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Abstract
Already on American soil, many Chinese student travelers sought to use their time to explore and turn their experiences into published works and travelogues. As a result, these routes and the writings that accompany them demonstrate a spectrum of Chinese experiences in North America during the Exclusion Era. The Chinese narrators in the writings of elite overseas Chinese students Chen Hengzhe (
Abstract
Based on oral histories and archival research in Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangzhou, this article focuses on identity and cultural formation among the descendants of overseas Chinese men and Latin American women. Some of the children and grandchildren of Chinese men and their wives in the diaspora have adopted Latin American identities even when they have never been to the region. While Chinese Latinos have created hybrid linguistic, cultural, and religious expressions, notions of Latin America have been central. Considering the myriad ways people have taken up Latin Americanness and integrated it into their mixed identities in Macau, Hong Kong, and southern China, this work explores what these experiences can tell us about the Chinese diaspora, return overseas migration, and the idea of “Latin America,” showing how Chinese Latino transnational families add to and complicate our understanding of the Latin American Chinese diaspora as well as southern China as a borderlands and contact zone.
Abstract
Chinese restaurants in the US are symbolic “canaries in the coalmine,” indicating widespread anti-Asian hate by attracting negative reactions from the American community but also inspiring love and resistance from the Asian American community. This study examines the relationship between the number of American Chinese restaurant closures, lowered revenue, and the incidence of anti-Asian American hate crimes in the US during the 2019–2022 period. During the pandemic, many American Chinese restaurants lost revenue or closed down. The findings of this study suggest that hatred directed at Chinese American restaurants historically and because of COVID-19 correlates with the incidence of anti-Asian hate crimes. Chinese Americans and Asian Americans are fighting back against this xenophobia via social media campaigns urging consumers to support Chinese restaurants and Chinatowns economically and socially. The vacillating reception of Chinese restaurants in the US shows how culture and consumption are intimately interrelated with society.
Abstract
This article offers a new perspective on the Straits Chinese public intellectual Lim Boon Keng (1869–1957) in historical context. Rather than analyze Lim’s relative Chineseness, it explores the development of his argument that a new civil religion was necessary for citizenship in the post-Enlightenment world before the rise of reform and revolution in China. It introduces the positions and the rhetoric of key protagonists in local debates in Singapore over governance, education, and religion, and analyzes the influence of global developments such as the expansion of Methodist mission schools, the American Student Volunteer Movement, James Legge’s translations of Confucian classics, and the first World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893. I argue that Lim, who wrote as “Isaiah” in 1896 to oppose proselytizing in publicly supported schools while courting his Chinese Christian bride, may be understood as engaging the world as a modern world citizen.
Abstract
This research report argues that the promotion of a positive shared future for all humanity can be accomplished through dual-embedded transnational People’s Republic of China (PRC) Chinese social actors who are self-styled Sino-Thai folk diplomats making multiple contributions in countries both of origin and of residence. Conceptually, this research report remedies unilateral state-centric diplomacy, scarcity of intra-Asian Chinese migrant studies, the limited scope of non-state actors, dichotomous categorization of transnational Chinese, and an over-emphasis on exhibitive and pretentious unilateral exports in Chinese foreign policy. Through the research-based case study of a transnational Chinese residing in Bangkok, Thailand, this research report exemplifies the multiple folk contributions to both Thailand and China. As policy considerations, this research report proffers: (1) avoiding the generalization of Chinese transnationals in Southeast Asia; (2) appreciating the growing realm of social actors and their contributions; and (3) applying a sophisticated developmental perspective to domestic governance. Against rising protectionism, xenophobia, and precarious global challenges, this research report advocates a positive shared future for all humanity through the lens of Sino-Thai folk diplomacy.