Across the Pacific: the strategic citizenship of Chinese musicians

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, the world has seen an incredible surge of Chinese performers in Western classical music. Unknown to most outside of Chinese musical networks, these musicians often began their training as young children, learning from parents who lost musical ambitions during the Cultural Revolution and who hoped to realise them through their only child. However, as children rapidly developed musical skills and entered conservatories, other career paths became eliminated. Drawing from anthropologist Aihwa Ong’s work on ‘flexible citizenship’ and ethnographic fieldwork in Mainland China, Canada, and the United States, I theorise the ‘strategic citizenship’ of these students and their families. I do so to argue that the strong presence of Chinese instrumentalists in Western classical music has resulted from a desire, even a desperation, amongst many families to negotiate intergenerational traumas and acquire socio-economic stability in the neoliberal age. In this process, transnational Chinese musicians must also contend with issues of precarity and Orientalisms abroad.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese musicians
• one-child policy
• citizenship
• transnationalism
• precarity
• Orientalism

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Chi-ming Yang, Jim Sykes, Timothy Rommen, Lei X. Ouyang, members of the Dissertation Workshop at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Music, members of the Wolf Humanities Center Mellon Research Seminar, fellow panellists and audience participants of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Annual Conference in 2020, and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback. This research would not have been possible without the generosity of the author’s interlocutors, who have been anonymized.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Pseudonyms are used for interlocutors in order to protect their privacy.

2 I capitalise Mainland China as a proper noun because it signifies a politico-geography with its own identity. Although part of Hong Kong is technically on the mainland, it is not part of what various Chinese and East-Asian peoples call ‘Mainland China’, or guonei 国内. At times, ‘China’ is even omitted as ‘the Mainland’ is a clear signifier in itself. As this article is grounded in ethnography, I acknowledge the colloquial uses of ‘Mainland’ and employ it with the socio-political indexes it carries.

3 I use ‘Western art music’ instead of ‘Western classical music’ for purposes of clarity, as the latter may be easily confused with Classical music, the stylistic period (c. 1750–1825). Art music also implies a greater creative range than classical music.

4 Many Chinese musicians also pursue post-secondary music studies in Europe. This article focuses on their transpacific experiences between contemporary China and North America.

5 My thinking on neoliberalism has been heavily influenced by Aihwa Ong’s Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (2006), Elizabeth Povinelli’s Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism (2011), and Anna Tsing’s Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (2004) and The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015). Each of these groundbreaking texts combines socio-economic analyses with rigorous ethnography to investigate the impacts of late liberalism on human and non-human life forms.

6 Mao Zedong became Chairman of the PRC in 1949 and died in 1976. My use of the ‘Mao era’ refers to the period between 1949 and 1978, when the PRC transitioned to the post-socialist era.

7 I include the British empire here because of their settler-colonial projects in North America, which is continued by the Canadian and American governments today. My thinking on transpacific issues has been influenced by the groundbreaking work of Eiichiro Azuma (2005), Iyko Day (2016), Yen Le Espiritu (2003), Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Okamura (2008), and Shu-mei Shih (2007), to name a few.

8 For more on indentured labour, the Yellow Peril, and institutional exclusion, see Madeleine Hsu (2015), Lisa Lowe (1996), and Mae Ngai (2004).

9 Building off of Edward Said’s seminal text, Orientalism (1978), and the work of economic historians such as Kenneth Pomeranz (2000), Andre Gunder Frank (1998), R. Bin Wong (1997), and Giovanni Arrighi (2008), Yang illustrates that the foundations of Western Orientalisations of China were built upon objects of commerce during the early decades of the British empire. For more on the intellectual history of Orientalism from Said (1978) to contemporary conversations, see the above as well as Raymond Schwab (1984), Edward Said (1985), Lisa Lowe (1991, 2015), Homi Bhabha (1994), Arif Dirlik (1996), Andrew Jones and Nikhil Singh (2003), Bill Mullen (2004), Shu-mei Shih (2007, 2008), Debra Johanyak and Walter S. H. Lim (2010), Teemu Ruskola (2013), and Anne Anlin Cheng (2019).

10 In addition to Mainland Chinese, South Koreans and Taiwanese significantly contribute to the demographic of East Asians in elite Western conservatories. Although various East Asians share similar experiences of Orientalisation, my study focuses on the experiences of Mainland musicians who are operating in the context of the one-child policy after the Cultural Revolution. For more on the experiences of Asians and Asian Americans in Western art music, see the work of Grace Wang (2014), Mina Yang (2014), and Mari Yoshihara (2007). For more on the stereotype of automatons and other racialisations of Asian international students, see David Eng and Shinhee Han (2019).

11 Sea turtles (the animal) have geo-magnetic abilities that allow them to ‘imprint on the unique magnetic signature of the beaches where they hatch’ and use the North and South Poles to navigate the oceans, returning years later to the same beach in order to lay their eggs (National Geographic 2019). It is as if they have an internal GPS or compass to guide them through the expansive waters. In an affectionate comparison, Chinese nationals are thought to have lifelong ties to China, which is regarded as the point of return in their lives.

12 For more on the Opium Wars and the transnational history of Asian indentured labour, see Lowe’s seminal book, The Intimacy of Four Continents (2015), and Mae Ngai’s, The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (2021).

13 The foreign credentials of overseas returnees often come at high costs for families who invest hundreds of thousands of Chinese yuan in order to financially support their child. Moving one’s household registration status in Mainland China is not a simple task, but requires significant effort, time, finances, and social connections.

14 For more on conservatories and negotiations of trauma, see Shelley Zhang (2022).

15 To this day, living in the Chinese countryside is undesirable since labour conditions are harsh, medical and social services are limited, education is under-funded, and job security is wanting (Chu 2010; Liang and Shapiro 1984).

16 With household registration status, a newborn child obtains a shenfenzheng 身份证, or identity card, which they will need for transportation, education, employment, and most socio-political possibilities in life. Without a hukou, a person does not have legal identity in the PRC and their life is severely restricted. Put more bluntly, a person does not legally exist. For more on the realities of those who do not have legal status in the Mainland, particularly children born outside the laws of the one-child policy, see Mari Manninen’s journalistic book, Secrets and Siblings: The Vanished Lives of China’s One Child Policy (2019), and Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s documentary, One Child Nation (2019).

17 The requirements for transferring hukou between specific cities are unique and periodically modified. It is extremely difficult, at times impossible, for a rural resident to become an urban one, and for a Tier 3 or lower resident to become a Tier 1 resident (Chu 2010).

18 The Central Conservatory accepts children as young as nine to begin their studies at the age of ten. Other conservatories also accept children, such as Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, which has no age limits. Unlike pre-college programmes where students do not board and complete their academic studies at other schools of their choosing, conservatories such as the Central Conservatory require students to live in the city and previously provided all academic requirements. It becomes the child’s primary school.

19 The Shanghai Conservatory is the primary competitor of the Central Conservatory and is also extremely prestigious. Like Beijing, it is a Tier 1 city, although it is not the capital of the nation.

20 Many students at the Central Conservatory and other highly competitive conservatories, such as Curtis, begin to self-identify as musicians from a young age due to their rigorous training and the cultural milieu. In some cases, they are taught and encouraged to do so.

21 These positions are often associated with a danwei 单位, that is, a government unit. Although these public-sector jobs are not the highest-paid positions, they offer security, benefits, and influence in society. In the past, they were also accompanied by housing and food allocations, amongst other significant privileges.

22 The euphemism, tiaolou 跳楼, meaning to jump from a building, is regularly used. Many in Mainland China believe that the CCP’s two-child policy was influenced in part by the high suicide rate of teenagers whose parents would be left childless at an older age, past the years of childbearing. See Yun Zhou’s work for more information about the CCP’s family planning policies, such as the one-child and two-child policies (2019), and Zachary Howlett’s work for more information about the examination system (2021).

23 Juries are performance exams where a student plays different pieces while faculty members adjudicate them.

24 Within the sphere of music performance, Curtis is often regarded as the top conservatory in the world for Western art music due to its unique curriculum focused on students and performance, stellar faculty, financial capabilities, location in the robust musical culture on the U.S. east coast, and alumni network.

25 Aspen Music Festival and School is one of the premier summer music festivals in North America. Located in Colorado, it is one of the few to offer a classical guitar programme.

26 After completing his Master’s at Yale School of Music, Eli began a Doctorate of Musical Arts programme at another institution that he quit during the pandemic due to the unexpected changes.

27 Like Fei, Eli’s parents could not afford to visit the United States to celebrate his undergraduate or master’s graduations.

28 For more on this history, see Lydia Liu’s The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making (2004) and Lisa Lowe’s The Intimacies of Four Continents (2015).

29 Ang’s family was able to afford tuition costs since her parents have become rather successful in recent decades.

30 The exchange rate is usually £1 = 9RMB (Renminbi).

31 For more on migrant workers, specifically migrant musicians, see the work of Kai Tang (2020).

32 Today, there are more academic preparations at the school.

33 Eng and Han speak here of the immigration experience of international students who become first-generation Asian Americans. I include their excellent work because of the applicability to Chinese musicians who are also international students, weighing their transnational options.

34 As twentieth-century China scholar Wu Yiching notes, ‘In the late 1970s, China was undeniably one of the most egalitarian countries in the world’ due to the low incomes and limited resources throughout the country (Wu 2014: 4).

35 On July 6, 2020, the administration announced a plan to deport international students who were only enrolled in online courses during the pandemic. A week later, the plan was reverted, but marked the precarity of international students and the hostility of the then-administration. For more, see Perez Jr. (2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Pennsylvania's Wolf Humanities Center and Center for East Asian Studies; and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Grant number 752-2017-0433].

Notes on contributors

Shelley Zhang

Shelley Zhang is the Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. Her research focuses on music practices in post-socialist China, the legacy of the Cultural Revolution, and Asian American issues in Canada and the United States. She was born in Hunan, PRC and raised on the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples in what is also known as Toronto, where she trained as a classical pianist. She received her PhD in 2022 from the University of Pennsylvania.