Abstract
This chapter puts forward two main claims. First, it argues that dispersing the patrilineal Chinese family is, paradoxically, often a rational family decision to preserve the family, a resourceful and resilient way of strengthening it: families split in order to be together translocally. The ‘astronaut families’ of Hong Kong, for example, are a model of such dispersion for our time. Second, this chapter argues that these spatially dispersed families constitute strategic nodes and linkages of an ever-expanding transnational field within which a new type of Chinese identity is emerging—that of the Chinese cosmopolitan.
Paper presented at the Symposium on Chinese Traditional Culture and Family Changes in Chinese Communities, sponsored by the Hong Kong Women’s Foundation and the Institute of Women’s Studies of the All—China Women’s Federation (Hong Kong, March 1994). Subsequently revised while the author was Visiting Professor at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan, May-August 1994; then read at a seminar in the Museum on 8 June 1994. The author wishes to thank Khachig Tololyan for his thorough critique of an earlier draft of this chapter. Diana Wong, Giovanna Campani, and Ronald Skeldon also made helpful comments and suggestions.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, I use ‘he’ most of the time in reference to the migrant or immigrant, partly because international migration of the Chinese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was, of necessity, almost wholly a male phenomenon. I acknowledge the recent appearance of women as members of the new overseas Chinese. I avoid the usage of ‘he or she’ because I consider it a cumbersome expression that achieves very little gender neutrality.
- 2.
In this chapter, I focus on the historical and contemporary experiences of the Chinese migrants and immigrants to Canada and the United States for three reasons. First, I am most familiar with these two experiences, having studied them and lived in Canada for close to two decades. Second, the Chinese experiences in Canada and the United States have close chronological and political parallels. In fact, they are best seen as two closely related histories—a scholarly analysis of which is yet to be attempted. Third, the bulk of the theoretical and empirical literature on the experience of the ethnic Chinese overseas I draw upon for this chapter is Canadian- and American-based. I am, of course, fully aware of the limits of generalizability of my analyses to ethnic Chinese elsewhere. For me, the degree of fit between theory, experience, and data is considerable and attractive. The ‘astronaut families’ of Hong Kong were chosen as a case illustrative of modern-day dispersed families among the ethnic Chinese overseas. Many such families are made up of the resource-rich, hypermobile ‘transilients’ I attempt to delineate in this chapter. Not at all coincidentally, Canada, the United States, and Australia are their favourite countries of adoption. Hong Kong has lately been under the watchful eye of the world. The sheer magnitude of its emigration compels me to examine the ‘astronaut families’ thus created.
- 3.
These remittances were usually sent through the occasional returning migrants or through one of the many brokering agencies set up by Chinese merchants or family and clan associations in Chinatown districts.
- 4.
I owe the analogy of the kite to a discussion with Professor Taban Lo Liyong on 27 May 1994, at National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan.
- 5.
Race riots punctuate the history of Indonesia, the latest as recent as May 1998. In 1965, Chinese stores were looted; ‘killing communists’ was often synonymous with killing Chinese. The Chinese were forced to send their children to Indonesian-language schools, culminating in the closure of all Chinese-medium schools in 1966. Today there are no Chinese schools in Indonesia. Ill feeling and distrust continue to exist between the Chinese and the Indonesians. In May 1998, Chinese were the targets of organized destructive attacks: their shops and homes were looted and burned down; many Chinese were injured or killed, and many Chinese women were raped. It was reported that about 100,000 Chinese had fled the country.
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Kwok-bun, C. (2013). A Family Affair: Migration, Dispersal and the Emergent Identity of the Chinese Cosmopolitan. In: Kwok-bun, C. (eds) International Handbook of Chinese Families. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0266-4_2
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