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Chinese Refugees Forum
* Research for this article is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada. Many thanks to Yilang Feng for his work as a research assistant on the project.
Introduction
On 9 September 2012 Chen Zun (...)1posted on his personal blog the verses he had composed earlier in the summer to mark 32 years of the Xiamen Burma Returned Overseas Chinese Association.2With nostalgic phrasing he recalled the tastes and sounds of Myanmar, including a specific reference to the Burmese language. Chen Zun's other posts include a poem uploaded on 29 August 2012 entitled 'A New Era of Chinese People' (...). In this poem Chen reflects on the relationship between foreigners and foreignness, verbal expression, and Chineseness.3He juxtaposes foreign dress and English-language colloquial phrases ('yes, all right') with continued use of Chinese as the language of frank expression. When I read the poem, it took on the cadences of Mandarin because Mandarin is the only Chinese language with which I have any facility. Having used Mandarin as the language of communication when I met others associated with the Xiamen Burma Returned Overseas Chinese in the summer of 2011, I assume this is the language and dialect used in the composition of the poems.
The question of language and Chineseness is immediately complicated by Chen Zun's nostalgic engagement with the Burmese language in the first poem, and in the joy expressed by members of the Xiamen Burma Returned Overseas Chinese Association when, as part of their regular meetings, they sing Burmese songs interspersed with Chinese songs. The singing enacts and celebrates a linguistic affinity that members of the Association connect with a space of previous residence, namely, Rangoon and Burma. These social interactions conjoin with the name of the organization to prioritize mutual identification with migration trajectories from Burma to China, ethnic identity (that is, Chineseness), and languages spoken. One of the notable aspects of the affinity forged through language and space is that it rests upon eliding or rendering secondary various other ways in which geographical terrain has informed Chineseness through the mapping of space to politics. This includes the long history of conflict between the Guomindang and Chinese...