The Cheongsam: A Site of Wonder and Contestation for Canadian Women of Chinese Heritage
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Through its promotion of ‘tolerance’ the policy of official multiculturalism adopted in 1971, was instrumental in articulating power relations between immigrant ‘others’ and a dominant Anglo-Canadian culture. In the name of nation building, Canadian born children of immigrants have been pressed to adopt and assimilate by eschewing their heritage languages, customs and traditions despite the policy’s discourses of equality and the promotion of a pluralistic Canadian identity. Almost 40 years later, with the loss of language and erasure of a meaningful connection with the communities of their ethnic heritage(s), first generation Canadians are now looking for ways to access and assert these erased or estranged aspects of their identities. One of these ways is through the wearing of clothing associated with their ethnic heritage(s). This chapter will explore the results of a research/creation project that investigates links between ethnic clothing and identity with a focus on the cheongsam or Chinese dress. Specifically, this chapter asks if a connection to one’s ethnic heritage can be meaningfully expressed through the wearing of clothing associated with that heritage. A group of Canadian born women of Chinese and Chinese/mixed parentage (born in the late 1960s through to the early 1980s) were interviewed in order to gather a sampling of opinions, attitudes and wearing practices in regards to the Chinese dress. An analysis of selected quotes from these interviews will demonstrate how current cheongsam wearing practices elicit four positions: pleasure, ambivalence, assertion and connection. Based on a feminist (Kondo) and post-colonial (Hall) theoretical framework and informed by my own experience as a Canadian woman of Chinese-Filipino descent, these questions are tied up with the expression of one’s identity against the hegemonic force of multiculturalism, in recognition of the dynamics of power that affect one’s representations in everyday life.