Introduction: Chinese diasporic writing

“Diaspora” is an old word and idea but is also one that is still debated. The word in English comes from the post-classical Latin diaspora or its etymon in the “Hellenistic Greek διασπορά act of dispersion, group of people who have been dispersed < ancient Greek δια-dia-prefix + σπορά sowing, seed (see spore n.), after ancient Greek διασπείρειν to disperse” (“diaspora, n.”, OED Online). The word beginning with a capital letter in English, from the 1690s, means Jews living outside Israel; and the term in lower case, from the 1740s, signifies any people beyond their origin or homeland. In some ways, it might be better to go to the earlier word, “dispersion”, from the 1340s, referring to the scattering of the Jews (definition 5 in “dispersion, n.”, OED Online). An alternative title for this Special Issue could be “Chinese Dispersed Writing” as dispersed is an earlier and perhaps less loaded term, but here, given the debate in colonial and postcolonial studies, “diasporic” is used even if the term seems more loaded (Braziel and Mannur 2003, 4; Gilroy 1991, 207; Lee 2005, 5). The scattered or dispersed Chinese communities and the artists and writers within those communities are the subject of this Special Issue. Perspective is important to this topic, as it depends on how much writers of Chinese or mixed descent that includes Chinese background view their identities, homes, and heritage. Is China the centre from which they come and are dispersed? Or is this a restraint on Chinese artists born or gone overseas or abroad? There is sometimes a tension between writing in English or other languages in other places or living without knowledge or a deep understanding of the Chinese language or fluency in it. There is also a matter of hybridity or new cultures arising in Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, and elsewhere as well as countries and regions closer to China in Asia.

The tension or debate over “diaspora” is productive and is unlikely to be resolved. Instead, briefly, I will explore the term, especially as it relates to the dispersal of Chinese people and their writing, art, and culture. There is cultural multiplication, new combinations in various places worldwide. Regina W. Lee (2005) stresses diversity and identity in Australian and Canadian fiction and film, and notes this heterogeneity in the Chinese diaspora as do Pan Lynn (1990), Gungwu Wang (1991), and Ien Ang (2001, 1–13). The mixed identities, which involve translation and migration, balance on a fulcrum while residing on both sides, a liminal space, a threshold between Chinese and another identity. It is like the betweenness Arnold Van Gennep (1909) expressed in discussing “liminality” to describe people when on the threshold of starting a new phase in life. It may be that it is harder to leave the previous phase behind for those who migrate and live on the threshold or the hyphen or space between “Chinese” and the other. Victor Turner ([1974] 2018) also examines the limen. He draws on and transforms van Gennep’s work and I draw on them both and look at thresholds and liminality in identity within new contexts, particularly the dispersed or diasporic Chinese writing and film (Turner [1974] 2018, 231–232). The sense of diaspora, Chineseness, and identity are changeable, intricate, diverse, heterogeneous.

Although there are connections in the contexts for writers of Chinese or hybrid identities (including Chinese) in various countries, each artist and each situation is distinct. In this Special Issue, it is important to have a sense of the individual works. Texture in art is distinctive, and it is not good to blur or homogenize that difference. There is a difference from within, being other to oneself (Hart 2015), which challenges hasty generalizations and stereotypes.

In 2017, Claire Alexander and Rogers Brubaker had a productive exchange in exploring “diaspora” in relation to Brubaker’s (2005) earlier article on the subject. In that conversation, Alexander telescopes the matter:

As Brubaker himself notes, diaspora as a concept forms part of a broader field of theoretical engagement with migration and mobility against a backdrop of increasing scale, diversity and pace of transformation in the global north and west in the past four (or so) decades, and – alongside concepts such as transnationalism, globalization, postcolonial studies and hybridity – has exploded since the late 1980s, traversing disciplinary boundaries and the conceptual borders of the academy, and proliferating meanings and linguistic formations.

(Alexander 2017, 1545)

Brubaker himself points to Stéphane Dufoix’s (2012) “consolidation” in diasporic studies (Brubaker 2017, 1557). The field has expanded greatly since his article and he stresses the three core elements or “constitutive” tensions of diaspora: dispersion as trauma or general movement, roots versus routes, identity versus hybridity (1557-1558; Brah 1996; Clifford 1994, 1997; Ho 2017; Tan and Liu 2022). The diversity of Chinese diasporic writing is greater than any book or Special Issue can demonstrate, but an issue such as this one can suggest the variety, intricacy, and distinctiveness through presenting some interesting examples.

The Special Issue begins with this brief introduction and ends with an afterword by the co-editor, Wu Shang, whose ideas provide the important last frame of thinking diaspora through the metaphor of translation. The body of the issue moves from King-Kok Cheung’s analysis of Russell C. Leong’s long poem “Azure in Angel City” to my interview with Leong. Then the issue moves to studies of key instances in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia, to poetry in Britain, the USA, and Canada, then to the Chinese American experiences in Chinatown and Chinese American theatre. Writing and performance arts tell us much about the diversity, complexity, and hybridity of the Chinese diaspora across the world. While the Special Issue cannot address all Chinese diasporic communities, it can examine a few in some depth through the genres of poetry, autobiography or memoir, fiction, theatre, and other cultural discourses and representations.

The first group of articles ranges from the Chinese diaspora in the USA to that in Singapore and Australia. King-Kok Cheung examines Leong’s graphic epic, “Azure in Angel City”, which alludes to the classical Chinese text Journey to the West, in an odyssey that starts with the Los Angeles River and ends in Sri Lanka, to show that diasporic Chinese literature epitomizes a transnational world literature. (This article uses American spelling as the author requested.) Cheun Hoe Yow presents the literary demography of Chinese-language literature in postcolonial Singapore and analyses its reconfiguration in the Chinese diaspora. Mao Xu looks at the miner Jong Ah Siug’s autobiography, “The Case” (1872), written in pidgin when he was detained in a lunatic asylum, as an example to illustrate Australian colonial culture from the perspective of Chinese diaspora.

The second group of articles has a British dimension but with connections or typologies elsewhere. Gregory B. Lee focuses on the female poet who creates “a Hong Kong Chinese imaginarium in a postcolonial English idiom” – Jennifer Wong – both of Hong Kong and the UK, her poetry representing the thresholds, liminality, or in-betweenness of Chinese–British borderlands. My own article discusses briefly “Chinese and British”, an exhibition at the British Library in 2022–23, then it examines the poetry and other works of four poets, Hannah Lowe in Britain, Marilyn Chin and Russell C. Leong in the USA, and Fred Wah in Canada, and how they speak for themselves in the surrounding culture and negotiate their art, identities, and hybridity.

The next group of articles concentrates most on the Chinese American experience. Lan Xiujuan analyses the Chinatown narrative and imagined community in Bone (1994) and Steer Toward Rock (2008) by the Chinese American writer Fae Myenne Ng, in terms of world diasporic literature and Chinese American literature, exploring how Chinatown contributes to forming ethnic identity and community. Zhao Zhiyun examines how playwrights of Asian descent can give a nuanced interpretation of relations between China and the USA and introduces David Henry Hwang’s play Soft Power as a case study to stress transnational appreciation. Zhao argues that Hwang, a Chinese American, employs his understanding of the debate surrounding the rise of China, his knowledge of the Confucian idea of self-cultivation, and his cross-cultural experiences to criticize western culture and foreign policy.

Then there is an interview with Russell C. Leong, a remarkable poet, short-story writer, editor, artist, and performer who has long been active in facing the issues of diaspora, colonization, decolonization, and postcolonialism. He has considered the topic of this Special Issue for decades, and, in this interview, he prompts us to think, to explore further with a restless critique and creativity. The cover image for this Special Issue, of a street in San Francisco’s Chinatown, has been selected in homage to Leong as the city where he grew up, and also as the setting of Ng’s novel Bone.

The dispersed or diasporic Chinese writers and film-makers in this ever-changing world with the legacy of colonialism and imperialism make a difference in their distinctive ways in exploring the mixed, hybrid, liminal, and other spaces in our senses of culture and art, of identity and otherness within individuals and groups. The Chinese diaspora has long been important to the world and will continue to be. The growing influence of China in Asia and worldwide will make the consideration of Chinese diasporic art even more intense and productive. This Special Issue, which combines scholarship, interpretation, and art, attempts to contribute to this scholarship and art and to prompt further study.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Notes on contributors

Jonathan Locke Hart

Jonathan Locke Hart (PhD English, Toronto; PhD History, Cambridge), is Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Member of the Academia Europea, and Chair Professor of the School of Translation Studies, Shandong University. He taught at Peking University and has given talks at Chinese universities for over 30 years. He is also Fellow, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria College, University of Toronto; Associate, Harvard University Herbaria; Life Member, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. He was Chair Professor, School of Foreign Languages, and Director of the Centre for Creative Writing, Literary Culture and Translation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.