ way of chanting a Chinese ancient poem – the metrical pronunciation and tones – are positioned as peripheral in this dialogue, a new perception of the ‘appropriateness’ of a Chinese textbook and a reconstruction of diasporic Chineseness unambiguously demonstrating ‘teenage British Chinese boy rapping a classic Chinese poem’ comes to the centre. Within this diasporic educational chronotope, this textbook discourse of ‘ancient poem in rap’ indexes to a new fluid intersection of cultural elements across historical chronotopes. The chronotopic trajectory of cultural elements connects the ancient Chinese poet’s voice to a modern Western music form of rap; this trajectory of cultural elements – or, in Blommaert’s term, the invoked chunks of history – fi nds its acceptable presentation in the

28 Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

chronotope of Guo-Wen’s dialogue with Theo. A fluid identification of Chineseness therefore is created in this textbook dialogue: being Chinese is constantly changing with new forms of speaking and new understandings of appropriateness. Apart from this intersection of different social-cultural elements in the form of Chineseness discourse in a textbook, the chronotopical trajectory of social-cultural elements and voices also is demonstrated in many other ways. In the next subsection, I present another example by using a fieldnote vignette together with a photo to describe an extra-curriculum school event of a food exhibition entitled ‘The Flavour of China’ for further discussion. ‘The Flavour of China’ food culture exhibition

Influenced by the aesthetically-stylised popularity of food culture in China during the early 2010s, the researched school hosted an exhibition of Chinese food culture at the school in the 2014 spring term. With this exhibition event, the school aimed to present and practise its proficiency in organising transnational sociocultural events to bringing the ‘flavour’ of Chinese culture to its teachers and students. I draw on a fieldnote vignette here to discuss the transnationalisation of Chinese culture and identification. Data extract 2a:

It is a warm afternoon in early April 2014. As soon as I enter the school corridor, the deputy head teacher Sarah comes to tell me about a grand exhibition from China which is going to be held in the school today. I see her very excited and busy around informing class teachers their different time slots to enter the school hall for the exhibition. They have to make sure 394 students all have their chance to see the exhibition during the 2-hour-long school session. Later, after being in one of my key participants’ classroom for around 15 minutes, I see the deputy coming to tell the class that it is their turn to go to the exhibition together with other year 2 and 3 children. Right after the deputy’s announcement, two boys in the class ask in English: ‘Do we have to go?’ The deputy says: ‘Yes, you better go’. Then, all students in the class, led by their teacher, go to the school hall for the exhibition. The school hall is like a press conference bombed by noise. All the school staff (including some temporary volunteers) are scattering at the doorway to keep order. A few photographers are flashing their cameras vigorously. One of the school governors is making an announcement

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with a mic to students who are coming at this time slot: ‘Good afternoon students, please stay together with your teacher and enjoy the exhibition. You will have 20 minutes to look around before the next group.’ Right on the wall facing the entrance of the hall, a 1.5-meter square poster in designed Chinese calligraphy saying ‘The Flavour of China’ comes into view. Around the hall, neatly sized colourful photograph boards are displayed. On each board, it shows a single or multiple image(s) with explanation in both Chinese and English. There are around 70 boards in total showing the big variety of Chinese food culture based on different geographical areas. I walk around the hall, being impressed by the stylish design of the exhibition boards and the wide range covered in the content, as well as the English translation. No Chinglish at all! The whole exhibition passes on a genuine passion for Chinese food culture with professionally produced exhibition materials. The big hall is fi lled with the noise of teachers talking and students questioning, exclaiming and chatting. Younger children are mostly gathered around their teachers while teenage students are hanging around with peers, making claims of where they have been to in China, or some comments and jokes about the exhibition boards, etc. (Fieldnote vignette originally written on 6 April 2014)

During 2013 to 2014, there was a television programme called 舌尖上 的中国 (A Bite of China) which enjoyed nation-wide popularity in P.R. China. That series of documentary programmes adopted an artistic genre fi lming the food culture nationwide around China, from a village kitchen in a remote countryside to a luxurious restaurant in downtown Shanghai. The programme involved fishermen on their boats on the southeast coast and Tibetans in their yurts in the northwest highlands. The programme enjoyed real success and led the hot topic list among all social groups. Some of the narrative lines from the programme even became posh language used on all types of social media. Influenced by this trendy enthusiasm for the Chinese food culture scene, UKAPCE (UK Association for the Promotion of Chinese Education) organised the exhibition introduced above to the Chinese diasporas around the UK. The researched school was selected as one of the exhibition sites in England. The school authority had been busy preparing the exhibition for weeks, and an information slip was sent to all parents one week earlier extolling the exhibition as a valuable extra-curriculum opportunity for students to learn about Chinese heritage. Students were organised to attend the exhibition as part of their learning routine, despite individual willingness to attend. To illustrate this event, next I provide a photo taken at the event (Figure 2.2).

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Data extract 2b

Figure 2.2 A photo of school girls on the exhibition of ‘The Flavour of China’ (Photo taken by author on 6 April 2014 in the hall of the researched school)

Here what I want to bring up is the exhibition board on the right side of the photo. On this board, four Chinese young ladies walking in a line are dressed up in typical Qing-dynasty costumes with bright colours, serving dishes in traditional arm postures. They are walking in a corridor furnished and decorated in Qing-dynasty imperial style with red-painted pillars and carved wooden windows and screens painted in red, yellow and gold. This photo delivers an immediate cultural note in terms of ‘popular Chinese heritage’, as Qing-dynasty style is seen everywhere, in TV soap dramas as well as at Forbidden City tourist events. When talking about ‘Chinese heritage’, Qing-dynasty styles has become iconic. These symbols appeared on the exhibition board travelling across borders from China to a school hall located in the British Midlands, making a trajectory from the ancient Qing dynasty to contemporary society, into a complementary school extra-curriculum event. This intersection of cultural elements travels across time, space and borders, embedding itself in the local school practice under a wider sociocultural structure projecting from China.

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This dataset shows that the local practice in a Chinese complementary school in England is not influenced by wider factors separately or homogeneously. Rather, there are interweaved multi-layered conditions dynamically coming into force, informing and shaping the local practice to construct new meanings of Chineseness. In this discussion, the impact from a nation-wide popular TV programme under a higher socio-political ideology on celebrating food culture in China, together with other sociocultural forces (such as the networking and fi nancial support from the Chinese embassy in London and influential Chinese migrant associations), makes the way for a ‘Flavour of China’ exhibition into the researched complementary school. Along with this intersection of sociocultural factors in school practice, various indexical signs including the designed calligraphic poster of the exhibition; the professional quality of the exhibition materials; the wide coverage of Chinese food culture; the deputy’s ‘You better go’ answer to the boys’ question of ‘Do we have to go?’; the formal recording activities with multiple flashing video cameras; the Qing-dynasty-style image displayed; even the professional English translation on exhibition boards are all blended creatively and dynamically, making the local exhibition event successful. This local hybridity reflects a creation of new preferred meanings about the sociocultural status of a CCS, and more importantly, the reconstructed identification of ‘being Chinese’ in such a diasporic context. Chinese complementary schools in diaspora are no longer isolated community spaces restrained by explicit boundaries, providing limited voluntary language maintenance classes. Such educational bodies become more important in transnational communication. Diasporic identification of Chineseness becomes more flexible and fluid, chronotopically reconstructed by cross-boundary forces from the past to the present, as well as from the home country to the diaspora. To carry on with this topic of ‘being Chinese’, I next provide an interview narrative to extend the discussion further. ‘Who are Chinese?’

The question of ‘who are Chinese?’ is often asked. In this discussion I aim to answer it with foci on the complexity and fluidity of diasporic context. In such a context, as introduced earlier, individuals with different migration motivations and post-migration experiences, of different educational and socioeconomic backgrounds and statuses, join in and then remain in the diasporic contexts. New migrants are intermingled with long-term settlers with nuanced (re)categorisations. Speakers of different

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languages, dialects and accents are interacting with each other as part of a diasporic community, creating new hybridity and also confl ict, new images of the local diasporic world, as well as new forms of negotiation over social inequality (Huang, 2018). An updated discourse to frame the Chinese diaspora in the late modern time in terms of intense and constant interactions at a transnational level (Tsgarousianou, 2004) is needed. In this fi nal part of the discussion, I present a narrative from Mr W, a mainlander Chinese migrant who works as the manager of a big Cantonese restaurant owned by a Cantonese-speaking migrant. Mr W speaks no Cantonese in his daily work in the Cantonese restaurant. In this narrative, he gives his personal perception about ‘who are Chinese’. Data extract 3

Mr W: 海外的华人，在这儿土生土长的也是华人，来这工作的也是华人， 后来的新移民，来这学习的，也是华人，大家都是华人。而且一些马来西亚 人，也是华人。台湾人，他们也是华人。华人，现在有不同意义的华人。(…) 照现在的趋势，我感觉吧，再过十年，现在讲广东话的人， 都会开始讲 普通话。 我是这样一个感觉。 (…) 现在是个混合的状态。年龄，不同年 代的人。 [The overseas Chinese, people who were born and raised in here are Chinese, who came here working are Chinese, the recent new migrants, who came here for study, are Chinese, all of these people are Chinese. Plus some Malays, they are Chinese. Taiwanese, they are Chinese as well. Chinese people, now there is a diversity of definitions of Chinese people. […] Following the current tendency, I feel like, after another 10 years, people who speak Cantonese at the present will then start speaking Putonghua. I have such a feeling. […] Now it is a mixed situation, age, different generations of people.] (Audio-recorded narrative data)

As introduced earlier, a fast-growing number of Chinese migrants from mainland China has changed the structure of the Chinese diasporas worldwide during the past three decades. The previous dominance of the Cantonese-speaking group is no longer the case. New migrants from the mainland of China speaking Putonghua are becoming the new majority. Mr W is one of the new migrants who have experienced the change. Mr W has been working in the local Chinatown for 16 years. During these years, he had an experiential process of ‘struggling with Cantonese → trying to learn some Cantonese while quickly picking up English → achieving a linguistic repertoire with good English used for work → giving up Cantonese’. He witnessed and experienced all the changes within the local Chinatown, which, in his perception, legitimates him to make the prediction and claim in the narrative presented in Data Extract 3.

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He claims that ‘Now it is a mixed situation’. He also predicts a new situation towards which the current mixed situation will be evolving in the following decade: a prediction that current Cantonese-speakers will all start using Putonghua. Actually, his ‘prediction’ already has its demonstration in the present. In the context of the researched CCS, for example, the Cantonesespeaking-only deputy head teacher, Sarah, is changing her use of Chinese literacy from traditional characters (which are associated with Cantonese) to simplified characters (which are associated with Putonghua) in her emails to the researcher. And the school magazine issued in 2014 was printed exclusively in simplified characters, without a single word in the traditional form. As shown in Mr W’s narrative, there is a new diversified Chineseness at the present. However, this Chineseness is not floating in a vacuum but is tied to the shifting power relations. Hegemony, hierarchy and inequality do not disappear from this newly constructed Chineseness, only the affiliation and presentation of such an ecology change and shift among different varieties, groups of speakers and social categories. During this changing and shifting process, local agents like Mr W, with their life experience from their empirical observation, become able to express the present and to predict the future. For Mr W, that ‘current Cantonesespeakers will all start using Putonghua in 10 years or so’ is a consequence of the evolving process of Chineseness in the diasporic context. This local practice underpins the heteroglossic nature of Chineseness in late modernity. There is always a monoglossia generated from socioeconomic and political conditions within a heteroglossic ecology of ideology and identity. Local discourses show that the increasing currency of Putonghua and the upward mobility of Putonghua speakers will inevitably lead to a hegemony of Putonghua in the future, while other Chinese varieties including Cantonese and Hakka move to the periphery. To understand this heteroglossia of Chineseness, it is salient to historically link the discourses and voices from the past, the present and for the future, together with the multi-layered social structures and conditions. Conclusion

Chineseness is in flow and flux (Huang, 2018). It implies an everevolving process of identification with constant updates of defi nition. In this chapter, Chineseness is seen as no longer merely being related to a cultural heritage which links the Chinese diaspora to the homeland in the past, or to the abstract referential signs of Chinese culture or identity

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(such as the specific architectural styles in a Chinatown, the Chinese takeaway food, or the lion dance in Chinese New Year celebrations, etc.). Chineseness in this discussion no longer implies boundedness to a given minority community marginalised into a certain area of the city or a relatively lower social class. Neither does it remain harmoniously stable among the collective group with similar values, beliefs and customs shared. Rather, diasporic Chineseness in late modern urban areas (such as Birmingham) involves a heteroglossia of identifications which associates to various levels (individual, communal, ethnic or national) and domains (business, education, economics or politics) of sociocultural discourses. In this study, the heteroglossia of Chineseness compounds the use of ‘rapping a Chinese classic poem’ in a textbook; the cross-time-and-space cultural exhibition of ‘The Flavour of China’ in the hall; and the ‘who are Chinese?’ narrative of the school volunteer, Mr W. All these small local phenomena in a CCS context reveal new norms of Chineseness. The chronotopic trajectory of cultural elements connects the ancient Chinese poet’s voice to a modern Western music form of rap, in which a fluid identification of Chineseness is created: the question of ‘what counts as Chinese?’ is answered with new beliefs of appropriateness, with rapping an ancient poem acceptable to appear in textbooks. While the flexible norms of Chineseness are being generated, the Chinese complementary school is also being transformed from a marginalised informal language school to a conceptual Chinese community, performing important economic and political functions, such as hosting a popular cultural exhibition event. These economic and political functions, under the global conditions of high mobility, endow the Chinese complementary school with new social meanings across the diaspora, the local host society and the home country. It is only with such connections that the school event of the food cultural exhibition becomes possible: diasporic Chineseness is no longer bound up within certain geodemographic locations; instead it is transnationally constructed across temporal and spatial boundaries. Throughout the process of trajectory and transnationalisation, the identification of Chineseness is being reconstructed and negotiated into a heteroglossic ecology. Within this ecology, some norms of ‘being and becoming Chinese’ connect to higher social status or upward mobility; some emplace certain individuals who have experienced displacement after migration; some affi liate groups of people for mutual benefit; still others may disempower certain types and modes of practice which used to prevail. This evolving ecology also discloses a new local answer, as discussed in this chapter, to the question of ‘who are Chinese?’. Mr W’s answer may not satisfy everybody – it may displease or infuriate some

Chineseness in Diaspora: Multilingualism, Heteroglossia and Fluid Ethnicity 35

(with his prediction of a Putonghua hegemony). Nevertheless, the answer explicitly indexes to the flow and shift within the Chinese diaspora. Chineseness is fluid, its meaning has been reconstructed, reaffi liated and redefi ned. It complies with new forms of diversity as well as unification, multilingual flexibility as well as monolingual hegemony, and celebrations as well as depositions. I hope this chapter offers some empirical evidence leading to better understandings of the Chinese diasporas and the nature of Chineseness. References Ang, I. (1993) To be or not to be Chinese: Diaspora, culture, and postmodern ethnicity. Southeast Asia Journal of Social Science 21 (1), 1–19. Ang, I. (2000) Can one say no to Chineseness? Pushing the limits of the diasporic paradigm. In R. Chow (ed.) Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory: Reimagining a Field (pp. 218–300). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Chps 1, 2, 3, 7, 9). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bailey, B. (2012) Heteroglossia. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge and A. Creese (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism (pp. 499–507). London: Routledge. Bakhtin, M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (ed. by M. Holquist, trans. by C. Emerson and M. Holquist). Austin: University of Texas Press. Bemong, N. and Borghart, P. (2010) State of the art. In N. Bemong, P. Borghart, M. De Dobbeleer, K. Demoen, K. De Temmerman and B. Keunen (eds) Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Refl ections, Applications, Perspectives. Gent: Academia Press. Benton, G. and Gomez, E.T. (2008) The Chinese in Britain, 1800–Present: Economy, Transnationalism, Identity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Benton, G. and Gomez, E.T. (2014) Belonging to the nation: Generational change, identity and the Chinese diaspora. Ethnic Racial Studies 37 (7), 1157–1171. Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (2010) Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective. London: Continuum. Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (2014) Heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy. In A. Blackledge and A. Creese (eds) Heteroglossia as Practice and Pedagogy (pp. 1–20). Berlin: Springer. Block, D. (2014) Social Class in Applied Linguistics (chps 1,2,3,4). New York: Routledge. Blommaert, J. (2007) On scope and depth in linguistic ethnography. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 (5), 682–688. Blommaert, J. (2010) The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. (2015) Chronotopes, scales, and complexity in the study of language in society. Annual Review of Anthropology 44, 105–116. Blommaert, J. and Rampton, B. (2011) Language and superdiversity. Diversities 13 (2), 3–21. Brah, A. (1996) Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge. Busch, B. (2015) Expanding the notion of the linguistic repertoire: On the concept of Spracherleben – the lived experience of language. Applied Linguistics 38 (3), 340–358.

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Ong, A. (1999) Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rampton, B. (2007) Neo-Hymesian linguistic ethnography in the United Kingdom. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 (5), 587–601. Rampton, B. (2010) Speech community. In J. Jaspers, J.-O. Östman and J. Verschueren (eds) Handbook of Pragmatics: Highlights, Volume 7. Bristol: MLA. Rampton, B. (2011) From ‘multi-ethnic adolescent heteroglossia’ to ‘contemporary urban vernaculars’. Language & Communication 31, 276–294. Rampton, B., Roberts, C., Leung, C. and Harris, R. (2002) Methodology in the analysis of classroom discourse. Applied Linguistics 23 (3), 373–392. Rymes, B. (2014) Communicating Beyond Language. Everyday Encounters with Diversity. London: Routledge. Silverstein, M. (2003) Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23 (3–4), 193–229. Tsgarousianou, R. (2004) Rethinking the concept of diaspora: Mobility, connectivity and communication in a globalised world. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 1 (1), 52-65. Tölölian, K. (1991) The nation-state and its others: In lieu of a preface. Diaspora 1 (1), 3–7. Tusting, K. and Maybin, J. (2007) Linguistic ethnography and interdisciplinary: Opening the discussion. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 (5), 575–583. Tu, W.-M. (1991) The Triadic Chord: Confucian Ethics, Industrial East Asia, and Max Weber: Proceedings of the 1987 Singapore Conference on Confucian Ethics and the Modernization of Industrial East Asia. Singapore: Institute of East Asian Philosophies. Vice, S. (1997) Introducing Bakhtin. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wang, G. (2009) Chinese history paradigms. Asian Ethnicity 10 (3), 201–216.

3 When ‘Chineseness’ is Not Preferred: Accounts of Academically Elite Students from China in Singapore’s Schools Luke Lu

Introduction

Ng (2013: 280–1) opines ‘the global war for talent’ as a competition amongst economies coping with the effects of globalisation, where the emergence of a ‘global meritocracy’ (Axelrod et  al., 2001; Brown & Tannock, 2009) has coincided with increasingly permeable geographic and cultural borders, as well as the willingness of people to migrate. The attraction and retention of talent is therefore seen by governments as a strategic approach to address these challenges of a globalising economic system. In Singapore’s case, one of the lowest birthrates in the world1 is counteracted with an immigration policy that seeks to boost workforce numbers at all skill levels (Yeoh & Huang, 2011; Saw, 2013: 1). There was hence a wave of general migration into Singapore from the 1990s to 2000s that saw the non-resident population (i.e. non-citizens) increase more than fourfold from 1990 to 2010. Immigrants who were non-citizens (1.3 million) comprised 25% of Singapore’s total population in 2010 (5.1 million), compared to 10% in 1990 (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2010: v). 2 Crucially, one of the main criteria in Singapore’s immigration policy is that individuals must fit the existing Chinese-Malay-Indian racial model sanctioned by the state, where 76% of the population are Chinese, 15% Malay and 7.5% Indian (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2019b). In order not to upset this racial proportion amongst the population in Singapore (Tan, 2003: 773; Yeoh & Lin, 2013: 35), individuals who are 38

When ‘Chineseness’ is Not Preferred 39

ethnically Chinese form the vast majority of immigrants. Further, Singapore promulgates a bilingual policy where all students in school must acquire English + an official Mother Tongue denoted by their race (i.e. Mandarin for the Chinese, Bahasa Melayu for Malays and Tamil or other sanctioned languages for Indians). Immigrants from China would presumably already possess proficiency in Mandarin. Such a rationale of racial recruitment can imply two linked assumptions by the state. (a) Race is seen by the state as an anchoring factor, where similarity in cultural practices would lead to affinity for the local. (b) Immigrants who already appear to fit Singapore’s official races would be more politically acceptable to the existing polity. Ethnically Chinese immigrants are assumed to be less likely to upset the racial and cultural equilibrium in Singapore. Yet, the government’s immigration policy itself had become politically-charged and controversial toward the late 2000s. Singapore citizens are portrayed by scholars as resentful of ever-rising immigrant numbers that are said to have put a strain on public infrastructure and services (Chong, 2014; Yeoh & Lin, 2012). Public pressure forced the government to restrict the flow of immigration ahead of the 2011 General Elections (Yeoh & Lin, 2012). Additionally, the state’s justification of welcoming more immigrants in a Population White Paper in 2013 was met with stiff criticism from academics (Low et al., 2013) and public protests (Goh & Mokhtar, 2013; Hodal, 2013), a phenomenon that is extremely rare in Singapore. 3 The fact that the majority of immigrants are from China has meant that most anti-immigrant sentiment is directed at immigrants from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (Ho & Fang, 2020; Yang, 2014: 365; Yeoh & Lin, 2013: 32–3). This is partly demonstrated by the phenomenon of Singaporeans heightening their national identity whilst distancing themselves from PRC immigrants, with the loudest objections not from non-Chinese citizens but Chinese Singaporeans (Yeoh & Lin, 2013: 43; Yeoh & Willis, 2005). The use of labels such as ‘PRC’ in interaction, for example, is one way that citizens often distinguish between local Chinese and recent immigrants from China. Given that they were recruited for their racial and supposed cultural similarities amidst anti-PRC sentiments, this paper seeks to explore whether and how a specific group of immigrants from China claim to manage and negotiate their Chinese identities and practices whilst in Singapore. As part of the state’s talent recruitment strategy, the Singapore government offers scholarships to top-performing secondary school students from China, enticing them to study in and hopefully settle in the country. I draw on semi-structured interview data with eight students

40

Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

who have taken up such a scholarship, and who attended and graduated from one of the top-ranked secondary schools in Singapore. The analysis of data is based on a sociolinguistic axiom that ‘the contexts for communication should be investigated rather than assumed’ (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011: 10), as well as guided by Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) framework about how identity might be produced in linguistic interaction. In this view, overarching categorisations (‘macro-level demographic categories’; Bucholtz & Hall, 2005: 592) like specific races or nationalities become objects of analysis in themselves, while I address the ways in which informants use various linguistic forms to signal their (dis)association with different categorisations (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011: 5). In setting the stage for the examination of data, I fi rst provide a précis of the state’s recruitment of students from China. I then summarise my informants’ profi les and data, as well as my method of analysis guided by Blommaert and Rampton (2011) and Bucholtz and Hall (2005). This is before focusing on the data and examining how my informants talked about their Chinese identity and practices in relation to their peers in Singapore schools. The State’s Recruitment of Top-Performing Students from China

Within the aforementioned population strategy, the government has since the 1990s begun actively initiating policies to shape Singapore’s infrastructure as a regional education hub for foreign students, in the hope that some of them may be retained in the workforce to contribute to the local economy (Yeoh, 2007). More recently, the policy took a proactive turn, and currently involves offering scholarships to secondary school students from neighbouring countries (e.g. China and Vietnam) who are excellent in math and science. Top-ranked secondary schools from Singapore routinely visit prominent schools in China4 and Vietnam in order to headhunt individuals from these localities and attract them with scholarships to study in Singapore. These ‘feeder’ schools have been designated and allocated by the home nation, so that Singapore is only allowed to recruit students from these same schools every year. Each topranked secondary school from Singapore is matched with top-performing schools in a given city where the recruitment process occurs. According to explications by the state, such a policy is calculated to not only augment the population but also establish stronger ties with geopolitical neighbours (Shanmugam, 2015). It is also instructive to note that the state’s recruitment of students from China dwarfs other available schemes targeting other nationalities

When ‘Chineseness’ is Not Preferred 41

in terms of sheer number and systematicity. The programme that targets 15-year-olds is called ‘SM1’, the one that targets 17-year-olds ‘SM2’, and the third that targets those in the fi rst year of university is ‘SM3’. There is no other scholarship scheme that attracts one particular nationality on such a scale through direct recruitment in the country, and which necessitates official labels for each age group. The government does not publish official figures, 5 but Yang’s (2014) ethnographic study of the SM2 recruitment process estimates that the yearly intake of SM1 students is 200; SM2 is 200–400; SM3 is 200–400 (Yang, 2014: 360). The informants in my study were recruited via the SM1 scholarship. Potential candidates of age 15, with already excellent academic attainments, are interviewed for scholastic aptitude and sit through a series of assessments testing proficiency in basic English and STEM subjects. Individuals who accept the scholarship arrive in Singapore at age 16 with free education till their A-levels at 19. There is the possibility of further sponsorship should they do well enough to land a place in any local university. They are generally one year older than their Singaporean counterparts in the same cohort, due in part to their lower proficiencies in English. Their academic performance in Singaporean schools is constantly monitored, with those unable to maintain a minimal grade point average having their scholarships revoked and facing possible repatriation. In the particular Singapore secondary school they attended, students from China on SM1 scholarships make up about 80 students out of a yearly cohort of 1200. Having sketched the context through which my informants were recruited to enter Singapore, the next section outlines their profi les and how I examined their accounts. Informants and Method

The data I present in this paper are drawn from a study I undertook in Singapore between March and December 2014. Born and raised in Singapore, I attended a top-ranked secondary school in the nation (1994–9), and then became a teacher (2007–12) in the same institution. Partly due to sensitivities about anti-immigrant sentiment, the school refused access to my research that wished to interview current students, some of whom included immigrants. To mitigate this, I decided to recruit former students who had graduated from the school in order to examine their narrative accounts of the past. I had remained in touch with students that I taught, and contacted 50 former students who had graduated, of whom 20 agreed to be part of my research. Informants consisted of a mix of individuals born in Singapore as well as overseas.

42 Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

I conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews in English with these 20 individuals, totalling 62.5 hours of interview data. This study utilises semi-structured interviews that I conducted with eight individuals (among the 20) who were recruited from China via the SM1 scholarship. The interviews were aimed at uncovering the educational pathways they undertook, as well as how they experienced life in each school they attended. My position in the interviews is therefore not only one of researcher, but also someone familiar to the interviewees and an insider of the secondary school in Singapore. At the time of data collection, informants were all at least 21 years of age and not in a dependent relationship with the researcher. Like Singapore, the secondary school landscape in China is highly stratified, with an academically selective system for enrolment into topranked middle schools in each major city (cf. Lu, 2016; Pérez-Milans, 2013; Yang, 2016). My informants have been highly successful in such a system, enrolling in the top-ranked schools in their respective localities, before attending a top-ranked secondary school in Singapore. Upon graduation from the secondary school in Singapore, three of them proceeded to attend top-ranked universities in the US and UK, while the other five won local state scholarships to study in local universities. My informants’ profi les are summarised in Table 3.1. For the purposes of this study, I focused on bits of the data when informants described their experience in Singapore schools, while attending to how they differentiated themselves from others, with characterisations of their own cultural and linguistic practices. As mentioned, the method of data analysis is based on the principles outlined by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) regarding identity, as well as Blommaert and Rampton’s (2011) Table 3.1 Informants’ profiles Informant

Migration trajectory

Occupation at time of data collection

Chang

China → S’pore

Postgraduate student in S’pore

Dong

China → S’pore

Working in S’pore

Felicia

China → S’pore

Working in S’pore

Ling

China → S’pore

Undergraduate student in S’pore

Ming

China → S’pore → US

Working in US

Xavier

China → S’pore → US

Working in US

Yang

China → S’pore

Undergraduate student in S’pore

Ying

China → S’pore → UK → S’pore

Working in S’pore

When ‘Chineseness’ is Not Preferred 43

approach toward investigating rather than assuming categories that individuals (dis)associate themselves from/with. In this paradigm, identity is seen to be an emergent product of linguistic practice, possibly encompassing macro-level demographic categories (e.g. race); it may be indexed through a speaker’s style, use of language forms and positioning, and is relationally constructed between self and other; it may be in part intentional, in part habitual (and less conscious), in part an outcome of negotiation and co-construction with interlocutors, in part linked to wider social structures and systems. Guided by similar principles, I examine how informants discursively constructed and positioned themselves in interviews to other individuals or groupings. I acknowledged the variation in accounts and was careful to let any differences amongst my informants emerge from the data, rather than impose them from the outset. I tried to look for patterns behind these regularities that might suggest co-construction with interlocutors. I considered how the accounts could also reflect circulating discourses, such as the use of labels for certain groupings. I then postulated arguments that linked wider social structures to the talk that my informants produced. In what follows, I present illustrations of how my informants talked about their Chinese identity and practices in relation to their peers in Singapore schools. ‘Singaporeans’ vs ‘PRCs’ in Secondary School

One salient point that emerged from informants’ accounts was that they never invoked their Chinese ethnicity when describing the social groups they participated in throughout four years of secondary school. This is despite the school environment, like Singapore society, having a mix of Chinese-Malay-Indian amongst the student population, with the Chinese racial group forming the majority. Instead, they used labels of nationality to refer to the two largest groupings they gravitated between. Thus, Ying describes her experience trying to negotiate relationships between the two groups. Extract (i)

The PRC group is large, it’s harder to integrate with Singaporeans. I chose to integrate in Sec 3 and Sec 4, that’s why I got a bit outcast by the China students. They feel like why you betray us? We are one group, that kind of thing. So sometimes it’s not that you don’t want to integrate, it’s because they stay together, you feel obliged to join them. (Interview with Ying, 5 October 2014)

44

Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

In this account of differentiation, Ying uses two sets of labels referring to students from China as the ‘PRC group’ or ‘China students’, vis-à-vis ‘Singaporeans’. This distinction via nationality was consistent across all eight informants when they described their experiences in secondary school, where they initially found it hard to form connections with local students. This differentiation via nationality was maintained in the accounts of university life by the five informants who remained in Singapore after graduating from secondary school. However, their accounts of experiences in local universities revealed greater complexity in their differentiations of social groupings. Internal Differentiations among Students from China Extract (ii)

1 2 3 4 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Luke: Chang:

Luke: Chang:

How was it like in NUS? Because NUS, you don’t have a class, like secondary school you still have your civics group. So I know very few people from my course. But then from Maths, I really know no one. I only know the two girls from my secondary school, we went to Maths together, the rest I really know no one. And the majority of Math students are PRC scholars. Because you know SM2 SM3 when they join NUS, they can only take engineering and science. They cannot take any other courses, so there are certain engineering and science courses with a lot of PRC students. Computing, information systems, also a lot of PRC students. So you didn’t hang out with them? Very hard to fit in. it’s like SM2 students they come together they are one clique. It’s like you can make friends with them, but when you are in trouble or when they are in trouble, they won’t come to fi nd you, you won’t go to them. (Interview with Chang, 21 August 2014)

In Extract (ii), Chang describes her friendship circles in NUS (National University of Singapore), a local university, with reference to particular groupings that she is not a part of. She uses the label of ‘PRC scholars’ [Extract (ii), line 12], and ‘SM2 SM3’ [Extract (ii), line 13] to mean more recent students from China who have been given undergraduate scholarships by the state. This is even when she herself is from China and is on a similar scholarship as well. When asked, Chang explicitly states that she fi nds it difficult to fit in with these ‘SM2’ students [Extract (ii), line 19], whom she describes as an exclusive ‘clique’ [Extract (ii), line 20]. I then tried to fi nd out why by asking the following question in Extract (iii).

When ‘Chineseness’ is Not Preferred 45

Extract (iii)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Luke: Chang:

Would you say that there’s a slight cultural difference? Yes, of course, especially SM1 is quite awkward. Because when we join uni, those SM2 SM3 the school will take care of them, because they are directly under NUS. Then local students, because they are local ma. We are not here not there. Sometimes we face a very funny dilemma. When we go to a class, you can see the PRC students sit in front, then the Singaporean students sit behind, so where do you sit? Sit in the middle? But which group do you join during discussion? I don’t know, because if you join the China side, they will like, you come here at 15 years old, then your accent doesn’t really sound right, and your mindset is totally local. Then the locals will say you are Chinese. So it’s like you get rejected by both of them, so you don’t know where you should go. That’s what SM1 students face in uni I feel. (Interview with Chang, 21 August 2014)

Here, Chang labels herself as ‘SM1’ [Extract (iii), line 2], that is to be differentiated from ‘SM2’ and ‘SM3’ [Extract (iii), line 3]. Recall the state’s scholarship scheme targeting students from China at various educational levels. These same institutional labels for the scholarships are now appropriated by Chang to mark different groupings in NUS. Compared to the newer immigrants, SM1s such as Chang have a different accent and a local ‘mindset’ [Extract (iii), lines 13–14]. In Chang’s account, the disjuncture between these groups is partially created by the institutional recruitment system of foreign students, and experienced in an institutional site (i.e. the classroom). Given that the majority of Singaporean students in her classroom would presumably have been ethnically Chinese, the cultural differences here are also marked along the lines of nationality rather than ethnicity or race. In response to my next question, Chang also suggests other factors that prevent SM2s from socialising with others. Extract (iv)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Luke: Chang:

Would the large number of SM2s in NUS account for the issues of integration then? Yeah of course, there are 200 of them. They come together, they had the bridging course period which they have to do. I think the bridging course is 1.5 years before they start in NUS. That’s why we think SM2 there’s a problem, because they never get the

46

Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Luke: Chang:

chance to socialise with local students in the 1.5 years. That’s why it’s very hard for them to integrate. Last time English lesson is not compulsory, they don’t even have the chance to speak English. That’s why after four years [in NUS], probably they still cannot speak properly. It’s a huge problem for SM2s really, we all know that, they have no chance to integrate, they just stay in school. Do the SM2s themselves see it as an issue? Yeah, they know, but they can’t change it. They will complain that it is the local students who are not willing to interact with them. But at that age in uni, very hard already. Unlike secondary school, the school will force, they will mix us, we had no choice, but then uni is very difficult. Like last time, our form teacher will say you should not speak Chinese in the classroom at all, but uni you can’t. (Interview with Chang, 21 August 2014)

To Chang, a major factor in the SM2s’ lack of socialisation lies in the inability to speak English [Extract (iv), lines 9–13], though she is clear about the institutional causes for this as well (lines 17–24). Chang here attributes both cultural and institutional factors for constructing the condition of newer immigrants and constraining their opportunities to integrate. So Chang makes an unsolicited differentiation within students from China, marking them (and herself) with the official scholarship labels of ‘SM1’ (age 15), and ‘SM2’ and ‘SM3’ (those recruited later). Chang describes this difference in terms of familiarity with local culture and proficiency in English. The implication is that a cultural practice like speaking English is a valuable resource when socialising with locals. All four other informants who attended local universities, too, made these unsolicited references to SM1/2/3, thereby giving these groups of people structural or institutional rather than ethnic classifications, with the implicit invocation of the age at which they arrived in Singapore. But Chang’s account also reveals some disaffiliation between these groupings, including when there is blatant dissociation from more recent immigrant students from China and their concomitant practices.

Dissociation from ‘Chinese’ Practices and Groups

I provide an example from Yang’s account in Extract (v).

When ‘Chineseness’ is Not Preferred 47

Extract (v)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Luke: What do you speak with your friends? Yang: I speak Mandarin with my other Chinese scholar friends. But when we are eating with other people who are Singaporeans, we will all use English. Or when we don’t want people to know that we are very outwardly Chinese, so like in the lift, we will speak English. As in me and my boyfriend. Like you know, when you are waiting for the lift and discussing something in Chinese, and when the lift comes [laughs] we switch to English. Luke: Why won’t you want people to know? Yang: They will judge ma. But I tell you something I observed. I went to eat Macdonald’s with my boyfriend [who is on a SM3 scholarship]. Then he saw a big group of SM3 friends, that he had bridging course with last time. [starts to whisper] but he doesn’t want to acknowledge them, yeah, don’t know why. Oh my god [laughs]. I think he also knows, he’d rather associate with SM1s and USP people. (Interview with Yang, 7 October 2014)

In Extract (v), Yang makes a distinction between Chinese scholars and Singaporeans [Extract (v), lines 2–4] in terms of the language she uses with each group. Yang states that there are two instances when she and her Chinese scholar friends would use English: When they are ‘with other people who are Singaporeans’ [Extract (v), lines 3–4]; and when they ‘don’t want people to know’ they ‘are very outwardly Chinese’ [Extract (v), lines 5–6]. Yang’s use of English with her Singaporean friends is easily understandable, given that the majority of young Singaporeans today already use English as a predominant home language, and English is the de facto lingua franca among most Singaporean youth (Lu, 2020). Moreover, we see the influence of circulating discourses regarding Chinese immigrants reflected in Yang’s account. She makes an ethnolinguistic evaluation by stating that she does not want others to judge her for being outwardly Chinese through her speaking Mandarin [Extract (v), line12]. She elaborates on this by recounting an incident between her and her boyfriend, and a group of SM3s. Her boyfriend is on a SM3 scholarship himself but did not acknowledge the presence of other SM3s when encountering them in McDonald’s. Yang’s narrative of this incident also sees a clustering of somewhat awkward responses. It was as if what she was saying is embarrassing. She suddenly breaks into a whisper when telling how her boyfriend did not acknowledge his peers [Extract (v), line 16].

48

Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

She dramatises it by saying ‘oh my god’, and laughs [Extract (v) line 18]. Crucially, she hedges her proposition, initially claiming that she does not know why her boyfriend acted as such [Extract (v), lines 17–18], but then provides the answer herself that he ‘knows’ something and would rather associate with SM1s and other Singaporeans [Extract (v), lines 18–19]. I continue probing this issue in my next question to Yang. Extract (vi)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Luke: But is there a difference between SM1 and SM3 people? Yang: Quite different leh. I think those people, SM3, come here to study. Only study. Their mentality is like I must cherish this chance, this opportunity to study in the best QS ranked school in Singapore. They’d be like me, trying my best to get perfect scores, perfect As. Actually I don’t think the SM3s are all very hardworking. They associate with their group and then they have fun, they are not very driven. There can be this kind. But I don’t personally know many SM3s, except my boyfriend. [laughs] they must be of a certain standard to be known by me [laughs]. The difference between me and my other Chinese friends is they don’t interact, but I do interact with other Singaporeans. They are SM2s and SM3s. SM1 are very good, I have to say. SM2s and SM3s they are quite cliquish. When I was immature I treated the SM2s and SM3s differently, like I think they very noob [slang for newbie]. When I just came to uni, then I think huh you don’t know this? But now I acknowledge they have certain abilities and skills better than me. Luke: Noob in what sense? Yang: Like they were not adapting well to the uni. Like on orientation day, they have this like “which booth to go to”? but I should understand right? They just came to uni, they don’t know what the education is like. (Interview with Yang, 7 October 2014)

In a way, Yang’s account in Extract (vi) is similar to Chang’s in differentiating herself from more recent immigrants. Yang initially states that SM3s ‘only study’ [Extract (vi), line 4], but then backtracks to say it may not be true for all SM3s as there are some who are ‘not very driven’ [Extract (vi), line 10]. Like Chang’s references to SM2s and SM3s, Yang also claims that SM2s and SM3s are ‘cliquish’ [Extract (vi line, 18] and ‘don’t interact with other Singaporeans’ [Extract (vi), lines 15–16]; she invokes the term ‘noob’

When ‘Chineseness’ is Not Preferred 49

to say how they are unfamiliar with local ways of doing things [Extract (vi), line 19]. Importantly, Yang’s accounts in Extracts (v) and (vi) portray the same relational pattern exhibited by all five informants who attended local universities, as she positions herself as being more localised than a newcomer. But Yang also reveals that her evaluations of ‘SM3s’ are influenced both by a regard for the official terms of the scholarship scheme (i.e. academic achievement in lines 21–2) and her preference for particular cultural styles (which here also includes fluency in institutional practices in lines 24–7). Unlike Chang’s account that only discusses the cultural and structural factors differentiating SM1s from SM2s and SM3s, Yang provides a more complex picture where proficiency in conventional institutional practices and expectations is also valued. Like Chang previously, the deployment of English with Singaporeans and avoidance of Mandarin point to unequal ways in which the linguistic repertoires of English and Mandarin are valued amongst localised peer groups. This is further demonstrated when I consider how informants evaluated Singlish. The Use of Singlish

This relational closeness to local practices is also instantiated in how all informants claimed to speak English or Singlish (a local vernacular and variety of English). Ling in Extract (vii) provides a fairly typical claim, and also juxtaposes her own use of Singlish with other immigrants from China in both secondary school and university. Extract (vii)

I had like two PR friends in my class in secondary school. Those are the people who came down since they were young, when they were six, seven, the whole family kind of moved over. They were treated as Singaporeans. They were not really localized, but more localized than we were. They spoke Singlish. In university, like my friends who met other china scholars, they feel a huge difference when communicating. Actually my Singlish is very weird also, but it’s a bit more natural than those people [other students from China] who try to speak proper English, in accent and everything. (Interview with Ling, 12 October 2014)

Here, Ling compares herself with two friends who were Permanent Residents (PR) in secondary school, indexing their deeper localisation through the use of Singlish. Similarly, Ling’s claim to possess Singlish in university that is ‘a bit more natural’ than recent immigrants from China suggests a relational positioning where she herself is more localised.

50

Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

The accounts I have presented to this point have therefore demonstrated how informants consistently differentiated themselves in terms of nationality and relational closeness to being Singaporean (juxtaposed against more recent immigrants) via local practices such as English/Singlish use, whilst often dissociating themselves from practices that index their status as immigrants from China. Crucially, it is English or Singlish use that indexes localisation amongst my informants’ peers in school, not Mandarin the official Mother Tongue prescribed by the state for the Chinese racial group in Singapore. It can be inferred that forms of English or Singlish are more valuable compared to Mandarin as a linguistic practice amongst their localised peer groups. This parallels the practices of Korean ‘study abroad’ students in Singapore, where Singlish was claimed to be acquired for building friendships and solidarity with local Singaporeans (Kang, 2012: 179). Park and Bae (2009) and Bae (2012) also found the same valuations accorded to Singlish, that guided how Korean students and their families positioned themselves toward the vernacular in local contexts, even as they continued to perceive Standard English as a valuable economic tool on the global stage. Further, the fi ndings offer a different vantage point too, whilst corroborating Yang’s (2016) ethnography of SM2 students in Singapore. In his work, SM2s were seen to acknowledge their out-group status amongst Singaporeans, positioning themselves as less adapted to Singaporean practices such as Singlish (Yang, 2016: 80–2). It is also congruent with Ho and Fang’s (2020) fi ndings via interviews with ‘new’ Chinese immigrants who are working adults, where similar distinctions are made by informants in terms of cultural practices and time of entry into Singapore – ‘老新移民 lao xinyimin (an earlier cohort of PRC immigrants) and the 新新移民 xin xinyimin’ (a newer cohort of PRC immigrants’ (Ho & Fang, 2020: 82). How then can we explain my informants’ accounts? Making Sense of These Accounts

In Singapore’s context, these patterns of self-differentiation (in my informants’ accounts) and discrimination (in Yang’s (2016) research) with links to use of Singlish and English (while avoiding Mandarin with locals) might be explained if they are seen in the light of wider coterminous discourses. I have already pointed to wider anti-immigrant sentiment in a previous section (and referenced in past studies, e.g. Yeoh & Lin, 2013) as possibly salient to my informants’ experiences. But their accounts also suggest other relevant discourses to do with the status of English and Singlish in Singapore, and how the use of Mandarin is linked to notions of social class among academic elites.

When ‘Chineseness’ is Not Preferred 51

As already discussed, anti-immigration sentiment and public discourse has risen since the 2010s, purportedly in response to straining public infrastructure (Chong, 2013, 2014). The government has, in turn, reacted by tightening immigration criteria since the 2011 General Election when the ruling party garnered its lowest percentage of votes in history. Immigrants from China, who presumably fit the state’s proscribed racial model of ‘Chinese-Malay-Indian’ citizens, comprise the vast majority of all immigrants, so that they have been singled out for public ire and disdain (Yeoh, 2013). My informants, both Singaporean and immigrant, would have been well aware of these circulating discourses and are seen to reproduce these discourses themselves. Second, Singlish as a vernacular is not just a language for inter-ethnic communication for Singaporeans (Vaish & Roslan, 2011) but has been described as being embedded in all aspects of life in Singapore (Cavallaro & Ng, 2009: 156), including the home, playground and school (Ansaldo, 2009: 138). It is the lingua franca for almost everyone in Singapore, regardless of social class and educational level (Ansaldo, 2009; Fong et al., 2002), with associations of local cultural identity and solidarity (Tan & Tan, 2008). Without Singlish (the valued cultural practice within local peer groups), individuals (such as Yang’s (2016) informants) are liable to be positioned as outsiders by local students and continue to have low social status associated with being an immigrant (due to anti-PRC sentiment) (Lu, forthcoming). Third, by virtue of the institutional circles they inhabit (top-ranked secondary schools and local universities) my informants also occupy positions as an elite class of educated individuals in Singapore. Within such circles, being outwardly ‘too Chinese’ is historically linked to unsophistication. It can be traced to how Singapore had English and Chinese medium schools before the 1980s, including a university (i.e. Nanyang University); how the state introduced English as medium of instruction in all schools from 1978 so Chinese medium secondary schools were phased out by 1988 (Pakir, 1997: 61); how the Chinese-educated suddenly became disenfranchised. Individuals who are more proficient in Chinese than English were then looked down upon by those more proficient in English. For example, the term ‘cheena’ is widely used in Singlish, especially amongst individuals who have performed well in English as the medium of instruction schools. Etymologically, it is from the Malay word for China or Chinese, i.e. ‘Cina’. People would say someone is ‘cheena’ as a mark of being not proficient in English, and therefore uneducated and lower class. In light of anti-PRC sentiment, ‘cheena’ has also taken on connotations of someone who has PRC links, either culturally or real ones (Lu, 2020).

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Consequently, in Singapore, there exists a cultural hierarchy, with overt Chinese practices deemed to be unsophisticated when juxtaposed with styles of English and Singlish. This is in addition to circulating negative sentiments regarding immigration and PRC immigrants in particular. Within Singapore’s educational institutions like top-ranked secondary schools and universities, proficiency in institutional practices and academic achievement are also valued [Yang in Extract (vi)]. My immigrant informants enter this cultural space of Singapore schools in which they have low status as immigrants from China unless they can acculturate, and in this, the official classifications such as ‘SM1/2/3’ (implying time of entry) become a crucial source of cultural and structural (not just chronological) differentiation. Equally important, the different proficiencies in English and Singlish contribute to varying competence in performing certain (desired) identities. This is part of the reason behind the differential acculturation of ‘SM1/2/3’ students, and different social statuses associated with each group. In this sense, these students’ linguistic repertoires are their semiotic resources, or cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991). These accounts of self-differentiation produced by my informants therefore connote levels of localisation and class, where ‘Chineseness’ is not preferred. For instance, Yang [in Extract (v)] states that she switches to English when she is around locals so as to avoid being seen as from China. My informants’ practices of eschewing Mandarin use, of not wanting to associate with SM2s and SM3s, are not a result of language policy or visible policing by authorities. In fact, the opposite is true. They have been recruited to Singapore on the basis of their cultural practices like speaking Mandarin, a language that is officially recognised as a Mother Tongue in the nation. All of these suggest that my immigrant informants are aware of and subject to the overarching ideologies discussed above that constrain language use and the portrayal of Chinese identity (indexed by such language use) in informal academically elite Singaporean contexts, beyond the diktat of the state. Conclusion

The experiences of my informants may not be easily classified as racism in the conventional sense, where institutions of a ‘capitalist/patriarchal western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world system’ have reproduced the racialisation of individuals as inferior/superior (Grosfoguel, 2016: 10). While not exactly situated in the margins of global geo-politics, Singapore presents an experience of post-coloniality in the Global South (Lazar, 2020: 7), by virtue of its racial categories inherited from its time as

When ‘Chineseness’ is Not Preferred 53

a British colony (Purushotam, 1998). This is a case of co-ethnic mobilisation in immigration (a discriminatory racial policy unthinkable by liberal Western European standards) instigated by the state, which also prescribes a set of values on the national scale that ostensibly desires individuals of Chinese ethnicity and who are proficient in practices such as Mandarin. Yet, as Blommaert (2010: 41) reminds us, people, and especially migrants, ‘do not just move across space … they move across different orders of indexicality’. The scalar metaphor thus appears apt to explain the situation of my informants, whose differences are turned into inequality (cf. Canagarajah, 2013: 204) as they move from China to local contexts in Singapore. We are reminded of practices by Korean ‘study abroad’ students in Singapore (Bae, 2012; Kang, 2012; Park & Bae, 2009), who orient to spaces of different scales when discussing their use of Standard English (on a global stage) and their deployment of Singlish with Singaporean peers (in localised spaces). However, for my informants in this study, the juxtaposition in scales is not of a global/local nature, corresponding to the values of Standard English and Singlish. Rather, it pertains to their initial recruitment by the state for their ‘Chinese’ practices (brought along from China), and subsequent positioning among local peers in Singapore’s schools. In these specific spaces of intercultural contact with Singaporeans, immigrant informants from China possess different linguistic and cultural practices from Singaporean Chinese, even if both groups might be identified by the state as ethnically Chinese on the national scale. These different practices manifest as inequalities when transported across contexts (different spaces). My informants respond to the altered value of their original practices by adopting acceptable repertoires (English/ Singlish) when interacting with locals and abandoning repertoires that index migrant status. The state’s apprehension of ethnicity – expecting that immigrants can fit in locally just because they fit official racial categories – does not consider how cultural practices are re-valued when transported to a different space. Notes (1) The Total Fertility rate for the nation has averaged around 1.20 between 2010 to 2019. It was 1.14 in 2019 (Singapore Department of Statistics 2019a). (2) The latest fi gure for immigrants who are non-citizens is 39% (2.2 million) of Singapore’s total population (5.7 million) (Singapore Department of Statistics 2019b). (3) While Singapore’s Constitution guarantees every citizen’s right to freedom of speech and expression, and peaceful assembly without arms, these rights are severely curtailed by laws such as the Public Order Act. Labour strikes are also illegal unless they follow stringent rules in the Trade Unions Act and Trade Disputes Act. A two-day strike by Chinese nationals working for Singapore’s train system in 2013 was deemed

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illegal with subsequent arrests and deportations, and was actually the only strike since 1986 (Wong, 2013). All public gatherings must apply for a police permit, and activists who do flout regulations have been swiftly arrested in the past. (4) The recruitment process in China is not permitted in ‘first tier’ economic zones such as Beijing and Shanghai, but takes place in ‘second tier’ cities such as Chongqing and Chengdu. I would presume it is for reasons linked to restrictions on internal migration within China ie the ‘户口HuKou’ system where families are registered as households and tied to a particular municipality. This may widen the opportunities for individuals who desire top quality education, but who may be prevented by the HuKou system from migrating to Beijing and Shanghai where the best institutions are. It would also prevent a brain drain of top talent already residing in and enjoying opportunities in ‘first tier’ cities. (5) The state has been rather reluctant to publish hard figures of immigrant students on scholarships, even when asked direct questions in parliament (Hansard, 2012: 776). This may be due to the rise in anti-immigration sentiment among members of the public, and the state’s fear of antagonising these groups.

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4 Joseonjok YouTubers: Translating Vernacular Chineseness in South Korea Elaine Chung and Xuan Wang

Introduction

Joseonjok is the Korean equivalent of Chaoxianzu (Chaoxian nationality) in Chinese, which refers to Chinese nationals who are of Korean descent and are recognised as Chaoxianzu, one of the 55 officially categorised ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China. Outside China, Joseonjok is a commonly used label for the Korean diasporic population who have re-migrated from China. Joseonjok in this chapter primarily refers to those living and working in South Korea. It is widely observed that the Joseonjok diaspora in contemporary South Korea suffer from systematic socioeconomic exclusion due to the country’s nationalist ideology and policy on immigration, recognition and associated civic rights (Piao, 2017; Seol & Skrentny, 2009). At the centre of this predicament lies the uneasy positioning of Joseonjok as a group being caught up in the historical entanglement and ongoing tensions surrounding the ethnonational boundaries between the so-called Chineseness and Koreanness (Park & Park, 2015; Waddell & Kim, 2015). Simply by virtue of its name, Joseonjok is faced with what can be described as double affi liation and marginalisation: the labelling not only marks out their adopted status as ‘ethnic minority’ in China, it also serves as an index of othering to which the group is regularly subjected due to their Chinese ‘national’ background, even if linguistically and culturally they may well identify themselves as having as much if not more in common with the ‘ancestral’ Koreans. In this sense, Joseonjok constitutes a group whose voice is systemically ignored, overshadowed and even manipulated by the mainstream discourses and media representations in their host society of South Korea. 57

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Recently, with the emergence of YouTube and other platforms of social media, vernacular communities such as Joseonjok (also Asian American, African American, Latinos, etc.; see e.g. Guo & Harlow, 2014; Guo & Lee, 2013) are afforded new channels and opportunities through which they are able to engage with and to various extents tackle issues of social alienation and inequality in relation to their own sense of subjectivity. By generating and disseminating self-made multimodal materials on YouTube, the Joseonjok appear to try to, among other things, articulate their Chineseness vis-à-vis Koreanness from their individual and collective perspectives to both ingroup and outgroup members. This chapter aims to uncover the vernacular voice projected by Joseonjok by scrutinising online discourses produced by popular YouTubers from this community in the South Korean context. It focuses on their vernacular discursive strategies, that is, selectively or simultaneously affi rming or distancing from the essentialised, binary perceptions of Chineseness and Koreanness, by which Joseonjok YouTubers construct highly hybrid, ambivalent and sometimes incoherent meanings of self that must still fit the dominant cultural politics of recognition. The hybrid vernacular discourse as seen in this chapter, we suggest, points us to practices of cultural translation that contest and potentially deconstruct predefi ned categories and boundaries such as Chineseness, thus ‘serv[ing] as a vehicle for new ways of seeing and being that enable us to question the received ideas that structure the worlds in which we live’ (Maitland, 2017: i). Joseonjok and Their Double Marginality Joseonjok as ethnic minority in China

Historically, Korea has had close geopolitical ties with China, particularly during the five centuries of the reign of the Joseon dynasty (1392– 1910). The history of Joseonjok as a distinct ethnic group in China, however, is relatively short. Many of the group today are only of the third or fourth generation, resulting from the more recent waves of migration in the 19th century for political and economic reasons (Lee, 2019). These migrants were known as Joseonin, or Chaoxianren in Chinese, which means ‘people of Joseon’ (arguably with an undertone of Sinocentrism; cf. Rozman, 2012). Their descendants who remained in China have later been officially recognised as Chinese citizens after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. As part of the Ethnic Classification Project enforced by the newly established communist government (Mullaney, 2011), these Korean Chinese in turn became Chaoxianzu – reversely in Korean, Joseonjok (people of the Joseon ethnicity) – one of the 56 officially

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categorised minzu (ethnic nationalities) – alongside the dominant group of Han Chinese that constitutes more than 90% of the population. The name Joseonjok, therefore, is a reinvented ethnolinguistic label derived from Joseon and Joseonin in Korean while reflecting China’s modernist project of constructing a multinational, multicultural nationhood in which the hegemony of the Han majority is unmarked by creating and casting the minority others as distinct ethnic and cultural groups (Mullaney, 2011). The labelling, furthermore, indicates a semantic shift which signifies a fundamental change of the political status of Joseonjok, from foreign immigrants of vague state boundaries to ‘indigenous’ ethnic nationals who have been fully legitimised and integrated into the Chinese nation-state. This discursive and political process of ethnicisation, minoritisation and Sinicisation is sustained by the establishment of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province in 1952, instituting Yanbian, the remote frontier in Northeast China bordering the Korea Peninsula, the designated settlement area of Joseonjok. Following on, and owing to the various ethnic policies, including the availability of ChineseKorean bilingual primary and secondary education in Yanbian, Joseonjok has been able to attain remarkable educational achievements, with the lowest illiteracy rate of all ethnic minority groups (Park, 2017). As a result, Joseonjok have been extolled by the Chinese state and public as a ‘model minority’ group (Gao, 2008). Although Joseonjok are officially entitled and encouraged to maintain their ethnic traditions, the community in its ‘native’ region of Yanbian has been shrinking considerably in recent years. According to government statistics (Census Data, 2010), there are approximately a total of 1.8 million Joseonjok in China, but only about 56% of them actually reside in Jilin province. The cause of the exodus is largely attributed to economic migrations of Joseonjok to wealthier metropolitan centres from Northeast China, a ‘geo-economic hinterland’ (Gao, 2008: 62) or the ‘Rust Belt’ of China (Han, 2013: 72) that has been left behind by the country’s rapid yet uneven economic reform and development in the past decades. Especially since the 1990s, many Joseonjok residents have moved to coastal cities in China, where education in Korean language is unavailable, to seek lucrative job and business opportunities. Many of those who remain in Yanbian also send their children to Chinese-only schools, hoping that they can have better knowledge of the Han Chinese language and culture which are essential for social mobility across the country. In this way, despite the state policies rewarding their loyalty and docility, Joseonjok as a people of migrant origin are doomed to be left in a marginal space with limited prospects for future prosperity and autonomy.

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Joseonjok as outcast migrants in South Korea

Apart from major cities in China, a growing number of Joseonjok people venture further away to other countries, such as Japan or America, in search of a better life. Many make their way to South Korea, believing that their Korean linguistic skills and cultural heritage can facilitate their lives in the supposed ancestral home that has fossilised in the group’s collective memory. Despite the influx of migrant workers in the past decades, the South Korean government has been slow in addressing cultural diversities and protecting these minorities from widely observable social stratification, discrimination and injustice (Lee, 2009; Park & Lo, 2012). In this adverse context, Joseonjoks moving back to South Korea is hardly a happy return to an imagined or long-lost homeland. Most of the first generation Joseonjok migrants stayed in South Korea without a legal status. Given this, and even when many of them took up jobs that are considered too low-paying, dirty or dangerous for the locals, the South Korean government – as opposed to its warm welcome to Korean Americans – has exerted strict control over the economic activities, thus, social access, of Joseonjok migrants. For instance, the H-2 short-term working visa, issued only to Korean descendants from less developed countries, including Joseonjok from China, is designed to prohibit its holders from working outside the prescribed list of industries that are in short supply of manual labour. Even though many Joseonjok migrants nowadays are more skilled workers in comparison to their predecessors in the 1990s, the institutional, systematic othering and discrimination persist and go hand-in-hand with the widespread stereotypes of Joseonjok in South Korean society. Frequently, Joseonjok are portrayed as unskilled immigrants, inferior residents, and potential law-offenders (Lee & Chien, 2017; Piao, 2017), and this image is reinforced by the overrepresentations of Joseonjok as fierce criminals in South Korean television and cinema (e.g. Waddell & Kim, 2015). Rather than a symbol of ingroup membership and affinity, Joseonjok’s Chinese ties are repeatedly depicted as evidence of impurity while their Korean heritage is seen as a dangerous tool for infi ltrating the South Korean society (Yi & Jung, 2015). Although the South Korean government policy regarding Joseonjok increasingly gives them rights above and beyond those enjoyed by other non-Korean migrants, such as Han Chinese, it continues to keep them at the margin of the Korean nation (Seol & Skrentny, 2009), perhaps precisely because of their Chinese origin and affi liation. According to the official database (KOSIS, 2020), there are currently over 700,000 Joseonjok

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residents in South Korea, making up by far the largest foreign group in the country; the second largest group, interestingly, are the 400,000 so-called ‘Chinese’. That is to say, ‘Korean Chinese’ (Joseonjok) are singled out from other Chinese nationals in South Korea’s official immigration system. While old and new Chinese immigrants from not only the PRC but also Taiwan and Singapore are collectively known in South Korea as hwagyo (hwaqiao in Chinese, meaning ‘Chinese citizens living abroad’), Joseonjok are not considered a part of them. The logic of this differentiation underscores the general, problematic perception of the Chinese diaspora, which assumes a geographical hierarchy of Chineseness with those living outside China proper being less authentic (Ang, 2001), while ignoring the possible ‘end date’ of diaspora (Shih, 2013: 38) when emigrants eventually fully subscribe to their settled culture. The outcast status of Joseonjok in South Korea is linked to Chineseness as a wider, globalising issue, especially with regard to ethnic minority Chinese diasporas. Since they are considered marginal even within the PRC, the epicentre of Chineseness, non-Han Chinese citizens emigrated out of China such as Joseonjok are further excluded from the essentialised category of Chinese diasporas that centres on Han Chinese (Lo, 2013). It is difficult, even for the Chinese government (Barabantseva, 2010), to consistently treat ethnic minorities returning to their ancestral homelands as overseas or diasporic Chinese. However, given these people’s Chinese citizenship and lived experience in China, it would also be impossible to wipe out their Chinese affinity when they leave geographical China. This Sinocentric and Han-centric understanding of Chineseness is precisely what this chapter, as well as this volume, seeks to deconstruct or unpack, by looking into how vernacular Chinese communities associate themselves with or distance themselves from so-called Chineseness in a specific context. Joseonjok in South Korea, as this chapter will show, offer a case in point, and it is to this we now turn. Hybrid Vernacular Discourse of Chineseness

In August 2017, the Joseonjok community in South Korea held the largest protest rally in history (Ock, 2017). The protest was against the newly released Korean movie Midnight Runner for allegedly misrepresenting Daerim District, the major Joseonjok settlement in Seoul, as a hotbed of violent crime. The Joseonjok protestors mobilised various labels of Chinese and Korean identities to communicate their cause. On the placards they held in front of the press (see Kang, 2017), the protestors urged South Koreans to treat them fairly as dongpo returned from China, which

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in the Korean language literally means compatriots and commonly refers to diasporic Koreans. Meanwhile, in an interview with Huaren Shijie (Chinese World, 2017), a daily news show on the Chinese-governmentowned channel CCTV International, one of the protest leaders described in heavily accented Mandarin Chinese that Joseonjok are tongbao of the Chinese people, a word that is the exact Chinese equivalent of dongpo, referring here to Chinese compatriots and diasporic Chinese. The twominute session aired by CCTV International, on the other hand, depicted Joseonjok in South Korea as a group of huaqiao and huaren (foreign citizens of Chinese descent) who were protesting against the defamation of the ‘Chinatown’ in Seoul, although the two Chinese terms are mostly used to refer to Han Chinese who have migrated abroad. The word ‘Joseonjok’ was unmentioned and completely subsumed into a broader, Handominated Chinese national identity. From the various identity labels chosen and deployed among this controversy, which is the epitome of the kind of struggles Joseonjok perpetually face, one can see a vernacular discourse (cf. Flores, 2009) specific to Joseonjok emerging, with ‘Chineseness’ being the centre of its concern. A basic observation is that this discourse, to follow Ono and Sloop (1995), is culturally syncretic, in the sense that (a) it involves overt protest from Joseonjok as a marginalised community against the dominant image and ideology imposed on them (‘criminal immigrants’); (b) it situates the protest within the double framework of hegemony, namely, Joseonjok as ‘marginal nationals’ of China and as ‘impure descendants’ in South Korea; and (c) it reproduces and embraces the popular rhetoric of compatriot (‘dongpo’ and ‘tongbao’ respectively, which are akin to what Ono and Sloop term ‘pastiche’ but are misrecognised and dismissed by both sides) in an attempt to appeal to specific audiences for symbolic sympathy, approval and acceptance. The mixed orientations show that Joseonjok’s struggles for recognition are inherently hybrid and pluricentric, involving at once multiple agency (the home country, the host society, the mainstream media as well as the vernacular community itself) and, as such, different, asymmetrical and sometimes contradictory discursive centres and imperatives. In the same vein, the ‘Chineseness’ produced from this vernacular discourse is arguably hybrid too since, as aforementioned, it is not necessarily in a binary relationship with but can be intersectional with other identity categories, a point also evidenced in studies of Joseonjok elsewhere

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(Gao, 2008; Han, 2013; Lee & Lee, 2015; Park, 2017). In fact, the discursive manoeuvring of Joseonjok is ultimately for constructing a sense of ‘Joseonjokness’ without necessarily subverting ‘Chineseness’ or asserting it over anything else. To this end, Joseonjokness is better understood as a product of strategic hybridity (Kraidy, 2002; cf. Bhabha, 1994) between Chineseness and Koreanness, embedded in power-laden communicative practices through which Joseonjok subjects can claim what Bhabha (1994) calls the Third Space that they culturally inhabit, and flexibly posit themselves between the dominant perceptions in order to maximise their interests and have their marginalised voice heard. Chineseness, in this light, should be understood not as an automatic or pregiven identity but part of a ‘strategic choice’ (Chun, 2017: 204). Such a choice is both political and cultural, and predicates on the rearticulation, negotiation and translation of difference in terms of value systems and communication cultures (Kramsch & Zhu, 2020), as can be seen in the Joseonjok protestors’ effort in drawing on different discursive and linguistic strategies when facing different audiences and norms. However, like many other unsuccessful complaints the Joseonjok community has made against the South Korean media (Waddell & Kim, 2015), the 2017 protest failed to stop Midnight Runner from being a national box office hit. Perhaps because of the feeling of powerlessness, many Joseonjok youths began to turn to social media, where they have created their own contents in response to the discriminatory discourses against them. The participatory and emancipatory potentials of social media (notwithstanding its enormous structural normativity and constraints; see Fuchs, 2014) open up new avenues for Joseonjok who otherwise have little say or influence on how the South Korean authorities and media (or Chinese ones) represent and define them. YouTube, for example, quickly becomes a convenient and popular platform where more and more vernacular discourses start to mushroom online through which Joseonjok are seen as actively rebuffing stereotypes and communicating their own ethnic and cultural identification in the public sphere. Pertinent to the consideration of such online activities, as this chapter sets out to do, is the concept of ‘hybrid vernacular discourse’ proposed by Guo and Lee (2014). Following Ono and Sloop’s (1995) critique that voices of the subaltern do not automatically represent counter-hegemony but often incorporate the dominant power they appear to protest against, Guo and Lee (2014) expand this discussion to the understanding of resistance and self-identification in the age of social media. In their study of Asian American YouTubers, they suggest a model of analysis from the aspects of content, agency and subjectivity. They argue that not only do

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YouTube-based vernacular discourses interact with mainstream and other types of discourses at the textual level, but their production online also involve hybrid agency of the personal and the institutional, both of which shape or constrain vernacular discourses on the site. Furthermore, subjectivities that emerge from online vernacular discourses are outcomes of political strategies of hybridisation that blur and deconstruct the existing social distinctions and boundaries while reconstructing differences, borders and social agendas. Guo and Lee’s (2014) arguments echo the ongoing debates over whether social media platforms orienting to entertainment and commercial purposes can empower and legitimise subaltern voices (Turner, 2010). Similarly, this chapter explores how and to what extent the Joseonjok YouTubers make use of the online space for challenging the social structures that marginalise their community in the offline world, applying the synthesised model of hybrid vernacular discourse. Importantly, we draw on the notion of cultural translation to critically examine the way the Joseonjok YouTubers speak for and to fellow Joseonjok while also addressing South Korean viewers as their targeted audience through Koreanlanguage videos. As mentioned earlier, cultural translation involves the translation of the symbolic system of one community to another, and therefore is often entwined with the political aim to effect social changes by transforming the minds and lives of the targeted group with ‘foreign’ practices, belief and values (Kramsch & Zhu, 2020; Maitland, 2017: 53). For the Joseonjok YouTubers studied in this chapter, who consciously introduce, if not lecture, South Korean viewers on the ‘authentic’ image and legitimate identity of Joseonjok, they exhibit both intent and strategies to communicate and translate their marginality to the mainstream. Translating Joseonjokness on YouTube

Having considered the theoretical synthesis of hybrid vernacular discourse and cultural translation, we will now explore the discourse strategies employed by Joseonjok YouTubers for narrating and translating marginality and hybrid identity on social media. This, as explained above, revolves around the construction of Joseonjokness of which the so-called Chineseness (as much as Koreanness) is part and parcel. Three Joseonjok YouTubers who have attained relatively high average viewership and visibility are selected for case studies. Their online nicknames and YouTube channels are respectively Bobo/bobotv, Kim Min (henceforth KM)/eoneul-uni haetnim, and Lee Jung (henceforth LJ)/jeongdaeuntv. All three YouTubers were born and grew up in Yanbian Korean

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Autonomous Prefecture in China. Bobo and KM migrated to South Korea with their Joseonjok spouses, and LJ, after completing her undergraduate degree in China, has moved to Japan for further studies. Though residing outside of South Korea, LJ’s videos are all in the Korean language and her discussions on Joseonjok identity are mostly based on her knowledge about Joseonjok in China and South Korea, rather than in Japan. Based on research conducted in May 2020 using the YouTube search results of the keyword ‘Joseonjok’, LJ’s and Bobo’s videos have the highest viewing figures among those made by (self-proclaimed) Joseonjok, reaching 238,969 (jeongdauntv, 2019d) and 91,384 (bobotv, 2019c) respectively. Contrarily, KM’s videos are less viewed. She is included in this study since she was featured in a video published by Awesome STORY, a South Korean grassroots YouTube channel that focuses on foreigners in South Korea and has 325,000 subscribers. As the video about KM has reached 172,322 views (Awesome STORY, 2019), it is safe to assume that she is also relatively well-known as a Joseonjok YouTuber. A close look at the videos published by these YouTubers (see Table 4.1) show that they cover diverse topics, often related to trivial episodes of life, ranging from parenting, housekeeping, meeting friends, dating and cooking to pop song covering and, sporadically, telling of personal family histories, thoughts on Josoenjok identity and responses to discrimination against Joseonjok. This chapter focuses primarily on personal narratives of self-identity and commentaries on Joseonjok-related news produced by the YouTubers (see Table 4.1). These videos will be scrutinised adopting Table 4.1 An overview of videos published by the Joseonjok YouTubers Themes\Channels

bobotv

eoneul-ui haetnim

jeongdaeuntv

Travelling/everydaylife vlogs

12

22

23

Cooking/food reviews/mukbang

3

23

0

Life advice/housekeeping tips

9

7

1

Tips for running a YouTube channel

3

4

0

Song covering/ASMR

0

5

16

Make-up/grooming tips

1

4

0

Product unboxings and reviews

1

1

0

Parodies of TV dramas

0

0

2

Livestreaming/Q&A with audience

3

5

0

Personal narratives of self-identity

3

4

2

Commentaries on Joseonjok-related news

5

0

0

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the approach of critical multimodal discourse analysis (cf. Kress, 2011) by which the vernacular discourses are revealed through examination of the semiotic modes adopted in the videos, including language, gesture, sound, written text, image, and visual effects. This will shed light on not only the micro-level practices of identity hybridisation, performance and translation, but also the macro-level structures and ideologies that shape the YouTubers’ communicative practices (Thurlow, 2017), that is, how their experiences as minority at home and overseas may have prompted their opting for certain discourse strategies in order to change people’s (mis) perceptions and opinions of Joseonjok. These strategies, as we will see below, include a mixture of self-essentialising, flexible identification and affirmation of their subordinate position. Essentialising Joseonjok ethnicity and its normalness

While most of their videos cover trivial episodes of lives with little ethnic specificity (Table 4.1), as the self-given titles of many of these videos tell, the YouTubers constantly remind viewers that they are Joseonjok. The emphasis on Joseonjok ethnicity and its ‘normalness’ is markedly featured in their videos. For example, the video blogs or vlogs that trace Bobo’s routine drive to work (bobotv, 2018) and LJ’s sightseeing in Japan (jeongdauntv, 2019c) are published as ‘the daily life of a Joseonjok in South Korea’ and ‘the travel story of a Joseonjok university student’. This voluntary self-ethnicisation is highly performative and purposeful, as they reveal that the YouTubing activities are motivated by a desire to show ‘how the majority of ordinary Joseonjok live’ and to counterbalance the overwhelming number of videos that associate Joseonjok with violent crimes and social deviants (jeongdauntv, 2018; bobotv, 2019b; eoneul-ui haetnim, 2019a). By flagging a Joseonjok label to everyday-life vlogs, the YouTubers convey a strong message to the South Korean public that Joseonjok’s otherness, contrary to common beliefs, is normal, unthreatening and perhaps even agreeable to (even if impossible to fully assimilate with) South Koreans. Language and accent are important tools for the YouTubers to normalise Joseonjok’s difference. Under the umbrella of Korean language, various dialects and accents are spoken. Joseonjok can be linguistically differentiated since their accent and word choice are characteristically different from those of South Koreans, including the standard Korean based on the Seoul dialect. The three YouTubers we studied consistently use Korean with a Yanbian accent to highlight the (essentialised version of) Joseonjokness as presented in their videos. For instance, KM names the

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videos of her accented conversations with Joseonjok friends and families in South Korea as ‘Yanbian language vlogs’ (eoneul-ui haetnim, 2019b, 2019c), while LJ introduces herself as a ‘Yanbian-language speaking university student’ in her make-up tutorial (jeongdauntv, 2019a). The deliberate foregrounding of marginal accents resonates with Chow’s (2014) concept of xenophone, a form of ‘creative reinvention’ for minority groups to destabilise the hegemony of the normative language. In this sense, by showing how Joseonjok’s linguistic otherness can naturally blend into the ordinary lives of many South Koreans, such as when talking to friends on the streets or sharing beauty information online, the YouTubers xenophonically subvert the default of standard Korean language in South Korea while normalising the Joseonjok language varieties. LJ’s parody of a popular South Korean TV drama Sky Castle, in which she asks ‘what about the main characters all being Joseonjok?’ and performs the original lines in Yanbian dialect (jeongdauntv, 2019b), further exemplifies a xenophonic resistance and implicitly challenges the absence of Joseonjok characters, except for criminals, in South Korea’s mainstream media. Along with the everyday-life vlogs, the YouTubers also produce a small number of videos in which they share their personal backgrounds, migration trajectories, and self-identities. Notably, the self-narratives are always accompanied by their responses to public misconceptions of Joseonjok. For example, in his video entitled ‘I am a Joseonjok’, Bobo declares that he is proud to be a Joseonjok after condemning Han Songi, a North-Korean-defector-turned-South-Korean TV personality who demeaned Joseonjok as ‘garbage’ (bobotv, 2019b); KM states in one of her videos that she decided to produce something specifically about her selfidentity after her previous videos were attacked by malicious comments against Joseonjok (eoneul-ui haetnim, 2019a); and LJ, though studying in Japan, also proclaims that she will create a video about the history of Joseonjok to unravel some common misunderstandings about Joseonjok among South Koreans (jeongdauntv 2019c). Although the YouTubers heavily use the pronouns ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’, gaining identification from fellow Joseonjok does not seem to be their priority. Instead, they urge fellow Joseonjok to use social media and contribute to the improvement of ‘our’ image (bobotv, 2019b) for a larger purpose of providing ‘accurate’ and ‘authentic’ information about Joseonjok. In other words, rather than simply criticising South Koreans for stereotyping Joseonjok, the YouTubers consciously assume the role of cultural translator to mediate intercultural understanding on behalf of the community. Meanwhile, the YouTubers further construct the sense of Joseonjokness by creating a collective identity that they can openly claim, perform and

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translate. As described by Ono and Sloop (1995), vernacular discourse does not only contest dominant discourses but also serves to ‘reflect a community’s defi nition of itself’ (Flores, 2009: 996). In several videos, the YouTubers celebrate ingroup solidarity by characterising Joseonjok as a group of people who are proud of their ethnicity and resilient in preserving their ethno-linguacultural tradition. While LJ testifies from her experience that Joseonjok migrants across the world, sharing a ‘strong ethnic spirit’, are willing to connect with and help their fellow members (jeongdauntv, 2019d), Bobo and KM upload videos of their offl ine socialising events to show that Joseonjok YouTubers in South Korea are supportive of each other (eoneul-ui haetnim, 2020). This emphasis on internal solidarity and cohesion, however, inevitably involves a process of self-essentialisation, by which individual difference and diversity of non-ethnic or ‘non-Joseonjok’ categories, such as age, gender, occupation or destination of migration, are obscured by the construction of a singular, homogeneous Joseonjokness. According to Lo (2015), who reflects on cases of minority activisms online, elite leaders tend to imagine a unified ethnic identity to portray a legitimate ethnic history and collectivity that can resist the state. It seems that the Joseonjok YouTubers are adopting a similar strategy. As illustrated by the above examples, even though they are aware of the multiplicity within their community – for example, LJ frequently refers to her Yanbian accent as ‘Joseonjok accent’, even though she also admits that many accents are spoken among Joseonjok (jeongdauntv, 2019d) – they tend to ‘strategically essentialise’ (Buchanan, 2018) an imagined Joseonjokness to render the group’s voice coherent enough to be translatable and recognisable to both themselves and external audiences. Claiming flexible Chineseness

Another theme emerging from the YouTubers’ videos has to do with the strategic distancing from the Chineseness Joseonjok are attached to in order to debunk the suspicions and stereotypes they encounter in South Korea. As discussed above, the YouTubers use the self-reference ‘we’ to project group unification and show that as the Joseonjok Other, they are perfectly ordinary, normal and unthreatening. In other videos, they also use ‘we’ or ‘us’ when addressing South Koreans, and in doing so they outspokenly emphasise and claim the shared Korean bloodline. But this play of the ethnic card is often impeded by their ascribed Chineseness. The political ideology of ethnonationalism, the belief that South Korea is an ethnically homogeneous nation whose people shared the same

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ancestral root, has been dominant in South Korean society. This discourse is often invoked to incite people’s loyalty to the ethnic nation and promote unification with North Korea. The marriage between ethnicity and nationalism puts Joseonjok in an uneasy position since Joseonjok’s faithfulness to the Korean nation is considered highly distrustful because of their Chinese nationality. Lately, amid rumours that the Chinese government employed Joseonjok to influence online opinions of the 2020 South Korean parliamentary election, the Joseonjok community in the country are increasingly accused by the media and the public of being dangerous spies who work for Communist China while disguising themselves physically and linguistically as South Koreans. The Chinese government’s pursuit to mobilise nationalism among overseas Chinese in recent years has fuelled the hostility and suspicion too. Against this backdrop, to convince South Koreans to embrace Joseonjok not as ‘foreigners’ but members of the Korean family, the YouTubers must above all explain their Chineseness, the root of their alleged ‘impure’ Koreanness. It is for this reason that the YouTubers carefully address the topic ‘whether Joseonjok migrants are Chinese or South Koreans’, which they cast as a frequently asked question from South Korean people. And all three of them fi rmly assert that ‘we are Chinese’. Remarkably, this statement is always followed by lengthy elaborations and specifications. Like Bobo who edits the cover of the PRC passport into his video ‘Are Joseonjok Chinese?? Korean??’ (bobotv, 2019c), the YouTubers uniformly insist that Joseonjok are Chinese only because they were born in China with a prescribed Chinese nationality. What they are seeking in saying so is what Ong (1999) describes as ‘flexible citizenship’, by which their affiliation to China can be reduced to something objective, passive and external to them, like a passport, based on practical circumstances rather than active ethnocultural identification or political allegiance. This can also be seen in the explanation offered by KM that she only keeps her Chinese citizenship because it is more convenient for her to visit family in China (eoneului haetnim, 2019a). Moreover, instead of identifying themselves as Chinese, the YouTubers give reasons for why Joseonjok ‘can only’, ‘unavoidably’ and ‘inevitably’ (jeongdauntv, 2019d; bobotv, 2019b, 2019c) become Chinese, one of the main reasons, for instance, being that Joseonjok were educated in China since childhood, on history, culture and politics of the country where their ancestors fled to from Korea and sought shelter. In delimiting their discussions to the scope of citizenship, the YouTubers imply that for Joseonjok, their Chineseness is merely a byproduct of history and politics and therefore not in a mutually exclusive relationship with their identification with their Korean roots.

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Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

With such explanations attached to their statement ‘we are Chinese’, the videos are intended to downplay or defend Joseonjok’s Chinese affi liation and dismiss the dichotomy between Chineseness and Koreanness that underlies the question itself. Whenever viewers demand them to take a side between China and South Korea, such as between Chinese and South Korean teams in football matches (bobotv, 2019c), or between Chinese and South Korean men as boyfriends (jeongdauntv, 2019d), the YouTubers refuse to provide a concrete reply and, in return, urge South Koreans to stop forcing Joseonjok to testify to their Koreanness by disapproving of China (bobotv, 2019c). This often generates complicated responses to reflect a flexible or ambiguous positioning to Chineseness in relation to Koreanness. Bobo’s words in one of his videos succinctly illustrate this strategy: Let me reiterate that Joseonjok are Chinese, that is, Chinese people that hold Chinese nationality. They were not born in other countries and later naturalised as Chinese. They are Chinese people who were born in China, educated in China and they have learnt Chinese culture. But being one of the ethnic minority groups in China, Joseonjok have been working hard to preserve the cultural tradition and language of our [Korean] ethnicity. Joseonjok live with the pride of our [Korean] ethnicity. Therefore, for us, Joseonjok: nationality is nationality, ethnicity is ethnicity. (bobotv, 2019b, 4’23–4’59)

In the quote, Bobo uses both third-person and first-person perspectives to dissect Joseonjok’s relationship with Chineseness and Koreanness. The third-person reference ‘they’ (in lines 2 and 3) is chosen when he explains why Joseonjok are born to be Chinese nationals. This sort of neutral and distanced position-taking by Bobo (also the two other YouTubers) demonstrates that Joseonjok’s Chineseness is largely bound to citizenship so does not offset their commitment to Koreanness. Meanwhile, in the first-person narratives, there are two layers of ‘we’, one (‘us, Joseonjok’, see line 7) as a self-reference to Joseonjok, and the other (‘our [Korean] ethnicity’, see line 6) referring to the broader category of ethnic Korean to which they subscribe. By grouping themselves with South Koreans in this latter category, the YouTubers try to redefine Koreanness by inserting the voices of nonSouth Korean nationals such as Joseonjok migrants, pleading that Joseonjok’s Koreanness should not be denied because it is hybridised with or infiltrated by Chineseness. In summary, while the YouTubers assert their Chinese affiliation, they also put themselves in a position in which they can distance and declaim it, rationally but discreetly, in order to allow themselves to be Korean and recognisable as such to South Koreans. This ambivalence and flexibility

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lead to a Joseonjokness that rests upon and brings together both Chineseness and Koreanness through symbolic negotiation and repositioning. The hybridity and inbetweenness are also described by KM: ‘it is fi ne to say that we [Joseonjok] play both sides against the middle because we do like both China and South Korea’ (eoneul-ui haetnim, 2019a). Being the transnational ‘model minority’

One further distinct pattern is that the YouTubers consciously deploy a ‘model minority’ strategy which Joseonjok are acquainted with back in China. This relies on appropriate displays of loyalty and docility towards the dominant expectations. For example, the YouTubers avoid being too critical of South Koreans as the main audience, ensuring that they do not feel the established ethnocultural hierarchy and social normativity are radically challenged and, therefore, are comfortable with the alternative voices of Josoenjok. By putting the blame on distorted media representations (bobotv, 2019c), the YouTubers show understanding of why ordinary South Koreans, especially those who have never met any Joseonjok, could be ‘misled’ to discriminating the group. They also tend to declare their attachment and gratitude to South Korea before making any critical comment. For example, Bobo states that, despite his discontent with the discrimination experienced in South Korea, he is grateful to the country’s visa policy which allows him to stay and work (bobotv, 2019b); and KM, while claiming that she is not ready to fully integrate herself into the South Korean society, asserts that she has been ‘upgraded’ by the sophisticated lifestyle and culture in the country – and when saying so, she uses the popular meme of a Chinese beggar (Brother Sharp) to describe how she used to be a dowdy and scruff y woman with poor style (eoneul-ui haetnim, 2019a). In addition, from time to time, the YouTubers even agree that South Koreans do have legitimate reasons to be hostile to Joseonjok after seeing news about the violent crimes and disorderly behaviours attributed to Joseonjok individuals (jeongdauntv, 2019d; bobotv, 2019c). In contrast to their celebration of Joseonjok as a cohesive community, by acknowledging the validity of some stereotypical images of Joseonjok, the YouTubers effectively divide members of their own community into hierarchical categories: the bad minority, the uneducated minority, the good majority, and the opinion leaders cum translators like themselves. Firstly, they fi rmly distance the ‘majority’ of Joseonjok from those individuals who committed crimes in South Korea, asserting that it is unfair to generalise ‘isolated cases’. On the other hand, in respect of those Joseonjok migrants who fail to conform to the South Korean social

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etiquettes, the YouTubers explain that they are just ‘a portion of elder Joseonjok’ who keep old living habits from China and have not learnt how to adapt to the new sociocultural norms of South Korea (bobotv, 2019c; jeongdauntv, 2019c). Defi ning the troublemaking Joseonjok as the cause of discrimination who are in fact merely ‘the minority’, the YouTubers go on to argue that most Joseonjok are law-abiding and well-behaved residents and therefore a model minority in South Korea. The YouTubers have put themselves in the category of the good majority. They also assign themselves the role of influencers who teach other members of Joseonjok to contribute to improving the group’s public image. Directly addressing their peers with captions like ‘to Joseonjok viewers’ on the screen (jeongdauntv, 2019d), the YouTubers provide fellow Joseonjok with specific guidance on how to be like a South Korean, such as ‘avoid talking loudly in public areas as if you were in China’, ‘remember to dispose of household wastes properly’, ‘keep away from disorderly behaviour after drinking’ (bobotv, 2019c; jeongdauntv, 2019c), and so forth. Such advice reminds us once again of the model minority rhetoric Joseonjok inherit from back in China, which is rooted ‘in popular Chinese notions of success and merits’ (Gao, 2008: 60) that celebrate the docility and productivity of ethnic minorities and encourage them to be diligent and self-sufficient in order to be recognised by the mainstream. Following the same logic, the YouTubers engender discourses of good Joseonjok migrants by placing a greater emphasis on how Joseonjok overcome institutional discrimination and inequality with their hard work than on the problem itself. Bobo, for instance, talks about job competition between foreign and domestic workers in South Korea’s construction industry (bobotv, 2019a). Rather than criticising South Korean companies for excluding foreigners with valid visas and even naturalised citizenship, Bobo focuses on arguing that, regardless of the inequality, foreigners, including Joseonjok, are sought-after on the labour market since they are more industrious and compliant than their South Korean counterparts. By prioritising self-realisation over resistance, the YouTubers disseminate the message that, only when a minority group is decent, competent and cooperative enough is it legitimate for them to speak up against discrimination and inequality. Thus, before meeting these conditions, Joseonjok in South Korea should be ‘tolerant to unfavourable treatments’ (bobotv, 2019c; jeongdauntv, 2019d) and work on improving and proving themselves. The above lecturing given by the YouTubers to fellow Joseonjok is simultaneously a performance to the South Korean viewers, showing them that some Joseonjok are leading, and willingly so, the entire community to appreciate and conform to the South Korean normativity. As described

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earlier, in the protest against Midnight Runner, some Joseonjok participants tried to contend their legitimacy by holding a placard that read ‘Chinese “dongpo” are model migrants’ (Jo, 2017) in front of the Korean press. Likewise, the YouTubers are seen deploying the same discourse of model minority, not only within the Joseonjok community but also translating it from the Chinese context to the South Korean context, seeking to manifest that Joseonjok can replicate and transform their ‘success’ story across national and ethnocultural borders. Conclusion

This chapter presents a case of Joseonjok YouTubers and the online vernacular discourse they produce in the context of South Korea. In the age of globalisation and social media, disenfranchised communities such as Joseonjok seem to have, as this study illustrates, more resources and scope than before for coming up with their own defi nitions of who they are in the face of the dominant groups. While the social technology of YouTube and the like is gaining criticisms for feeding and exacerbating power asymmetry and social injustice driven by consumerism and surveillance capitalism, it does also to a considerable extent enable the infrastructure for participatory culture and communication power that can potentially reshape the public sphere (see Fuchs, 2017; Turner, 2009; and others). As can be seen in the case of Joseonjok migrants, by resorting to YouTube, they begin to break out of the punitive adversities and restrictions experienced in the offline world and create an online transnational space where they can connect and form a community of ethnocultural practice (e.g. LJ’s participation from Japan) to re-rationalise and reestablish, separately but collectively, the (artificial, alienating) social categories and boundaries imposed on them. As a result, a distinct vernacular discourse of Joseonjok is emerging, enabled by the new form and format for self-expression provided by YouTube, with the concomitant onlineoffl ine connectivity and interactions being multimodally encoded and (relatively) freely disseminated in the public mediascape. However, we must be cautious in declaring online vernacular discourse a fulfilment of the social media revolution as some may do. Guo and Lee (2014) rightfully remind us of the hybrid nature of content, agency and subjectivities in online activities, a point that has been widely observed in scholarship on the increasing complexities in the way social media operate (e.g. Fuchs, 2017; Turner, 2009) and how individuals navigate the various opportunities and constraints (Varis et al., 2013) at the personal, institutional, ideological, commercial, technological and other levels. What

74 Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

YouTube affords Joseonjok is indeed a discernible alternative that directs their consciousness of and pursuit for self-identification away from the state-sponsored mainstream media and public opinions. Nevertheless, this is a niched identity opportunity that is small in scale – note the modest YouTuber profi les and viewership – confi ned to specific languages and audiences and within the symbolic, digital discursive space of reactive representation and dissent. Such activities, we suggest, constitute noteworthy albeit moderate forms of micro online (video) activism (cf. Marichal, 2013), which largely follow the infotainment and prosumer patterns of social media – as can be seen in the video types and contents of the YouTubers – even if they are invested with important yet implicit intent to subvert hegemony and claim social citizenship. Comparatively speaking, the YouTubers’ politically-oriented communication is heavily circumscribed by and embedded in banal and benign materials of everyday self-representation. Its visibility and impact, therefore, are also limited. Meanwhile, social media-based vernacular discourse, such as that presented in this study, can be understood as dynamic processes of selecting, devising and applying communicative strategies by the grassroots, marginalised subjects in order to project their voice to the mainstream society. This kind of discourse strategy, also observed elsewhere (e.g. Guo & Harlow, 2014; Guo & Lee, 2014), is characteristically hybrid and multivocal as the subaltern speakers consciously (dis)engage with multiple, specific public discourses and opinions endorsed by the powerful majority, and seek appropriate ways to address them. As demonstrated by the Joseonjok YouTubers, this involves simultaneous and seemingly ambivalent manoeuvres, such as self-assertion and self-essentialising (of Joseonjokness), professing but refraining and distancing from the prescribed affi liation (Chineseness) that may cause precarity, while confirming and justifying the imposed subordinate position (of model minority as marginal Koreanness). Such strategies are hybrid and multivocal in the sense that, instead of assuming marginality by taking on stable and mutually exclusive identity categories (Chineseness and Koreanness) and having the legitimacy of the in-betweenness (Joseonjokness) they belong to denied, the YouTubers turn to redefine these identity categories, rebuff the stereotypes and recombine these into their own project of self-identification. And, to this end, as discussed earlier, the orientations they take are multidirectional and pluricentric, a stance ambiguous, contradictory and inconclusive, as they speak at once to different audiences and stakeholders (e.g. Chinese, South Koreans, fellow Joseonjok and other spectators – such as the researchers). In this light, the discourse strategy observable in the case of Joseonjok is in line with Ono and Sloop (1995) in that, although uttering a

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vernacular voice, it is not overtly, primarily or consistently counter hegemonic in its content or tone. Instead, it entails a mixed strategy of affirming and distancing, asserting and resisting in relation to Chineseness and Koreanness; and, even when distancing or resisting, as we have seen in the analysis, the YouTubers appear to be mindful of not being overly outspoken, transgressive or offensive in the eyes of South Koreans or the existing imperative of hierarchy and recognition in order to subtly explain, negotiate and justify their own sense of Joseonjokness. This type of discreet and covert behaviour adds to our earlier suggestion about micro activism, and further testifies that vernacular discourse can be described as fluid, nonlinear, flexible and strategically hybrid (Kraidy, 2002). In fact, we may go further to argue that the YouTube discourse of Joseonjok can be interpreted as an instance of local practices of flexible discursive strategy generated by members of the vernacular community for their own interest. The strategy, as revealed by the YouTubers, is as much about creating a set of self-narratives alternative to the hegemonic ones, as orienting to the relevant parties and interpretive frameworks accordingly and making what is said recognisable and understood to them via social media. It is in this sense that the YouTubers as inbetweener subjects become cultural translators who not only concern themselves with how to produce and perform a self-identity discourse as text per se, but also what they might be able to or have to do linguistically, semiotically, discursively and corporeally to facilitate its potential reach, reception and effect, taking stock of what social technology has to offer. In doing so, fi nally, the online vernacular discourse strategy of Joseonjok draws attention to the ongoing studies and debates about Chinese identities, in which this volume situates itself. To debunk the Sino-centrism and Han-centrism that underlie the label ‘Chinese diaspora’, Shih (2013) coins the term ‘Sinophone Studies’ to explore the multiple meanings of Chineseness encoded in the Chinese-language cultural texts produced by overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities within China. The case of Joseonjok YouTubers presented in this chapter contributes precisely to this framework and further expands it by considering ‘Chineseness’ inscribed in Korean, a non-Sinitic, non-Chinese language. What it also shows, more importantly, is that the kind of Chineseness based on modernist ethnonationalism has limited purchase in an increasingly diversifying world, particularly for those whose life reality requires multiple sets of identification and constant border crossing, both physically and metaphorically. For these individuals and groups, many of whom are left in the margins of society, self-identification is all the more essential for making sense of the self and the social environments that

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are supposed to acknowledge diversity, democracy and equality. In this respect, what the case of Joseonjok YouTubers ultimately indicates is that Chineseness is not a neutral, bounded, timeless and contextless object that one either has or doesn’t have; it is, like any identity label, a relative notion that is always open for negotiation, reappropriation and translation in real-life situations, even for powerless groups like Joseonjok. By way of flexible discursive strategy and micro online activism, as evidenced in this chapter, Chineseness as a pregiven is, however inconspicuous or moderate it may seem, being discursively and symbolically ‘disinvented and reconstituted’ (to borrow from Makoni & Pennycook, 2007) by vernacular communities in order to arrive at a self-determined identity. References Ang, I. (2001) On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West. London: Psychology Press. Awesome STORY (2019) The things that shocked Josoenjok who came to South Korea. YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEmkBTsOdyM (accessed January 2020). Barabantseva, E. (2010) Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism: De-Centering China. New York: Routledge. Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. bobotv (2018) Vlog of a Yanbian/Joseonjok Man’s daily life in South Korea [in Korean]. YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8u2hqs6qk4 (accessed July 2020). bobotv (2019a) Foreigners have no contribution to South Korean economy?? Foreigners occupied all job vacancies?? [in Korean]. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArOVo6uIUNs (accessed July 2020). bobotv (2019b) I am Joseonjok. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3-tXyyxAN24 (accessed May 2020). bobotv (2019c) Are Joseonjok Chinese?? Korean?? Let me talk about it [in Korean]. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8u2hqs6qk4 (accessed May 2020). Buchanan, I. (2018) Strategic essentialism. In A Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Census Data (2010) National Bureau of Statistics. See http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/pcsj/ (accessed April 2020). Chinese World (2017). CCTV.com. See http://tv.cntv.cn/video/C17604/4cad2067a57345 34ba534686b200586d (accessed April 2020). Chow, R. (2014) Not Like a Native Speaker: On Languaging as a Postcolonial Experience. New York: Columbia University Press. Chun, A. (2017) Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identifi cation. Albany: State University of New York Press. eoneul-ui haetnim (2019a) The reason why I have to start YouTube. YouTube. See https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy2BP4WYSwA (accessed May 2020). eoneul-ui haetnim (2019b) Vlog: Everyday conservation in Yanbian language. YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkPgkVBIPPs (accessed May 2020).

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eoneul-ui haetnim (2019c) Vlog: Joseonjok YouTubers/Everyday life with friends in Yanbian language. YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtCBsZGkTbA (accessed May 2020). eoneul-ui haetnim (2020) Vlog: Joseonjok YouTubers gathered for the first time … rookie YouTubers gathering. YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCqE9fmFQeg (accessed May 2020). Flores, L. (2009) Vernacular discourse. In S.W. Littlejohn and K.A. Foss (eds) Encyclopedia of Communication Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Fuchs, C. (2014) Social Media: A Critical Introduction. London: SAGE. Fuchs, C. (2017) Social Media: A Critical Introduction (2nd edn). London: SAGE. Gao, F. (2008) What it means to be a ‘model minority’: Voices of ethnic Koreans in Northeast China. Asian Ethnicity 9 (1), 55–67. Gates, P. (2019) Criminalization/Assimilation: Chinese/Americans and Chinatowns in Classical Hollywood Film. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Guo, L. and Harlow, S. (2014) User-generated racism: An analysis of stereotypes of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians in YouTube videos. Howard Journal of Communications 25 (3), 281–302. Guo, L. and Lee, L. (2013) The critique of YouTube-based vernacular discourse: A case study of YouTube’s Asian community. Critical Studies in Media Communication 30 (5), 391–406. Han, E. (2013) Contestation and Adaptation: The Politics of National Identity in China. New York: Oxford University Press. jeongdauntv (2018) Vlog of joseonjok university students in China: Curious about Yanbian dialect?! YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCrx5PJA7yA (accessed May 2020). jeongdauntv (2019a) [GRWM] Get ready for school with a Yanbian-language speaking female university student. YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yrOrhWp GlM (accessed May 2020). jeongdauntv (2019b) If Sky Castle’s protagonists are Joseonjok?? Parody with Yanbian dialect. YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O71LBROkRYw (accessed May 2020). jeongdauntv (2019c) New Year in Kyoto, second day of a Joseonjok university student’s trip to Kyoto. YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9k0wPnHK4c (accessed May 2020). jeongdauntv (2019d) South Korean? Chinese? A Joseonjok little sister tells you about Joseonjok. YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcTxEmzVC7M (accessed May 2020). Jo, S. (2017) ‘Is every Joseonjok gangster’ … Chinese dongpo strongly protested misrepresentation. Yonhap News. See https://www.yna.co.kr/view/MYH20170829003800038 (accessed September 2020). Kang, S. (2017) Chinese dongpo: Midnight Runner should go off the shelf and the fi lmmaker should apologise. Yonhap News. See https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR201708 28133100371 (accessed September 2020). KOSIS (2020) Data on foreign residents by nationality, region and age (2011–2019). Korean Statistics Information Service. See http://kosis.kr/statHtml/statHtml. do?orgId=111&tblId=DT_1B040A6 (accessed September 2020). Kraidy, M. (2002) Hybridity in cultural globalization. Communication Theory 12 (3), 316–339. Kramsch, C. and Zhu, H. (2020) Translating culture in global times: An introduction. Applied Linguistics 41 (1), 1–9.

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Kress, G. (2011) Multimodal discourse analysis. In J.P. Gee and N. Hanford (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 35–50). London: Routledge. Lee, D. (2019) ‘Victimised for being Chinese’: The hard lives of South Korea’s Joseonjok community. South China Morning Post, 10 May. See https://www.scmp.com/weekasia/society/article/3009651/hard-lives-south-koreas-chinese-joseon-jok-communitywho-face (accessed May 2021). Lee, J. and Lee, K. (2015) Multilingual experiences, media consumption, and transnational identity in a double diasporic context: The case of Korean-Chinese in Japan. Keio Communication Review 37, 27–39. Lee, S. and Chien, Y.-C. (2017) The making of ‘skilled’ overseas Koreans: Transformation of visa policies for co-ethnic migrants in South Korea. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43 (13), 2193–2210. Lee, Y. (2009) Migration, migrants, and contested ethno-nationalism in Korea. Critical Asian Studies 41 (3), 363–380. Lo, K.-C. (2013) Reconfiguring the Chinese diaspora through the eyes of ethnic minorities. In J. Kuehn, K. Louie and D.M. Pomfret (eds) Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China: Communities and Cultural Production (pp. 170–186). Toronto: UBC Press. Maitland, S. (2017) What Is Cultural Translation? London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (eds) (2007) Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Marichal, J. (2013) Political Facebook groups: Micro-activism and the digital front stage. First Monday 18 (12). See https://fi rstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/4653/3800 (accessed May 2021). Mullaney, T. (2011) Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Ock, H. (2017) Ethnic Korean-Chinese fight ‘criminal’ stigma in Korea. The Korean Herald. See http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170924000289 (accessed April 2020). Ong, A. (1999) Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press. Ono, K. and Sloop, J. (1995) The critique of vernacular discourse. Communication Monographs 62 (1), 19–46. Park, J. S.-Y. and Lo, A. (2012) Transnational South Korea as a site for a sociolinguistics of globalization: Markets, timescales, neoliberalism. Journal of Sociolinguistics 16 (2), 147–164. Park, G.H. and Park, G.H. (2015) Between ethnicity and nationality: Joseonjok’s dilemma between transnational mobility and ethnic identity [in Korean]. The Journal of Korean Studies 39, 449–484. Park, J.B. (2017) Identity, Policy, and Prosperity: Border Nationality of the Korean Diaspora and Regional Development in Northeast China. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Piao, Y. (2017) Hierarchical citizenship in perspective: South Korea’s Korean Chinese. Development and Society 46 (3), 557–589. Rozman, G. (2012) East Asian regionalism and Sinocentrism. Japanese Journal of Political Science 13 (1), 143–153. Seol, D.-H. and Skrentny, J.D. (2009) Ethnic return migration and hierarchical nationhood: Korean Chinese foreign workers in South Korea. Ethnicities 9 (2), 147–174. Shih, S. (2013) Against diaspora: The Sinophone as places of cultural production. In S.  Shih, C. Tsai and B. Bernards (eds) Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (pp. 25–42). New York: Columbia University Press.

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5 Framing Chineseness and Indonesianness on the Periphery Jessica Birnie-Smith

Introduction

Sociolinguistic studies have uncovered a variety of identities claimed by diaspora and mainland Chinese communities the world over (CurdtChristiansen & Hancock, 2014; Goebel, 2009; Handoko, 2009; Lee & Su, 2019; Wei & Hua, 2013; Zhang, 2005). However, political rhetoric has not consistently reflected these findings as many ethnic Chinese communities continue to be cast as a homogeneous group of ‘forever foreigners’ and agents of the PRC, whose actions in politics and the economy serve Chinese interests (Fealy & Ricci, 2019; Setijadi, 2017; Tuan, 1998). The current chapter challenges this rhetoric by unpacking what it means to be Chinese in Indonesia. Indonesia’s population is one of the most diverse in the world, consisting of numerous varied ethnic, religious and migrant groups, each with their own distinct languages and cultural practices (Goebel, 2009). Despite representing little more than 2% of the population, ethnic Chinese Indonesians have weathered the most erratic waves of public opinion of any ethnic group in the region (Aguilar, 2001; Coppel, 1983, 2008; Purdey, 2006; Suryadinata, 1978; Tan, 2004). Beginning during Dutch colonisation, the Chinese were segregated from non-Chinese Indonesian citizens, establishing the pribumi ‘native’/non-pribumi ‘non-native’ dichotomy that has served to exclude ethnic Chinese from Indonesian identity to this day (Elson, 2008; Handoko, 2007; Reid, 1997; Suryadinata, 1976; Tan, 2004). Post-independence, the development of a new national identity and associated standard Indonesian language cemented the classification of Chinese as non-Indonesians. The New Order’s monologic language policies required more than 600 ethnolinguistic groups to acquire the national 80

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language and assimilate to Indonesian national identity (Goebel, 2017). Most groups were considered capable of adopting Indonesian nationalism whilst maintaining their ethnic and regional identities (albeit in a newly subordinated position) (Steinhauer, 1994). However, Chinese languages and cultures were targeted as threats to Indonesian nationalism based on their perceived connection to Chinese nationalism, calling into question the political allegiances of the Chinese minority (Handoko, 2009; Suryadinata, 1976; Tan, 2004). In response to the ‘Chinese problem’, discriminatory government policies fixated on assimilating Chinese to pribumi Indonesian identity, while simultaneously ensuring they could never succeed in becoming pribumi Indonesians (Chua, 2004; Coppel, 2008). Anti-Chinese policies were eventually revoked during the reformation era. However, the lingering effects of anti-Chinese prejudices and cultural genocide are ongoing. Ethnic Chinese Indonesians today continue to be branded as one uniform and ‘exclusive’ group, incapable of integrating into the Indonesian nation (Setijadi, 2017). The reductive stereotyping of Chineseness is coupled with mounting distrust and suspicion of the ethnic Chinese, evidenced in the recent resurgence of pribumi ‘nativist’ narratives and anti-Chinese rhetoric in political discourse (Fealy & Ricci, 2019; Setijadi, 2017) Sociolinguistic studies of the ethnic Chinese have challenged these narratives by showing that heterogeneous diaspora communities are not ‘overseas Chinese’ but Indonesians strongly oriented to the culture, language and identity of the archipelago since their arrival centuries ago (Handoko, 2007, 2009; Heidhues, 2003; Oetomo, 1987, 1988; Rafferty, 1982; Tan, 2004). Research on Chinese youth throughout Java has consistently shown that the younger generations of ethnic Chinese have become Indonesianised, requiring those invested in rediscovering their ‘primordial Chineseness’ to engage in ‘resinicisation’ (Hoon, 2017; Setijadi, 2016). Although these works contradict claims that ethnic Chinese are not integrated into Indonesian society, they unintentionally reinforce the perceived homogeneity of the diaspora and augment perspectives of Chineseness as akin to foreignness, as Chinese identities are cast as largely irrelevant to young Indonesians who no longer recognise their Chinese ancestry. This chapter and others in this book produce a more nuanced picture of Chineseness that transcends cultural homogeneity and territory boundedness. Drawing on global southern perspectives, I adopt an intersectionality approach1 to illustrate that Chineseness and Indonesianness are not binary social categories but rather intersectional identities (cf. Kirkham, 2015; Kubota, 2019; Levon, 2011, 2015). Specifically, the analysis examines the use of Chinese and Indonesian address forms by ethnic Chinese youth

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at two educational institutions in Pontianak, West Kalimantan. The discussion demonstrates how address forms can reproduce perduring indexicalities (Manning, 2001) connected to Indonesian and Chinese cultures to instantiate intersecting Chinese and Indonesian identities in discourse. Before moving to a discussion of the results, I present in the following section the intersectionality approach adopted in this study. Following on, I then introduce Chinese and Indonesian address forms that are the object of analysis in this chapter. Operationalising Intersectionality

To examine the intersections of Chineseness and Indonesianness in this chapter, intersectionality acts as the lens for conceptualising identities. Additionally, Blommaert and De Fina’s (2017) chronotopic frame theory and Manning’s (2001) social relations are combined to examine how speakers use address forms to construct these intersecting identities in interaction. Intersectionality theory, at its most basic level, refers to the imbrication of social categories once viewed as independent (Crenshaw, 1989; McCall, 2005; Yuval-Davis, 2006). Although there exists a series of nonunified approaches to intersectionality research (e.g. Choo & Feree, 2010; Levon, 2011; McCall, 2005; Yuval-Davis, 2006), I draw on Levon’s (2011, 2015) interpretation that intersectionality captures the ‘lived reality’ of how linguistic work instantiates mutually constitutive identities simultaneously in particular ‘social, historical and interactional configurations’ (Levon, 2015: 297). To explore the role of language in structuring intersectional identities, sociolinguistic studies have frequently drawn on indexicality (e.g. Bucholtz, 2009; Eckert, 2014; Mallinson, 2006). Indexicality looks beyond the referential meaning of linguistic forms by examining how forms index social meanings, including particular social contexts, social categories and associated character traits (Silverstein, 2003). For example, the colloquial fi rst person singular (1SG) Jakartan pronoun gue refers to the speaker or the self. However, the use of this pronoun in context can index particular locations (Jakarta City), character traits (e.g. assertiveness, coolness, toughness) and interpersonal relationships (from familiar to socially distanced) (Djenar et al., 2018). Importantly, this example demonstrates that the relationship between forms and social meanings is nonexclusive and context-sensitive, with a single form (directly or indirectly) indexing multiple speech situations, social categories and associated traits across different contexts (Eckert, 2008; Ochs, 1992; Silverstein, 2003).

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Indexicality’s conceptualisation of social meaning as fluid and contextually variable (Eckert, 2008; Ochs, 1992) offers analytical space for the investigation of intersectional identities (Levon, 2015). Indexicality approaches to intersectionality involve tracing links between different elements of a linguistic feature’s indexical field (Eckert, 2008) to understand how different stances and identities are related. The mutual constitution of identities then involves exploring how indexical relationships between linguistic forms and a particular social system (e.g. race/ethnicity) are recruited in the construction of other social categories in contextually variable ways (Levon, 2015). Manning’s (2001) social relations provide more detail on the relationships between forms and social categories by conceptualising indexicality on a spectrum from concrete to spatially based. Manning argues that in addition to situational deixis, emerging from the immediate context, there are indexical relations which extend beyond a given interaction to form ‘perduring social relations’ (Manning, 2001: 63). Perduring social relations between a form and a field of related meanings emerge through repeated use of a certain form in particular circumstances to convey the same or similar meanings. The result is that every time the form is used, even across varied social circumstances, the same social relations may be perceived. Returning to the example of the 1SG Jakartan pronoun gue, it is possible to observe how Manning’s (2001) perduring social relations can be used to examine social meanings attributed to the pronoun that persist across diverse communicative contexts. Djenar et al. (2018) explain that gue is commonly used in Jakartan Indonesian and has become recognised as the default 1SG pronoun of informal everyday conversation in the city. The recurrent use of these pronouns in this context produced a perduring association between these forms of address and Jakarta City that is invoked when speakers from other parts of the archipelago encounter or use these forms in varied social circumstances. Therefore, there are perduring social relations between the form gue and the Indonesian capital. It is important to note that perduring social relations are still grounded in the interactions within which they are reproduced. That is, a speaker who does not profess Jakartan identity may draw on the perduring indexicalities of gue associated with Jakartanness (such as coolness or toughness; Djenar, 2008; Manns, 2015) to point to aspects of Jakartan identity and thus only indirectly index this social category. The example above further illustrates that a single form can carry several different perduring indexicalities that can be reconstituted and negotiated in contextually variable ways. Building on Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of chronotope, Blommaert and De Fina’s (2017) chronotopic frame

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theory (CFT) clarifies how the meaning of and relationship between indexicals is organised in discourse. Specifically, as a language variant indexes meaning in interaction, chronotopes act as reference points to ‘packages’ of time-space that include a string of indexicalities, ideologies, beliefs and identities that are particular to a specific point in spatiotemporal history (Blommaert, 2015; Koven, 2013). Chronotopes of these ‘invokable chunks of history’ (Blommaert, 2015: 105) then bring this series of attributions, collectively referred to as a chronotopic frame, into the immediate interaction. This process positions talk in a particular communicative context, coordinating the understanding of and relationship between constituent indexicals and the identities they reference (Agha, 2015; Koven, 2013). In effect, chronotopes reproduce frames that structure the social relations between a form and particular social meanings that emerge in specific interactions. Importantly, chronotopic frames do not only organise the interpretation of indexicals, they are also reproduced by indexicals that invoke particular chronotopic configurations (Blommaert & De Fina, 2017). In this sense, the relationship between indexicals and chronotopes is bilateral; they mutually influence and evoke each other. CFT builds on indexicality by detailing how perduring social relations do more than just point to social meanings; rather, different indexes reproduce and respond to different constellations of frames which structure and reflect diff erent combinations of intersectional identities. Specifically, CFT better explains the impact of context on how perduring indexicalities frame speaker identities in discourse by adopting the perspective that ‘practices performed in our identity work demand specific timespace conditions’ (Blommaert & De Fina, 2017: 4). According to CFT, situational context, including time, place, discourses, identities and ideologies, together act as a ‘framing constraint’ (Blommaert & De Fina, 2017: 4) on what is possible in identity work. In effect, frames in interaction condition individuals’ use of specific features to invoke chronotopes that bring perduring indexicalities into interaction and structure identities of conversational participants (Blommaert & De Fina, 2017; Karimzad & Catedral, 2018; Kroon & Swanenberg, 2020). Likewise, the speaker’s use of a form can also invoke chronotopes that reproduce new frames that shape the roles, identities and discourses of ongoing interaction in ways that may converge towards or diverge from those evoked in prior discourse (Blommaert & De Fina, 2017). CFT offers a more systematic framework for studying intersectional identity by demonstrating how manifold identities can be enacted simultaneously through responses to multiple chronotopic frames present in

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interaction. Within a single given context, several chronotopes can ‘coexist and may be interwoven with, replace or oppose one another’ (Bakhtin, 1981: 252), generating multiple overlapping frames in interaction. For instance, drawing on examples of interactions within a Sicilian classroom, Blommaert and De Fina (2017) illustrate that using Italian language during a lesson invokes chronotopes of official classroom discourse. By contrast, Sicilian invokes chronotopes of talk from the ‘back regions’ that challenge frames for normative classroom discourse (Blommaert & De Fina, 2017: 8). In the Indonesian context, the exchange of gossip between close friends of the same ethnic identity that occurs in the presence of an audience of different ethnic identities can simultaneously evoke frames for intraethnic, interethnic and even in-group communications that layer together in ‘ever more complex interrelationships’ (Bakhtin, 1981: 252). In situations where there are multiple overlapping frames, speakers can choose to (not) respond to one or more of the present frames. Speakers can also attempt to balance these frames by constructing responses which cater to the requirements of each frame (Blommaert & De Fina, 2017). To do so, speakers deploy forms with diverse indexical potential (Becker, 2014; Levon, 2015) to invoke chronotopes that bring perduring indexicalities related to several social categories into interaction, calibrating a response to all frames and structuring intersecting identities. The forms and perduring indexicalities that the individual uses in a particular frame response are at least partially shaped by mutually constituted macro-social structures and ideologies evoked by frames. In the Indonesian context, for example, monologic ideologies have strengthened perceptions of standard Indonesian as emphasising the shared nationality of Indonesian people while minimising their regional or ethnic differences (Errington, 1998; Goebel, 2017). As such, the ideology promotes use of the national language as a lingua franca in ‘public talk’ between Indonesians who do not share a regional or ethnic language (Djenar et al., 2018; Englebretson, 2007; Sneddon, 2003). These perceptions of standard Indonesian have also reinforced the restriction of socalled ‘ethnic languages’ to private and personal communications within the local ethnic community, creating local language ideologies that associate ethnic languages with ethnic identity and intraethnic talk (Goebel, 2017; Sneddon, 2003). The discussion of these ideologies illustrates the mutually constituted nature of national and ethnic categories that is reproduced through chronotopic frame response. That is, what is considered ‘ethnic’ language and identity is defined by national monologism and reinscribed through social practice. Likewise, the context in which specific identity behaviours emerge

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is coded in these social constructs as monologic ideology prescribes the use of Indonesian language within ‘translocal’ interethnic contexts which position Chinese language as appropriate within ‘local’ small-scale interactions with more restricted participation frameworks (Blommaert, 2007). Overall, Blommaert and De Fina’s (2017) CFT is used alongside Manning’s (2001) perduring social relations to examine how Chinese Indonesian youth are using address forms to structure intersectional identities in dynamic and mutually constitutive ways. Address Forms

Personal address forms are widely studied sociolinguistic phenomena in cultures throughout the world and variation across these items is well recognised as a location for identity work in linguistic contexts (L. Brown & Cheek, 2017; Bucholtz, 2009; Djenar et al., 2018; Harkness, 2015; Hua, 2010; Said & Zhu, 2017). According to prior studies, the use of terms of address is seldom entirely systematic, but rather complex and contextually situated, with their use having the potential to communicate several facets of an (actual or desired) relationship between two or more speakers, including power dynamics, intimacy and formality. Additionally, address forms, though used to address the other, are often reflective of the identity of the speaker and the way in which they view their role and relationship to the addressee (Braun, 1988; Djenar et al., 2018; Manns, 2011). Studies of Indonesian languages have shown that selection of address forms can convey various different social meanings, creating wide-ranging consequences for social dynamics (Errington, 1998; Kartomihardjo, 1981; Manns, 2015). Indonesian speakers have at their disposal an extensive variety of person reference forms including pronominal and non-pronominal terms (e.g. personal names, titles and kin terms) (Djenar et  al., 2018; Ewing, 2005). Many of these terms are associated with standard and colloquial varieties of the national language while others have more regional connotations. The distribution and use of Indonesian pronominal address forms has frequently been described in terms of (non)-reciprocity and (in)formality (Djenar, 2006; Djenar et  al., 2018; Englebretson, 2007; Ewing, 2015; Manns, 2015; Sneddon, 2006). Generally, reciprocal second person singular (2SG) pronominal address is associated with social parity between speakers whereas non-reciprocal 2SG address typically references asymmetric social status (Djenar, 2006; Djenar et  al., 2018; Ewing, 2015; Manns, 2015). The distribution and social meaning of 2SG forms has also been compared to Brown and Gilman’s (1960) description of the t/v

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distinction (Djenar, 2007; Englebretson, 2007; Errington, 1998; Kartomihardjo, 1981; Manns, 2015), where the informal ‘T’ pronoun (e.g. kamu in standard Indonesian) is used with an intimate, an equal or an inferior, and the formal ‘V’ pronoun (e.g. Anda in standard Indonesian) is used to address a non-intimate or a superior (Brown & Gilman, 1960). However, these descriptions are slightly reductive as the difference in contexts eliciting selection of particular pronominal forms can equally be defi ned according to other social factors, for instance, the presence of public or private communicative contexts (Djenar, 2007). Further, the enormous regional and contextual variation in perceived indexicalities of the forms is reflective of the limiting perspective on pronouns as only indexical of differences in levels of formality. For example, kamu is typically associated with informality; however, when used in contrast to other regional variants, this form can carry perduring indexicalities derived from perceptions of standard Indonesian as the formal language of outsiders or non-solidary persons (Errington, 1998). This indicates that there can be layers of social meaning associated with particular pronominal address forms that can variably include the relative formality of the interaction as well as the identities and relationships between conversational participants. However, no pronominal forms in Indonesian explicitly index deference towards an addressee; rather, non-pronominal forms, such as kin terms, more commonly indicate this stance (Djenar et al., 2018). Kinship terms (hereafter KT) are the primary source of non-pronominal address forms in Indonesian. KT are used as often, if not more often, than pronouns in Indonesian conversation, as KT are commonly used as pronoun substitutes (Kartomihardjo, 1981; Manns, 2015; Rafferty, 1982). The distribution of KT in Indonesia is widespread, and far from limited to communications between blood relatives. The use of KT in Indonesia is often performative and indexes a metaphoric kinship between individuals who are known to be non-kin, acting as invitation or instructions to addressees to assume behaviour which usually occurs in the context of kin-like relationships (Agha, 2015; Djenar et al., 2018; Errington, 1998). KT thus do not directly index kin relationships but rather invoke characteristics of familial kinship that are then applied to a present context (Agha, 2015; Harkness, 2015). Characteristics of kinship relationships include implicit familiarity and solidarity or ‘sameness’, in the sense that individuals may be from the same family or group, as well as recognition of the seniority of older family members. Errington (1998) further explained that in the Javanese context, speakers often select KT to transport siblinghood and seniority to broader social settings beyond the immediate family. The use of KT that are associated with specific ethnic

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communities can further invoke chronotopes of family relations that emphasise intraethnic solidarity and position the community as separate from wider society (Errington, 1998). For instance, Javanese people can use Javanese KT to invoke fictive kinship with Javanese people that highlights the shared ethnic identity of collocutors and emphasises their difference from other ethnic groups in Indonesia (Errington, 1998). Although several studies have examined the role of second person singular address forms within majority ethnic groups in Indonesia (e.g. Djenar, 2006; Djenar et  al., 2018; Ewing, 2015; Goebel, 2010), many minority communities, and in particular the ethnic Chinese, have not yet received much academic attention. This is significant because young Chinese Indonesians in Pontianak have access to Chinese systems of address with designations and social meanings that differ from those of Indonesian equivalents (Qian & Piao, 2009). For instance, unlike Indonesian kinship systems, Chinese kinship systems mark the age of individuals relative to one’s immediate family and typically feature two sets of terms used to address relatives from the maternal and the paternal sides of the family (Qian & Piao, 2009). Ethnic Chinese speakers selecting both pronominal and non-pronominal address forms must also consider the perduring indexicalities of different address forms as well as the different Indonesian and Chinese languages with which they are associated. Following a brief overview of the methodology used in this study, the analysis outlines young Chinese Indonesians’ ideologies and attitudes regarding language and ethnic identity, then illustrates how these constructs are reconstituted through the selection of address forms in interaction. Methodology

The analysis draws on ethnographic data collected over seven months of fieldwork at Pontianak Catholic College in Pontianak City. Pontianak is the capital city of West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo near the periphery of Indonesia’s border with Malaysia. Pontianak was chosen as the research site, first, because it is one of very few cities where the Chinese minority make up a large portion of the population (approximately 30% compared to 1–10% elsewhere) (Center for Acceleration of Inter-Religious and Ethnic Understanding (CAIREU), 2008). Second, researchers have claimed that the Chinese of Pontianak have preserved their culture and language to a greater extent than those in other communities in Indonesia (Heidhues, 2003). Additionally, the relationship between Chinese and non-Chinese communities is considered more harmonious in Pontianak compared to other areas of Indonesia (Heidhues, 2003; Hoon, 2009).

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Several Pontianak Chinese people interviewed for the current study stated that it was because of the positive relationship between Chinese and nonChinese Indonesian communities that Chinese people in Pontianak were able to maintain their Chineseness without fear of exclusion or persecution from broader Indonesian society. However, the city is not altogether free from anti-Chinese sentiment, as there is a long history of social discord between the ethnic Chinese and the ethnic Malays in the area based on persistent cultural and religious disputes (Hoon, 2009). As a result, the question arose as to how all these competing factors in Pontianak’s society impact on young ethnic Chinese Indonesian’s conceptualisation and expression of their identity through language. Data collection in Pontianak was localised to Pontianak Catholic College (PCC). The university was selected as the locus for research because students in Indonesia gain significant personal freedom after entering university, at which stage they often leave home for the first time and move into student boarding houses near the campus where they spend the majority of their time with friends (Manns, 2011: 84). Students entering university also encounter new social dynamics that require them to adopt new roles that are particular to the institutional context. For instance, students enrolled in the same year level are generally viewed as equals; however, junior classmen are generally positioned below senior classmen in the social hierarchy, defining the social roles of both groups in discourse (Manns, 2011). Junior students are expected to show deference and respect to senior students based on their superior age, knowledge and experience at the university. Despite sharing some similarities with other universities in the region, the peculiarity of PCC lies in its status as a private Christian educational institution whose student body is 80% ethnically Chinese. Private Christian educational institutions in Indonesia are usually funded and established by wealthy Chinese businesspeople and are situated at the centre of Chinese communities (Coppel, 1983; Hoon, 2011). The institutions themselves have traditionally been considered safe havens for the preservation of Chinese culture, religion and identity, as they are largely removed from government control (Hoon, 2011). The unique combination of a predominantly Chinese student cohort and typical Indonesian social constructs positioned this university as an important site for examining the negotiation of Chinese and Indonesian identities. Participants of the study included 15 ethnic Chinese Indonesian youth aged between 18 and 21 who were enrolled in the fourth semester class of the foreign language major at PCC. All participants identified as being of either Chinese or mixed Chinese and non-Chinese Indonesian (e.g. Dayak, Madura) ethnicity, and spoke some combination of one of the local

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Chinese languages (Khek or Teochew), the regional language (Pontianak Malay) and/or the standard national language (Standard Indonesian). The data collection procedure drew on traditional ethnographic methods including participant observation, interviews and recording of daily interactions (Perez-Milans, 2015; Saville-Troike, 2003). The method for producing recordings was adapted from Rampton’s (1995) data collection method by lending a recording device to each of the participants for one school week (five days) and asking them to record themselves at the institution. The data collection procedure produced approximately 300 hours of recorded conversation of which 30 hours of conversation were selected for analysis (approximately 2 hours per participant). In addition to conversational data, semi-structured interviews were conducted with each of the participants at the end of the fieldwork procedure to gain insight into the participants’ sense of identity, their language ideologies and their perceptions of different ethnic groups in Pontianak (cf. Bucholtz, 2010; Kiesling, 1996; Saville-Troike, 2003). A second set of interviews with small groups of two to four participants was also conducted one month after the fi nal interview of the first set. Drawing on the interview structure used in Manns (2011), participants in this second interview were asked to listen to five recordings of five different unidentified voices and discuss their perceptions of the languages used by each speaker. I provide a brief summary of interview responses relevant to the current study in the following section. Reflections on Language and Identity

This section outlines the attitudes and perceptions of young ethnic Chinese individuals towards Chinese Indonesian identity as well as the role of languages within their community. Although participants did not express identical perceptions of their own individual identities and linguistic practices, this section focuses on outlining trends in interview responses that are indicative of wider translocal ideologies and values held by the young ethnic Chinese community in Pontianak. In response to questions about what it meant to be Chinese Indonesian, participants all agreed that proficiency in Chinese languages was paramount to Chinese culture, values and identity. Their comments echoed trends observed in aforementioned studies of other communities in Indonesia where, as a result of monologic ideology, varieties labelled as regional or ethnic languages become heavily associated with regional and ethnic identity as well as intraregional or intraethnic communicative contexts (Goebel, 2017; Kurniasih, 2006; Sneddon, 2003). For instance, one

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participant argued that all Chinese Indonesians in Pontianak ‘speak their Chinese languages’2 to avoid losing connections to their Chineseness that would otherwise ‘be wasted and useless’. This resulted in perceptions of Chinese languages as ‘our identity as Chinese people’ and ‘the family language’, that when spoken with others in the Chinese community created ‘family feelings’ and ‘closeness’ based on this shared identity. The perceived link between Chinese language and cultural values was so strong that several participants spoke specifically about the importance of using ‘correct’ Chinese KT when addressing older community members to show that they still practise Chinese culture. As mentioned earlier, the Chinese KT system differs considerably from non-Chinese Indonesian KT systems, and so using Chinese KT accurately involves more than directly translating Indonesian KT into Chinese languages. Instead, speakers must understand a myriad of social designations and how they apply to context. Participants claimed that failing to demonstrate this cultural knowledge by not using appropriate Chinese KT, and Chinese language in general, lead elders to question their Chinese identity and even label them cina bodoh (‘dumb Chinese’), a phrase encapsulating discourses of concern that young ethnic Chinese Indonesians, as a product of government policy and cultural shift, will lose their Chineseness. Participants thus explained that using correct KT was one way that young Chinese Indonesians could show their elders that they are ‘still Chinese’. Likewise, although non-Chinese people in Pontianak have been known to acquire Chinese languages, it is generally assumed that only Chinese people speak Teochew or Khek languages. Participants instead expected that non-Chinese Indonesians in the region speak non-Chinese ethnic languages (e.g. Dayak, Javanese or Madurese) in addition to local Malay. Pontianak Malay was classified by participants as both a regional language of Pontianak City and an ethnic language of the Malay majority. Although most participants claimed to have some proficiency in Pontianak Malay, most said that they would rarely speak it and only when making jokes or ‘playing around’ due to its perceived informality. Additionally, several participants voiced overtly negative evaluations of the language claiming it was ‘coarse/vulgar’. In one of the group interviews, upon hearing the recording of a speaker using Pontianak Malay, participants said that ‘as soon as I heard this language, I didn’t like it’ because ‘it’s so fanatical, as if they think their language, their ethnic group and their religion is better [than others]’. These comments suggest that the historic distrust between the ethnic Chinese and Malay communities has configured negative perceptions of Malay language within the Chinese Indonesian community in Pontianak.

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Participants’ perceptions of Chinese and Pontianak Malay languages contrasted with those of Standard Indonesian language which, as the national language, was not associated with any one ethnic group. Further, although considered important and prestigious, Standard Indonesian did not carry the same perceived association with interpersonal intimacy as regional and ethnic languages. Echoing earlier discussions of large-scale Indonesian monologic ideology (Errington, 1998; Goebel, 2017), participants explained that Indonesian language was the necessary code choice in interethnic contexts where no common regional or ethnic language is shared. The more formal variety in particular was associated with interactions within formal, public and impersonal domains such as business, education and government (Handoko, 2007, 2009; Manns, 2011; Sneddon, 2003). The following analysis sections detail how participants reinscribe these large-scale ideologies and social constructs using address forms in small-scale interactions that structure intersecting Chinese and Indonesian identities. Doing Chineseness and Indonesianness

There were two dominant patterns of address that appeared in student interactions at PCC. First, reciprocal 2SG pronoun use was the most common form of address, appearing in interactions between students of the same class who shared the same age and rank at the school. However, occasional interactions between more junior and more senior students, especially from different classes, involved younger, lower-ranking junior students using upward-oriented KT when speaking with more senior students. Outside of peer interactions, students frequently interact with nearby salespeople when buying food or class materials from stalls on campus during school hours. Patterns of address in this context also involved students using upward-oriented KT to acknowledge the superior age of salespeople relative to themselves. However, the ‘public’ context of these interactions configured different indexicalities and identities from those appearing in junior-senior student interactions. Throughout this section, I analyse these patterns, examining how the selection of address forms invokes chronotopes that reproduce perduring indexicalities of forms in response to particular chronotopic frames in interaction, which in turn structures dynamic and intersectional Chinese and Indonesian identities. The following excerpt exemplifies the fi rst of the two patterns of address. The conversation occurs between two fellow Teochew Chinese friends and classmates, Lestari and Harry, as they sit together in their classroom before the start of their first lesson. In the excerpt Indonesian

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speech is presented in Calibri font and Teochew Chinese speech is represented in italicized Calibri font and terms of address in both languages are underlined. This norm is used for all extracts in the current chapter. (1) 1 Lestari Pelajaran Sir Muljadi pai sa nang maju he? Shall we move up for Sir Muljadi’s class? 2 Harry Ciu le leh Up to you 3 Lestari Ciu wa ha Up to me, hah 4 Harry Ai co muek la What do you want to do? 5 Lestari Le kin me u janji nang me? Do you have anything on later tonight? 6 Harry Kin me? Later tonight? 7 Lestari Kak Si chut he? You’re going out with Siti, right? 8 Harry *quietly* Iya sih *quietly* Yeah

Throughout the interaction, Lestari and Harry exchange the Teochew Chinese 2SG address form le, in lines 2 and 5. 3 The reciprocal use of 2SG pronominal address in (1) clearly resembles descriptions of such forms in reproducing indexicalities of social sameness between interlocutors of equal status (Djenar et al., 2018; Ewing, 2005, 2015). However, examining the content and setting of the conversation indicates that these forms do more than index social parity. The interaction involves discussion of Harry’s plans with his girlfriend Siti that is restricted to these two speakers, evoking frames for intimate and private talk. Prior studies have shown that speakers frequently use reciprocal 2SG pronominal address when discussing personal matters with close friends to construct a stance of solidarity to initiate an exchange of interpersonal intimacy for personal information (Manns, 2015). In the example above, Lestari’s reciprocal use of the 2SG form can be considered both triggered by frames for intimate and private talk and invoking chronotopes of these contexts that draw on indexicalities of social closeness that frame the interaction as intimate personal talk. This frame can reinforce solidarity and reduce Harry’s inhibitions in providing information about his plans with Siti, which he does in the following line. In this sense, Lestari and Harry’s use of le reproduces and responds to frames for intimate social talk.

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The choice of specifically Teochew Chinese pronominal address to respond to this frame further invokes chronotopes of Chinese language ideologies reflected in participants’ interview responses that position Teochew Chinese as an ‘ethnic’ language confined to private and personal talk. Therefore, the use of le invokes chronotopes that reproduce perduring indexicalities of solidarity and ethnic identity along with private communications that work together to create layers of social sameness and intimacy that enhance the proximal social alignment between the speakers. The patterns in 2SG reciprocal pronominal address in (1) appear frequently across many of the interactions between fellow classmates at PCC. However, not all 2SG pronominal forms invoke the same chronotopes. In the following example, Lestari uses the 2SG Malay pronoun kau 4 when engaging in casual banter with her classmate, Rana. Lestari and Rana are both ethnically Chinese and frequently speak to one another using Teochew Chinese language. Lestari opts to diverge from this norm in example (2) by creating a persona to engage in verbal play. (2) 1 Lestari Eh cinte kau duduk dimane? Hey beautiful, where are you sitting? 2 Kursiku can k a My seat is pretty nice 3 Kau disini a How about you sit here 4 Aku di sini ye? and I sit here? 5 Rana @ Kau ni! @ Oh you!

As in (1), the use of reciprocal 2SG pronominal address in (2) can index social sameness between the interlocutors. However, by looking at the surrounding context, Lestari is clearly reproducing more diverse indexicalities of the form. Lestari initiates the conversation by addressing Rana as cinte, a shortening of pecinta ‘lover’, which invokes a frame of sexualised banter that typically occurs between a (male) speaker and the (female) object of their affection. This frame is then calibrated against Lestari’s identity as a woman and platonic friend which creates a humorous effect. Rana evidently understands the intention of Lestari’s humour as she laughs and responds playfully in line 5, using the same 2SG pronominal form. Additionally, several phonetic features in the excerpt indicate that Lestari diverges from her natural speech in creating a persona for her joke. The realisation of the fi nal /a/ in words like cinta and mana as [ə] is

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typical of Pontianak Malay pronunciation of these items (Asmah, 1977), but is not consistent with Lestari’s natural accent. Elsewhere in the data, Lestari produces these same words using standard Indonesian phonology. Additionally, in intraethnic contexts, such as in (1), Lestari typically uses Teochew Chinese language. This highlights the markedness of Lestari’s use of Malay language and phonology and suggests that divergence from her usual practices is purposeful. As previously mentioned, Pontianak Malay language features have a perduring social relationship to local Malay identity. These associations are contrasted with the frame for intraethnic contexts present in the interaction which then reproduces discourses of Malay language and identity emerging from within the Chinese community. As outlined earlier, Malay language features are frequently indexed to very informal or even vulgar speech within the Chinese community and thus appeared frequently in verbal play, ritualised insults and affectionate banter between intimate friends. Therefore, the use of the Pontianak Malay 2SG form in combination with Malay phonology to evoke frames for sexualised verbal play in response to intraethnic frames then reproduces chronotopes of the aforementioned Chinese community discourses about Malay language and identity, configuring the indexicalities of the form in this context. Lestari is thus using the pronoun and phonetic features of Malay to construct a character shaped by the Chinese perspective that is intentionally playful and mildly vulgar as they repeatedly try to convince Rana to sit next to them. 2SG pronouns are the most common form for address among students of equal age and status at PCC. However, KTs are more often used when junior students address seniors. The following excerpt (3) features this pattern in a conversation between college senior Lestari and her underclassman, Dina. (3) 1 Lestari Pelajaran apa kalian? What are you studying? 2 Dina Si sialan (.) This shit. 3 Ce, “in the street”, “on the street” kan juga “in the street” Sis, ‘in the street’, ‘on the street’ and also ‘in the street’ 4 dari mana sejalan jadi “in the street”? where does it become ‘in the street’? 5 Lestari Base on the sentence lah Based on the sentence 6 Dina Bisa dak? Bisa dak? Is this okay? Is this okay?

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7 Lestari “In the street” bisa (.) ‘In the street’ is okay (.) 8 Kalau Dina habis ikut kelas kalian nih, If you’re fi nished, Dina, go join your class, 9 kau langsung kelas kami kan, if you go straight to ours 10 curhat die langsung yang kau bilang in sama on nih. he’ll pour his heart out if you talk about this ‘in’ and ‘on’ 11 Aku bilang die- kau nih makin bodoh kena ajar die I’m telling him- you guys will get dumber from his teaching

Lestari consistently refers to her interlocutor using the Malay 2SG address term kau and the Indonesian 2PL address term kalian in lines 1, 8, 9, 10 and 11. This is contrasted by Dina’s address of Lestari using the Chinese KT ce, ‘older sister’, in line 3. The selection of divergent pronominal and non-pronominal address terms by senior and junior students is consistent with descriptions of asymmetric forms as indexing status difference (Djenar et al., 2018; Manns, 2015). Additionally, the choice of forms responds to frames emerging from the situational context of typical junior-senior interaction involving both homework discussion and casual friendly talk, reflected through use of informal expressions (e.g. curhat ‘pour one’s heart out’) and expletives (e.g. sialan ‘shit’). The indexical potential of KT in referencing familiarity and deference (Errington, 1998; Goebel, 2010) mean that Dina’s selection of ce to address Lestari responds to frames for casual talk and more formal institutional talk that frequently overlap in junior-senior talk. Dina’s use of ce invokes chronotopes of kin-like contexts, drawing on perduring indexicalities of intimacy, solidarity and deference that communicate with both frames in interaction. Significantly, the indexicalities connected through the chronotope of kinship interact with different aspects of the junior-senior dynamic at PCC. The upward-oriented KT index respect for elders is reflective of the deference of junior students for senior students that echoes that of younger siblings for their older siblings. Additionally, there is some level of solidarity and intimacy involved in the relationship between students at PCC emerging from their shared membership in the same college (cf. Harkness, 2015). Belonging to the same college is analogous with belonging to the same family, in that both infer familial intimacy and shared identity. Hence, the upward-oriented KT draws on both cultural concepts of solidarity and deference that reconstruct both axes of the relationship between the interlocutors. The selection of Chinese KT in place of Indonesian equivalents adds a layer of solidarity that emerges from the enduring

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association between the forms and the speakers’ shared ethnic identity. These chronotopes of kin-like contexts and Chinese language ideologies reproduce a frame of fictive kinship at PCC that structures Dina’s uptake of the Indonesian junior student role in a distinctly Chinese way. The invocation of fictive kinship also invites Lestari to adopt the behaviours associated with the senior role that include aiding juniors. Lestari adopts this role by assisting with Dina’s homework (lines 5 and 7) and insisting that she quickly returns to her own class to protect Dina from their teacher (lines 8–11). Lestari’s persistent use of kau and kalian, typically used in reference to equals or inferiors, responds to the frame for fictive kinship between juniors and seniors and reinforces Dina’s stance of deference and Lestari’s relative superiority. Further, kau specifically invokes chronotopes of casual contexts that reproduce perduring indexicalities associated with jocularity that enhances the informality of the interaction. Lestari’s choice of informal 2SG/2PL forms in place of more formal downward oriented Chinese KT (lelet) follows a common pattern in Indonesia where superiors avoid downward-oriented KT to minimise reference to the inferior status of the hearer without compromising their own status (Ewing, 2015; Manns, 2011). Taken together, Lestari and Dina’s selection of address forms illustrates how speakers can co-construct fictive kinship through a combination of Chinese and Indonesian resources creating intersectional Chinese Indonesian student identities. In contrast to (3), the following two examples illustrate how KT are used to address strangers or non-solidary interlocutors in more public contexts. Extracts (4) and (5) below show Wilma using two different upward-oriented KT to address two salespeople. (4) Saya mau fotocopy ini 41 rangkap I want to make 41 copies of this Hari rabu For Wednesday Tolong hitung perrangkapnya berapa, kak Please count how many copies there are, older sister Bayar yang ini dulu ya, kak I’ll pay for this fi rst, yeah, older sister Salesperson 1 Makasih Thank you Wilma Boleh minta kantongnya gak, kak? May I ask for a plastic bag, older sister? Salesperson 1 Boleh You may

1 Wilma 2 3 4 5 6 7

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(5) Ieie, ini satu nya berapa ie? Lima ya? Auntie, how much for one of these, auntie? Five yeah? 2 Beli dua I’ll buy two 3 Salesperson 2 Beli dua ya? You’ll buy two, yeah? 4 Wilma Iya Yes 1 Wilma

In both interactions, as suggested in prior work (Djenar et al., 2018; Errington, 1998; Goebel, 2010), Wilma’s use of upward-oriented KT indexes social distance and deference for the seniority of her interlocutors. However, as in the earlier examples, frames present in the interaction play a role in organising the indexicality of forms. Contrasting with the more relational talk in (1)–(3), extracts (4) and (5) involve frames for public transactional talk, (Goebel, 2014) as Wilma purchases goods and services from each salesperson using public Indonesian speech styles typified by the use of standard 1SG saya alongside more casual contractions such as makasih ‘thanks’ (from terima kasih) (Djenar, 2007; Djenar et  al., 2018; Englebretson, 2007; Manns, 2012). Wilma’s selection of KT invokes chronotopes of kinship that are calibrated against the frames for public transactional talk, reproducing indexicalities of social asymmetry and deference. However, the KT not only convey social difference and deference, they also reproduce a frame of fictive kinship that constructs a relationship between interlocutors who share no extant bond. The fictive kinship coordinated by Indonesian monologism and Chinese language ideologies constructs a familial social distance between Wilma and the salespeople based on shared nationality and ethnicity respectively. Participants claimed that they frequently used the address forms that they perceived a salesperson to prefer in the hopes of receiving better prices. As in (3), the KT then instruct the addressees to take on the roles of elder members within imagined national or ethnic families that involve assisting younger members. Unlike Dina and Lestari, Wilma has no personal relationship that she can draw upon to build solidarity with her interlocutors, so instead she draws on shared nationality and ethnicity. Wilma’s selection of different KT to build solidarity in otherwise analogous circumstances is clearly motivated by the presence of interethnic frames in (4) and intraethnic frames in (5). However, use of these forms is more complex than simply indexing interethnic and intraethnic talk. Wilma’s use of ieie with an elder invokes chronotopes of cina bodoh

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discourses that motivate young ethnic Chinese to ‘prove’ that they are maintaining Chinese cultural practices and are ‘still Chinese’. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, though used to address the other, address forms frequently represent the identity of the speaker and the way in which they view their role and relationship to the addressee. Her use of KT then illustrates that Wilma understands the Chinese KT system, and how it is used in interaction with older Chinese interlocutors. The KT then structures the ethnic identity of Wilma and her addressee. Use of Chinese forms also evokes a sense of ‘closeness’ based on shared identity and distinctiveness from other ethnic groups mentioned in the discussion of (1) and (3). Therefore, the use of ieie invokes chronotopes of Chinese kinship that reproduce perduring indexicalities of Chinese cultural values and intraethnic solidarity. The sense of intraethnic solidarity evoked through the forms is then balanced against the frame of public transactional talk, framing the interaction as more intimate than that of (4) but less intimate than in (3). This illustrates how ideologies and social constructs of Chineseness and Indonesianness are reinscribed in interaction in mutually constitutive ways.

Conclusion

Looking back at the data, it’s clear that pribumi narratives’ positioning of Chineseness as independent of Indonesianness fall flat. As addressed in early intersectionality research, the apparent separation of these social categories is largely illusionary and does not represent the reality of people who experience plural identities (Hall-Lew & Yaeger-Dror, 2014; Kirkham, 2015; Levon, 2011, 2015). The analysis showed that Chinese Indonesian speakers are invoking chronotopes that draw on particular perduring indexicalities of pronominal and non-pronominal address forms to construct intersecting Indonesian and Chinese identities in dynamic and mutually constitutive ways. As shown in the analysis, contextual variation in the use of forms to construct different kinds of relationships illustrates the dynamic and situational contingency of intersectional identities (Becker, 2014; Levon, 2015). The same speaker, Lestari, used different forms to establish distinctly different identities in response to different constellations of frames emergent in excerpts (1)–(3). Her use of 2SG Teochew pronominal forms in (1) constructed solidarity and social sameness with her interlocutor based on shared ethnicity, social status and interpersonal relationship. This contrasted with Lestari’s use of highly informal Malay 2SG

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equivalents to respond to upward-oriented Chinese KT that configured her identity as the more senior student relative to her junior interlocutor in (3). Notably, even the same 2SG pronoun was not guaranteed to generate the same effects as when combined with Malay phonology in (2), kau constructed a Malay persona for verbal play. Likewise, Dina and Wilma’s use of Chinese and Indonesian KT in excerpts (3), (4) and (5) invoked chronotopes of kinship that enacted different levels of familiarity and deference in response to frames for more private relational or public transactional talk. The identities constructed across these excerpts all had a ‘family feel’ but they differed in the level of social sameness indexed as Dina and Lestari shared ethnic, national and institutional identities whereas Wilma and Salesperson 1 only shared nationality. Importantly, identities are intersectional as, for instance, in the case of (2), Lestari drew on perduring indexicalities of kau that interacted with the ethnic identity of herself and her interlocutor to reproduce chronotopes of Chinese ideologies about Malay language and identity. To wit, these intersecting identities do more than interact (cf. Levon, 2015); they intersect in mutually constitutive ways. For example, Dina invoked chronotopes of intraethnic kinship to reproduce perduring indexicalities of deference for seniority and solidarity to respond to frames for juniorsenior interactions. In this way, she structured what is considered an Indonesian social construct through resources traditionally associated with Chineseness. At a larger scale, the enactment of distinct public and private personae is itself a product of the imbrication of social categories and ideologies related to Chinese and Indonesian identities. Indonesian monologism designates Indonesian as the language of Indonesian nationality suitable for public talk, whilst relegating Chinese languages to more intimate intraethnic contexts. Chinese language ideologies ratify and reinforce this classification by insisting that youth sustain their Chineseness through use of ethnic languages in intraethnic talk. Ultimately, it is evident that the categories of Chinese and Indonesian are themselves mutually constituted intersectional categories, reinscribed through linguistic practice in discourse. The fluidity in Chinese Indonesian identities observed within this peripheral community group demonstrates that Chineseness is not a monolithic social category. Instead, ways of doing and being Chinese are incredibly superdiverse. Operationalising global southern theories to explore this diversity demonstrates the importance of departing from global northern frameworks to capture the lived reality and experiences of southern subjects.

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Notes (1) In referring to intersectionality as a global southern theory, I draw on Santos’ (2012: 51) defi nition of the Global South as ‘existing in the Global North in the form of excluded, silenced and marginalised populations’ that would necessarily include Black American women who developed the theory (Crenshaw, 1989). (2) All quotes translated from colloquial Indonesian by the author. (3) Although ‘you’ appears in the English translation of lines 4 and 7, due to the common instance of pronoun-dropping in Chinese languages no 2SG form appears in the source lines. (4) The 2SG pronoun kau is not exclusive to Pontianak Malay language and is considered an informal 2SG pronoun in Indonesian (Atmosumarto, 2015). However, I have referred to kau as Malay here and elsewhere to reflect participants’ classification of it as such in interviews.

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Choo, H.Y. and Feree, M.M. (2010) Practicing intersectionality in sociological research: A critical analysis of inclusions, interactions and institutions in the study of inequalities. Sociological Theory 28 (2), 129–149. Chua, C. (2004) Defi ning Indonesian Chineseness under the new order. Journal of Contemporary Asia 34 (4), 465–479. Coppel, C. (1983) Indonesian Chinese in Crisis. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Coppel, C. (2008) Anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia after Soeharto. In L. Suryadinata (ed.) Ethnic Chinese in Contemporary Indonesia (pp. 117–136). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Crenshaw, K. (1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. The University of Chicago Legal Forum 140, 139–167. Curdt-Christiansen, X. and Hancock, A. (2014) Learning Chinese in Diasporic Communities: Many Pathways to Being Chinese (Vol. 12). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Djenar, D.N. (2006) Patterns and variation of address terms in colloquial Indonesian. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 29 (2), 22.1–22.16. Djenar, D.N. (2007) Self-reference and its variation in Indonesian. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 4 (1), 23–40. Djenar, D.N. (2008) Which self? Pronominal choice, modernity, and self-categorizations. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 189, 31–54. Djenar, D.N., Ewing, M. and Manns, H. (2018) Style and Intersubjectivity in Youth Interaction. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Eckert, P. (2008) Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12 (4), 453–476. Eckert, P. (2014) The problem with binaries: Coding for gender and sexuality. Language and Linguistics Compass 8 (11), 529–535. Elson, R.E. (2008) The Idea of Indonesia: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Englebretson, R. (2007) Grammatical resources for social purposes: Some aspects of stancetaking in colloquial Indonesian conversation. In R. Englebretson (ed.) Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction (pp. 69–110). Amsterdam; Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing. Errington, J. (1998) Shifting Languages: Interaction and Identity in Javanese Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ewing, M. (2005) Colloquial Indonesian. In S. Adelaar and N. Himmelmann (eds) The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar. London: Routledge. Ewing, M. (2015) Localising person reference among Indonesian youth. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 1–22. Fealy, G. and Ricci, R. (2019) Contentious Belonging: The Place of Minorities in Indonesia. Singapore: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. https://doi.org/10.1355/9789814843478 Goebel, Z. (2009) Semiosis, interaction and ethnicity in urban Java. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13 (4), 499–523. Goebel, Z. (2010) Language, Migration, and Identity Neighborhood Talk in Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goebel, Z. (2014) Doing leadership through sign switching in the Indonesian bureaucracy. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 24 (2), 193–215. Goebel, Z. (2017) From neighborhood talk to talking for the neighborhood. In M. Tomlinson and J. Millie (eds) The Monologic Imagination (pp. 121–141). New York: Oxford University Press. Hall-Lew, L. and Yaeger-Dror, M. (2014) New perspectives on linguistic variation and ethnic identity in North America. Language & Communication 35, 1–96.

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6 Narrating the Future Self: Strategic Stylisation and Cosmopolitan Stancetaking in Chinese IELTS Preparation Classes Eric S. Henry

Yingchun1 told me that she had always wanted to be an architect. A student at an elite private high school in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, she was also enrolled in evening and weekend classes at Washington English, one of the most expensive private English schools available. Despite pressure from her parents to study economics, she applied to a prestigious architecture program at a university in Hong Kong and was granted an English-language interview, one of the requirements of admission. I spoke with Yingchun a few days after she had returned from the interview in Beijing, and she was disheartened by her own performance. It had gone, she told me, very quickly. After introducing herself and talking about her education and background, the interviewer asked her to look around the room and discuss what architectural changes were required to improve it. ‘I’m so nervous. I say to him, I tell him, the room is very plain. Maybe put a plant in the corner.’2 Yingchun was not accepted into the program. As we discussed the experience, I asked Yingchun if she would apply again – perhaps she could take a few more English classes to help her prepare for next time. But Yingchun was adamant that her foreign language skills were not the issue. She was an excellent student and scored highly on standardised language exams. But, she said, for all of her private English classes, she had not been raised in the right linguistic environment. The language was not ‘natural’ (ziran) to her, and this was what she 106

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identified as the source of her poor performance. It was not, she felt, what she had to say but how she said it that had disqualified her. Yingchun’s invocation of an English language environment reflects a common trope of foreign language students in Shenyang and, more than lexical or grammatical knowledge, posed the greatest challenge for those who dreamed of going abroad. It is not enough to just use standard English; one must also sound like a globally situated English speaker, indexing this identity through the adoption of a range of stylistic elements such as prosody, attitude and even bodily comportment. As Vanessa Fong has extensively argued, international study is not merely an educational opportunity for today’s generation of students who have come of age under a neoliberal regime of schooling in China but a means of transcending perceived boundaries, moving from locally isolated to globally competent social actors. Transnational students seek to return to China: armed with developed world levels of wealth, developed world skills and credentials that would qualify them to receive developed world-level salaries, and perhaps legal permanent residency rights in a developed country that would enable them to travel almost anywhere in the world anytime they wanted. (Fong, 2011: 23)

These transformations are not simply legal or practical but speak to the very nature of self and the inculcation of presumably foreign systems of value, individualism, commodity consumption and so forth (Henry, 2013; Rofel, 2007; Yan, 2009). In other words, Yingchun’s application to the Hong Kong architectural program was part of an aspirational pathway towards not only a future career but a future self, one defi ned by transnational connections and global mobility. Her failure therefore threatened to delegitimise a carefully constructed transnational persona at the core of Yingchun’s self-presentation and self-identity as a global and cosmopolitan social actor. Yingchun’s framing of her failed interview as a matter of stylistic deficiency was not the only opinion on the matter, as one of her foreign English teachers made clear to me. I discussed Yingchun’s story with Patricia, an Australian in her early 50s who had been teaching English in China for many years and was one of several native-speaking teachers who worked at the school. She laughed over the excuse and attributed Yingchun’s failure instead to an overall lack of creativity and imagination. Chinese students, she told me, are ill-prepared for oral English exams because their foreign language education is solely geared towards written tests. And the result?

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Almost zero imagination. And I think they’re trapped inside this terrible education system their parents give them. They don’t have any thinking for themselves. You know, you ask them, if you won a million renminbi3 what would you do? ‘I’d buy a house.’ What else would you do? ‘Cellphone.’ Their imagination is not real good.

These competing interpretations of the interview offer several insights into both the paradoxes of contemporary Chinese transnationalism and the role of discourse in sustaining them. Note for instance how both interpretations are grounded not in the specific content of Yingchun’s speech but in a higher-order metapragmatic evaluation of discourse style (Blommaert, 2010, 2015; Silverstein, 2003a). Both raise instances of discourse – Yingchun’s interview or Patricia’s students’ responses to hypothetical wealth – to the level of ethnolinguistic social facts. External factors, such as Yingchun’s nervousness and lack of architectural experience, or the limited foreign language abilities and outright boredom of students in Patricia’s case, are discounted. Instead, token discursive events serve as models for, and reinforce pre-existing notions of, the speaker as a characterological type: in Yingchun’s case the chronotopically and geographically isolated Chinese subject and, for Patricia, the orientalist trope of the unimaginative Asian student (see Agha, 2007: 145–89; Silverstein, 2003b). Despite ample evidence of creativity in the students I did research with, and the fact that other Chinese students raised in a similar language environment to Yingchun’s presumably passed the exam and were accepted into the program, discourse styles become ideologically regimented into enduring iconic ‘truths’ about groups of people (Irvine & Gal, 2000; Woolard, 2008). Short, direct answers to simple questions are considered by teachers such as Patricia to be symptoms of cultural deficiency, rather than pragmatic or reasonable conversational choices for students working in a second language. Voluble responses, in contrast, index for these teachers a clear intellectual superiority. These biases amplify the structural and economic inequalities faced by Chinese students aspiring to study abroad, who must not only deal with the fi nancial costs of their educational choices but the symbolic costs of the discourse styles that are a natural part of their socialisation. Recent work on sociolinguistic style and conversational stancetaking highlights the interrelationship between speech registers and sociocultural positioning. Style, taken as patterned assemblages of speech practices that, by way of their location in an indexical field make a speaker’s meanings, identities, and intentions interpretable to others, is never an ideologically neutral quality of discourse (Coupland, 2007; Eckert, 2008; Eckert &

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Rickford, 2001). In other words, adopting a style is always tied to a speaker taking a stance, to positioning him or herself in relation to audience and context (Englebretson, 2007; Jaffe, 2009; Kiesling, 2001; Kockelman, 2004). By way of an example, Patricia’s voicing of her students’ responses to her question about winning a million renminbi was stylised by way of a low intonation and slow pacing to convey a lack of intelligence and critical thought. And that stylisation automatically orients Patricia negatively towards her students’ subject positions and differentiates herself as a properly socialised global actor – one who could find more creative ways to spend such wealth (see Park, 2013). My purpose here is to examine how such stancetaking is developed through narrative practices intended to pave the way for transnational identity formation. English language education in China now forms a vast and growing multibillion-dollar industry, including countless private English schools ranging from simple home classrooms to multi-branch operations serving thousands of students (Hu & McKay, 2012: 347; Pan, 2015: 3). This is largely a product of the critical role English plays in China’s regime of educational testing (Cheng, 2008; Zhao, 2016) and as the language of global educational opportunities. Oral language evaluations like the one Yingchun experienced are the most prominent hindrance to educational mobility, often even more important than fi nancial cost. Consequently, students often take advanced language preparation classes that focus specifically on oral exams like TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and IELTS (International English Language Testing System) that are required for study abroad opportunities in the United States and British Commonwealth respectively (see Hamp-Lyons, 1998). These classes rarely focus on simple language teaching – many feature hardly any explicit English language instruction at all – but on what Asif Agha (2007: 187) calls strategic stylisation, the attempt to learn and produce key stylistic elements of a register in order to animate the socially indexed personae associated with it (see also Coupland, 2007: 149–54; Rampton, 2013). In this chapter I will examine a class at one such school I call Exeter Prestige English in Shenyang. Through highly stylised and collaborative forms of narration, teachers and students at this school worked together to fashion presumably foreign conversational stances intended to appeal to test examiners while also projecting distinctly cosmopolitan – and explicitly non-Chinese – transnational identities. The deployment of these stylistic resources was not always smooth or uncontroversial, however, which is to be expected considering the rapidly changing educational and linguistic ecologies of contemporary China. Transnational identities are fabricated through complex discourses among language examiners, teachers and students against the

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backdrop of the neoliberal restructuring of Chinese education and society, while stylistic repertoires are embedded within the broader discourse context of China’s ongoing social and economic development. In particular, China’s recent history has undergone a process of renarrativisation in which the postsocialist reform period has been allegorised as a passage from the rural, traditional and provincialised past to a dynamic, modern and global future. This transformation is crucially dependent upon a new form of urban citizen (shimin) who embodies the values, ideals and consciousness of a cosmopolitan subject, in contrast to rural peasants (nongmin) who are limited by closed social and mental horizons (Zhang, 2006). Successful shimin are those who have transcended cultural and linguistic impediments to participate in global orders of sociality and belonging. The challenge for the students taking these examinations was often how to translate conversational styles and stances valued in China into a global idiom. Concepts such as ‘quality’ (suzhi) and ‘self-cultivation’ (xiuyang), for instance, are discourse tokens that index positive stances towards modernist subjectivities in contrast to conservative, traditionalist ones. But stripped of their locally determined value on international English language tests, these concepts can resist translation and form an area of contestation in the creation of global Chinese personae. Although part of a long-term ethnographic research project, the data for this paper was largely collected during three months of fieldwork in Shenyang, China, in 2013. During this time, visits were made to six different language schools to observe classes and speak with students, teachers, IELTS examiners, administrators, parents and other interested parties. Classroom discourse was recorded where permitted and transcribed with the assistance of native Mandarin speakers. Fifteen semi-structured interviews with students and teachers were also recorded and transcribed. One representative language class is described in detail in this article to illustrate more fully the field of sociolinguistic inequalities around English currently playing out in China. Despite being the capital and largest city of northeastern China’s Liaoning Province, Shenyang has experienced a long period of industrial decline leading to a sense of existential malaise described as ‘backwardness’ (luohou) that pervades the urban experience. Shenyangers experience acute anxieties about the pace of development and their place both nationally and globally in relation to other cities and locales, and these anxieties inform linguistic interactions both inside and outside the classroom. The drive for Shenyangers’ transnational mobility is informed by these contextual factors: a desire to leave the city and seek one’s fortune elsewhere.

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Testing, Testing, Testing: Neoliberal Education in China

The modern era of higher education in China can be said to have begun in 1978 when, after a more than a decade-long interruption due to the Cultural Revolution, national entry examinations for university education resumed (Hayhoe, 1996; Kwong, 1988). This led to a period of rapid expansion of both student enrolments and the number of schools and universities. The state still maintained control of educational resources; all universities were public institutions and graduates usually found employment through state-allocated positions (Hoff man, 2010: 53–61). By the late 1980s however, China’s bureaucratic apparatus had fewer openings to fi ll and an ever-increasing number of graduates seeking positions. Ordinary students began looking abroad in the early 1990s for educational opportunities, either drawing upon scholarships and fi nancial aid at foreign institutions or their own gradually expanding household incomes (Xiang & Shen, 2009). In the 21st century, Chinese education has rapidly transformed in response to shifting state policies and the development of neoliberal reforms. As Stanley Rosen (2004) points out, educational priorities in China have moved away from the cultivation of socialist morality towards the materiality of wealth and success, particularly as measured in the global marketplace. The secure future of guaranteed employment in government or state-owned industries for university graduates has been replaced by the risk and uncertainty of private labour markets. These pressures are exacerbated by a one-child policy that has placed all of a family’s hopes for future security on a single child (Fong, 2004; Kipnis, 2011; Liu, 2015). Neoliberalism, as a broad global movement towards market models for the valuation and distribution of social goods, has had a profound impact on schooling in China. In education, neoliberalism implies the packaging of knowledge and acquired skills – including linguistic skills – as commodities that can be marketed to employers in a competitive labour environment (Block et al., 2013; Holborow, 2015; Park, 2011; Shin, 2016). Although by no means a hegemonic transformation (Nonini, 2008), schooling in China can increasingly be characterised as a system in which ‘education and educational credentials have become marketsupplied commodities, parents discerning consumers/investors in a burgeoning transnational educational marketplace and children determining fi gures in the realisation of a cosmopolitan, middle-class Chinese modernity’ (Crabb, 2010: 387; see also Gao, 2016; Mok, 2009; PérezMilans, 2013).

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Nowhere is this more apparent than the crucial role testing plays in allocating human capital. Although testing has always been a prominent feature of education in China, where for two thousand years the advancement of elites through the imperial bureaucracy was tied to examinations (Elman, 2013), in today’s educational landscape tests play a nearly determinative role in every individual’s future. Success, in terms of wealth, employment, social class and prestige, are all dependent upon competitive placement in a series of examinations: the zhongkao for admission to senior middle school, the gaokao for admission to university, two iterations of the College English Test (CET) for foreign language, and a range of others (Davey et al., 2007). Cheng (2008: 18) notes that these tests are not only a way of assessing students, who must possess a CET test certificate to graduate and provide to potential employers during their job search, but also a way of ranking teachers and schools, both of which are evaluated on the collective success of their students on the examination. Tests are not simply methods of evaluation but, as Elana Shohamy (2001) asserts, disciplinary tools that shape appropriate curriculum and regulate student behaviours. Foreign language tests in the Chinese public school system are typically discrete-point multiple-choice written examinations. These are composed by Chinese educators in consultation with national curriculum and testing committees and therefore reflect the language as it is taught through domestic textbooks and pedagogies (Hu, 2002; Pérez-Milans, 2013; Zheng & Davison, 2008). The English portion of the gaokao, for instance, includes four sections: listening, reading, practical language knowledge (selecting the correct word to complete a sentence) and writing. There is no oral language component as the standard curriculum contains little conversational teaching or practice: most classroom instruction is focused on the close reading and analysis of English texts. The senior middle school teachers I interviewed all dedicated the fi nal year before the gaokao to test preparation, endlessly drilling multiple choice questions and how to answer them. It was on these types of tests that Yingchun performed so successfully. As I noted above, examinations necessary for transnational mobility, such as TOEFL and IELTS, do include oral language sections and, more importantly, those are administered by native English-speaking foreign examiners. The oral component of IELTS is often described as interactive: ‘as close to a real-life situation as a test can get’, as stated in its promotional materials, and consists of an 11 to 14-minute interview between the student and a certified examiner. An interview begins with a few minutes of short questions about the student’s experiences and then, based on a randomly selected question task card, a longer 1 two 2-minute response to a general

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question and a series of follow-up questions by the examiner.4 The other sections of the examination are listening, reading and writing. The examiner rates the student on a nine-point scale (where nine indicates a native speaker) and the final IELTS score is an average of the scores on each section. A sample oral interview task card drawn from the test’s website lists the following potential questions, which the examiner reads out to the student: Describe something you own which is very important to you. You should say: where you got it from how long you have had it what you use it for and explain why it is important to you You will have to talk about the topic from 1 to 2 minutes You have one minute to think about what you’re going to say You can make some notes to help you if you wish

The task card then lists two further follow-up questions: Is it valuable in terms of money? Would it be easy to replace?

Many of the Chinese students I interviewed were initially mystified by these types of questions; what is the ‘correct’ answer? Fanny, a Chinese IELTS tutor with a degree from a British university, told me how she coached one such student whose test scores continually failed to meet his expectations. After listening to his spoken responses to several sample questions, she told him that the issue was how he framed his answers: they did not follow what she characterised as a ‘logical’ British response pattern (cf. Kirkpatrick & Xu, 2002). As she explained to me: [Examiners] want to know why you think so. Rather than, you know, in high school, Chinese high school, you don’t have to tell why you think that. You just tell the conclusions. So, I said, ‘Okay, try to break your answers down into different parts. You don’t have to come up with all the beautiful ideas. You have to tell me why you think so.’

On the basis of her tutoring, the student raised his score and was accepted at a British university. Fanny’s coaching therefore emphasised response structures that follow the pragmatic conventions of British English. Only by emulating not only the stylistic conventions of British

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discourse but appropriate interactional stances towards the question and questioner could students raise their scores and pass for properly socialised transnational subjects. I now turn to an extended series of classroom interactions to explore how such instruction proceeded in practice and how teachers conveyed these proper styles and stances to students. Exeter Prestige English

Exeter Prestige English is a private English training school in Shenyang specialising in IELTS test preparation. Opened in 2011 in a large downtown office tower, its classes rank at the higher end of the private educational marketplace at about 12,000 renminbi for an intensive five-week course (about a third of the annual salary for an average worker at the time of data collection, although there are significant wealth disparities among households). The school is owned by Winston, a native of Shenyang in his early 30s and a young, dynamic and energetic English teacher. Winston studied English translation and interpretation at a city-level university and, after graduating, delivered English training programs to Chinese employees of several multinational corporations. He worked for many different English schools throughout the city before starting his own business. Winston now runs both the school and a consulting business that provides training for Chinese IELTS teachers at other schools. Although he employs three other teachers, Winston still teaches many classes himself. Much of Exeter’s teaching focuses on preparation for the speaking component of IELTS, although there are some sessions throughout the week tailored to other sections of the exam. Each day features two 90-minute classes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with between five and ten students. The classes feature both lecture-type instruction – with the teacher giving advice about particular questions or answer strategies – and intensive conversational interactions where students recite prepared responses and the teacher critiques them and develops strategies for improvement. At the end of each class, the teacher provides a sample question – such as ‘talk about your favourite teacher’ or ‘describe your family’ – and students use their time between classes to compose their responses. On a Thursday morning in the summer of 2013, Winston led me into his class, joking that the students would be more talkative today because he had brought the ‘white monkey’ (bai houzi) with him. 5 Like him, all of the students used English rather than Chinese names in the classroom (see Henry, 2012). After introducing me to his students, Winston began discussing some general strategic tips on rate of speech, pronunciation and lexical choice for the IELTS speaking test before getting into the meat of

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the day’s lesson, the sample question ‘What will your life be like in ten years?’ Winston modelled his own thought processes in constructing an answer for the students: Winston:

The clothes I’ll wear, they’ll be really beautiful, not like right now, right? The food I’ll eat I’ll pay a lot of attention (jiangjiu) to, right? Maybe I’ll put more emphasis on the experience of dining, not like now where you just cram your belly full by madly swallowing Chinese dates (hulun tunzao), am I right? And then, where I live – I can live inside a villa. Not just a house, like a villa, like a beach house overlooking Hunhe River. [student laughter] That’s really good. Transportation? By then I defi nitely won’t be taking the subway. I’m driving my own car. Clothes, food, home, transportation, these are our lives. It’s what the people (laobaixing) take notice of, right? [bold = English, roman text = Mandarin]

In this extract, Winston introduces students to the dominant framework to which their answers should conform, contrasting a future expansive self, embodying modern character attributes, with a backwards, locally-identified and stigmatised social actor. Several lexical contrasts between these two stances stand out. The first is between the verbs ‘pay attention’ (jiangjiu) and ‘cram’ (tianbao) to characterise the styles of food consumption embodied by these two selves. The fi rst connotes a careful and measured approach to eating, one that appreciates the slow savouring of exquisite tastes. The latter indexes the indiscriminate desires of those who stuff their guts with dates, a traditional Chinese snack. The phrase ‘madly swallow dates’ (hulun tunzao) itself is also idiomatic in the sense of not understanding or not thinking critically about the information one is given. The second lexical contrast is between the indexical reference of the fi rst-person pronoun Winston uses to describe himself and the audience for his self-presentation: ‘the people’. Literally ‘old hundred names’, laobaixing refers to the most common one hundred surnames of the Chinese populace and a sense of the common people or, under socialism, the proletariat. Winston therefore sets up an implicit distinction between himself as one particular kind of person and a group of common, nominally socialist-era, others who ‘notice’ his consumption choices. One of the key code switches occurs at the critical juncture between the descriptions of the two identities, juxtaposing the poorly-dressed, date-eating and subway-riding commoner of today with a fashionable, fi ne-dining, cardriving and villa beach house-living individual exemplified by Winston’s

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future. The likelihood of that future is initially hedged (‘maybe’ and ‘can’) but becomes progressively more certain as conveyed through his subsequent use of ‘defi nite’ and further emphasised by the declarative ‘I’m driving my own car’. Winston is therefore couching this self-transformation in the familiar stylistic tropes and stancetaking contained within discourses of modernisation and the transformation of rural Chinese peasants into modern urban citizens, which are recognisable to the students through their circulation within the broader speech community. After modelling his own answer, Winston began eliciting similar narratives from students and collaborating with them to expand their responses. In the next extract, a female student using the English name Ann tells him she will become a physicist. Winston: What’s your opinion? Tell me. Ann: I can be successful, I can become a physicist Winston: That’s for sure, wait until I graduate, when I graduate I will become a physicist, I will shock the world with new discovery, new law of motion. Defy Newton. Will defy the time-space continuum. Time travelling is possible, you know? I will make a time machine, I will make a perpetual machine. Ann: It’s not this [unintelligible] Winston: What else? Or will you be sitting the chair? Looking at the monitor, Stephen Hawking. Bazinga! [Student laughter] Sheldon … I will be the physicist.

After this initial exchange, Ann then suggested that she would be able to use more ‘advanced equipment’ (xianjin de shebei) in the future, including larger telescopes than those used in China today. This replicates the temporal structure and the attendant metadiscursive evaluations Winston laid out in his initial example. Winston then provided another extended response: Winston:

Look at ten years from now and the most exciting thing will be that I can have a bigger telescope. I will have a state-of-the-art telescope, and I will try to look for signs of a potentially new star, and guess what I’m gonna- gonna name that new star: Ann! I will name the star with my own name, and then, um, that will be- that will be the dream-come-true moment, because Ann will be always remembered by astrophysicists. Okay, that’s the one crazy girl, who have a dream that one day I will have a telescope, and, uh, my forechildren will not be judged by the color of their telescope, but the content of their character. [Student laughter]

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Taking these two extracts together, we can see that Ann maintains Winston’s initial code preference for Mandarin. She offers some responses phrased in a stylistically conventional Chinese manner using the modal ‘can’ (hui) to mark her potential ‘success’ in the future. Winston prompts her to modify this sense of probability with ‘for sure’ (yiding), once again pointing to a more certain future. As Winston guides Ann in constructing her answer, he makes several intertextual references that index cosmopolitan forms of knowledge. ‘Sitting the chair’ and the subsequent mention of Stephen Hawking reference both the physicist’s fame and his well-known physical disability due to Lou Gehrig’s disease that confi ned him to a wheelchair.6 Following this, Winston makes a further Western pop-culture reference in the form of ‘Bazinga!’, the catchphrase of the character Sheldon Cooper, also a physicist, on the American television show The Big Bang Theory (which is extremely popular on Chinese video streaming websites). Later, Winston initiates a description of Ann as ‘the one crazy girl, who have a dream’ but quickly pivots into a parody of Martin Luther King’s iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, only in this case ‘my forechildren will not be judged by the color of their telescope, but by the content of their character’. All of these references act as allusions to specifically nonChinese forms of cultural belonging that would be plausibly familiar to a Euro-American audience and to the IELTS examiner. Whether or not the students understood the intertextual references, they played along and responded with laughter. Note also the numerous tag questions (‘shi ma [isn’t it]?’ and ‘zhidao ma [you know]?’) that function interactionally to bring the audience into alignment with Winston’s stance (Chen & He, 2001; Wang et al., 2010). These processes invite the Chinese students to assimilate themselves with a broader global audience of knowing social actors who also ‘get’ the references and can respond appropriately; they become insiders to a participant structure centred on transnational forms of knowledge. Throughout these exchanges, Winston adopts a confident, almost boastful, attitude in guiding Ann. Not just a physicist, he tells her, but one who will ‘shock the world’ with time-travel and a perpetual motion machine. Later, he again guides Ann towards an explicitly arrogant footing by naming a star after herself. This is accompanied by Winston’s adoption of the first-person deictic ‘I’ (wo) as he essentially animates Ann’s response for her. Notably, in other interviews between us, Winston often contrasted the individuality of English with a kind of deferential passivity in Chinese. ‘In speaking, well me, I’m Westernised, I will look you in the eye. But most Chinese, will tend to look at their fingers, at the ceiling, outside of the window.’ Here that stancetaking is evident as Winston instructs Ann not

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only in words but in attitude, a cocky persona that discovers stars and names them after herself. Winston thus associates this type of confident persona and its stylistic devices with Western individualism, which he encourages students to emulate in their spoken IELTS tests. After some further back-and-forth between them, focused specifically on academic publications and conferences, Ann narrated the fi nal English version of her answer for the class: Ann: Perhaps, after my graduation from college, I would become as- uh, astrophysicist, hopefully. And instead of staying at my house every day doing assignments, I will go outside in my car to observe the stars with the state-of-the-art telescopes. And make my new de- discoveries, perhaps name some stars after my name and, um … perhaps I will travelling around world to attend some, uh, conventions, seminars and publish my own paper which can make me feel excited… a:nd, um::: interacting and make conversations with other international elites, I will share my expertise a:nd push forward understanding of ourselves and the universe.

The exchanges between Winston and Ann thus gradually shift from predominantly using Mandarin, to code-mixed Mandarin-English speech, and, in the end, unmixed English as the parameters of the answer take form. Aside from a few disfluencies, Ann successfully emulates both the narrative content of Winston’s instruction and also the stylisation he models for her. Like Winston, she establishes a contrast in her answer centred on the transition from her conventional Chinese educational experience – staying at home doing assignments – to a more open and creative Western one, adopting a cosmopolitan stance and positive orientation to these transformations. This future self goes outside, uses advanced technology, travels to conferences and publishes academic papers. The rural, backwards, unimaginative or impoverished Chinese peasant is nowhere to be found. Translating Chinese Discourse Stances into Global English

Not all of these collaborative narrations were as polished and smooth as the one Winston achieved with Ann. At some points, for instance, Winston ran up against ideas or concepts drawn from the students’ Chinese responses that resisted easy translation, as when a student named Kevin described how his fi nancial responsibilities would change in the future. While the money he spends currently comes from his father, in the future, ‘Maybe I’ll have to take responsibility for my parents or my

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family’. Kevin’s answer is thus framed by the Chinese value of fi liality (xiao), the debt that children owe their parents. Traditionally fi liality meant physical care, including the expectation that children will remain close to parents and care for them in old age, although it is increasingly taken to refer to material comfort (Ikels, 2004). In Winston’s hands, however, the debt to the older generation is reframed as a responsibility to one’s nuclear household: Winston: Kevin: Winston:

You are a family man! Excellent. Uh, so when you’re at home now you don’t have that feeling, right? Not… a lot of, ah, responsibility and pressure. Yes… right? Then, this thing is very convenient, very easy, very comfortable, no pressure, no responsibility, like that? Because I’m a kid! But this excuse can’t be used for much longer. But this excuse will not last long, right? Maybe when I’m 18, I’m a grown-up. Wait until I’m 28, I should be the breadwinner for the family. I should be the person shouldering the responsibility for our family.

The figure of the ‘fi lial son’ is replaced by the ‘family man’, a type more familiar to a Western audience. In this Westernised formulation, the family is the nuclear family, with the father taking on the role of breadwinner. The relative freedom of childhood is gradually replaced by increasing burdens as people transition to adulthood. But this is a significant departure from common Chinese narrative tropes of childhood, where children are anything but free (or ‘easy’ and ‘comfortable’ in Winston’s words) as they face tremendous educational pressures. Parents, in turn, have a responsibility to push their child to achieve that success (Fong, 2004). It is this responsibility, rather than merely a fi nancial one, that Kevin alludes to in his answer and which Winston obscures in his own. At other times the strategic stylisation of contemporary Chinese discourses into a global idiom failed altogether. David, for instance, recruited the explicit terminology of modernising discourse in China: Winston: David: Winston: David:

Ten years from now, later. Something that is different from now, what is it? I can say, um, knowledge (zhishi) and my self-cultivation (xiuyang) Knowledge and self-cultivation? Ten years in the future, your knowledge and your personal quality will be different. So what is the relationship between these two things? You get them through studying.

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Winston:

Right, because I will have received fine education overseas, so the quality of my, of my, um, of my knowledge base and, um, the essence of- of- of my being, all will be different. That sentence is your main idea right there. But you should use a whole sentence to say it, got that? [David writing notes] Are you going to hesitate for half a day here?… Okay, then, your fi rst sentence is, let’s see how would you say it … actually you can say it like this, I think ten years looking forward, ten years in the future, I think my life would be quite different than now, in terms of my knowledge and my personal quality.

In this exchange, David answers Winston’s question on how his life will be different in ten years with two areas of development: his knowledge and self-cultivation. The latter is a rough translation of the Chinese term xiuyang, which has distinct moral overtones in addition to its literal meaning of accomplishment and self-training, analogous to Western ideals of culture, taste and breeding. The xiuyang individual, a key social type in modernising discourse, is successful, authoritative, refi ned and morally upstanding. Winston translates the student’s answer with the term ‘personal quality’, a common gloss for the related term suzhi. Like xiuyang, the presence of suzhi marks urban citizens as distinguished, refi ned, well-mannered and therefore of higher value than the left-behind labouring masses of the socialist era. This sense of personal distinction would, however, make little sense to IELTS examiners, stylistically rooted as it is within a distinctly Chinese modernising discourse and not a transnational English one. In China, however, these are perfectly clear stance positions, orienting the speaker towards modernist sensibilities and against backwards social types. We can see Winston fumble and hesitate several times as he attempts to render the student’s aspirations into a form that would be comprehensible for a transnational audience. Conclusion

In his analysis of speech in a college fraternity, Scott Kiesling has argued that gender identity can be viewed as a ‘repertoire of stances’, meaning that interactants select from among the full range of possible stances those that position themselves as particularly gendered individuals (2001: 252). In this chapter, I have examined the case of aspiring Chinese transnational migrants who attempt to similarly locate themselves within a shifting landscape of identities and affi liations, but without a sure knowledge of the stylistic properties that generate these stances and guarantee their authenticity. Guided by teachers such as Winston, students

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learn to present themselves as globally competent cosmopolitans, doling out pop-cultural references and acting in the mode of confident speakers. These stylisations demonstrate an intense desire to emulate Westernised discourse stances in their performance of standard English, but they are not effortless since they entail the translation of locally dominant discourse stances into a presumably global linguistic medium. The resultant co-constructed teacher-student narratives that I have reproduced here, intended as idealised answers to hypothetical IELTS questions, draw upon both the expected discursive norms of the test-taking conversational frame itself as well as widely circulating discourse frameworks of modernisation and development. Those narratives also call our attention to the very nature of transnationalism itself. Traditionally tied to movement across borders (e.g. Hannerz, 1996; Ong, 1999), here we can see transnational identities being inculcated in acts of narration, stylisation and stancetaking. The student responses to the question of what their lives would be like in ten years all presumed the outcome they sought: to go abroad. And the potential future selves they outlined in class have already achieved the sociocultural dimensions of identity and the conversational footings associated with transnational personae. In other words, the students had to act transnational before they could have the chance to literally be transnational. Transnationalism is therefore less a product of movement than it is the development of a linguistic and cultural habitus and orientation towards non-local forms of social belonging. Crucially, that linguistic and cultural habitus is an explicitly Western one. We should note here how transnationalism is not a stance equally available to all speakers. American or British students fi nd it much easier to inhabit these kinds of characterological personae since they are naturalised products of their own socialisation. Non-Western students must, on the other hand, study these types of personae from afar in order to be awarded the opportunity to acquire them in person. Western biases and assumptions underlie the entire enterprise of educational transnationalism. We have seen in these examples just how delegitimised Chinese or other Asians forms of transnational discourse are in the global sphere, treated as inauthentic representations of transnational positioning. What room is there for a transnationalism of self-cultivation, for example, or for a fi lial transnationalism in the spaces otherwise occupied by the confident stances of the native English speaker (see Tu, 2016)? The possibilities of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism are therefore premised upon an inherent structural inequality between various types of global citizens.

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High-stakes language exams like IELTS have long played a gate-keeping role in managing opportunity for educational mobility. But their design also, premised as it is on supposedly ‘naturalistic’ forms of interaction, can have unintended biases and effects. Although tests like the IELTS bill themselves as objective measures of language ability, students felt the need to attend intensive classes like Winston’s in order to project properly socialised global identities through their linguistic performances. The students I worked with experienced acute anxieties about what the examination frames as a simple conversation and went to great lengths to prepare their answers ahead of time. As we have seen, those answers are suff used with markers of presumably Westernised styles and stances that are intended to appeal to native-speaking English examiners like Patricia who bring with them negative register valuations towards explicitly Mandarininflected English. What might have happened if Yingchun had taken Winston’s class in preparation for her own interview? Not just a plant but an indoor forest. A jungle! With parrots squawking and monkeys swinging through the trees. Would she be studying architecture right now? Notes (1) The names of all schools and individuals given in this article are pseudonyms. Choice of pseudonym (Chinese or English) refl ects the language of address speakers preferred. (2) Much of the discourse I examine here exhibits frequent codeswitching. As I am mostly interested in the content of speech, my transcription adheres to the following convention: English speech is in bold text, untranslated Mandarin speech in italics and translated Mandarin Chinese in roman script. There is also a local dialect called Dongbeihua frequently employed in informal interactions, but it was not used in any of the classroom discourse recorded for this chapter. I also adopt the following transcription conventions: , short pause . sentence-fi nal pause … longer pause ! exclamation : phoneme lengthening interruption (at beginning of speaker’s turn); false start or repetition [ ] editorial comment or clarification (3) A unit of Chinese currency roughly equivalent to US$0.15 or €0.13. (4) A more extensive description of the speaking portion of the IELTS exam along with sample task cards can be found at http://takeielts.britishcouncil.org/prepare-test/ understand-test-format/speaking-test. For a history of the development of IELTS see Clapham (1996). (5) The reference to my skin colour here is significant. Most Shenyangers use skin colour as an index of both modern subjectivity and language ability, so that people with white skin are assumed to be from highly developed countries and to speak English

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fluently (Henry, 2020). He also hoped that my presence would stimulate more English interaction in the classroom, as the students did usually prefer to communicate in Mandarin unless prompted. (6) This extract predates Hawking’s death in 2018.

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7 Coffee, Social Space and Middle-Class Romance: Customer Writings in an Independent Coffee Shop in China Shuang Gao

Introduction

What is success, and how can it be measured? It might be difficult to answer these abstract and philosophical questions, but many Chinese people fi nd consonance in a trending article entitled ‘I have worked hard for the past 18 years so now I can fi nally have a cup of coffee with you’ (Maizi, 2008). Published fi rst in 2008, the article was written under a pseudonym and documented how for someone from poor rural China, achieving personal success involves extra efforts to overcome stigma and marginalisation due to socio-regional inequality and stratification. In this account of anxieties and struggles, coffee is used both literally and symbolically: sitting in a coffee shop is a consumer behaviour made possible by increased income after years of hard work; it also symbolises success in the struggle for identification and integration so that ‘I’ can fi nally have a coffee with ‘you’, an imagined middle-class urban Chinese, on equal terms. Adapted versions of the story continued to emerge in the following years, such as ‘I have worked hard for the past 18 years, but am still not able to have a cup of coffee with you’ (Pingxingtabu, 2016); ‘I have worked hard for the past 18 years, but not because I want to have a cup of coffee with you’; ‘I have worked hard for the past 18 years, so that fi nally I don’t need to have a cup of coffee with you’ (Sina, 2019). Common in these varied accounts and discussions of personal success and failure is the use of coffee as a trope, through which material constraints of and aspirations for social mobility are laid bare. 126

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This chapter examines intricate relations between coffee and social identity in China by looking at customer writings in an independent coffee shop. Whereas having coffee tends to be considered as a mundane behaviour in many Western countries (Gaudio, 2003), coffee is an acquired taste in China, thanks to the global expansion of the coffee industry since the late 1980s. Almost 40 years after coffee was made available in the Chinese market, the most recent industry report shows that ‘China remains overwhelmingly a tea-drinking nation, with retail sales of tea outweighing coffee by almost ten to one’ (the International Coffee Organization, 2015: 1). Yet despite being at an early stage of coffee consumption, which is ‘comparable to the evolution of coffee demand in Japan fi fty years ago’ (ICO, 2015: 4), there has been ‘rising popularity of coffee shops and coffee culture’ with coffee consumption growing at double-digit rates in China (ICO, 2015: 1). What does coffee mean for Chinese people? If there is an emerging coffee culture, in what ways does coffee construct and mediate the sociocultural practices and identity of Chinese people? And what roles do language and communication play in this process? With these questions in mind, I examine writings found in guestbooks at a coffee shop as unsolicited reflexive discourses about and around coffee (Noy, 2015; Riley & Cavanaugh, 2017). Analytically, I approach these writings as social practice in the sense that they are produced under certain social and ideological conditions and mediate the construction and performance of social identities (Ahearn, 2001; Barton & Papen, 2010; Gaudio, 2003; Noy, 2015; Street, 2000; Weth & Juffermans, 2017). The assumption here is that as food (and drink) travels, it may acquire new social meanings and significance which are in turn constructed by possibly distinct modes of discourse. I thus pay attention to the social and material conditions of text production as well as the semiotic meanings and identities constructed via discourses on coffee. As I will explain, coffee discourses by Chinese customers show different features from the typical customer feedback genre such as ‘very good coffee and service’. Specifically, I take a social semiotic approach (Manning, 2012) and examine these writings as metapragmatic discourses on coffee (Agha, 2007). As I will show, coffee in China acquires indexicalities (Silverstein, 2003) along a continuum from trying an exotic drink, constructing xiaozi (petit bourgeois) identity, to indulging in a romantic experience. Also, the consumption of coffee happens in actual time-space, showing how the coffee shop is re-imagined, aestheticised and romanticised as a space of sociability, pointing to coffee drinking as essentially an experience economy (Gaudio, 2003; Pine & Gilmore, 2013). In the sections below, I fi rst review the relevant literature on food/ drink and social identity, in particular on coffee. I then look at the history

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of coffee in China with a focus on the sociohistorical conditions of coffee consumption. It becomes apparent through the historical review that it is almost impossible to understand coffee and social identity in China without understanding Chinese people’s consumption of Western food in general. I then introduce the coffee shop where I collected data during fieldwork in 2011, including interviews with coffee shop owners, observations, and customer writings in the guestbooks. It is shown that coffee is inextricably linked with middle-class identity and romance, but at the same time such identity is ambivalently performed and contested as consumption constitutes new material conditions for the performance of affect and identity in China today. Food (Space), Social Class and Affect

Food has always been a key topic of anthropological research and has been shown to mediate everyday sociocultural practices and political economic structure (e.g. Karrebæk, 2012; Mintz & Du Bois, 2002; Phillips, 2006; Roseberry, 1996; Watson & Caldwell, 2005). Recent sociolinguistic research has also highlighted the dialectic relationships between language and food, showing how discourses on food production and consumption can inform our understanding of social class (Cotter & Valentinsson, 2018; Gaudio, 2003; Manning, 2012; Mapes, 2018), and race and ethnicity (Gaudio, 2003; Karrebæk, 2012). Taking social semiotic approaches to food, scholars have shown that food has no intrinsic values; instead, its social meanings and significance are constructed or enregistered (Agha, 2007) based on socially constructed, and sometimes moralised, models of behaviour (Karrebæk, 2012, 2014). Riley and Cavanaugh (2017) also note that food discourses ‘express and construct categorical distinctions and sociocultural identities, relationships of solidarity and dominance, stances of desire and disgust’. Also, the ‘multisensual reality of food (including drink)’ has impacts on language and communication (Riley & Cavanaugh, 2017). Existing research on coffee discourses has examined various genres, including coffee talk (Gaudio, 2003), ordering coffee (Manning, 2012), serving coffee (Toback, 2017) and discourses on coffee cupping events (Cotter & Valentinsson, 2018). These studies point to the dialectical relations between coffee and social class. Manning (2012) shows that the interactional act of ordering coffee is a potential site of struggle and conflict between baristas and customers wherein social class anxieties are revealed. Cotter and Valentinsson (2018) show a paradoxical bivalency in coffee discourses wherein craft coffee indexes both elite identity via authentication of high-quality coffee beans and progressive political stance via emphasis

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on ethical production of coffee. Elitism is also shown in Toback’s (2017) examination of Tully’s Coffee in Japan, where elitism and popularism, two historical strains throughout the history of coffee in Japan, are reconciled through the discursive construction of authenticity and equalitarian sociability. Equally important are the material conditions of coffee consumption. In his critique of coffee talk, Gaudio (2003) deconstructs the naturalisation of conversation and suggests that, contrary to the common conception of the coffee shop as a social space of equality and fraternity, the coffee shop constitutes a space where occurrence of seemingly natural social interactions is embedded in social, racial, gender as well as geographic differentiation and stratifications, thereby pointing to the importance of the material conditions of language use and the power of social space. This chapter builds on these studies on coffee discourse and social identity and extends the discussion to affect. As I will show, coffee in China acquires the indexicality of not only middle-class identity but also desirable love and romance, pointing to the intersectionality of social class, affect and consumption. To understand the socio-ideological processes (Silverstein, 2003) that mediate the construction of social meanings of coffee in China, in the next section I introduce the sociohistorical contexts through which coffee culture emerges and develops in China, before discussing further how the coffee shop provides a liminoid situation (Illouz, 1997: 142) that enables the performance of romance as well as social distinction. Coffee and Coffee Shops in China

Coffee in China carries contested sociopolitical meanings and cultural significance at different historical times. The mass consumption of coffee in China only started in the late 1980s, though coffee plantations and their production for export can be traced back to the early 20th century (Pang & Li, 2018). There was an early and brief appearance of coffee shops in China in the early 1900s, when coffee was served in restaurants or coffeehouses in foreign settlements. These places were exclusive food spaces (Highmore, 2008) frequented by foreign military officials and wealthy businesspeople, and sometimes Chinese cultural elites. Zhang Ailing, a prominent writer famous for her romantic novels, was a frequent customer of coffeehouses while living with her affluent family in Shanghai during the 1920s to 1950s (Wang, 2012). Deng Xiaoping’s open-up and reform policy in 1978 lifted constraints on capitalist exploration of the Chinese market and paved the way for foreign products and businesses into China. As always, big brands led the

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way in the global expansion of businesses (Phillips, 2006). Nestlé fi rst entered the Chinese market in 1988 by promoting their bottled instant coffee as a healthy drink gift, which matches well with the Chinese giftgiving culture as well as satisfying the desire for Western goods and modernity during the reform period (Wang, 2012). The coffee shop as a business establishment started shortly afterwards in the late 1990s when Starbucks opened its very first coffee shop in China, in Beijing, in 1999. This happened around the same time when other global brands such as KFC and McDonald’s started to appear in China. Protests against the fi rst Starbucks in Beijing is often cited as evidence of anti-globalisation and rising nationalism against threats to traditional Chinese culture (Maguire & Hu, 2013; Watson & Caldwell, 2005). Western goods thus constitute an ambiguous entity in China: their existence is embedded in cultural politics, economic imperialism and the anxiety of nationalism. But at the same time, they are also signs of modernity and development in postreform China, much desired by an emerging Chinese middle class (Yan, 1997). Just like the quick expansion of McDonald’s and KFC in China, Starbucks and the coffee industry in China has also been quickly expanding, totalling about 85,000 coffee shops in 2016 (Ma, 2018). Here, it is useful to talk about Chinese people’s consumption of other Western goods, McDonald’s in particular. This is not because it is another Western food in China, but because of the parallels between both business types in post-reform China, pointing to a system of distinction (Bourdieu, 1991) being made and remade through engagements with Western food. Social class, affect and Western food in China: The rise and fall of McDonald’s

In his detailed ethnography of McDonald’s in Beijing, Yan (1997, 2005) delineates the local meanings of the global brand in China and argues for understanding McDonald’s as a social space that provides hitherto unavailable forms of social life in post-reform China. While Yan did not explicitly adopt a social semiotic approach, his analysis shows how the meaning of food is socially constructed. Importantly, he shows that the popularity of the brand does not necessarily mean the popularity of its food. As he sharply observes, many Chinese customers complained about food at McDonald’s, e.g. the food is not tasty, its price is too high (by Chinese standards), and it is not a proper meal based on the Chinese concept of meal. Nevertheless, eating at McDonald’s remained popular, as it provided Chinese people with a window to the Western world. Eating at McDonald’s even constitutes ‘meaningful social event’, such that a tour of

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McDonald’s kitchen can be provided at the requests of customers (Yan, 1997: 41). But it is meaningful not just in the touristic sense of experiencing something new and exotic, but also re-imagining oneself. Yan observes that: ‘Many customers spent hours talking to each other and gazing out the huge glass window that overlooks a busy commercial street – thereby demonstrating their sophistication to the people who passed by’ (Yan, 2005: 87). Through slow consumption of the ‘fast food’ (Yan, 1997), Chinese people are redefi ning themselves as ‘middle-class professionals, or yuppies’. It was also noted that young people found the environment of McDonald’s romantic; indeed, in some McDonald’s shops, private service areas nicknamed ‘lovers’ corners’ were available for couples (Yan, 2005: 91). Thus, Yan (1999, 2005) shows that the social meaning of food lies not within the intrinsic quality of food itself; it is the socially conditioned ways through which food is consumed and experienced that endow it with social meanings. Unsurprisingly then, with the fast-changing development of China during the past few decades, the meaning and significance of McDonald’s have been changing accordingly. Gao (2013) shows that from 1988 to 2012 people’s perception of McDonald’s changed from providing healthy to unhealthy food, from offering a clean and tidy dining environment to a crowded and noisy one, from being a progressive model of business management to being unethical in food sourcing and processing, etc. The space of McDonald’s accordingly has changed from being a social space of leisure for yuppies to being a convenient place to grab some cheap junk food. Similarly, Wang (2012) notes that McDonald’s and KFC no longer offer the desirable space that once attracted the middle class. Coffee shops instead seem to be taking over as a new social space for the sophisticated middle class in China today. Coffee shops in China

Coffee shops are increasingly seen across China, though instant coffee still makes up around 99% of retail sales by volume and 98% by value (ICO 2015: 1–2). On average, Chinese people consume five to six cups of coffee per capita per year, slightly higher at 20 cups in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai (Ma, 2018). A cup of freshly made coffee in coffee shops costs around US$3–6 in China, much higher than in Europe or the USA (The China Guide 2018), making it an expensive drink for many people. According to Wang (2012), coffee shops in China today exist in mainly three types: chain shops of big brands, such as Starbucks, located in central business districts of global cities like Beijing and Shanghai for

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middle-class professionals; coffee shops near universities, such as Sculpting in Time Café, a Chinese coffee brand, which attracts the cultural middle class, mostly university students of literature, fi lms, music, etc.; coffee shops at tourist destinations which are more expensive and mostly cater to foreign visitors. Existing research on coffee in China has focused on Starbucks, the leading coffee brand in China. Based on interviews with customers, Maguire and Hu (2013) show that going to Starbucks means experiencing authentic American life and constitutes a symbol of middle-class status. The coffee shop is a social space where desires, imaginations and aspirations for a Western lifestyle are materialised. From a literary perspective, Henningsen (2011, 2012) shows that coffee and the coffee shop are central to the development of romance in contemporary Chinese novels: ‘characters meet in coffee shops; they drink coffee; they reflect on their habits … important events and memories, often of romantic love, are connected to the consumption of coffee’ (Henningsen, 2012: 412). Henningsen (2012) also notes that customers write about their personal love stories in Starbucks. Similarly, in the customer writings I collected, people write at length about their coffee drinking experience, and romantic prose is one of the main genres. As I will explain later, I examine these writings as metapragmatic discourses on coffee which shed light on how coffee acquires local meanings and mediates the construction of social identity in China. Customer Writings in an Independent Coffee Shop

Data were collected as part of a large project to understand language and social change in Yangshuo, China (Gao, 2019). The coffee shop constitutes one of the new types of space of sociability in Yangshuo, but it also differs from other social spaces, as I will explain. The Xijie coffee shop (pseudonym) where I collected the writings was a family-run independent coffee shop. Opened in 2000, it was the fi rst coffee shop in town, though coffee was also sold at that time in some restaurants. The coffee shop moved to its current location along the Li River in 2009 when they decided the former location in the town centre was no longer suitable for a coffee shop due to the further development of tourism and the increasing number of nightclubs and pubs (Gao, 2019). As the shop manager Wang explained to me, ‘there are always drunk people on the street, they are not the customers we want’. Two other coffee shops I visited in the area have messages written explicitly for customers: ‘no loud-speaking, no card games’, which are obviously allowed in many bars and clubs.

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Indeed, coffee shops differentiate themselves by the potential customers they attract. As Gaudio (2003: 671) also observes, a coffeehouse does not simply provide an interactional space which ‘could also be found in pubs and taverns’; instead, a coffee house is characterised ‘by the sophistication of its clientele, who were increasingly literate and eager to read and discuss contemporary works of literature . . . such that it becomes a sign of distinctiveness’ (Gaudio, 2003: 671). The appeal to particular types of customers can also be seen in the design of the shop. Designed by the owners, the coffee shop in question is in the style of a spacious middle-class living room: two arched walls separate the room into three parts (see Figure 7.1). The section in the middle has a bookshelf holding magazines and books in different languages for customers to read. And there was always classical music playing softly in the background every time I visited. Guestbooks have been provided at the shop since 2001. Notably, the owners told me that they started providing guestbooks at the suggestion of a customer. They introduced their first notebook as below: Write down how you feel at this moment in this Tourist Message notebook. Please feel free to write whatever you want to say, and we will keep the notebook for you. Maybe years later, when you come back again, you can have another look at what you wrote, or share this with your friends or family. Wouldn’t it be a nice memory to remember?

Figure 7.1 Inside the coffee shop, photo by author

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The notebooks are sequentially marked with numbers, and sometimes forwarded by the owners, such as ‘this notebook was given to us as a gift from our customer Xiaolan. We thank her kindness’, or ‘this notebook was lost but found fi nally’. For both the owners and customers then, these carefully preserved notebooks are meant to represent artifacts of a collective memory about coffee and the coffee shop as well as providing the material conditions for discursive construction of a socially meaningful space. By the time of my fieldwork in 2011, there were about 20 notebooks with thousands of customer messages. Writings in the guestbooks are multilingual and multimodal, which indicate the diversity of its customers (Zhu et  al., 2017), as shown in Figure 7.2. I collected the writings randomly from 2001–11. Altogether I made photocopies of 256 pages, which contain a total of 204 entries. Four main genres can be seen in these writings: (1) customer feedback, which usually consists of simple and short sentences; (2) narratives about coffee and personal relationships, which can last several long paragraphs or pages; (3) traveling experience in Yangshuo; (4) brief intertextual messages as replies to or comments on others’ messages.

Figure 7.2 A page with writings in Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Spanish

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Writings by international tourists tend to be brief feedbacks (e.g. ‘We loved your coffee shop. Such a lovely place to relax – beautiful music, comfortable chairs, great coffee and lovely people. You are very nice. Thank you. 08 Sept 07’). Writings by Chinese tourists, 149 entries in total in my dataset, are more varied in genres.1 In my analysis, I exclude writings about touristic experiences in Yangshuo in general, and focus on writings by Chinese customers about the experience in the coffee shop. As mentioned earlier, writings about personal relationships figure prominently, with a total of 39 entries. Semiotics of Coffee

In this section, I focus on the indexicalities of coffee constructed through discourses about and around coffee in writings by Chinese customers. As I will show, these writings constitute metapragmatic discourses through which customers establish social meanings of coffee as well as displaying their taste, performing middle-class identity and negotiating romantic relationships. Bitter and exotic coffee: Taste and social class

The following extract was written in 2001 on the fi rst guest book. Here the customer narrates his/her first experience of having coffee: Extract 1: ‘First time drinking coffee’ (2001)2

At [name omitted] coffee shop on West Street I had my coffee for the fi rst time. Coffee is an unfamiliar word to me. The owner … told us when we chatted with him that he is Taiwanese and all his beans and ingredients are from Taiwan. He is very skilled at making coffee. Now a cup of aromatic Cappuccino is in front of me, very appealing. I stir the coffee with a spoon, and the white foam starts to form circles with the color of coffee and then disappears into the bottom of coffee. Calm but excited, I really love the feeling of stirring coffee. I hold up the Hello Kitty coffee cup and have a close look at it. Ha, the [unrecognizable] is below the logo. I take a sip of the first Cappuccinoin my life. It even tastes familiar. Um, a mild but sometimes strong bitter taste full of my mouth. Wonderful! [Signature omitted]

Coffee is the focus of the narrative, and the customer provides a detailed account of what coffee is like, how they drink it, and how they feel about

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it, thereby indicating the specialty of the experience for them. The customer showed their interest and curiosity about coffee as they tried to fi nd out more about the shop owners and the source of coffee. The customer then documents a multisensual experience of talking about, looking at, smelling, stirring and drinking coffee. Note that the perception and evaluation of coffee changes as they try coffee, that is, from being an exotic drink (‘unfamiliar’) to being attracted to it (‘aromatic’, ‘appealing’) and to fi nally enjoying it (‘familiar’, ‘mild’, ‘strong’, ‘bitter’, ‘wonderful’). Through these evaluative words, they construct coffee drinking as an aesthetic experience while displaying taste (Bourdieu, 1991). The exoticness of coffee as a ‘unfamiliar’ drink is fi rst highlighted in the use of English ‘now’ and ‘cappuccino’ when coffee was served, which constructs an iconic (Irvine & Gal, 2000) relationship between coffee and exoticness, that is, the foreign code itself indicates the foreignness of the drink, highlighting coffee drinking as a transcultural experience. But the customer then re-works the semiotic meanings of coffee by aligning themself with the associated qualities of coffee. Despite being new to coffee, they show that they know how to drink and appreciate it (‘I stir the coffee with a spoon, and the white foam starts to form circles with the color of coffee and then disappears into the bottom of coffee’) as if it is something they already knew (‘tastes familiar’), thereby downplaying the exoticness of coffee and implying coffee is not too dissimilar from their lifestyle or habitus (Bourdieu, 1991) and is something they enjoy (‘wonderful’). Through these metapragmatic discourses on coffee, as well as the use of English, a typical middle-class language practice (Gao, 2012), the customer therefore displays a middle-class identity as they construct themself as someone with taste (Bourdieu, 1991). The semiotic construction of coffee as a middle-class marker is more explicitly shown in the extract below, wherein an iconic relationship between coffee and cultural middle-class identity (xiaozi) is constructed. Extract 2: ‘he never had the chance to … have a taste of this bitter but delicious coffee’ (2002)

This is my first time in Yangshuo, sitting in a café in West Street, listening to nice and beautiful music, watching tourists outside walking in the light rain. Thinking that I am leaving this memorable place in two days, I suddenly feel like I should leave something here: Oh, my feelings, my feelings right now. When drinking this bitter coffee, I remember my father who passed away years ago. He is a true intellectual, a man with xiaozi taste, but he never had the chance to visit this beautiful place and have a taste of this bitter but aromatic coffee. I feel so much regret for him.

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In this writing, the customer did not comment on their own experience of drinking coff ee, except by saying that it is bitter but delicious. Instead, they lament that their father, who they claim was an intellectual with xiaozi taste, never had the chance to try coffee. Xiaozi here means a lifestyle wherein one displays social status and taste through Western food, leisure activities and use of English (Gao, 2012). Note that it is not because of any intrinsic quality about or stories behind coffee that they regret their father never had tried it, but because their father was an intellectual with xiaozi taste. Based on this cultural logic, middle-class identity (‘a true intellectual’) must be authenticated through consumption of coff ee. Coff ee therefore is constructed and naturalised as an icon (Irvine & Gal, 2000) of middle-class identity and xiaozi taste. As a middle-class drink, coffee understandably comes with a price tag. The extract below shows the contested meanings of coffee as an index of either middle-class cultural practice or pretentious desire for a middleclass lifestyle. Extract 3 ‘my xiaozi life is only possible thanks to his hard-earned money’ (2011)

Peaceful mind, nice music, iced coffee, this is xiaozi life. My husband said, my xiaozi life is only made possible by his hard-earned money. I then suddenly felt that his hard work worth a lot.

Here the wife was indulging in a xiaozi lifestyle through symbolic consumption of coffee. But she was reminded by her husband of the materiality of coffee when he said to her that ‘xiaozi life is only made possible by his hard-earned money’. The husband seems to be making a complaint or having a subtext of resentment about his wife’s lifestyle preference and choice. Her desire and aspirations for a xiaozi lifestyle, including coffee drinking, is thus un-imagined and re-constructed by the husband as essentially a consumer behaviour: distinction through conspicuous consumption. Her statement that ‘his hard work worth a lot’ indicates that drinking coffee is not an everyday mundane behaviour for them. The absence of English here is also suggestive when English has become a common part of middle-class language repertoire (Gao, 2012), indicating the likely working-class background of the customer. Coffee has thus become one of the symbols Chinese people pursue as they seek distinction in a stratifying Chinese society. For this reason, as we shall see, coffee might also be a source of tension in romantic relationships as people seek distinction through this desired status symbol.

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Sweet and romantic coffee: Negotiating desire and love

Whereas the analysis above shows that through writing about coffee, customers construct and perform middle-class xiaozi identity, in the following writings, we will see that the indexicality of coffee is being further explored and constructed in relation to sociability around coffee, that is, being romantic. The writing below in 2002 represents one of the first writings about love in my dataset. Extract 4: ‘if I could find my Mr. Right’ (2002)

I always think that Taiwanese people have different feelings towards coffee. When I look at the busy bare-footed shop owner and his elegant wife, I am even surer of my thoughts. I very boldly asked for their signature on a card, and had a picture taken with them. I promise, I will email you the photo, and hope you will still remember me next time we meet – Penny who loves coffee 02.3.9 p.s. Someday in the future if I could find my Mr. Right, I will bring him here certainly! Yes, don’t hesitate – just you, who’s reading this now, are my witness!

The customer fi rst writes as an observer of the coffee shop owners. Watching the owners making coffee together, she seems to confi rm her assumption that coffee has some special meanings for Taiwanese people, without specifying exactly what. The English word ‘coffee’ here constructs an iconic (Irvine & Gal, 2000) relationship between coffee and exoticness. Then moving on from description of the owners to her ‘bold’ interaction with them, including asking for an autograph and taking photos together, the customer shows that being in the coffee shop constitutes a special experience for her, which needs to be recorded for memory. Here she obviously admires the couple, who she treats like popular stars or a characterological figure (Agha, 2003) that resembles the special meanings of coffee. In her signature, she switches to English and signs off as someone who loves coffee, thereby showing her taste and aligning herself with the shop owners through emphasising commonality among them. While it might seem lacking coherence to move abruptly from liking the coffee shop owners to fi nding Mr Right, it indicates that the customer may aspire to a relationship like that of their owners. Note that given the writer only sees a snapshot of the owners’ life together, it is very likely that she was fi lling in the rest from her own

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imagination about a romantic relationship, with such imagination amplified by the surroundings, that is, coffee and the coffee shop. By imagining a future wherein she and her Mr Right will be here in the coffee shop together, the author implies how a coffee shop is a space of romance for couples in love. Such public display of identity and desire highlights that romantic love is not simply about emotive state or private feelings but is imagined and materialised through consumption and display of status symbols. The indexicality between coffee and romance is also constructed in the writing below. Extract 5: ‘AM I his angel?’ (2008)

‘While I come here to Yangshuo and to [name of coffee shop] alone [in a drawing of heart] without him, I believe [in heart shape] one year later, he will realize his Dream - and come here with his sweetheart… Angel is flying in his heart, is that true? AM I his Angel? I don’t know it has been keeping for a long time … But, I was moved and have loved him already. Beauty Yangshuo, nice dream – maybe I could not be with him forever, but today, at the age of 34, I have crush for him, am sleepless because of him… TRUE Love is FOREVER Remember me HO Just a little not more Angel’

In this writing, the customer is lovesick. She starts with a concessional clause, introducing the fact that she comes here alone, thereby implying that the coffee shop is for couples. She speculates about the possibility that someone she knows may come here in the future with his sweetheart, who may or may not be her. She uses words of hesitation (‘I believe’ ‘maybe’ ‘I don’t know’) and asks several questions (‘Angel is flying in his heart, is that true? AM I his Angel?’), which indicate her uncertainty and insecurity towards her love relationship. Yet, the heart drawing and the use of capital letters ‘TRUE’ ‘AM’ ‘FOREVER’ serve to emphasise the customer’s strong desire for commitment and long-term relationship while in the coffee shop. Her use of English also constructs her as middle class, indicating a middleclass definition of romance based on coffee consumption. This is also shown in Extract 6 where the customer declares his love for his partner in English. Here, he links the quality of coffee to their feelings, thereby constructing an iconic (Irvine & Gal, 2000) relationship between romantic love and coffee.

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Extract 6: ‘love you forever’ (2007)

To Angel: Actually I think you’ll be my angel all my life. I love you from the bottom of my heart. First time, we come here to drink coffee. It seems like our feelings are just like the taste of this coffee which lingers and lasts. Is there such a thing as forever in this world. Yes! That’s my love for you. Love you forever

The social constructedness of coffee and middle-class romance can also be seen when such an indexical relation cannot be taken for granted but becomes a source of tension in interpersonal relationship, as shown below when the customer documents the differences and conflicts between her and her partner due to the coffee shop. Extract 8 ‘We like different things’ (2007)

‘The fi rst time I came to West Street, the only shop I like is [name of] coffee shop. And I only want to come to West Street again because of [name of coffee shop]. The second time I came to West Street was two years later, when I fi nally had someone I love and could have come over with him. But we did not have the time to go to coffee shop during our travel. I always regret it! This is the third time I come here, and this time with him again. I was directed to this new shop while arriving at the old shop. That’s fi ne, because at least apart from the environment, everything else including the coffee, music, style, and notebooks are all the same as I liked before. But he got angry, saying that they did not let you in there [in the old shop], but you still would let it go, and insist on fi nding all the way here just to go into the shop’. He was still just like that even though I explained to him a lot. Whatever, we like different things. In this last hour before leaving, it is perhaps the best that we each do something we like individually. Insisting too much will only makes us unhappy. … Well, right now I can travel with him, and share our journey, and we care about each other, but he dislikes everything xiaozi, and only likes natural sceneries, the freedom of enjoying oneself. I could not convince him to come with me; I also have to leave early now because he urged me to…. So regretful…

The absence of English here (see also Extract 3) indicates that English may not be part of her linguistic repertoire, and the multiple self-corrections in writing, and the use of pinyin instead of Chinese characters at one point also indicates that the customer might have difficulty in writing fluently,

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pointing to a working-class identity. Here, she documents how her partner does not like the idea of going to the coffee shop, and still refuses to go after she tried to convince him. She regrets not being able to come to the coffee shop with him, not because of the lack of company, but because she had hoped that one day she would go to a coffee shop with her love. For her, a romantic relationship should be marked by going to the coffee shop together – a middle-class romantic experience. Their arguments show how coffee consumption is embedded in class-based differences in desire and romance. Discussion: The Political Economy of Food and Affect

Through a social semiotic analysis of coffee, we have seen that coffee in China indexes foreignness, exoticness, and also indexes being middle class and xiaozi in China; coffee also acquires the indexicality of being romantic. In this section, I further discuss the social conditions under which the indexical order (Silverstein, 2003) of coffee, especially love and romance, are established and constructed. Love and romance used to be viewed as psychological and personal phenomena autonomous from and unaffected by socioeconomic structures. There was notable exclusion of love from scientific research (for critiques see e.g. Illouz, 1997; Jackson, 1993; Morrison et al., 2012) in the sense that when it comes to the exploration of emotion, love tends to be left out as a merely psychological, personal, irrational phenomenon and thus an unworthy and a-social issue. The same critique can be applied to sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology (but see Ahearn, 2001), though related topics like sex, sexuality and gender have been well-established research issues for decades (Besnier, 1990: 4; Cameron & Kulick, 2003). Recent sociological research has challenged this view of love as mental state or sexual desire (e.g. Illouz, 1997; Morrison et al., 2012), noting that love and romance are embedded in socio-historical structural and cultural practices (Ahearn, 2001; Illouz, 1997; Yan, 2003). Thus, there exists no universal defi nition of love and romance, and how romance and love are felt and expressed are always made within a particular sociocultural frame. As Ahearn (2001: 49) also points out, the association of love and romance with sexuality is a very Western conception. In other words, love always happens ‘in a culturally and historically specific way’ (Ahearn, 2003: 111). One important fi nding is how romance in modern society has become closely related to, and increasingly defi ned by, the capitalist economy. Through analysing a heterogeneous dataset of popular literary forms (e.g.

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advertisements, movies, novels, magazines) and interviews with both middle-class and working-class Americans, Illouz (1997) fi nds that the general public’s conception of love and romance in American society are mediated through consumption; in other words, romance has become closely related to and increasingly defi ned by consumption in a capitalist economy. Illouz (1997) proposes two interrelated concepts to capture the observed mutual embeddedness of romance and economy: ‘The “romanticization of commodities” refers to the way in which commodities acquired a romantic aura . . . The “commodification of romance”, on the other hand, concerns the ways in which romantic practices increasingly interlocked with and became defi ned as the consumption of leisure goods and leisure technologies offered by the nascent mass market’ (Illouz, 1997: 26). Romantic love always happens in a certain time-space (Illouz, 1997; Morrison et al., 2012). Some period of time (e.g. night as opposed to day) is considered more romantic, and taking one’s time, that is, ‘slowness’, as opposed to rushing one’s time, is also an important aspect of romance (Illouz, 1997: 128). And romance tends to be associated with a space other than home, as either in tourist destinations with natural scenery or in restaurants (Illouz, 1997). In the latter case, romance is associated with trying tasty and exotic food (Henningston, 2011, 2012; Illouz, 1997). In this sense, romance involves suspension of ordinary everyday life and the creation of liminoid situations (Illouz, 1997: 142). Through consumption in liminoid situations, romance as well as social distinction is constructed (Ahearn, 2001; Illouz, 1997). I suggest that coffee represents one such item of consumption and a coffee shop provides a liminoid experience in the Chinese context, wherein coffee as an exotic and middle-class drink is romanticised. In other words, coffee and the coffee shop are redefi ning social identity and sociability among Chinese people, and customer writings, together with other literary genres on coffee (Henning, 2011), constitute one of the discursive sites through which middle-class romance is performed and negotiated. Conclusion

In this chapter, I have examined how middle-class Chinese identity is constructed in metapragmatic discourses of coffee in globalising China. I have shown that customer writings provide a discursive site wherein the social meanings and significance of coffee are being constructed, which in turn mediates people’s construction of social class identity and social relationships. Coffee drinking constitutes as an aesthetic experience through which middle-class Chinese identity is performed and romantic

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relationships are articulated. Such experiences happen in actual space, pointing to the importance of examining social identity in relation to new conceptualisations of sociability and romance around consumption in a consumer economy. The chapter also shows new Chinese subjectivity in relation to romance and love. Yan (2003: 44) notes that a number of scholars simply assume that the Chinese are uninterested in romantic love, or are incapable of incorporating love into courtship and marriage, because of their collective social orientation. This underestimation persists because there have been few scholarly attempts to explore the emotional world of ordinary [Chinese] people.

In this chapter I have shown that coffee constitutes an important semiotic element in re-defi ning the meaning and practice of love and romance in globalising China. But just as with McDonald’s (Gao, 2013), the social meanings of coffee and coffee shop may change over time. Admittedly, they carry ambivalent meanings and values for people in different social class backgrounds, as we have seen. Nevertheless, in post-socialist China, with increasing stratification and the turn to a consumer society, seeking distinction seems to have become an important cultural logic that governs the everyday sociocultural practices of Chinese people as they try to define and redefi ne themselves. Notes (1) A tourist message usually contains date, signature, place of origin, as well as the main text. I identify the Chinese customers by looking at the language used, the signature and the writer’s place of origin, if provided. (2) Italicized bold texts are reproduced from the original text. The rest are my English translations from Chinese. [ ] is used for inserting my comments.

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Pang, C.L. and Li, M. (2018) Mapping Chinese coffee culture in the land of tea: The case of Yunnan Province. Journal of International Economic Studies 32, 103–115. Phillips, L. (2006) Food and globalization. Annual Review of Anthropology 35, 37–57. Pine II, B.J. and Gilmore, J. (2013) The experience economy: Past, present and future. In J. Sundbo (ed.) Handbook on the Experience Economy (pp. 21–44). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Pingxingtabu (2016) I have worked hard for the past 18 years, but am still not able to have a cup of coffee with you. See https://www.jianshu.com/p/11e4b54206c5 (accessed October 2020). Riley, K. and Cavanaugh, J.R. (2017) Tasty talk, expressive food: An introduction to the semiotics of food-and-language. Semiotic Review 5. Roseberry, W. (1996) The rise of yuppie coffees and the reimagination of class in the United States. American Anthropologist 98 (4), 762–775. Silverstein, M. (2003) Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23, 193–229. Sina (2018) I have worked hard for the past 18 years, so that fi nally I don’t need to have a cup of coffee with you. See https://k.sina.cn/article_5617133817_14ecea8f9022002 oxd.html (accessed October 2020). Street, B. (2000) Literacy events and literacy practices: Theory and practice in the New Literacy Studies. In M. Martin-Jones and K.E. Jones (eds) Multilingual Literacies: Reading and Writing Different Worlds (pp. 17–29). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. The China Guide (2018) A brief history of coffee in China. See https://www.thechinaguide.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-coffee-in-china (accessed February 2019). Toback, E. (2017) Cross-modal iconism at Tully’s Coffee Japan: Authenticity and egalitarian sociability as projections of distinction. Semiotic Review 5. Wang, J. (2012) The coffee/cafés-cape in Chinese urban cities. M/C Journal 15 (2), 1–3. Watson J.L. and Caldwell, M.L. (2005) Introduction. In J.L. Watson and M.L. Caldwell (eds) The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating: A Reader (pp. 1–10). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Weth, C. and Juffermans, K. (2019) Tyranny of Writing: Ideologies of the Written Word. London: Blomsbury Academic. Yan, Y. (1997) McDonald’s in Beijing: The localization of Americana. In J.L. Watson (ed.) Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (pp. 39–76). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Yan, Y. (2003) Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village 1949–1999. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Yan, Y. (2005) Of hamburger and social space: Consuming McDonald’s in Beijing. In J.L. Watson and M.L. Caldwell (eds) The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating: A Reader (pp. 80–103). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Zhu, H., Otsuji, E. and Pennycook, A. (2017) Multilingual, multisensory, and multimodal repertoires in corner shops, streets and markets: Introduction. Social Semiotics 27 (4), 383–393.

8 The Authenticity, Cultural Authority and Credibility of Weibo Public Intellectuals Mingyi Hou

Introduction

The year 2013 marked the high point of political microbloggers’ fame in China. ‘Big Vs’ were invited both to China Central Television’s studio as guest speakers and into jail as criminals for the solicitation of prostitutes and disseminating rumours.1 The compound phrase ‘public intellectual and Big V’ implies that public deliberation was once a genre of content contributing to one’s media visibility on Weibo. Five years later, Weibo has evolved into a digital platform embodying a very different cultural atmosphere. As societal issues and debates about current affairs still constantly make it to the trending topic list, Weibo nowadays is attributed in popular discourse as a platform best for consuming celebrity scandals, or ‘eating watermelon’ in the Chinese neologism. Speaking the language of IT industry, celebrity-related content is a strategic niche of Weibo in the ecology of social media platforms in China. Nevertheless, the dim-out of the political microblogger’s high visibility indeed questions the potential of online public deliberation in China. Many communication and media studies treat Chinese social media as an exception (Schneider, 2018). The media–state relationship has long been a parameter to assess the freedom of media systems on a libertarianism to authoritarianism scale (Josephi, 2016). China is considered as sitting at the latter end of this scale with its state-owned mass media institutions and media censorship policy. As such, scholars have developed a democratisation paradigm when researching Chinese media. It directs the attention of these studies to whether the freer flow of information facilitated by networked communication technologies can bring liberal democracy to China (see the criticism by Herold & De Seta, 2015; Arora, 2012). Some 146

Authenticity, Cultural Authority and Credibility of Weibo Public Intellectuals 147

of them have a limited scope of observation, focusing only on the antagonism between digital-activism and state-censorship, a simplified good vs. evil struggle criticised by Leibold (2011). Such a framework creates a double standard when analysing online political communication in the Global South. While fake news, misinformation and the algorithmic power of giant tech companies become a concern for healthy functioning public spheres in the West, digital technologies were read merely as empowering tools facilitating the expression of political dissent in China. In Shi-xu’s (2014) sense, the topics of interest, values and understandings on the function of political communication from the West are projected as the agenda for studying the public intellectuals in China. To make sense of the digital world of China, we should then consider the various stakeholders who ‘construct networks and deploy power to achieve their individual political and commercial ends’ (Schneider, 2018: 15). Once focusing on the discourse and behaviour of the users, rather than merely the influence from state and private corporations, we may realise that ‘the Chinese-language blogosphere is producing the same shallow infotainment, pernicious misinformation and internet-based ghettos that it creates elsewhere in the world’ (Leibold, 2011: 1025). Sullivan (2014) reminds us that the dominant political power can use the same tools of online public opinion mobilisation to exert social control and claim its legitimacy. In this regard, political dissent coexists with the national pride and patriotism discourses enacted by networked users on Weibo. With the aim of providing a more nuanced account of the content and quality of public deliberation on Weibo, this study examines the media practices and discourse strategies of the political microbloggers. Together with some highly visible academics, journalists, leading entrepreneurs and political expressive entertainment stars, political microbloggers are regarded as public intellectuals by popular discourses in the Chinese online world. Political microbloggers are full-time bloggers managing content aggregation Weibo accounts, with commentaries on current affairs and historical events as primary content. Many of them are grassroots writers, meaning that they do not have a background in academia, literature or journalism. These political microbloggers exist in large numbers and they have become the important nodes in the network of public deliberation. Navigating through Weibo popularity metrics, they can push certain online events, individuals and opinions to virality by collaborative reposting and commenting. To some extent, they can exert significant influence on the shape of public opinions through technical means. Also importantly, these microbloggers are blurring the professional boundaries

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among media figures. As many types of creative professionals can become public intellectuals, microbloggers are none of them but also all of them. They can be historian writers, news commentators as well as journalists sourcing and reporting their own news stories. Therefore, it is interesting to explore how political microbloggers construct their cultural authority and credibility as public intellectuals. Through an ethnographic approach, this study explores the media practices and discursive strategies employed by political microbloggers according to the descriptive scheme of public intellectual studies proposed by Heynders (2016). In particular, I examine what thematic topics the microbloggers include in their discussions. What is the media context of their practices? How do they obtain cultural authority and credibility? It is found that microbloggers embed their writings in the multi-layered process of globalisation (Blommaert, 2010). On the one hand, they align with the digital optimistic expectation for microblogging technology to democratise the Chinese political system, which is a celebrative discourse in the geo-cultural globalisation process. One the other hand, a chronotopic narration of Chinese identity as ‘uncivilised and immoral’ is invoked through the ‘national character critique’ discourse so that the microbloggers can inherit the authoritative voices of the modern enlightenment intellectuals. This choronotope calls up the chunk of history in which China began to be involved in the world system of capitalist expansion, a deep and slow process of geopolitical globalisation. However, the analysis in this study will show that the invocation of China’s colonial past does not guarantee its positive reception in today’s Weibo public deliberation. In the following sections, I will first introduce the theoretical framework and analytical toolkits of the study. Then, my access to the research field and data collection process are explained. In the data analysis part, I will discuss the authenticity, cultural authority and (lack of) credibility in political microbloggers’ writing. The study concludes with research fi ndings and their implications for the research of political communication in a globalised digital China. A Descriptive Model of Public Intellectuals

Scholars have shown that the roles public intellectuals take and their activities in the public sphere vary across societies with different intellectual traditions. The academic definition of public intellectual is also surrounded by debates. Equating contemporary Chinese public intellectuals with political dissidents falls into the trap of ‘epistemological racism’ (Kubota, 2019). It ignores both the intellectual tradition with Chinese

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characteristics and the century-old dialogue between East and West that are promoted by the Chinese intelligentsia, which I will elaborate on in the following section. A defi nition of public intellectual with certain common ground may be referenced from Collini (2002). Public intellectuals are ‘those figures who, on the basis of some recognized standing in a creative, scholarly, or other non-instrumental activity, are also accorded the opportunity to address a wider audience on matters of general concern’ (Collini, 2002: 209). To analyse Chinese public intellectuals, this study adopts a framework which can provide historically and locally situated accounts of intellectual practices and performance. Heynders (2016) proposes a scheme for researching a public intellectual from the following perspectives: (1) one’s cultural authority and credentials, (2) the social and cultural context one operates in, (3) the mediated context of production and reception, (4) aesthetic features of one’s text and public persona. This scheme demonstrates the themes and strategies of intellectuals’ public intervention and performance, as well as audiences’ response to these activities. Cultural authority refers to an intellectual’s academic and artistic achievements as well as specialisation; it also means that such credentials need to be translated into communicable knowledge to the wider publics. In other words, public intellectuals write and put ideas into their words. The social and cultural context is the frame of intellectuals’ debate but also the object of their criticism. As the public sphere is highly mediated in contemporary societies, public intellectuals also need to address audiences with a particular style of language and by using appropriate media. Last but not least, the aesthetic performance refers to their media persona and effect on audiences. This is useful for the current study as it addresses how microbloggers claim intellectual authority, especially when many of them are grassroots online writers rather than more established public figures such as academics and journalists. It also directs our attention to the globalising economic and cultural context out of which the microbloggers engage with certain societal and political issues through their writings. Importantly, the audiences, with their concerns, emotions and knowledge, are not situated in a social vacuum. The social and cultural context dimension of this model helps us to consider the uptake of certain rhetoric from microbloggers. Lastly, how these online writers make themselves visible in the coded environments of Weibo can be elucidated by the last two perspectives. The Multi-layered Globalisation

The presence and visibility of intellectual discourse in the Chinese public sphere is largely supported by the networked communication

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technologies that characterise economic and cultural globalisation. Nevertheless, by referring to Hobsbawm (1987) and Wallerstein (2004), Blommaert (2010) reminds us that globalisation is a not a brash new phenomenon of our age. Globalisation as a deep and slow ‘geopolitical’ process of capitalist expansion began in the 19th century, and its cultural formation draws on Enlightenment and capitalist values and mass politics. What we are experiencing as ‘the emergence of new communication technologies, increasing and intensified global capitalist process of accumulation and division of labor’ is the more recent ‘geo-cultural’ developments within globalisation. In this sense, globalisation is a complex process at multiple scales and with different scopes, speed and intensity. This conceptualisation warns us against a de-historicised discourse of globalism which sees the advent of the internet and neoliberal economic and sociopolitical orders as the starting point of globalisation and also ‘the end of history’. In the same tone with this discourse are certain celebrative observations on the networked communication technologies, as they are expected to make Western democracy prevail. Political microbloggers’ ascendance to high visibility in China is indeed contemporaneous with a series of political uprisings in the Arab world. The mobilisation, organisation and media framing of these movements are believed to be facilitated by microblogging platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Therefore, many studies also raise questions about whether digital media and online deliberation can democratise the Chinese public sphere and, further, the political system. Following this line of inquiry, however, is to de-historicise modern Chinese intellectuals’ political intervention, which can be dated back to the late 19th century when China began to be involved in Western capitalist expansion, i.e. the slow and deep process of geopolitical globalisation. In the analysis I will demonstrate that the intellectual discourse on national character critique is a tradition of Chinese intellectuals’ effort which is often incorporated as a chronotope of Chineseness in today’s Weibo discussion. Chronotope

The concept of chronotope derives from Bakhtin’s theorisation of heteroglossia, meaning that any discourse entails historical-sociological different voices within the stratified discourse repertoire of that moment. It is a useful concept when we explore the context of communication, as it is ‘invokable chunks of history organizing the indexical order of discourse’ (Blommaert, 2015: 105). Chronotopes are ‘elaborate frames in which time, space and patterns of agency coincide, create meaning and value, and can

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be set off against other chronotopes’ (Blommaert, 2015: 110). In this sense, a chronotope is fi rst and foremost a ‘trope’ or ‘token’ against which we make sense of the discourse. Second, a chronotope entails a particular plot, actors and moral or political normativities. It orders what and how things happen and the power relations among the subjects as well as the moral evaluation of what has happened. We recognise chronotopes in discourse through certain indexical features. In Blommaert’s example, opening phrases like ‘once upon a time’ triggers a genre of fairy tale which involves particular actors, plots and endings. The brave prince will save the kind princess, and the evil and ugly witches will be conquered in the end. By invoking a chronotope, we invite certain subjects and make certain political claims in discourse. As Blommaert (2015) argues, this is how the concepts such as national and ethnic identities are constructed in today’s public debates for particular ideological positions. For instance, European nationalism is legitimated through linking people’s here-and-now national belongings with the chronotope of an unbroken line of heritage transmission dating back to an unspecified past. Through this means, national language should be pure and national identity should be secured, so as to enact the contemporary transmission of this mystified heritage. Nevertheless, to invoke a chronotope in discourse requires the narration of not only knowledge about a particular piece of history but also the appropriate register and style to communicate it on a certain scale. In this sense, scale is the scope of actual understandability of a specific bit of discourse. Audiences with different resources of the stratified sociolinguistic economy will recognise different indexical orders in the same discourse. In this study, I will demonstrate that the national character critique is a chronotopic narration of Chinese identity, which is constantly invoked in political microbloggers’ writings. To invoke this chronotope is to take on an elite role of critique, thus gaining cultural authority. This criticism of the uncivilised (i.e. lack of enlightenment values) elements in the traditional cultural identities of Chinese people is an established discourse in modern Chinese public intellectuals’ political intervention, dating back to the late 19th century. Chinese Enlightenment Intellectuals

Modern Chinese intellectuals’ interventions in the public sphere can be dated back to the late 19th century. This background is critical for us to understand the historical and social context of Weibo political bloggers’ writings. According to Xu Jilin (2003), the formation of the public sphere in late-imperial China was neither associated with the rise of a

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capitalist class nor with the citizen’s public concerns, like that of Western societies. Instead, it was related to the domestic and diplomatic crisis of the late Qing Dynasty. Confronted by the contacts and conflicts with the West and modern Japan, Chinese intellectuals began to reflect on the weakness of the nation, exposed by the consecutive defeats in the (AngloChinese) Opium Wars and the First Sino-Japanese War in the late-imperial age. They tried to educate the public and import Western capitalism, culture and ethics in forms of journalistic and artistic expressions (Guo & Yuan, 2000). The New Culture Movement during the 1910s and 1920s was the high point of intellectual intervention. Chinese intellectuals critically reflected on Confucianism and introduced the concept of democracy and science to the public. The material infrastructure of this newly emerged public sphere was not places like cafes, bars and salons, but institutions, including news presses, academic unions and schools. The topics discussed were not on art and literature, but directly related to the political agenda: the construction of a modern nation-state and the reformation of the traditional political orders. Methodology Approaching the field

The research objectives in this study are to investigate the media and discourse strategies of Weibo political microbloggers. An ethnographic approach is adopted so as to capture locally situated experiences, locally specific practices and lived local realities of political blogging on Weibo (Varis, 2016: 56). The in-depth analysis of microblog posts can contextualise the political bloggers’ rhetorical strategies and content with social and historical explanations. In October 2014, I registered a Weibo account as my research account. Although as a Weibo user I constantly read news and public affairs content, I did not have an overview of the public figures who participate in public deliberations. Therefore, I searched with key words ‘big V’, ‘public intellectuals’ and ‘Weibo opinion leaders’ on Baidu. The search yielded a handful of names, who were mentioned by news articles and online forum discussions as influential and controversial figures in the field of online public deliberation. I then subscribed to them on my Weibo research account. I also employed the recommendation function of Weibo which fed me with more accounts with similar content. This process is similar to a snowball sampling but making use of the algorithm and connective affordances of social media platforms. With 111 accounts in my subscription list, I then classified them based on the microbloggers’ occupation, ranging

Authenticity, Cultural Authority and Credibility of Weibo Public Intellectuals 153

from full-time microbloggers, popular writers, journalists and editors, academic scholars, lawyers, and leading entrepreneurs to entertainment stars. Then I observed the activities and microblog contents in my research account’s main page, where the content is fed by these 111 accounts. Having mapped out a landscape of public deliberation on Weibo and gained a preliminary impression on the microbloggers’ style and practices, I then focused on the category of full-time microbloggers, who manage content aggregation accounts specialising in political commentary. Although political and current affairs content is critical and sharp in style, which may help to attract followers, the scale of its reception is still limited compared to entertainment stars or accounts featuring lifestyle content. Consequently, many political microbloggers have also diversified their topics by including, for instance, chicken-soup self-help tips. In this trend of diversification, a microblogger named Baigu Lunjin caught my attention as he was very dedicated to political and current affairs content. The name literally means ‘display the past, discuss the present’, which also indicates the theme of this account. I then observed this Weibo account in detail and found that the blogger also had a Tencent Weibo account, where the blog posts were synchronised with those on Sina Weibo. On 21 January 2015, Baigu Lunjin’s Sina Weibo account stopped being active. Several days later, I was informed that the blogger had died due to illness. His sudden death aroused an online discussion where he was evaluated both positively and ironically as a leading grassroots political microblogger in China’s online public sphere. After Baigu Lunjin’s death, both of his Sina and Tencent Weibo accounts were taken over by his friends. Two months later, the Sina Weibo account was deleted. As I had fi nished most of my observation before the Sina Weibo account was deleted, the blogger’s Tencent Weibo then functioned as the main site where I went back to the field for some supplementary information. Data collection and discourse analysis

In this case study, my data consisted of Baigu Lunjin’s Weibo activities and posts. The main method to collect data is observation. As Sina and Tencent Weibo feature a time-line function, I can view all the account activities from the launch of the account, except for those that have been deleted by the blogger. In order to become familiar with Baigu Lunjin’s writings, I have read all the posts appearing on the fi rst five pages of each month’s log data from June 2012 to January 2015 on Sina Weibo. Sometimes, the posts may provide hyper-links to the news sources, so I also clicked on the links to check the original news stories. For posts

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without information about original sources, I tried to search on Baidu to locate where the story came from. In doing so, I gained knowledge of how Baigu Lunjin formulated and framed news reports. In this way, I identified the recurrent themes in Baigu Lunjin’s posts and then saved the screenshots of the posts which I considered as being representative of the blogger’s rhetorical style and content. To gain insights from the data collected, I have conducted discourse analysis. In line with Schneider’s approach, I consider discourse as ‘communication practices that systematically construct our knowledge of reality and reinforce commonly accepted truths’ (2018: 18). In the analysis, I pay attention to what themes and actors microbloggers mention in their writings, how they frame the topic of discussion, and how they connect the topic or event with the social-historical context. Data Analysis Freedom fighter in the discourse of globalised microblogging technology

One way for Weibo political microbloggers to gain authenticity and legitimacy is to position themselves as a fighter for freedom of speech. Post 1 and Post 2 in Table 8.1 are two posts updated by Baigu Lunjin when his account obtained 100,000 and 300,000 followers respectively. At these benchmark moments, he reflects on the intention of his public intellectual writings and also the uneasy process. In Baigu Lunjin’s words, he is willing to expose social injustice and corruption, to reveal the truth in history and help those who need to have a voice about their sufferings. Nevertheless, he believes such efforts are suppressed by media censorship of the dominant political power, as the account might be suddenly deleted from Weibo. In Post 3, Baigu Lunjin is informing his followers that he has a back-up account in case one day the current account disappears. He also indicates explicitly that some of his posts were deleted and his account has been banned in the past. In these posts, the microblogger represents himself as a fearless survivor of media censorship and he will insist on the pursuit of freedom of speech. He emphasises that ‘on Weibo, I’m not going to say goodbye to you’. This statement implies that Baigu Lunjin believes that Weibo, despite its censorship policy, can still bring freer information flow into the public sphere. From these reflections on media practices, we can see that the grassroots microblogger aligns his public intervention with digital optimism which expects globalised microblogging technologies to empower political activism. Big Vs’ ascendance to high visibility in China is contemporaneous

Authenticity, Cultural Authority and Credibility of Weibo Public Intellectuals 155

Table 8.1 Benchmark moment reflection (data retrieved on 18 November 2014) Post 1

终于 10 万粉丝了，没有欣喜只有感慨。 玩微博一年多，很辛苦，很受伤！但是本 人没有买过一个粉丝，没有打过一次广 告，一直本着良心做人的原则！唯一在微 博做了不得人心的就是：因为说出了历史 真相，伤害了奴才们的”忠心”！感谢所有 的朋友，感谢所有的粉丝！让我们的希望 同在！让我们的梦想同在！

Finally got 100 thousand subscribers. I don’t feel joyful but only emotional when I reflect my experience. Having been writing on Weibo for more than one year, I worked hard and was also hurt by it! But I have never bought one subscriber, never posted one advertisement, and always have a sense of right and wrong in my life. The only thing I did was to reveal the truth in history, which hurt the slaves’ ‘loyalty’. Thanks for my friends and subscribers. Don’t give up our hope and dream!

Post 2

粉丝终于上了 30 万，以前觉得到了这个 数目，一定可以揭露更多的腐败；帮助跟 多的救援者；关注更多的不公平…现在看 来，我仅仅是多了几分被销号的危险，此 时此刻，没有喜悦，只有迷茫…传说中的 中国梦，你何时来到我身边？

Finally got more than three hundred thousand followers. In the past, I feel I can disclose more corruption cases when I have obtained such number of followers; I can help more of those who seek help from me and pay attention to more social inequality cases . . . Now, I realize that my account is just more prone to be deleted. Now, I don’t feel joyful but only frustrated. When will the Chinese dream become true?

Post 3

删帖不算什么，禁言其实也不算什么，我 们还是步履蹒跚的走过来了…如果有一天 我的这个号突然消失，请关注我的另外一 个号：@有话憋住——在微博，我不能给 大家说再见！

It doesn’t matter that my posts were deleted and my account has been banned. We still survived after all the difficulties … If one day my account suddenly disappears, please follow me on another account: @有话憋住. On Weibo, I’m not going to say goodbye to you!

with a series of political uprisings in the Arab world, the mobilisation and organisation of which are believed to be facilitated by Twitter and Facebook. Although social media’s role in these movements has been reevaluated by scholars and journalists as an exaggerated one (Esfandiari, 2010; Fuchs, 2014), ironically, Twitter has been blocked in mainland China since 2009, thus contributing to microblogging’s heroic image as an effective tool for political activism. Discussions on politically sensitive topics then found a place to blossom on domestic microblogging sites, and most prominently Sina Weibo. The local media landscape is also relevant to the freedom fighter persona adopted by political microbloggers. Chinese mainstream media have specific social and ideological functions (Zhang, 2010). Television news often focuses on cultural propaganda and is instrumental in the construction of grand narratives, thus placing the function of disseminating local, accurate, in-time information in a secondary position. This

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phenomenon is also explained by Yang, Tang and Wang (2014) as the hyper-normalisation of public communication in contemporary China. The official discourses are saturated with rigid and formalised political rhetoric, in the form of endless slogans and empty-sounding clichés. Therefore, audiences may lose interest in mainstream media as they feel a large distance between what is represented in media content and their daily lives. In sharp contrast, social media have become the sites where bad news and scandalous stories are quickly disclosed to the public. In Zhang’s words, compared to the formal and celebrative mass media, social media in China are associated with an impression of reflecting ‘the real world’. Sullivan shows that the ‘microblogosphere has helped netizens to publicise and express their discontent with the negative consequences of economic growth, income inequalities and official corruption’ (2014: 24). This is indeed Baigu Lunjin’s mission statement in the abovementioned posts. To study the public intellectual, we should consider the mediated context of the intellectual’s practices and audience reception (Heynders, 2016). I argue that the assumption that social media disclose social reality is an important discursive resource for grassroots microbloggers on which to build their authenticity. As academics, journalists and authors derive their cultural authority and credentials from professional, artistic achievements and specialisation (Heynders, 2016), the situation is slightly different in China. Chinese scholars are often criticised by the public for legitimising and celebrating any policy decision by the government. Institutionalised credentials in this sense may undermine their credibility in digital worlds. Freelance online writers like Baigu Lunjin thus speak as the grassroots and for the grassroots in an attempt to express political dissent. In this sense, the lack of cultural authority becomes a stance or posture taken by Weibo political microbloggers. The contemporary geo-cultural globalisation process is marked by intensified cultural and economic flows facilitated by networked communication technologies. Political microbloggers like Baigu Lunjin play a role in this process where freer information flow has challenged the dominant political power in China. Nevertheless, the authenticity of the microbloggers derives from a de-historicised version of this geo-cultural globalisation process. It identifies with the ideology of globalism, the belief in the internet and the neoliberal market economy as the starting point of globalisation and also the end point of history (Blommaert, 2010). To summarise, it is at this conjuncture of the globalised microblogging technology, the rhetoric of globalism, as well as China’s media policy that the new public figure of the political microblogger gains their authenticity.

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Chronotopic Chineseness: National Character Criticism

Although political microbloggers are not recognised with academic and artistic achievements, they indeed strive to demonstrate cultural authority through polemical writings. Importantly, the authoritative voice is invoked by enacting the discourse of national character criticism, which marked the high point of Chinese intellectuals’ public intervention to solve the national crisis in the early 20th century. According to Neiburg (2015: 223), national character is ‘an expression which describes forms of collective self-perception, sensibility and conduct which are shared by the individuals who inhibit a nation state’. Wang and Zhang (2003) have examined the genealogy of this concept, in particular its textual trajectory to China. National character had been attributed by German nationalism as a tool for social cohesion and national unification. It was then adopted by many colonised countries as the political legitimacy and mobilisation for national independence. After modern Japan inherited this concept from Germany, it was then brought to late imperial China by intellectuals of that time. To criticise the national character of Chinese people implies that there are undesirable and flawed elements in Chinese people’s personalities and psychologies. Posts 4 to 6 in Table 8.2 showcase some content of the criticism and Baigu Lunjin’s identification with this discourse. In these three entries, Baigu Lunjin makes reference to Chinese scholars’ words, American missionaries’ observation and historical stories. These accounts summarise a few characteristics of Chinese people’s cultural mentality and personalities, including servility, chauvinism, immorality, lack of conscience and belief and obsession with power. I suggest that this portrait of Chineseness is a chronotopic identity from the colonial China of the late 19th and early 20th century. By invoking this discourse, the microblogger has brought specific actors, power relations and sociohistorical context to the here-and-now public deliberation in Weibo. The actors in this chronotope include Chinese enlightenment intellectuals who criticise, and the rural population in that historical period who are criticised. According to Guo and Yuan (2000), Chinese intellectuals’ public intervention in the late imperial and early republic period strived to solve the national crisis in the contacts and conflicts with the West and modern Japan. They took the image of the modern Western citizen as a standard, identifying a series of deficiencies in the personal characters and social psychology of the Chinese nation. Liu (1999), by resorting to Said and Foucault, considers these characters as a form of Orientalist discursive construct. When the Western diplomatic corps and missionaries arrived in

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Table 8.2 Chinese national characters (data retrieved on 15 November 2014, 18 November 2014 and 5May 2015 respectively) Post 4

【国人四大劣根】第一个是造神， 双膝骨骼缺钙，跪地仰望强人； 第二个是树敌，盲目树敌，假民 族主义，动则仇视台外，总是被 权力趋势；第三个是信仰缺失， 甘做金钱奴隶，道德底线全无， 只谋最大利益；第四个是崇尚官 场，无限贪恋权力，官职平摊价 值。——周孝正

[Depravity of Chinese people] The first is idolization, (Chinese) people always docilely kneel down and worship powerful figures. The second is to blindly make enemies, for instance they enact false nationalism through the hatred towards Taiwan and foreign countries, which is actually misguided by the political power. The third is about the lack of faith. Chinese people are the slaves of money, who maximize profits without any ethical and moral concerns. The fourth is the obsession with officialdom, where bureaucratic power is worshiped and bureaucratic tittles are treated as personal value.

Post 5

【人格和良知】清末，一个西方传 教士为一乞丐做了白内障手术， 乞丐重见光明。不料乞丐的亲属 找上门来要求赔偿，理由是人家 全靠这瞎眼要饭的，你把眼治好 了，这不是砸人家饭碗吗？估计这 老外当时死的心都有。故事载于 《中国人的性格》， 作者史密斯 曾经断言：中国人什么都不缺， 只缺人格和良知！（转）

[Dignity and Conscience]. In late Qing dynasty, a Western missionary conducted a cataract surgeon on a beggar and the beggar was cured. Surprisingly, the relatives of that beggar asked for compensation from the missionary, since the whole family was relying on the money from begging. Now the beggar lost his job as he is no longer blind. This foreigner must be so frustrated at that time. The story was originally from The Chinese Characteristics. The author Smith once claimed: the only thing Chinese people need is dignity and conscience.

Post 6

满清入关后逼汉人剃头留辫，抵制 汉人被斩众多。武昌起义后，革 命党号召剪辩，许多被剪辫的汉 人嚎啕大哭、甚至有的回家后自 杀——奴性的中国，当被强奸成 了习惯，就死心塌地的屈服在强 权之下。当有人不满屈辱揭竿而 起时，奴才们就会大吐唾沫，恨 恨地说：该死的革命党！——奴 才的辫子，如今依旧蓄着。

When Manchu people took the rule over China, they forced (Han) Chinese people to braid their hair. Many of those who refused were beheaded. After Wuchang Uprising, the revolutionary groups called on the people to get rid of their braids. Those whose braids were clipped burst into tears, some of them even committed suicide after going home − The slavery China. When people were accustomed to being raped, they were determined to surrender to tyranny. When there were someone revolting against this tyranny, the slaves would spit and curse: the damn revolutionary group! The servility braid still exists today

China in the 19th century, they constructed Chinese culture as the opposite of modernity, so as to provide legitimacy for colonial activities. The (in)accuracy and genealogy of the national characters discourse has long been a debate in Chinese academia. I indeed believe that the political efforts to transform folk traditions and sociocultural mentalities can have multiple origins (see discussions in Wang, 2004). However, two discussions are the most relevant when we argue that national characters

Authenticity, Cultural Authority and Credibility of Weibo Public Intellectuals 159

constitute a chronotopic Chineseness. First, Wang and Zhang (2003) emphasise that the uncivilised Chinese image is a historical concept. It was applied by early modern intellectuals to criticise the particular social problems of that particular historical conjuncture. Second, we can see the implied power relation in the criticism. In Mo’s (2011) theorisation, when the intellectuals took the initiative to criticise the uncivilised features of the public, they were also establishing the elites’ voices in the new political order after the fall of the last empire in China. For one thing, through invoking this period of history, Baigu Lunjin can position himself as the elite subject of the discourse. He identifies his microblogging career with the enlightenment intellectuals’ efforts in China’s New Culture Movement. In this case, the microblogger can obtain a certain elite voice and credibility, even though he is a grassroots online writer. For another, however, this chronotopic Chineseness is not secured with positive uptake, as the construction of national characters is marked with particular historicity. Starting from the 1920s, the ideal Chineseness in intellectuals’ discourses has re-oriented from the individual citizen of liberal democracy to revolutionary proletariats with class consciousness (Yuan, 2010). In Xie’s (2015) words, the previous immoral and uncivilised population of the lower social class suddenly became the brave and leading forces in social revolution. However, Baigu Lunjin believes that the character of servility still explains certain societal issues of contemporary China. In Post 6 and Post 1, he argues that Chinese people today still, metaphorically, wear the braid of the Qing Dynasty and display slaves’ loyalty to masters. In other words, he suggests that political democratisation in contemporary China is challenged by conservative and cynical citizens who are docile in the face of the dominant political power. In this case, the applicability and reception of this discourse are doubtful. We should also recognise the here-and-now political and cultural atmosphere of Weibo. The observation by Schneider (2018) indicates that digital nationalism is a prominent discourse enacted by networked actors on the Chinese internet, including dominant political propaganda but also user communities and highly visible celebrities. Much user-generated content on message boards and Weibo is fi lled with chauvinistic sentiment and nationalist pride. In 2015, a picture about railway construction became viral on Weibo. 2 The picture makes a comparison between two scenes. One is from the Chinese TV show Towards the Republic, telling the stories of political struggles in the last few years of the floundering Qing Empire. The other is a photo of then British Prime Minister David Cameron and Queen Elizabeth II standing in front of 10 Downing Street. The two scenes are

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marked with different times and locations. One is in 1885 Beijing, the other 2015 London. However, the subtitles in the two photos are identical – ‘Your Majesty, the foreigners are going to help us construct railways’. Although we don’t know who fi rst created the image, it went viral after Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit to the UK in 2015. 3 Apparently, the picture contrasts two tropes of Chineseness. One recalls the colonial past, where Western capitalist expansion brought railway infrastructure to China. It marks the start of China’s involvement in the deep and long process of geopolitical globalisation. The other indicates the here-andnow historical conjuncture, where contemporary China strives to take a leading role in the recent process of geo-cultural globalisation. This picture showcases the sentiment of nationalist pride in Weibo public discussions, and also resonates with the mainstream political discourse of national rejuvenation. In such a discursive environment, political microbloggers’ appropriation of the national characters discourse may not be well received. The invocation of this chronotopic Chineseness triggers a particular power relation view of the world system in which Western political power and technology outshines the Chinese. For the proponents of the national pride discourse, this power relation only existed in the colonial past. It is believed, as demonstrated in the picture, the contemporary power relation has been reversed. Romanticized Germany

The chronotope of the uncivilised Chinese is an inter-subjective construction in its historical context when late-imperial China began to be involved in the world system. Today, globalisation has its new manifestation in the form of a networked global fi nancial system (Castells, 2001) and a superdiverse and highly mobile cultural movement (Blommaert, 2010). The century-old Chinese national character discourse also has its new representation: the romanticised West represented in online international news. In the past, Chinese intellectuals summarised the Chinese national character according to a role model of the Western citizen. Now, Weibo political microbloggers have turned this mirror around and constructed an idealised image of Western citizens and Western society based on the undesirable social environment in contemporary China. However, the increased access to news and current affairs content on social media does not ensure more nuanced understanding of the global world. Post 7 in Table 8.3 is an example demonstrating how bloggers delineate a romanticised Germany to audiences.

Authenticity, Cultural Authority and Credibility of Weibo Public Intellectuals 161

Table 8.3 German sewage system and removable flood walls (data retrieved on 5 May 2016) Post 7

德国人挺逗的，他们一共就在青岛待了 17 年，结果没修别墅，没盖大楼，没弄布满 喷泉鲜花和七彩灯光的广场，倒是先把下 水道修了。这工作没人看得见。。可在 100 年之后，全中国人都看见了

The Germans were very unconventional. They had ruled Qiangdao for only 17 years; however, they neither built houses and high buildings, nor squares decorated with fountains and lights. Instead they built a sewage system under the ground which no one could see. One hundred years later, all Chinese people see it!

Post 8

多瑙河发洪水，看德国政府的应急措 施……

There is a flood in the Danube River. This is the German government’s emergency control measure

This update was posted on 25 July 2012 by Baigu Lunjin on his Tencent Weibo. It responds to news hype about a heavy urban waterlogging disaster in Beijing a few days earlier, which had caused a breakdown of the city transportation system and more than 20 deaths due to an old and malfunctioning sewage infrastructure. In the post, the blogger claims that the German colonialists have contributed to the modernisation process of the city of Qingdao with a down-to-earth action: building city infrastructure instead of cosmetic works like high buildings and squares, to which today’s local Chinese governments are dedicated. The Germanbuilt city sewage system in Qingdao has become a recurrent news story since 2010, especially in the rainy season in summer. There are even different versions of it. The most famous one is that some accessories in the sewer needed to be replaced, but the German company that built it had retreated from the Chinese market. However, Chinese engineers received an email from Germany responding to their inquiries that, according to German standards, within three meters of the site there should be a wax paper package in which the accessories were stored. The Chinese engineers then actually discovered the package and the metal accessories were brand new, although they had been stored for nearly 100 years. This is of course a myth. The German-built sewers were made of concrete without metal accessories and only three kilometres of the original system are left, which only account for 1/1000 of the sewage system in Qingdao. The reason that Qingdao seldom suffers from city waterlogging is because the city is built on hills and the sewage can easily flow into the sea. Another post on Baigu Lunjin’s Tencent Weibo account also praises the German construction technology as shown in Post 8. In this post, the blogger introduces the removable flood walls alongside (according to the blogger) the Danube River in Germany. Of course, the information is

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erroneous, as the picture was taken in Austria. Some followers correct the blogger and suggest that this should be the Rhine, because the Danube does not flow across Germany, but the Rhine does. This is an interesting point that we may delve into deeper. Both the blogger and his followers tend to believe that the high-technology removable flood wall should be in Germany. It seems that the idealised perfectionist image is so strong among the Chinese public that the advanced construction technology can only be invented by German people. Schneider (2018) in the analysis of Chinese digital nationalism argues that Japan is a primary foreign other for nationalist discourses to construct and negotiate contemporary Chineseness. In this study, I propose that Germany is imagined by political microbloggers as a role model of national identity. We can also infer this line of thinking through the discursive trajectory of national characters which travelled from Germany to modern Japan and then to China. European readers who are familiar with the local discussions of German society may think this is a naively simplified image of Germany. Interestingly, German media also reacted to this widely transmitted myth of German perfectionism in China. A news article in Süddeutsche Zeitung mentions that apart from the sewage system story (Neidhart, 2015), a blog on Sina.com even describes everyday life in Germany with similar stereotypes. For instance, kitchens in German households are equipped with all kinds of gadgets including scales, thermometers, measuring cups and egg timers. The housewives are not cooking; they are doing chemical experiments. This isn’t of course the truth, says the author, and once Chinese people visit Germany, they will fi nd that there are also thieves and the trains are not always punctual. Whether to be considered as misinformation, fake news or internet rumours, these posts undermine the credibility of the microblogger as a public intellectual on Weibo. It explains why intellectual discourses on Weibo are sometimes criticised for leveraging public concerns and frustration for sensationalism, rather than providing alternative perspectives and precise factual information. Nevertheless, to understand the meaningfulness and possible causes of such misinformation can shed light on Weibo public intellectuals’ style of writing. I argue that it is less about Germany than about domestic social issues. In China, many underground infrastructures are of low quality. Corruption has also been disclosed in connection to many construction projects where unsuitable materials have been used, causing the breakdown of a whole bridge or building. On the one hand, the microblogger blames the officials in local governments for impractical and inefficient policy-making. The leaders are busy at superficial and cosmetic

Authenticity, Cultural Authority and Credibility of Weibo Public Intellectuals 163

projects (e.g. squares decorated by fountains and colourful lights), which only contribute to the advancement of their political careers and ignore the welfare of local citizens. On the other hand, the low construction quality is believed to be caused by a lack of craftsmanship in contemporary Chinese society, a target of the national character criticism. In this case, Germany, due to its historical association with nationalism and the stereotypical image of perfectionism, becomes an imagined ideal for public deliberation on Weibo. This ideal echoes with Kubota’s (2019) discussion on Asia’s complex desires for the West, the type of Occidental desires that are projected from Chinese citizens’ imagination about Germany. Importantly, this romanticised Germany is not contemporary Germany, neither Germany in the Second World War nor Germany in 1871. It is all of them but also none of them. It is a chronotope marked by empty time and blurred space that exists only in local Weibo political discussions. To an extreme, it is the projected and desired Chineseness. Conclusions

In this study, I have explored the media and discourse strategies of Weibo political microbloggers according to the descriptive model of public intellectual studies proposed by Heynders (2016). In particular, I have examined their authenticity and cultural authority. A discourse analysis of the ethnographic data has shown that the microbloggers construct an authentic image of the freedom fighter by aligning their writings with the digital optimism discourse. It is believed that globalised microblogging technology will democratise the Chinese political system. As many of these microbloggers are grassroots writers, they strive to gain cultural authority through the appropriation of the national characters criticism discourse. The invocation of a chronotopic Chineseness marked by uncivilised and immoral behaviours injects particular actors, power relations and social-historical context into here-and-now political discussions on Weibo. While the microbloggers can position themselves as the enlightenment intellectuals in this piece of history, its reception is limited by the disrupted nature of national characters and challenged by contemporary national pride discourse on Weibo. Moreover, the microbloggers also tend to construct a romanticised image of Western countries, especially Germany, based on erroneous news and urban myths. I argue that this idealised token about German perfectionism is a projection of Chinese nationalism discourse. As mentioned at the beginning of the study, the current Sina Weibo has pivoted to a platform featuring popular entertainment content.

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Heated discussions on public affairs either appear in comments to viral news or are contained within networks of niche topics. Recent studies (Fang, 2017; Han, 2018; Zhan, 2016) suggest that the identity of the public intellectual has become stigmatised and the vernacular term for it in Chinese, ‘gongzhi’, bears the connotation of irresponsible and commercialised opinion makers. We need to reflect on this trend by thinking about how Chinese public intellectuals and intellectuals from the Global South in general give voice to local concerns with local knowledge and historical specificity (Shi-xu, 2014). The analysis in this study has demonstrated that the invocation of Chineseness in political microbloggers’ writings is Western-centric. The criticism towards the political power and social injustice is thus replaced by a self-Orientalising discourse which denies local cultural values and the subjectivities of local people. Although such discourse is rooted in modern China’s intellectual tradition, simply recovering the tradition ignores that successful intellectual performance is always based in specific time-space and answers here-andnow concerns. Globalised microblogging technology has brought Chinese public intellectuals under the spotlight. It also entitles non-elite citizens the opportunity to participate in public deliberation. A political microblogger like Baigu Lunjin is simply one of them. Studies of political communications on the Chinese internet are often underlined by two frameworks. One is the censorship-struggle paradigm that is often adopted by English research (see the criticism by Leibold, 2011); the other is the public opinion formation and rumour detection paradigm that is applied by research conducted in China (e.g. An, 2011; Liu & Liu, 2011). These two paradigms not only ask different questions about the Chinese digital world but also presume distinctive natures of online public discussions. However, in the current study, I have focused on the discourse and behaviours of political microbloggers. The analysis demonstrates that to celebrate political dissent without examining the concrete writings, strategies and postures is to exaggerate the potential of online public deliberation. In the same vein, the disregard for misinformation as toxic rumour is to ignore social concerns and public sentiments in public opinions. Notes (1) Big V, or ‘大V’ in Chinese, refers to verified microbloggers with a large follower base on the web. (2) The picture can be viewed on https://s.weibo.com/pic?q=%E6%B4%8B%E4%BA% BA%E7%BB%99%E6%88%91%E4%BB%AC%E4%BF%AE%E9%93%81%E8%B 7%AF&Refer=weibo_pic, (accessed 2 February 2019).

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(3) Chinese railway companies have been showing interest in becoming involved in the UK High Speed Train 2 projects. See https://www.railmagazine.com/news/network/ china-seeks-involvement-with-uk-high-speed-rail (accessed 31 January 2019). The proposal has been brought up in several diplomatic meetings between UK and Chinese political leaders.

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9 ‘Foreigners’ in One’s Own Land: Analysing Touristic Representations of Chineseness in the New York Times Xiaoxiao Chen

Introduction

As a key site for the everyday enactments of globalisation (Thurlow & Jaworski, 2010), tourism is underpinned by an axis of power around which people who are culturally different interact and negotiate their relationships with each other. Among some earlier studies that have looked at host–tourist interactions (Dann, 1996; Galasinski & Jaworski, 2003; Jaworski et al., 2003; Morgan & Pritchard, 1998; Thurlow et al., 2005), what is missing is the imaging of locals in the mutual gaze (Maoz, 2006), which involves the tourist gaze (Urry, 2002; Urry & Larsen, 2012) and the local gaze negotiating with and feeding off each other. This research seeks to expand on the knowledge of the tourist gaze and the mutual gaze by examining how Chinese locals or hosts are represented in interactions between themselves and English speakers in the NYT travelogues from 1980 to 2010. It also aims to explore how Chineseness is constructed in tourism discourses, an area that has received scarce attention. Chineseness in this case relates to ‘the nature being someone Chinese’ (Wang, 2009) rather than ‘a view of the world based on “Chinese common knowledge”’ (Li, 2008). I will ask how Chinese locals respond to the tourist gaze, to what extent the tourist gaze is affected by the host gaze, and what images of Chinese are constructed through the travel writers’ interpretations of the local gaze. 167

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The analysis of this study will demonstrate that even though the American travel writers are understood as ‘foreigners’ in the narrative events, ‘foreignness’ is invariably attributed to Chinese people depicted in this context (cf. Galasinski & Jaworski, 2003). Thus, this research will add a new dimension to our understanding of ‘Chineseness’: Chineseness may be identified with ‘foreignness’ to people who travel to China. Following this introduction, I will first explicate my theoretical framework and related concepts before clarifying my data collection process and data analysis methods. I will then present the major discourse strands and fragments in representing Chinese locals interacting with travel writers. These are Chinese locals as passive ‘gazees’, active gazers, aggressive gazers, engaging interactants and the over-friendly and over-enthusiastic Other. The chapter fi nishes by reflecting on the fi ndings and the implications of this study for research on the tourist gaze, the mutual gaze and Chineseness more broadly. Theoretical Framework and Relative Concepts

The overall theoretical framework for this study is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which draws primarily on the work of Fairclough (2003), Jager and Maier (2009) and Wodak and associates (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009; Wodak & Meyer, 2009). CDA analyses ‘opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language’ (Wodak & Meyer, 2009: 10). Further, its heterogeneity of theoretical and methodological approaches enables me to draw on some other concepts in exploring tourism discourses about Chinese people interacting with American travel writers. In the following, after an explication of some CDA principles that are adhered to in this study, I will present ‘the tourist gaze’, ‘the mutual gaze’ and ‘contact zone’ as the three analytical prisms through which I view the instances of representing Chinese people in interactions. In this study, ‘discourse’ specifically constitutes socially constructive and socially conditioned knowledge of Chinese people/Chineseness, as well as the social identities of and relationships between travel writers and Chinese locals. ‘Discourse strands’, i.e. ‘flows of discourse that center on a common topic’ (Jager & Maier, 2009: 46), are the sub-topics of tourism discourses on Chinese locals. In each strand, there are a multitude of elements that are called ‘discourse fragments’, i.e. a text or part of a text that deals with a particular sub-topic (Jager & Maier, 2009: 47). My view of ‘ideology’ conforms to that proposed by Wodak and Meyer (2009: 8) as ‘the more hidden and latent type of everyday beliefs, which often appear disguised

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as conceptual metaphor and analogy’. Ideologies are thus the takenfor-granted assumptions in everyday life that contribute to the maintenance of power structures. In this study, I will zero in on the discursive practices evident in meta-linguistic and meta-pragmatic comments about Chinese people in the tourist and mutual gazes to see how they are ideologically charged, whether they help produce and reproduce unequal power relations between tourists and locals, and what images of Chineseness are thus framed. In tracing the ideological work of touristic representations, I also draw on the concepts of the tourist gaze (Urry, 2002; Urry & Larsen, 2012), the mutual gaze (Maoz, 2006), and contact zone (Pratt, 2008). Urry and Larsen (2012: 26) contend that gazing, not merely seeing, involves ‘interpreting, evaluating, drawing comparisons and making mental connections between signs and their referent’, a perspective shared by Maoz (2006), who explains that the mutual gaze is ‘not concerned only with the spectacle as some claim’ but includes how tourists and hosts view and construct each other. While adopting this conceptualisation of gazing, I draw on ‘the mutual gaze’ for its explanation of the complexities surrounding the coexistence of the tourist and local gazes which affect and feed each other. These two concepts will provide a lens for me to understand whether and how the local gaze will affect the tourist gaze and hence travel writers’ framing of Chineseness. I interpret the interplay of the tourist gaze and the local gaze, i.e. the mutual gaze in this research, as a ‘contact’ clarified by Pratt (2008), corresponding to Said’s (2003 [1978]) contention about the power relations between the Orientalist and the Orient. The term ‘contact’ offers a perspective that treats the relations between travellers (English-speaking travel writers) and ‘travelees’ (Chinese locals) ‘in terms of co-presence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices, and often within radically asymmetrical relations of power’ (Pratt, 2008: 8). Thus, I see the ‘contact zone’ in this study as one in which English-speaking travel writers interact with Chinese ethnic or regional cultures and Chinese locals along with destinations that are being surveyed by English-speaking tourists. In this ‘contact zone’, Chinese locals are mostly not (or silently) reacting to the tourist gaze but sometimes gazing back. Data Collection and Analytical Methods

I collected 127 travelogues from the online New York Times (NYT) that were published between 1980 and 2010. First, I manually searched through the online NYT and collected all the articles about China from

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the travel sections. Then, I used a content criterion to choose the travel articles that cover at least one destination in China, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, but excluded articles about combined tours including China as well as other countries. Additionally, I used a genre criterion to choose travelogues with at least some narrative elements and to exclude articles simply listing tourism-related news or events. All the NYT travel articles that are accessible on a single page were saved as MHTML fi les, while the articles that couldn’t be viewed on a single page were converted into Word documents by copying and pasting so that each article became a single document. A fuller description of my data which includes the production and consumption of the NYT travelogues would be more desirable, but what I present is, to the best of my knowledge, all the information about NYT that is publicly available. In line with the theoretical framework of CDA, I followed a tripartite model in analysing the data – text, discourse and socio-context – which is built on the work of Jager and Maier (2009) and Fairclough (2003). In textual analysis, I analysed typical discourse fragments, which involves analysing contents and ideological statements such as assumptions made about Chinese locals. This step of analysis reveals some typical subthemes of representing Chinese locals. In a second step of discourse analysis, I looked at how some discourse fragments constitute a certain discourse strand, i.e. a typical discursive theme in representing Chinese locals. These themes head the sub-themes produced in the textual analysis. Finally, in the socio-contextual analysis, I considered the ideological and cultural implications of the representations against the wider sociohistorical background. The analysis revealed three major discourse strands on Chinese locals: fi rst, they are represented as reacting passively to the tourist gaze. Second, they are depicted as entertaining themselves by gazing at foreigners. Third, they appear as more aggressive gazers, more active interactants and, fi nally, they are presented as showing excessive friendliness and enthusiasm to the American visitors. The fi ndings regarding these themes and sub-themes are presented in the following sections. Passive gazees

Chinese natives are primarily depicted as passive locals who act according to the tourist gaze of travel writers eager to seek entertainment and diversion from the mundane. Very often they are portrayed as passive and silent gazers and gazees (for these two concepts, see Urry, 2002)

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without any change in the 30 years under investigation, as seen in the following two examples from the 1980s and 1990s respectively: (1) There was the look of amazement, utter amazement, on the face of the old fellow near the market in Xian as he stared at me in my Red Flag, a fancy Communist limousine, and we took each other’s picture, I with a camera. (Rosenthal, 19 July 1981) (2) Standing in the vast crowd, waiting for the human river to resume its motion, I surveyed the people around me: bent old men with white skullcaps and craggy faces, peering suspiciously at my camera; teenage boys on donkey carts, waving their whips impatiently at the stalled traffic; portly middle-aged women in long skirts, each arm tucked around a protesting chicken, and young women draped entirely in veils and cloth from which muffled shouts emerge when they wish to communicate. (Kristof, 15 May 1994) Both examples demonstrate the use of photography by travel writers in the interplay between their tourist gaze and the local gaze. Photography in this case seems to be a popular means to exert power and control over the locals being watched (cf. Urry, 2002). The featureless old man in Example 1 is seen directing his gaze at the author, who is apparently impressed and entertained by this local gaze. It is emphasised that even though the old man takes part in the mutual gaze, he appears to be the powerless one, using only his eyes compared with the author, who uses a camera because the ownership of a camera entails the possession of power over the object being photographed. Therefore, rather than posing any threat to the travel writer, the local old man is presented as a lower Other, being turned into a touristic sign collected by the author, who is depicted as a superior Self riding in a fancy car and wielding a camera. Further, the post-modification of the old man not only denotes him being backgrounded but also adds a touch of alienation with the old man not being involved in the mutual gaze (cf. van Leeuwen, 2003). Similarly, the power of photography is also implied in Example 2, in which the author takes a ‘monarch-of-all-I-survey’ (Pratt, 2008) stance watching the Uyghur people in Kashgar. His selective representation of old men, boys and women brings out an old, infantile and female human landscape, which falls prey to the consumption of the all-seeing eye of the author. While all of the social actors presented are tamed into objects for photography, the old men are not depicted as passive as the boys and the women, by being shown ‘peering suspiciously’ at the author’s camera. This reverse gaze of the locals, however, seems to be dismissed by the author, who

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continues his surveillance of the rest of the local ethnoscape without being affected. Indeed, there is an unchanging imaging of Chinese locals’ response to the tourist gaze, as further seen in an example from the last decade: (3) But you need walk only a few minutes down an alley into the hutong – and then turn a corner and turn a corner and turn a corner – and you will be lost in old Beijing. A woman washes her hair in a pail. Old men play games outside doors. A street vendor sells five or six pieces of fruit. Only by taking this kind of walk will you see that the new China is still only skin-deep. Once, deeply lost, I walked into a local restaurant – and every chopstick stopped. Even in Beijing. (Stevens, 16 November 2003) In this excerpt, the travel writer specifically highlights the unchanged curiosity shown by Chinese people at the sight of foreigners. The writer fi rst projects an image of the timeless, i.e. the enduring simplicity, onto an unspecified hutong and its local inhabitants in Beijing. Anonymous people are presented as iconic significations of timelessness because they are all depicted in the present tense as carrying out some mundane activities that are associated with the traditional lifestyle. None of these people show any sign of gazing back, indicating either their unawareness of the tourist gaze or their adaptation and full cooperation. In a similar vein as in Examples 1 and 2, an instance of the mutual gaze is presented against the permissive milieu. The agent of the local gaze, i.e. the diners in the restaurant, however, is rendered invisible. Thus, the power of this reverse gaze is minimised. Besides, even though the author is understood as a ‘foreigner’ in this case, foreignness is actually ascribed to the diners in the restaurant, for the latter are represented as strikingly different (hence ‘foreign’) from the author (and, by extension, from the target readers) by showing overt curiosity at the author’s presence. Furthermore, the author describes this local gaze, together with the timeless hutong people-scape, in order to substantiate his conclusive observation about China – ‘Only by taking this kind of walk will you see that the new China is still only skindeep’. In a sense, the hutong residents and the restaurant diners, being fi xed in a timeless imaging, are presented as stereotyped and tokenistic representatives of Beijing and China at large. Active or aggressive gazers

Chinese natives can be depicted as taking a more active part in the mutual gaze, especially in the 1990s travel writing. In this case, they are

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portrayed as active gazers initiating the mutual gaze, who may be involved in verbal communication as well. Witness the following example: (4) The highlight of my visit was simply a few days roaming the Tibetan villages around Qiapuqia, a town of about 30,000 in Gonghe County south of Qinghai Lake. Most of the townspeople are Han Chinese, but many of the nearby villages are Tibetan and the people are extremely welcoming. ‘Uncle, are you a foreigner?’ asked an eight-year-old girl who was startled to encounter me on a dirt path near her village. I explained in Chinese that I was a genuine foreigner. Since I was the first one she had ever seen, she led me to her home. Her family was enormously excited at my arrival, and pressed tea and bread on me, but the town was sufficiently remote that all they knew was that I was not Tibetan. ‘Are you Han Chinese?’ the grandmother asked me, after peering for several minutes at my face, which does not look in the least Chinese. I explained that no, I was an American. She nodded sagely, to show that she had heard of Americans, but I’m not sure she distinguished in her mind between Americans and Martians. (Kristof, 21 June 1992) In the above extract, the local Tibetans are represented as initiating the mutual gaze: the little girl and her grandmother are both depicted asking the writer about his nationality. This initiative, nevertheless, does not project an image of active interlocutors onto the two Tibetans. On the contrary, both of them are portrayed as the secluded and ignorant Others who know little about the world beyond their village, in particular by quoting the grandmother’s question that reflects her bewilderment at distinguishing Americans from Han Chinese after ‘peering’ at the author’s face. This imaging of the Tibetan locals is underscored by the author’s sarcastic and scornful imagining of the old woman as not understanding the differences between Americans and Martians. By comparison, the travel writer self-presents as a relatively internationalised American who speaks at least both English and Chinese. As is also clear from the example, the author uses the term ‘foreigner’ as the Tibetan girl’s reference to him as well as his self-reference. The label of ‘foreigner’, however, is not really a Self-attribution but an Other-attribution. The travel writer constructs his ‘foreignness’ not from his own standpoint as a traveller abroad but deems it sufficiently interesting to report that Chinese Tibetans descrive him as such (cf. Galasinski & Jaworski, 2003). As discussed in the previous example, the local gaze can entertain or amuse the author; it can also occasionally cause the travel writer’s discomfort and unease, as mostly seen in the travelogues of the last decade. In a

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2000 travelogue about the travel writer’s visit to Nanchang, the capital city of Jiangxi province, for adoption of a Chinese baby, it presents an instance of the local gaze that impresses the travel writer as follows: (5) Here among the masses, individuality merged as each of us anonymously plied our morning routines. But later, as I strolled the streets with my family, a moment’s pause made the four of us an instant sideshow that invited participation. Now all were on us. Ignoring the notion of personal space, people unabashedly bore in to touch or exclaim over our children. Of particular interest was our American daughter, with her shiny brown hair and pale skin. Our Chinese baby drew approving squeals and fruitless efforts at sign language conversation. The friendly but persistent sidewalk crowds would grow quickly, causing bike jams, pushing, poking and a bit more attention than we wanted. We would move on. (Beamish, 24 December 2000) The above extract presents a local-guest interaction that is characterised by the Chinese locals’ aggressive gaze at the American family. Besides the visual mode of interaction, this mutual gaze also involves other senses, such as touching from the locals and hearing from the American visitors. In this case, it is the travel writer’s children, American daughter and Chinese baby, that have attracted the local gaze. In the meantime, the Chinese locals in turn have become the objects of the tourist gaze and are described as ‘unabashedly’ touching and exclaiming over the writer’s children, ignoring ‘the notion of personal space’. Interestingly, there is an instance of self-objectification of the author by her metaphorical selfreference as ‘sideshow’. This objectifying self-reference, however, ascribes ‘foreignness’ not to the author and her family but to the Chinese gazers, who fi nd the author’s daughter, a normal American little girl, an object of particular interest. Hence, they are depicted as the curious Others, as in the previous examples, but more aggressive as this behaviour does not cause the travel writer pleasure but discomfort. The American visitors have managed to dismiss the active or even aggressive Chinese local gaze in the end. Engaging interactants

There are a couple of instances in which Chinese people are represented engaging in relatively more complex reciprocal interaction with the authors in the 2000s. In this situation, the travel writers may seek deeper communication with the locals for a taste of ‘authenticity’.

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The Chinese locals represented, however, remain as ‘foreign’ as those discussed previously. In a travelogue titled ‘Foreigners in the Land of Their Birth’ (Evans, 25 April 2004), the writer takes her two adoptive Chinese daughters to China, hoping the trip will help them foster a genuine feeling of connection with the land of their birth. They soon tire of playing tourists and decide to venture into the countryside with their friend: (6) As we walked down the dirt path, a woman came along, dragging a load of dried cotton stalks. She smiled broadly, plucked a few remaining cotton balls off the stalks and gave them to the girls. Then we walked past the rows of bok choy, past mounds of hay, to fi nd a water buffalo and her baby standing tethered and placid. It was like stepping back a century. The houses plastered with mud, the fields watered by hand. Our children were enchanted. A row of plucked and gutted ducks, rubbed with red chili, had been hung to dry on a fence in the sun. Dogs sat on the stoops, and people strolled out to greet us with curiosity. In the inner courtyards of the houses, chickens were housed in coops, and a pig snorted and came up to rub its nose on the bars of a small enclosure. Inside, furnishings were minimal – a stove, a table. On one wall were family photos, flanked by a photo of a young Mao Zedong, cigarette dangling from his lips. People in the area, we were told, get by on $1,000 or less a year. And children who grow up here aren’t likely to stay. They head for the cities where there is work. As we passed one doorway, an older woman motioned for us to come inside. Her face was deeply etched, lines following the contours of her smile. She was small and agile. I could not have guessed her age – she could have been 50 or 80. Taking Kelly by the hand, she led us into a bare room with a cement floor. She pulled out small wooden stools for us, and we all sat beaming at each other, wondering what was next. She held a hand at the level of Kelly’s head and then held up fingers. Seven? Eight? We worked out the children’s ages with our fi ngers. She gestured at me, and then at the girls, talking all the while, a sweet quizzical look on her face. I think she was wondering how we’d gotten ourselves together into a family. But when I tried to tell her, my night-school Mandarin fell apart. It didn’t seem to matter. ‘Where do you sleep?’ Kelly asked the woman, trying to make herself understood by folding her hands and tilting her head on them. The woman smiled and motioned with her hand to a place over her shoulder.

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Then she leaned forward and put her hands on my knee and made the gesture of taking chopsticks from bowl to mouth. Have you eaten, she asked, and she made it clear she wanted to feed us. ‘Yes, yes, eat,’ she said in Chinese, and rose as if to bustle off to the kitchen. I wanted to stay, but outside the door I could see our friends waiting by the minivan. So we got up, saying we were sorry, that we had already eaten, and that we had to get back to the city. We thanked her as profusely as we could. As we reluctantly walked away, my daughters said their goodbyes over and over, in two languages, to the woman and the water buffalo. ‘That woman was so nice,’ my older daughter said, bouncing along in the car. ‘She was really nice, but her hands were rough. She didn’t seem like she had much money.’ ‘She was like a grandma,’ Franny said. ‘She liked us.’ Whatever memories might eventually fade, like the calligraphy on the sidewalk, this visit had touched some deeper place. As we bumped along, Kelly clutched her cotton ball, staring back at the village. (Evans, 25 April 2004) The above passage involves an obvious intrusion into the local people’s lives in an unspecified old village’, which is explicitly constructed as timeless and poverty-stricken through the author’s metaphorically referring to her entrance into the village as ‘stepping back a century’ and stressing the old-fashioned houses and the manual labour in the fields. In a sense, the American visitors are represented as engaging in a touristic experience that goes beyond the mere tourist gaze, for the writer mentions the locals’ standard of living and the unlikelihood of the younger generation staying in the village. Presumably the author could only be informed of this through communicating with the locals with the help of their friends, who are assumed to be Chinese. However, there is no trace of such interactions presented, and even the information source remains unidentified in the clause ‘we were told’. Thus, the author’s relaying of this information serves only to confirm the image of timelessness and poverty that is projected onto the village at the beginning. While this implied interaction with the locals is minimised in the text, the other instances of interacting with the villagers are included, which, however, all contribute to the construction of the village as underdeveloped and static. Among the three encounters represented between the local villagers and the American family, there is a mutual gaze involving a woman who offers cotton balls to the girls. Then, the villagers are represented as curiously reacting to the visit of the American family, which can be read as a reverse gaze. Their last encounter with the locals involves more than a

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mutual gaze, because an older woman is seen very actively engaging with the visitors. Five instances of interaction depicted in the last encounter, which involves primarily sign language (gesturing), some verbal communication, and touching. Four instances can be counted as reciprocal interaction engaging both sides, such as the communication about the girls’ age, the formation of the author’s family, the woman’s sleeping place and the woman’s offer to feed her guests. While the woman’s questions are resolved through gesturing in the first and the third instances, the writer presents herself as trying in vain to answer the woman’s question in the second instance due to her deficient knowledge of Mandarin. This mild self-mockery, however, does not present the writer as incompetent as much as indicating that her poor Mandarin doesn’t seem to constitute an issue for her because their encounter with this woman is meant to be as transient and fleeting as any other touristic experiences. Moreover, the mild selfdeprecation of her Mandarin gives the appearance of self-reflexivity, a crucial skill for intercultural communication (cf. Lisle, 2006: 106). It is also notable in this instance that the depiction of the woman’s facial expression as ‘sweetly quizzical’ actually corresponds to the stereotypical view of Chinese as smiling but inscrutable (cf. Pennycook, 2002). In the fourth instance, the reciprocal interaction involves both verbal and nonverbal communication, even though the message is mostly communicated through the woman’s body language. Eventually, the mutual interaction ends abruptly when the writer and the girls say goodbye to the woman, without the latter’s involvement at all. All of a sudden, the woman is completely silenced, in sharp contrast to the previous imaging of her as ‘talking all the while’. She is not, nonetheless, totally excluded from the scene, by being presented together with the buffalo as the passive recipients of the visitors’ thank-you and good-bye. Thus, this woman is objectified and Othered in the end, being treated simply as a local sign of authenticity on the same level as the buffalo, as also seen in the second encounter when the villagers are presented in the same context as domestic animals. Thus we see the colonial rhetorical strategies of naturalisation and debasement (Spurr, 1993) working here: the locals are presented at the same level as animals, hence viewed as the inferior Other that is dichotomised from the writing Self, who is presented as a keen observer surveying the village and its people, as well as her adoptive Chinese daughters. Furthermore, it remains doubtful if the writer’s Chinese daughters have developed a genuine feeling of connection with the old woman and the village, even though both girls have acknowledged the woman’s friendliness. On the one hand, the older daughter fi nds the old woman

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more a ‘foreigner’ who is living a life vastly different from her American life, by commenting on the woman’s physical features (‘rough hands’) and imagining her fi nancial circumstances (‘She didn’t seem like she had much money’). Hence, the girl’s later action of clutching the cotton ball and staring back at the village can hardly be read as a clue of her attachment to the place and the people. On the other hand, the younger daughter seems to fi nd a feeling of connection with the old woman, by comparing the latter to ‘grandma’, a term of endearment. It is uncertain, nevertheless, if this kind of feeling of attachment derives from a brief and transient contact that will soon fade away as quickly as the water calligraphy they have enjoyed at the beginning (see Evans, 25 April 2004). While the above example features local-visitor interaction as going beyond the mere mutual gaze, it is still restricted to the mode of sign language which is complemented with sporadic language use. Occasionally, the mutual gaze involves more participation from both sides and the visual interaction can lead to deeper-level communication so that they know more about each other. For example, in a travelogue titled ‘On a people’s train from Urumqi to Beijing’ (Gross, 2 August 2006), the author presents himself as increasingly involved in interacting with his fellow passengers: (7) Early the next day, as passengers padded about in rubber sandals and sipped their morning cups of tea, my bunk slowly became a zoo. People would seek me out: the children to stare at this rare blue-eyed traveler in their midst; the adults to practice English and meet a real life American. With an Urumqi high school teacher, I griped about the problems that both China and the United States share, like housing, health care and politicians. With An-ran, a gaptoothed 8-year-old comedian, I sang Chinese nursery rhymes. And when people asked why I was in China, I invented a story about how I’d saved money, quit my job and was circling the globe alone — thus reinforcing the stereotype of Americans as rich and indolent. (My countrymen, I apologize.) By afternoon, everyone was comfortable enough with my presence that I could barely wander the corridors without being asked to join a game of cards, or sit on a bunk and listen to a Uighur man strum energetic folk songs on his two-string guitar. The 48 hours went by quickly. There was always something happening, whether it was the Dushanbe shoe salesman who came by to chat, a toddler to exchange funny faces with, or the 20-minute station stops, when half the train seemed to rush outside to buy some strange local melon. In this passage, the local-visitor interaction is presented as developing from the local gaze to reciprocal interaction between the Chinese passengers and the travel writer. It is noted that different modes of interaction are involved.

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It can be simply a local gaze, e.g. children staring at the writer out of curiosity. The local gaze may also be accompanied by verbal communication, e.g. adults come ‘to practice English and meet a real life American’. This author seems to be more at ease with the local gaze, as compared to the examples in which the local gaze causes discomfort or unease. While the child gazers are stereotypically associated with innocence and tameness (cf. Thurlow et al., 2005), the adults are presented showing their enthusiasm for learning English, the language of power and prestige. The local gaze is then developed into two-sided interactions: it can be a mutual gaze, e.g. exchanging funny faces with a toddler; it can engage the sense of hearing, e.g. listening to a Uighur man playing folk songs; it may involve the sense of hearing as well as verbal communication, e.g. singing nursery songs with a young boy; or it can be more complicated communication about a range of topics, e.g. being asked to join card games, chatting with a shoe salesman, talking about problems shared by China and the US with a high school teacher, and inventing a story about why he was in China. The last instance is a typical example of Othering, because the author wouldn’t have lied to the Chinese passengers (and admitted it freely) if he respected them or considered them equals. Interestingly, the writer apologises to his fellow Americans for perpetuating a stereotype but not to his fellow-travellers for lying to them, while in the usual scheme of things lying is considered a greater transgression than perpetuating stereotypes. These Chinese people, therefore, are not depicted as equals of the author but remain the ‘strangers’ or the Other, as also seen in the author’s metaphorical reference of his bunk as a ‘zoo’ that projects the image of ‘foreignness’ onto the people showing overt curiosity to the presence of a ‘normal’ American and in his assumption that many of them were eager to get hold of certain ‘strange’ melons at long stops. The Over-friendly and Over-enthusiastic Other

While Chinese people are mostly represented as overtly and curiously reacting to the presence of American visitors, they are at times depicted as showing exaggerated enthusiasm toward the latter. They can be hosts extending hospitality to visitors, but they are depicted as excessively hospitable in this case, or they can be total strangers who are extremely eager to make friends with Americans. Thus, they are represented as the Other of Oriental inferiority by the same token as those discussed previously. It is noted that the enthusiasm manifested by Chinese people toward American visitors has not decreased in the NYT travelogues over the 30-year period under examination.

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In a 1980s’ travelogue about Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang province, the author writes about their touristic experience as follows: (8) We drank tea again at the source, Dragon Well commune to the south of the lake, where an entrepreneurial peasant family captured us. They improvised a tea table by the back door of the Government teahouse and poured on the ground the first two infusions of tea from our cups. ‘Third is best,’ the woman said, as she weighed out a cattie (slightly more than a pound) of individually dried leaves, packed them in a cardboard box and released us unharmed. (Fussell, 13 March 1988) In this extract, the Chinese locals are depicted as ‘entrepreneurial’ business people trying to grab customers at the back of the Government teahouse. The author employs humour at her own expense as she is ‘captured’ and ‘released’ as if she were a hapless fi sh out of water. While it sounds as if the American visitors had been taken by force, they are actually treated very warmly, entertained by the process of making tea and presented with a packet of tea leaves. Thus, the humour makes the writer look good but also appeals to the Western reader by depicting an activity that is (implied to be) subversive of the Chinese government as represented by the ‘Government teahouse’. It is worth noting that no reciprocal interaction is depicted, though; the family and the woman host are represented demonstrating the process of tea infusion to the visitors and hence constructed as performers in a sense. On the other hand, the visitors are portrayed as the detached gazers at the tea infusion and the passive recipients of the gift pack, not engaging with the hosts at all. The last sentence also seems to suggest their feeling as one of being overwhelmed by the excessive enthusiasm of their Chinese hosts, who nonetheless turn out to be harmless. This encounter with the Chinese locals is merely one episode of the writer’s tour of Hangzhou, in which the hosts are seen as the featureless Others instead of individuals to whom the writer feels obliged to return their hospitality (cf. Galasinski & Jaworski, 2003). Indeed, the dichotomy between American travel journalists and overfriendly Chinese people always persists, even in the context of closer interaction being involved, as seen in an example from the 1990s: (9) The Uighurs I met were extremely friendly, perhaps because I was an obvious foreigner. Maksoud, a squat blacksmith in his 30’s, took a break from his work for four hours and showed me around the Sunday market. Maksoud spoke easily only in Uighur, a dialect of Turkish, but he knew a bit of Chinese and we managed to communicate in that language. (Only a few merchants and people in the tourist trade speak

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any English at all.) The only problem was that Maksoud was too polite: he kept buying me a sweet ice concoction that I felt obliged to sip, although I was apprehensive about anything made with the local water. Appropriately apprehensive, I soon discovered. Maksoud led me down a narrow street and turned to the right along an even narrower mud-walled alley, through a door and announced: ‘This is my home.’ In his living room, he seated me in a place of honor on the carpet-covered kang, the brick platform that in winter is heated by a fi re underneath. ‘Have some food, have some drink,’ he urged. His wife brought refreshments and gave them to him to serve to me. He poured weak tea into a stained bowl, fi lling it halfway, and then added sugar – nine lumps – until the tea was ready to spill over the sides. He also laid out a local version of the bagel, which I munched on to drive away the sweetness of the tea. Maksoud kept plying me with bagels and tea, and it was more than an hour before I shook hands and strolled back out to the bazaar. (Kristof, 15 May 1994) In this example, an ‘extremely friendly’ image of the Uyghurs is presented, with a Uyghur blacksmith named Maksoud being selected as a representative of his community in Kashgar. As in Example 4, the label ‘foreigner’ is not a Self-attribution but an Other attribution. The writer constructs his ‘foreignness’ not from his own perspective as a traveller in China but finds it sufficiently interesting to report that the Uyghur man fi nds him as such (cf. Galasinski & Jaworski, 2003). Moreover, the writer hints that Uyghurs are particularly friendly to foreigners only. Although Maksoud is described as not having good language skills, the writer doesn’t fi nd this a problem, for he indicates his competence in the Chinese language, of which his Uyghur host knows a bit. What the author manifestly represents as a ‘problem’ is the overfriendliness of Maksoud, for the latter’s continuous buying him a strange mixture of drink makes him uncomfortable due to his concern about the local water quality. The writer’s hygiene concern is also manifested in his depiction of the ‘stained bowl’. In fact, the writer here considers the hospitality offered by his Uyghur host an imposition, as seen in his presentation of the ‘weak tea’ besides the ‘stained bowl’ and his emphasis on the amount of sugar (‘nine lumps’). Mentioning the time during which hospitality was received as ‘over an hour’ further enhances the sense that the experience is unpleasant to the writer. In the end the writer sounds as if he has fi nally managed to free himself from the imposition of extreme hospitality, and he feels relieved to be able to go back to his mastery of the place, as seen in his exclusion of Maksound in the latter part of the last

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sentence. The writer, instead of establishing a bond with his Uyghur host, sees the local’s attempts to make him feel welcome as a burden. Indeed, it is rare for some sort of friendship or even mutual recognition to develop between travel writers and Chinese locals, as witnessed in the following passage about the writer’s encounter with a Chinese old man named Lin on a train from Beijing to Huangshan Mountain in Anhui province in 2002: (10) As Dann and the middle-aged woman said goodbye, an aged, slim man in slacks and a pale green crocheted sweater-vest squeezed into the compartment and greeted us in English. The man’s watery eyes were packed with years of 5 a.m. wake-ups, and his hair was the color of the moon. There was a gaping space between his striped button-down shirt and his long, thin neck, and his brown pants hung loosely off his telephone-pole legs. His deep face folds spread into a warm smile as he introduced himself as ‘Lin, a silly old pig.’ Lin was a human whirlwind. He was laughing at his own sporadic English, while he threw his hands around with a crazed fervor, declaring his love for Chinese astrology and ‘funny’ words like ‘horsefly.’ Within five minutes of our exchanging names, he was bestowing life details upon us, giving us answers to questions we hadn’t asked… Lin talked about his afternoons spent studying language and listening to English on the radio. He was speaking with the speed and enthusiasm of a man full of words, as though he had been on a deserted island for months. In spite of his self-declared loneliness, he had the most contagious and constant laugh I had ever heard. We could not help but join in with him as he became hysterical on hearing English phrases like ‘see you later, alligator.’ […] In the seven months since that morning, Lin and I have been writing about once a week. He addresses his messages to me ‘Dear American daughter.’ I have helped him with bits of English and tried to be sincere in answers to questions about American life; in turn he has bestowed his wisdom as only a stranger, a wise old foreign stranger, could… […] When I hear about Lin’s kite flying in the town square, his games with children in the park, his lunches of bamboo and boned meat, I am transported from New York back to my short trip in China, and I see the storefronts, the chubby-cheeked children, the countryside

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that passed outside the window of the K45. I think of all the people I have met during past travels and never contacted again. I am grateful that this time I broke one of my own cardinal road rules and exchanged addresses with someone met in transit. Lin and I have stayed in touch, and far beyond the train tracks, my Chinese journey continues. (Adler, 24 November 2002) Similarly to those presented in the previous examples, the old man is depicted as showing boundless enthusiasm and interest in Americans. Even though Lin is represented as a much more individualised character than those discussed previously, he is all the same depicted as a ‘foreign stranger’, an Other from the standpoint of the writer. Some metaphors are used to portray his physical traits that form an image of an overworked old man, e.g. ‘The man’s watery eyes were packed with years of 5 a.m. wake-ups, and his hair was the color of the moon.’ And the metaphorical comparison of Lin’s legs to a ‘telephone-pole’ sounds like a humiliating comment on the disproportionate size of his legs compared with his ‘slim’ body. Additionally, the theme of ‘foreignness’ is also constructed through the writer’s depiction of the old man’s talking and laughing as well as his email messages. In particular, he is portrayed as a very talkative person with an infectious laugh. On the one hand, he impresses the writer as very quick to open up about his life details, no matter whether the author and her friend are prepared to listen or not, which suggests an imposition similar to Maksoud in Example 9. His extremely talkative mood even reminds the writer of the image of a castaway; the old man is hence viewed as strikingly different from normal people. On the other hand, his laugh is depicted as so ‘contagious’ that the writer and her friend cannot help but ‘join in with him’. Specifically, the depiction of his ‘hysterical’ reaction to hearing the English phrase ‘see you later, alligator’ casts him as infantile and odd. Finally, Lin’s email messages are quoted as proof for the writer’s observation of him as a ‘wise old foreign stranger’. Of course, Lin is treated specially by the writer and their relationship is more meaningful than any other interaction between travel writers and locals in my corpus. Even so, their relationship can hardly be counted as an equal one. Lin’s self-introduction as ‘a silly old pig’ sounds more like a self-deprecating means to please the writer, whose metaphorical reference to him as ‘a human whirlwind’ sets him apart as an impetuously active person. Compared with Lin’s enormous enthusiasm, the writer appears rational and detached. In their email communication, Lin is described as addressing the writer as ‘Dear American daughter’. The writer doesn’t seem to share the old man’s feelings toward her; she views him more as an

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exotically interesting stranger than a real friend, to say nothing of a member of her family. Moreover, the writer maintains a sense of superiority over the Chinese old man, by depicting herself as highly mobile, travelling in and out of China, while Lin remains in his place but enables her continued engagement with China. Discussion and Conclusion

The analysis of this study reveals two trends in the three decades: the more recent the time, the more instances of interaction depicted. In addition, while depictions of the tourist gaze and the mutual gaze were featured mostly in the fi rst two decades, in the last decade some instances of a more complicated mutual gaze can be observed. These two trends in general reflect the increasing opening-up and globalisation of China since the 1980s. Despite this gradual increase in quantity and depth of interactions, however, the three decades have actually seen ‘foreignness’ invariably attributed to Chinese locals depicted in this context, even though American travel writers are understood as ‘foreigners’ in the narrative events (cf. Galasinski & Jaworski, 2003). I argue that the constructed images of Chinese inhabitants are simply signs of ‘Chineseness’ that the NYT travel writers collect, because as Urry (1992; Urry & Larsen, 2012) contends, tourism involves the collections of signs. Chineseness is thus turned into foreignness in these travel accounts because it is rendered as the Other in the tourist gaze and the mutual gaze of the travelogues under analysis. In this study, it is the tourist gaze that predominates over the touristic experiences under examination. It penetrates the Chinese locals’ lives, exercising surveillance, power and authority over the inhabitants of the places visited. Endowed with the tourist gaze, the NYT travel writers remain ‘the monarch all of I survey’. As a naturalised exclusive privilege enjoyed by tourists, the tourist gaze is hardly ever questioned by the travel writers (it may even reinforce the stereotypes of Americans, as seen in Example 7). It may also invite or be invited by the local gaze, hence the mutual gaze, but it is never challenged by the local gaze. In its encounters with the tourist gaze, the local gaze ranges from invisibility, passiveness, submissiveness and reverse gaze to full cooperation. No trace of resistance or maintenance of boundaries (Doǧan, 1989) can be seen in the local gaze under analysis; that is probably because these travel accounts are mostly about transient travel experiences (cf. Maoz, 2006). The local gaze is generally interpreted by the tourist gaze as curiosity or ignorance at the sight of foreigners. Chinese locals thereby appear as the passive and distant

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gazees. When the tourist gaze and the local gaze are intertwined with each other, we see Chinese locals turn into active and aggressive gazers or the over-enthusiastic Other. In such mutual gazes, nevertheless, the tourist gaze enjoys mobility and flexibility because it can draw itself out of the interactions at any time, while the local gaze remains engaged and fi xed all the time. Even when the mutual gaze becomes more personalised, it is virtually impossible for the local gaze to gain agency and power over the tourist gaze, for it can by no means exercise any choice or control on the mutual gaze (cf. Maoz, 2006) or intrude on the touristic consumption of the destinations. It is the tourist gaze, therefore, that orders and regulates the relationships between travel writers and Chinese inhabitants, identifying/collecting what are signs of Chineseness that are out-of-the-ordinary and the Other (cf. Urry & Larsen, 2012). It is also observed that the generic reference labels of classification by age and gender contribute to the imaging of Chineseness not only as genericised but also as the powerless and non-threatening Other. For instance, women characters are depicted in Examples 2, 3, 4, 6, 8; old people in Examples 1, 2, 3, 6, 10; children in Examples 2, 4, 6, 7. By contrast, adult men are rarely seen in the travelogues under analysis. Hence an old, feminised and infantile human landscape is constructed as a result. Also, some reference labels tend to represent Chineseness as generalised individuals and groups. For example, it can be represented through functionalisation, e.g. ‘vendor’ in Example 3, ‘teacher’ and ‘comedian’ in Example 7 and ‘blacksmith’ in Example 9; it can be assimilated into featureless groups through aggregate labelling, such as ‘masses’ and ‘crowds’ in Example 5; or it can be referred to with the most generalised labels as ‘people’ or ‘everyone’, as in Example 7. In addition, physical identification tends to divert the reader’s attention to the social actors’ physical characteristics, and this is usually done selectively (van Leeuwen, 2003), e.g. ‘bent old men with white skullcaps and craggy faces’ in Example 2, ‘gaptoothed’ boy in Example 7, ‘slim’ old man with ‘watery eyes’, ‘mooncolored hair’, ‘long, thin neck’ and ‘telephone-pole legs’ in Example 10. Meanwhile, some representational choices are intended to impersonalise Chineseness, which is represented through references to something related to social actors, e.g. the use of instrumentalisation – ‘chopstick’ in Example 3, somatisation – ‘eyes’ in Example 5, metonymic references – ‘approving squeals and fruitless efforts at sign-language conversation’ in Example 5, and spatialisation – ‘half the train’ in Example 7. It should be noted that Chinese interactants may occasionally be named, e.g. ‘An-ran’ in Example 7, ‘Maksound’ in Example 9, and ‘Lin’ in Example 10. As discussed previously, even though these people stand out as more

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individualised characters, they can hardly be counted as the equals of the travel writers. Chineseness thus constructed serves to add authenticity to the writer’s touristic experiences. Some discursive and rhetorical strategies are manifested in the representations of Chinese people as interactants. Undoubtedly, surveillance remains a primary means for the travel journalists to hold the authority to provide ‘knowledge’ about the cultural Other, i.e. the Chinese locals who are rendered into part of exotic destination scenery. Second, the strategy of debasement frames Chinese inhabitants, in particular women, old people, and children, as the Other showing improper curiosity and exaggerated friendliness and enthusiasm to American visitors. Additionally, the lifestyles of certain areas and ethnic communities are constructed as backward and primitive through the employment of debasement. Meanwhile, through the strategy of naturalisation, rural people are identified as part of nature, on the same level as animals, and this identification is presented as absolutely ‘natural’ in the NYT travelogues. Finally, these is a discursive consistency of constructing Chinese inhabitants as ‘foreigners’ in the three decades under analysis. Apparently, the NYT travel writing demonstrates cultural fi xity (Pennycook, 2002) in representing Chinese people in Orientalist terms (Said, 2003/1978), following the Orientalist constructs in Othering certain groups of Chinese such as children, women and old people. Ultimately, a similar ‘contact’ explicated by Pratt (2008) can thus be evidenced in the mutual gaze examined in this study, featuring asymmetrical relations of power between travellers and ‘travellees’, between representers and the represented. In this contact zone, while Chinese inhabitants try to negotiate their identities, i.e. Chineseness, via the reverse gaze or the active or even aggressive gaze against the backdrop of stereotypes, opinions and norms about themselves, they are presented as a perfect foil for the NYT travel writers asserting their apparent superiority. References Adler, J. (2002) Encounter on a Chinese train. The New York Times, 24 November. See http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/24/travel/encounter-on-a-chinese-train.html (accessed March 2010). Beamish, R. (2000) Nanchang looks like a nondescript industrial city, until you put on a pair of running shoes. The New York Times, 24 December. See http://www.nytimes. com/2000/12/24/travel/hitting-full-stride-china-nanchang-looks-likenondescriptindustrial-cityuntil.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm&gwh=B36ED0C843F388912FF A468FBB5AAC06 (accessed March 2010). Chen, X. (2016) Linguascaping China: Travelogues’ representations of Chinese languages. Multilingua 35 (5), 513–534.

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Dann, G. (1996) The people of tourist brochures. In T. Selwyn (ed.) The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth Making in Tourism (pp. 61–82). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Doǧan, H.Z. (1989) Forms of adjustment: Sociocultural impacts of tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 16 (2), 216–236. Evans, K. (2004) Foreigners in the land of their birth. The New York Times, 25 April. See http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/travel/foreigners-in-the-land-oftheir-birth.html? pagewanted=all&src=pm&gwh=201EBB7E5B51CFFDECA78195276B9584 (accessed March 2010). Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. Finkel, M. (1999) Dancing and skiing with the yaks. The New York Times, 18 April. See http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/18/travel/asia-pacific-issue-dancing-andskiing-withthe-yaks.html (accessed March 2010). Fussell, B. (1988) Exploring twin cities by canal boat. The New York Times, 13 March. See http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/13/travel/exploring-twin-cities-bycanal-boat. html?scp=1&sq=Exploring+twin+cities+by+canal+boat&st=cse&pagewanted=all (accessed 26 March 2010). Galasinski, D. and Jaworski, A. (2003) Representations of hosts in travel writing: The Guardian travel section. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 1 (2), 131–149. Gross, M. (2006) On a people’s train from Urumqi to Beijing. The New York Times, 2 August. See http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/travel/02frugaltraveler.html (accessed 28 March 2010). Jager, S. and Maier, F. (2009) Theoretical and methodological aspects of Foucauldian critical discourse analysis. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 34–61). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Jaworski, A., Ylänne-McEwen, V., Thurlow, C. and Lawson, S. (2003) Social roles and negotiation of status in host-tourist interaction: A view from British television holiday programmes. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 (2), 135–164. Krich, J. (1991) Dropping by Mao’s home. The New York Times, 20 January. See http:// www.nytimes.com/1991/01/20/travel/dropping-by-mao-shome.html?scp=1&sq=Dr opping+by+Mao%27s+home&st=cse&pagewanted=all (accessed 25 March 2010). Kristof, N.D. (1992) Tibet without going there. The New York Times, 21 June. See http:// www.nytimes.com/1992/06/21/travel/tibet-without-going-there.html (accessed 23 March 2010). Kristof, N.D. (1994a) Kashgar, on China’s Silk Road. The New York Times, 15 May. http:// www.nytimes.com/1994/05/15/magazine/kashgar-on-china-s-silkroad.html (accessed 16 March 2010). Kristof, N.D. (1994b) Seeing China under your own steam. The New York Times, 4 December. See http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/04/travel/seeing-chinaunder-yourown-steam.html (accessed 16 March 2010). Li, F.S. (2008) Culture as a major determinant in tourism development of China. Current Issues in Tourism 11 (6), 492-513. Lisle, D. (2006) The Global Politics of Contemporary Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maoz, D. (2006) The mutual gaze. Annals of Tourism Research 33 (1), 221–239. Morgan, N. and Pritchard, A. (1998) Tourism Promotion and Power: Creating Images, Creating Identities. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Pennycook, A. (2002 [1998]) English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge. Pratt, M.L. (2008) Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (2nd edn). New York: Routledge.

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Rampton, B. (1995) Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. London: Longman. Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. (2009) The discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd edn) (pp. 87–121). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Rosenthal, A.M. (1981) Memoirs of a new China hand. The New York Times, 19 July. See http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/19/magazine/memoirs-of-a-newchina-hand.html? pagewanted=all (accessed 1 March 2011). Said, E. (2003 [1978]) Orientalism. London: Penguin. Spurr, D. (1993) The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Stevens, M. (2003) Beijing; The walls come tumbling down. The New York Times, 16 November. See http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/16/magazine/beijing-thewallscome-tumblingdown.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm&gwh=CC11D4B19620C0930 60E64511D59F26C (accessed 29 March 2010). Swenson, K. (1997) Approaches to Tibet. The New York Times, 19 October. See http:// www.nytimes.com/1997/10/19/travel/approaches-to-tibet.html (accessed 16 March 2010). Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2010) Tourism Discourse: Language and Global Mobility. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Thurlow, C., Jaworski, A. and Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2005) ‘Half-hearted tokens of transparent love?’ ‘Ethnic’ postcards and the visual mediation of host-tourist communication. Tourism, Culture & Communication 5, 1–12. Toy, V. (2008) Stopping traffic in the People’s Republic. The New York Times, 4 May. See http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/weekinreview/04toy.html?pagewanted=all (accessed 25 March 2010). Urry, J. (1992) The tourist gaze ‘revisited’. American Behavioral Scientist 36, 172–186. Urry, J. (2002) The Tourist Gaze (2nd edn). London: SAGE. Urry, J. and Larsen, J. (2012) The Tourist Gaze (3nd edn). London: SAGE. van Leeuwen, T. (2003) The representation of social actors. In C.R. Caldas-Coulthard and M. Coulthard (eds) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 32–70). New York: Routledge. Wang, G. (2009) Chinese history paradigms. Asian Ethnicity 10 (3), 201–216. Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (2009) Critical discourse analysis: History, agenda, theory and methodology. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd edn) (pp. 1–33). London: SAGE.

10 Commentary Lionel Wee

Much has been said about Asia’s growing importance in the global economy (Lim, 2019), about its rising middle class, which is expected to outpace its European and American counterparts (Newman, 2018), and about its aging population (Iwamoto, 2019) – the point behind these studies being that Asia as a region is deeply consequential in many different ways for the world as a whole. And China is undoubtedly one of the more significant players in the region, one whose social, political and economic policies have longstanding impacts on her neighbours in Asia and beyond. The recognition of China’s importance has garnered a fair amount of scholarly attention. Shambaugh (2013: ix, emphasis in original), for example, suggests that the ‘rise of China is the big story of our era, and it is incumbent upon scholars to be able to explain China to nonspecialist audiences worldwide’. Shambaugh (2013: x) highlights various aspects of ‘China’s global “footprints”’, including ‘Chinese perceptions of their global roles, Chinese diplomacy, China’s role in global governance, China’s global economic presence, China’s global cultural impact, and China’s global security presence’. In a similar vein, the papers in Hung (2009) emphasise China’s substantial effect on global fi nancial, social and cultural networks and stress the ‘need for serious analysis of the impact of China’s ascendancy on the world’ (2009: vii). Taking a much more specific focus, White et al. (2006: 3) point out that: China’s spectacular economic growth over the last decade is having a dramatic impact throughout the world. It has become a leading nation in terms of its demand for forest products, and its influence is being felt as far afi eld as Cameroon and Cambodia, Indonesia and the United States. … China is now in the world’s spotlight, with governments, industry and development agencies eager to learn more about the global impact the country is having on forests and forest industries. 189

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As with the preceding studies, the theme in White et al. (2006) is also that the reverberations and repercussions from whatever it is that China does – in this particular case, China’s need for forest products – will tend to extend globally. While the point behind these studies is well-taken, it is nevertheless crucial to recognise that China is far from being a monolithic entity, politically, economically, or socially. And it is equally necessary to give due scholarly attention to how the Chinese (as opposed to, say, the Chinese government) view themselves and their relationships to their fellow Chinese, to the government, and to the world around them. In this regard, the present collection of papers edited by Shuang Gao and Xuan Wang constitutes an important contribution. In particular, it serves as a reminder that a proper understanding of China’s undoubted global impact and importance is incomplete in the absence of critical attention to the notion of Chineseness. A reliance on, if not an outright appeal to, the notion of Chineseness is detectable not only in academic discourses but, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is also a driver in pushing for or motivating the country’s social and economic rhetoric. An academic reference to Chineseness can be a convenient shorthand for something that is in fact known to be much more complex, heterogeneous and perhaps even highly fragmented. A political deployment of the term, on the other hand, can be intended to foster a sense of unity and a call to collective action, oftentimes relying on some form of essentialism, strategic or otherwise (Cowan et  al., 2001; McElhinny, 1996). Regardless, the fact that the notion of Chineseness enjoys wide currency makes the enterprise of interrogating it critical and urgent. The goal of the present volume, then, is a timely one. As expressed by the editors, the objective is to understand ‘contemporary Chineseness’ by exploring ‘how Chineseness is caught up in the complexities and tensions of neoliberal globalisation, rising nationalism, persistent western hegemony and shifting global geopolitics’. Keeping the foregoing in mind, my comments will focus on the following issue: the extent to which the points raised in this volume about ‘unpacking Chineseness’ are particular to the Chinese and to China. I have two reasons for doing this. The fi rst is that the data analyses and interpretations presented by the contributors might be enriched, I think, by establishing connections with similar phenomena that are located elsewhere in the scholarly literature. The second, and perhaps more fundamental, reason is that this establishing of connections with other like phenomena is very much in the spirit of the thrust of the volume itself, which is to provide a critique of cultural essentialism, in this case, Chinese essentialism. As the editors point out (p. 4), ‘our research is guided by

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questions like what is Chineseness, who defi nes it, in what ways, on what basis, and what social political purposes or interests such constructs serve’. In this regard, when it becomes clear that other societies, other cultures, are also dealing with similar concerns, this can only help to further debunk claims about Chinese cultural essentialism and, by extension, Chinese cultural exceptionalism. I make my comments in relation to the following two strands of investigation: diaspora and the nationalist imagination, and affective regimes in third spaces. Diaspora and the Nationalist Imagination

While the notion of diaspora does recur throughout the volume (e.g. Birnie-Smith; Chung & Wang), it is perhaps dealt with most explicitly in Huang’s contribution, where the argument (p. 34) is made that ‘diasporic Chineseness in late modern urban areas (such as Birmingham) involves a heteroglossia of identifications which associates to various levels (individual, communal, ethnic or national) and domains (generations, business, education, economics or politics) of sociocultural discourses’. The key takeaway here is that diaspora has the effect of generating varied discourses of Chineseness and, concomitantly, actors at different levels who are implicated in these discourses may be positioned – whether they intend it or not – to experience changes in their social, economic and cultural capital. Huang focuses on the site of a school in Birmingham, highlighting how the use of rap to convey a Chinese classical poem demonstrates the changing and evolving ideas about what it means to be Chinese. Huang’s detailed study is primarily concerned with highlighting the heteroglossic nature of the discourses generated. To the extent that there is any evaluative comment about the impact of diaspora, it is described vaguely and in somewhat positive terms at the level of the institution (p. 34): While these new norms of Chineseness are being generated, the Chinese complementary school is also being transformed from a marginalised informal language school and an ethnic enclave to a conceptual Chinese community, performing important economic and political functions… For example, these new functions help empower the school to mediate various levels of meeting among the economic-political forces from China, the Chinese embassy and the local council and society of Birmingham.

But the specific connections between the use of rap in teaching a classical Chinese poem, on the one hand, and the notion of Chinese diaspora, on the other, could benefit from further discussion and detail. In

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particular, how classroom heteroglossia is actually related to a shift in the school’s status from ‘marginalised’ to ‘important’ remains unclear. Absent such detail, the study is open to a criticism that has sometimes been levelled against diaspora studies. This is the tendency for understandings of diaspora, especially when it is conjoined with notions of cosmopolitanism, to be presented and described in rather too celebratory terms, such that its less than positive consequences may then go under-discussed or neglected (Ong, 1999: 15). In this regard, it may be worth noting that there has been a similar study conducted in Birmingham, albeit one that focuses instead on schooling in the Bangladeshi community. This is Blackledge and Creese’s (2008) study of Bengali schools in Birmingham, which demonstrates that there are indeed significant contestations of what is understood as ‘language’ or ‘heritage’, especially among education authorities, the students and their families. For many educators and parents, knowledge of Bengali is rationalised as necessary for the maintenance of Bangladeshi roots (2008: 539– 40). Not surprisingly, educators prefer to uphold the standard variety of Bengali as the relevant variety for such heritage education, denouncing the use of a more regional variety as ‘contaminating’ the standard (2008: 542). Speakers of a regional variety, such as Sylheti, are criticised as being members of a ‘scheduled or ‘untouchable caste’. At the same time, there are disagreements about the boundaries between standard Bengali and Sylheti (Blackledge & Creese, 2008: 544) so that ‘Whilst some speakers in our study considered “Sylheti” to be quite different from “Bengali”, others regarded the two sets of resources as indistinguishable … That is, there was disagreement about the permeability of the languages’. In addition to disagreements about the boundaries between Sylheti and Bengali, there was also opposition from the students themselves about whether (some form of) Bengali is even necessary for their Bengali identity. Blackledge and Creese’s study highlights social class and generational tensions and conflicts over what it means to be a Bengali in modern-day Britain. Arguments over which variety (the standard or the regional) is more suited to the Bengali identity signify class differences. Contestations as to whether some form of language is needed at all to sustain identity point to generational differences. And these conflicts are observable even without any intervention from the government ‘back home’. Such government intervention to reach out and maintain a connectivity across the diaspora is evidenced in the case of Singapore (Brooks & Wee, 2014: 67ff ). The Singapore government has been particularly keen to maintain a sense of connectedness across the Singapore diaspora, seeing these individuals located outside the country as potentially valuable resources that must not be lost.

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The most important point to bear in mind when considering the Singaporean diaspora is that, because these are individuals located overseas, they are less subject to any regulatory policies that the government may try to introduce. For example, the government has been discouraging Singaporeans from using Singlish, a colloquial variety of English, because it fears that this may compromise Singaporeans’ ability to speak Standard English and subsequently jeopardise their ability to compete economically in the global market (Wee, 2018). But while it may be better able to limit the use of Singlish domestically, it is hardly in a position to change Singaporeans’ language practices when they are located overseas. The Singapore government recognises this, and hence, in addressing the Singaporean diaspora, its focus is less on issues of regulation. Rather, the strategy here involves encouraging overseas Singaporeans to maintain some kind of emotional connection with their homeland. For example, the government launched in 2006 the Overseas Singaporean Portal, a website for Singaporeans living outside Singapore. The main goals of the Portal are to cater to their ‘informational’, ‘transactional’ and ‘community building needs’ (Wong, 2006), by providing overseas Singaporeans with information about events back home, making easily available various government administrative services, and helping them to make contact with fellow Singaporeans. In his speech marking the event at the Regent Hotel in Shanghai, the deputy prime minister and minister for home affairs, Wong Kan Seng, made the following comments (Wong, 2006): There are now more than 140,000 Singaporeans spread across the world. The Overseas Singaporean diaspora is rich in its diversity of experiences, knowledge and networks. You add to the rich fabric of our nation. It is important for us to remain engaged with one other … Together, we can build a strong and interconnected Singaporean community that is not constrained by geographical limits or by Singapore’s small size. […] We will do well to harness this to our advantage – to use this tool to bring us closer together, to stay together as one people, overcoming the constraints of physical distance. It enables us to be united as one by the Singapore spirit, even though we may be physically apart. Let us celebrate our new found proximity and connection.

In Wong’s speech, we see that even as the government acknowledges that Singaporeans overseas have many possibilities open to them, it emphasises their relationship to Singapore, presents the diaspora as something that Singapore can benefit from (‘We will do well to harness this to our advantage’) and reminds these overseas individuals that they have a contribution to make to Singapore’s success (‘Together, we can build a strong and interconnected Singaporean community’).

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Since 2007, the government has also regularly organised Singapore Day, an event that is held in different cities where there are large communities of Singaporeans, with the goal of helping overseas Singaporeans stay in touch with various aspects of local culture. This continued reminder of the overseas individuals’ connection to their homeland was recently reinforced by Grace Fu, second minister for the environment and water resources, at the Singapore National Day Reception in Seoul. According to Fu (2012), overseas Singaporeans are ‘ambassadors’ of the ‘Singapore brand’: On a more serious note, Singaporeans and Singaporean companies are often known for reliability, competence, trust-worthiness, and a high standard for quality and safety. We deliver what we promise and are trusted. This Singapore branding is invaluable and has helped many Singaporeans and Singapore companies land job and business deals in many parts of the world. As our community in Korea, I urge each and every one of you to be the ambassadors of Singapore and help uphold the Singapore brand here. With globalisation, the branding of Singapore is becoming ever more important … The Overseas Singaporean diaspora is rich in its diversity of experiences, knowledge and networks. You add to the rich fabric of our nation and contribute much to our Singapore brand. It is important for us to remain engaged with one another. We want you to stay connected with one another and with Singapore, to know what is happening back home. A vibrant and connected Overseas Singaporean community around the world, with strong linkages to the family and friends in Singapore, will be an asset to the country.

Fu therefore makes clear that, where the government is concerned, overseas Singaporeans have benefited from the ‘Singapore brand’, with its associated characteristics of reliability and competence. This branding has ‘helped many Singaporeans and Singapore companies land job and business deals in many parts of the world’. Overseas Singaporeans therefore have an obligation in turn to ‘uphold’ the brand, wherever they may be, because they ‘contribute much to our Singapore brand’. Diaspora, then, is not only about changing discourses and variations in interpretations. These changes and variations are entangled with multiple and often conflicting vested interests so that the agenda of one party may even be achieved at the expense of some other. The experiences of Chinese diaspora communities are echoed in those of other communities, including having to negotiate and respond to potential attempts by a national government to co-opt these communities for its own political ends. Tracing the interplay between shifting discourses and alliances of power that many diasporic communities are forced to negotiate can help to demystify the idea of Chineseness in the context of diaspora.

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Affective Regimes in Third Places

Oldenburg (1997) introduced the term ‘third place’ to distinguish a social setting that differs from that of the home and of the office. Whereas the home (or ‘first place’) is typically associated with family and the office (or ‘second place’) with work, Oldenburg considered as third places those settings where members of the community might publicly gather so as to socialise and converse. Because of this, for Oldenburg, third places are important in fostering a sense of belonging and encouraging civic engagement. Examples of third places include libraries, cafes, parks and community centres. In third places, face-to-face interactions are facilitated in an atmosphere that can be situated somewhere between the more intimate and personal nature of family interactions, on the one hand, and the more impersonal and formal nature of work-based obligations and responsibilities, on the other. In Wee (2016: 109), I defi ned an affective regime as ‘the set of conditions that govern with varying degrees of hegemonic status the ways in which particular kinds of affect can be appropriately materialized in the context of a given site’. Third places are places defi ned primarily in terms of affective regimes of conviviality (Wee & Goh, 2019). They are supposed to be places where there is a sense of being welcomed and accepted. Of course, the kinds of activities that are considered appropriate to libraries, cafes and parks all differ. Consequently, interpretations about what it means to be materialising the appropriate affect will have to be relativised and tailored to the expectations of these different places. For example, libraries are places where silence is generally expected and jogging or walking of dogs disallowed. The converse holds for parks. Nevertheless, these are all places that are, ideally, welcoming and comfortable, and accessible to individuals from diverse social backgrounds (Oldenburg, 1997: xviii, xxv) – which is what qualifies them all as third places. The contribution from Gao highlights the ways in which a third place such as the cafe has been appropriated in Chinese culture. According to Gao (pp. 73–74), ‘going for coffee as a social behaviour in China’ carries various social meanings ‘along a continuum from trying an exotic drink, constructing xiaozi (petit bourgeois) identity, to indulging in a romantic experience’. Going out for coffee is a marker of middle-class identity (p. 126) so that: In China, coffee drinking therefore constitutes as an aesthetic experience through which people perform their desired middle-class identity and imagined romance. Such experience happens in actual space, pointing to the importance of examining the sociality and spatiality of food consumption.

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The activities that occur in cafes are of course manifold. Cafes themselves may sometimes take an active role in trying to encourage particular activities from their patrons. This is usually by shaping their affective regimes. Consider, for example, the Carlaw Park Café in Auckland, New Zealand, which has many different sayings on its walls, as shown below. (1) One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well Virginia Woolf (2) A bagel is doughnut with the sin removed (3) Forget love … I would rather eat chocolate (4) Laughter is brightest where food is best (5) Food is our common ground A universal experience The linguistic landscape of Carlaw Park Café is overtly polyphonic. There are multiple voices, with one (1) attributed to Woolf though the others remain unattributed. The Café has these sayings all spread out and printed across its various interior walls so that its patrons are effectively surrounded by multiple voices. Significantly, the statements are thematically coherent. All, in this case, espouse food and the activity of eating as important to personal and social wellbeing. This is of course no accident since it is related to the Café’s business as a place that serves food and drinks. Here, the polyphony is intended to foster a specific affective regime, that is, to cultivate an appreciation of eating in a relaxed atmosphere. And The Cat Café in Singapore (http://thecatcafe.sg/#about; accessed 13 November 2019) makes the following claim on its website: At The Cat Café, we strive to provide the perfect combination of cats, coffee, tea and pastries. Due to our Singapore HDB’s [Housing Development Board] strict regulations, we understand that Cat Lovers like yourselves are unable to keep cat(s) at home (at least not legally). We want to create an environment where you can interact with felines, safely. Our Cats were all once strays, so don’t be surprised if they look familiar to you. We offer freshly brewed coffee, top-notch tea and freshly baked pastries. Come on here to have both your taste buds and furry instincts satisfied!

The point here is that the kinds of activities that occur in cafes are by no means static; these will change as the idea of what cafes signify also changes. And such changes are generally considered acceptable so long as the activities and the ways in which they are conducted are perceived to be staying within the bounds of the café’s affective regime. This affective regime is itself mainly more concerned with maintaining a sense of

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conviviality than anything else, though the specifics can of course vary (as in the case of The Cat Café). In fact, for some time now, cafes have even increasingly been co-opted as places where professional activities of various sorts (work interviews, small group meetings, insurance sales) are conducted, thus potentially undermining their status as third places, at least as originally defi ned by Oldenburg. Interestingly, Oldenburg (2015: 28) himself seems to not be too perturbed by such developments, if his recent comments are anything to go by: The biggest surprise is that the business world picked up on them. Corporations used to believe that the longer they could keep each employee at the desk, the more productive they’d be. That’s just been shot to pieces. Managers found out that if they let people work where they want and when they want, productivity went up. The marketplace is highly competitive and it’s important to be fi rst with new innovations. If you get people sitting together, talking together, innovation comes quicker. And I think that’s going to be the thing for business and industry for a long time.

But if third places are being appropriated by corporations for the specific purpose of improving productivity and encouraging innovation, then Oldenburg’s original notion of a third place as somewhere that is (i) distinct from family and work (especially the latter), and (ii) open to a socially diverse range of individuals is perhaps already being lost. Indeed, the notion of a third place has become something of a buzzword in the corporate world, and Starbucks apparently at one time even asked Oldenburg to endorse its cafes as ‘third places’ – a request which he declined (Oldenburg, 2015). More to the point being made in this commentary, regardless of whether patrons are trying exotic drinks, romancing one another, having work-related meetings, studying for exams, playing with cats or simply just hanging out, so long as they are not seen to be making nuisances of themselves and they are generally respectful of the fact that they are all in a shared environment, there is likely to be little objection to the activities that the patrons use the café’s premises for. The broader issue, then, raised by Gao’s contribution, it seems to me, is about how affective regimes – in third places as well as elsewhere – are being negotiated as part of increased social mobility and changing social expectations. These negotiations may be refracted along ethnic or national lines so that, in some ways, it is appropriate to speak of Chineseness in relation the affective regimes of cafes. But this should not lead us to downplay the fact that other such negotiations may well cut across ethnic or

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national demarcations, and instead, shows signs that index class, gender or some relatively narrow shared interest. Conclusion

I began this commentary by noting that the project of ‘unpacking Chineseness’ is important because of China’s global impact. There is another reason why this project is important, one that has less to do with China or the Chinese than with the general rise in identity politics. Nationalist movements, special interest groups based on sexual, ethnic or religious characteristics, coalitions that are geared towards specific objectives such as fighting climate change or fighting authoritarianism are increasingly active. The project of ‘unpacking Chineseness’ therefore is doubly important. It represents a major step in better understanding the impact and positioning of China and the Chinese in a world where groups of different stripes are also ever ready to take offence at perceived slights or violations of rights and are strident in vocalising demands for redress. References Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (2008) Contesting ‘language’ as ‘heritage’: Negotiation of identities in late modernity. Applied Linguistics 29, 533–554. Brooks, A. and Wee, L. (2014) Consumption, Cities and States: Comparing Singapore with Asian and Western Cities. New York: Anthem Press. Cowan, J.K., Dembour, M. and Wilson, R.A. (2001) Introduction. In J.K. Cowan, M. Dembour and R.A. Wilson (eds) Culture and Rights: An Anthropological Perspective (pp. 1–26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hung, H-F. (ed.) (2009) China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Iwamoto, K. (2019) Aging Asia rethinks retirement to pursue ‘productive longevity’. Nikkei Asian Review, 18 June. See https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/ Aging-Asia-rethinks-retirement-to-pursue-productive-longevity (accessed 7 November 2019. Lim Chow Kiat (2019) Asia’s growing importance in the global economy. The Business Times, 24 July. See https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/opinion/asias-growing-importance-in-the-global-economy (accessed 7 November 2019). McElhinny, B. (1996) Strategic essentialism in sociolinguistics of gender. In N. Warner, J. Ahlers, L. Bilmes, M. Oliver, S. Wertheim and M. Chen (eds) Gender and Belief Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Women and Language Conference (pp. 469–80). Berkeley, CA.: Berkeley Women and Language Group. Newman, Neil (2018) The rise and rise of Asia’s middle class. Glint, 16 August. See https:// www.businesstimes.com.sg/opinion/asias-growing-importance-in-the-global-economy (accessed 7 November 2019). Oldenburg, R. (1997) Our vanishing ‘third places’. Planning Commissioners Journal 25, Winter 1996–1997, 6–10.

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Oldenburg, R. (2015) Q+A with Ray Oldenburg. 360 Magazine, 6. See www.steelcase.com/ research/articles/topics/design-q-a/q-ray-oldenburg/ (accessed 2 November 2017). Shambaugh, D. (2013) China Goes Global: The Partial Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wee, L. (2016) Situating affect in linguistic landscapes. Linguistic Landscape 2 (2), 105–26. Wee, L. (2018) The Singlish Controversy: Language, Identity and Culture in a Globalizing World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wee, L. and Goh, R. (2019) Language, Space, and Cultural Play: Theorizing Affect in the Semiotic Landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. White, A., Sun X., Canby, K., Xu, J., Barr, C., Katsigris, E., Bull, G.Q., Cossalter, C. and Nilsson, S. (2006) China and the global market for forest products. Forest Trends. ISBN 1-932928-21-9

Index

Page numbers followed by n refer to information in notes. active gaze 168, 172–174, 185 address forms 81–82, 86–88, 91–92 language choice 92–100 affective regimes 195–197 aggressive gaze 168, 170, 174, 185 Americans 173, 184 aspirational Chineseness 7–8 authenticity 5 political microbloggers 154, 156, 163 tourism 174, 186 Awesome STORY 65

Carlaw Park Café, Auckland, New Zealand 196 Chaoxianzu see Joseonjok ethnic group China coffee shops 129–130, 131–135 education system 42, 54n, 109, 110, 111–114 international role 160, 189–190 middle class 4, 129, 135–137, 142–143, 189, 195 public intellectuals 1–2, 9, 146–147, 148–149, 151–152, 156–157, 164 Chinese Complementary Schools (CCS), Britain 22, 31 Birmingham 13, 19, 24–25 Chinese culture 17 discourse styles 117–120 heritage 30 values 118–120 see also Chineseness Chinese diaspora 5–6, 13–17, 33–35, 194 Britain 13, 16, 21–24, 31–33, 191–192 and Chineseness 33–35 Indonesia 80–82, 88–90 Singapore 43–49 Chinese language Cantonese 14, 16, 22–23, 24–28, 32–33 character sets 33 as Chinese identity 90–91 dialects 22, 32–33 forms of address 88, 91 kinship terms 96–99 Mandarin (Putonghua) 3, 5, 17, 22–24, 26, 32–33, 39, 47, 49–50, 52, 114–120

Baigu Lunjin 153–159, 161, 164 Bakhtin, Mikhail 8, 14, 17–18, 20, 150 Bengali schools 192 Big Vs see political microbloggers Birmingham, UK Bangladeshi community 192 Chinese diaspora 13, 21–23, 24, 191–192 A Bite of China (TV show) 29 Bobo 64–71, 72 body language 117–118 Britain Bangladeshi community 192 Chinese diaspora 13, 16, 21–23, 24, 31, 192 cafés see coffee shops Cantonese language 14, 16, 22–23, 32–33 Chinese Complementary School (CCS) 24–28 capitalism expansion of 150, 152, 160 and romance 141–142 see also globalisation; Western society

200

Index

Chineseness 10, 13, 15 aspirational Chineseness 7–8 Chinese diaspora 33–35 importance of 190–191 and Indonesianness 81, 99–100 and Koreanness 57–58, 62–63, 68–71 multiplicity 4, 5–6, 17, 76, 159 national character 148, 157–160, 163 in political discourse 2–3 in Singapore 52 tourism 167–169, 184–186 see also Chinese culture chronotope 18–21, 150–151 Chineseness 8–9, 14, 28, 148, 157–160, 163 chronotopic frame theory (CTP) 83–86 trajectory of cultural elements 27, 34 code switching 18, 47, 115 coffee 7–8 coffee shops 126, 195–197 food culture 128–130, 131–132 guestbooks 127, 132–135 middle class identity 135–137 romantic relationships 132, 137–141 colonialism 9, 80, 157–158, 160–161, 177, 184 consumer behaviour 126, 142–143 contact zones 168–169 conversational frameworks 113–120 cosmopolitanism 107, 110, 118, 121, 192 COVID-19 pandemic 3 creativity 107, 108, 197 credibility 148, 156, 162 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 168, 170 cultural authority 148, 149, 151, 157, 163 cultural hierarchy 51–52 cultural politics 4–5, 7, 9–10 cultural translation 58 Deng Xiaoping 2 dialogism 10, 18, 19, 20, 23 diasporas 15–16 Chinese 5–6, 13–17, 21–24, 31–35, 43–49, 80–82, 88–90, 191–192, 194

201

Korean 57, 58–59, 62, 68–69 Singapore 192–194 digital nationalism 159, 162 digital optimism discourse 154, 163 discourse analysis approach 154, 168, 170 discourse styles 107–109 Chinese culture 117–120 strategies 148 Western society 113–118, 119–122 education systems China 42, 54n, 109, 110, 111–114 Singapore 40–41, 42, 43–49, 51, 54n see also schools elitism 129 elite students 38–41 engagement see interaction English language 51 importance of 107, 137 oral interaction 106–109 in Singapore 46–47, 49, 50, 52, 53 teaching 114–122 Western way of thinking 7, 9, 113–114 see also IELTS (International English Language Testing System) essentialism 5, 66–68, 74, 190–191 ethnicity 70, 151 identity 85–86 model minority 71–73 ethnographic methods 13, 23–24, 88–90, 110, 148, 152 Exeter Prestige English, Shenyang 109, 114–120 Facebook 150, 155 fictive kinship 97–98 filiality 119 flexibility 4, 6, 27, 35, 70 fluidity Chinese-Indonesian identity 100 Chineseness 3–4, 14, 26–28, 33–34 food culture coffee shops 128–130, 131–132 exhibition of 28–30 Western food 130–131

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Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness

foreignness 172, 173, 179, 181, 183, 184, 186 formality 85, 87, 91–92, 97, 98 forms of address see address forms freedom fighter positioning 154–156, 163 gaze 167 active gaze 168, 172–174, 185 aggressive gaze 168, 170, 174, 185 local gaze 167, 171–174, 178–179, 184–185 mutual gaze 167, 168–169, 171–173, 176, 179, 184–186 passive gaze 168, 170–172, 184 reverse gaze 172, 176, 186 tourist gaze 167, 168–169, 170–171, 174, 184–185 Germany 160–164 global south 52, 100, 101n, 147, 164 globalisation 149–150, 156 China’s role in 111, 148, 160, 189–190 Chineseness 3–4, 7–8, 14–17 meritocracy 38 social media 73 tourism 184 see also capitalism; transnationalism Hakka language 22, 24, 33 Han Chinese 61, 62, 75 Han Songi 67 heteroglossia 14, 17–19, 33–34, 150, 191–192 hierarchies cultural 51–52 students 89, 92, 96–99 YouTube 71–73 Hong Kong 3, 16 HuKou system 54n hybridity 4, 5, 7, 31–32, 62–64, 75 identity 6, 43, 90 Chinese/Indonesian intersectionality 81–83, 89, 100 chronotope 8–9 ethnicity 85–86 Joseonjok 67–68

national 151 self-identification 65, 67–68, 74–75 social class 127, 135–137, 142–143 transnational 109–110, 121 ideologies 7, 168–169 Chinese language 94, 97, 98, 100 monologic 85–86, 90, 92, 98 neoliberalism 13, 16, 156 orientalism 4, 6, 108, 157, 164, 169, 186 IELTS (International English Language Testing System) 6, 109, 110 test preparation 112–120, 122 imagemaking 67, 72–73 indexicality 18, 19, 20 of coffee 126, 129, 135–141, 141–143 perduring 82, 83, 84, 85–86, 87, 92, 97, 100 Indonesia Chinese diaspora 80–82, 99–100 Chinese/Indonesian intersectionality 81–83, 89, 100 Indonesian languages 85, 86–87, 92–93, 98 informality 85, 87, 91–92, 97, 98 interaction intercultural contact 53 tourism 174–179, 180–184 internet see social media intersectionality 82 identity 81–84, 99–100 Jakarta City, Indonesia 83 Jakartan language 82, 83 Japan 129, 152, 157 Javanese language 87–88 Joseonjok ethnic group 57, 66–68 in China 58–59, 62 in Korea 57, 60–64, 68–71 marginalisation 57–59, 62 YouTube 64–71 Khek language 91 Kim Min (KM) 64–71 kinship terms (KT) 87–88, 91–92, 95–100 Chinese 96–99 fictive kinship 97–98

Index

203

Korea diaspora in China 57, 58–59, 62, 68–69 status of Joseonjok 57–58, 60–64, 68–71 students 50 Korean language 66–67

Joseonjok ethnic group 58–61 Singapore 38–41, 51, 52–53, 53n model minority 71–73 monologic approach 85–86, 90, 92, 98 multivoicedness 18–19 mutual gaze 167, 168–169, 171–173, 176, 179, 184–186

language choice 92 address forms 92–100 Indonesia 91 Singapore students 46–50, 51 Lee Jung (LJ) 64–71 linguistic ethnography 14, 23–24 local gaze 167, 171–174, 178–179, 184–185 localisation, using language 49–50, 52

Nanchang, China 174 narratives discourses 23, 29 on foreignness 168, 184 mass media 155 nativist (pribumi) 81, 99 self-identity 65, 67, 75 transnational identity 109, 115–118, 121 national Chinese character, criticism of 148, 157–160, 163 National University Singapore (NUS) 44–46 nationalism Chinese 69 digital nationalism 159, 162 Indonesia 81 nativist narrative (pribumi) 81, 99 neoliberalism 16, 190 Chinese education system 110, 111–112 Nestlé 130 New Culture Movement 152, 159 New York Times 169–170 travelogues 171–184 normalisation, Joseonjokness 66–68

McDonalds 130–131 Malay languages 39, 51, 91–92, 95, 99–100 Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) 5, 17, 22–23, 32–33 Chinese Complementary School (CCS) 24 cosmopolitan Mandarin 3 in English language teaching schools 114–117, 119–120 in Singapore 39, 47, 49, 50, 52 textbooks 26 marginalisation 7 Joseonjok ethnic group 57–59, 62–63, 74 media practices 154–155 mainstream media 155–156 social media 156 microblogging see political microbloggers micro-online activism 74–76 middle class 4, 128, 129, 142–143, 189, 195 markers of 127, 130–132, 135–137 social mobility 126 Midnight Runner (film) 61, 63, 73 migration 31–32 to Britain 21–23

oral interaction 107–110 test preparation 112–120, 122 orientalism 4, 6, 108, 157, 164, 169, 186 Other, over-enthusiastic 168, 179–184, 185–186 passive gaze 168, 170–172, 184 patriotism 3, 9, 147 People’s Republic of China (PRC) see China perduring indexicality 85–86, 87, 92, 97, 100

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persona, creation of 94–95 photography 171 poetry, rapping 25–28 political microbloggers 146–148, 152–153 authenticity 154, 156, 163 on Chinese national character 157–160, 163 freedom fighter positioning 154–156, 163 on Germany 163–164 Western society 160–163 Pontianak Catholic College, Borneo 88–89 Pontianak Malay language 95 post-coloniality 52–53 PRC students 43–49, 51–52 pribumi (nativist narrative) 81, 99 public infrastructure projects 161–163 public intellectuals 148–149 China 1–2, 9, 146–147, 151–152, 156–157, 164 public places 195–197 Putonghua see Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) Qing dynasty 30–31, 152 Qingdao, China 161 racism 52 railway projects 159–160, 165n rapping, Chinese poetry 25–28 repertoire 6, 20–21 stancetaking 120–121 research methods data collection 39–40, 41–43, 153–154, 169–170 discourse analysis 154, 168, 170 ethnographic approach 23–24, 88–90, 110, 148 social semiotic approach 127, 128, 141 reverse gaze 172, 176, 186 romantic relationships 129, 135, 141–143 capitalism 141–142 coffee shops 132, 137–141 rural areas 110, 126, 157

sameness (solidarity) 87, 93–94, 96, 98–100 schools China 42 Chinese Complementary School (CCS) 13, 19, 22, 24–25, 31 English language schools in China 106, 109, 114–120 Singapore 42, 51–52 see also education systems self, nature of 107 self-essentialisation 68, 74 self-identification 65, 67–68, 74–75 sewage systems 161 Shenyang, China 106, 110 Sina Weibo 153, 155, 163 Singapore constitution 53n language policy 39 migration 38–41, 51, 52–53, 53n racial groups 43–49 schools 42, 51–52 Singapore diaspora 192–194 student scholarship schemes 40–41, 43–49, 54n Singlish 49–50, 51, 52, 53, 193 Sinocentrism 1, 61, 75 social class 128 China 4, 142–143, 189 markers of 127, 130–131, 135–137 social mobility 126 social meaning 82–83, 87 social media 58, 63–64, 73 audiences 149 discourse strategies 74–76 Weibo 146–147, 153–159, 161, 163–164 Western platforms 150, 155 YouTube 58, 63–73, 75 social relations perduring 83–84, 86 solidarity 87, 93–94, 96, 98–100 social semiotic approach 127, 128, 141 solidarity 87, 93–94, 96, 98–100 South Korea see Korea space-time see chronotope speech communities 19, 20

Index

stancetaking 93 conversational 108–109, 115–121 Starbucks 130, 131–132, 197 stereotypes 4, 7 American 184 Chinese 81, 172, 177 German 162–163 Joseonjok 67 strategic stylisation 109 students hierarchies 89, 92, 96–99 migration 7, 38, 40–41, 109 relationships 93–99 scholarship schemes 40–41, 43–49 socialisation 44–49 and Western food culture 132 Sylheti language 192 Tencent Weibo 153, 161 Teochew language 91, 93–95, 99 testing 112 IELTS (International English Language Testing System) 6, 109, 110, 112–120, 122 TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) 109, 112 textbooks 25–26 third places 195–197 third space 63 Tibet 173 time-space see chronotope TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) 109, 112 tourism 7, 132, 186 authenticity 174, 186 Chineseness 168–169 host-tourist interactions 167–168, 174–179, 180–184 tourist gaze 6, 167, 168–169, 170–171, 174, 184–185 transcultural experience 136 transnationalism 16, 108, 121 Chineseness 3, 5, 32, 34 identities 109–110, 121 online 73

205

students 107 see also globalisation Twitter 150, 155 UK see Britain UK Association for the Promotion of Chinese Education (UKAPCE) 29 UK Federation of Chinese Schools (UKFCS) 25 urban areas 110 citizens 120 flooding 161 Uyghur people 171, 180–181 verbal play 94, 97, 100 video activism 74–76 Washington English, Shenyang 106 Weibo 146–147, 159, 163–164 Baigu Lunjin posts 153–159, 161, 164 popularity metrics 147 Sina Weibo 153, 155, 163 Tencent Weibo 153, 161 see also political microbloggers Western society cultural references 117–118 discourse styles 9, 113–118, 119–122 food/drink culture 7–8, 130–132, 137 Germany 160–163 hegemony 3, 6, 8, 190 individualism 117–118 influence of 2, 150, 157–158, 164 rap music 26–28 romance 142 see also capitalism Xi Jinping 2, 160 Yanbian, Jilin province 59, 66–67 Yangshuo, China 132 YouTube 58, 63–66, 73–74 Chineseness 68–71, 74–76 hierarchical categories 71–73 Joseonjokness 64–71, 74–75 Koreanness 70–71, 74–75