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Home , Cambodian Hokkien, Cantonese people, Chaoshan, Vietnamese language

Teochew nang, gaginang: Boundary-making and -crossing of the Teochew in Saigon, .

Li Li 7/3/17 [Course title]

Li Li Vuong University of Amsterdam 10000587 Contemporary Asian Studies Thesis supervisor: Dr. Shanshan Lan Date: 31-07-2017 Co-readers: Dr. Leo Douw and dr. Tina Harris count: 37,434

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Table of contents 1 Introduction ...... 4 1.1 Multiple meanings of being Chinese ...... 6 1.2 Boundary-making and-crossing practices ...... 8 1.3 Identity construction ...... 9 1.4 Research question ...... 11 2 Setting and Methodology ...... 14 2.1 Setting ...... 14 2.2 Research population ...... 17 2.3 Position in the field ...... 21 2.4 Operationalization and methods ...... 23 2.5 Ethical considerations ...... 24 3 “I would rather die than living in ”: The impact of Vietnam’s state policies on the Chinese community ...... 25 3.1 From sojourner to citizen, the position of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam’s state ...... 25 3.2 Transformation of Cho Lon into a multiracial place ...... 29 3.3 Four generations of Teochew-Vietnamese ...... 31 4 “Teochew speak Teochew”: Language choices and identity construction ...... 35 4.1 Challenges in the maintenance of Teochew language ...... 36 4.1.1 Influences on the maintenance of the ethnic language ...... 37 4.1.2 The language maintenance ...... 38 4.1.3 The attitude towards speaking the heritage language per generation ...... 40 4.1.4 Exceptional case ...... 41 4.2 Multiple layers of the identity through languages ...... 42 4.2.1 -Chinese identity...... 42 4.2.2 People of the Tang Dynasty ...... 44 4.2.3 Teochew-Vietnamese identity ...... 48 4.2.4 The cosmopolitan identity ...... 50 4.2.5 Ethnic chameleons ...... 51 5 “I will never work for the Vietnamese”: Shifting and ambiguous interethnic relationships in the business and occupational sector ...... 53 5.1 The meaning of self-employment versus employment ...... 54 5.1.1 Self-employment as the marker of PTD-identity ...... 54 5.1.2 Employment, the choice of the disadvantaged ...... 56 5.1.3 Reasons to pursue education and employment ...... 58 5.2 Interethnic relations when doing business ...... 60

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5.2.1 Stereotypes in business ...... 61 5.2.2 Interpersonal relationships ...... 63 5.4 A family business case ...... 64 6 “I’m going to the , wanna join?”: The reflection of interethnic relations in cultural and leisure practices ...... 67 6.1 Cross-overs in rituals and cultural practices...... 68 6.2 The social nature of religion and cultural adaptation ...... 70 6.3 Stereotypes and interethnic relations ...... 71 6.3.1 The Cantonese stereotype ...... 71 6.3.2 The Vietnamese stereotype ...... 73 6.3.3 Accommodation within the Saigonese society ...... 75 6.4 Cultural continuity or breakdown? ...... 77 7 “We love our daughter-in-law”: Intermarriage and the family unit ...... 81 7.1 Intermarriage and the deinstitutionalization of marriage ...... 82 7.2 Standards of choosing a spouse and stereotyping ...... 84 7.2.1 Negative attitude towards marriage with the Vietnamese ...... 85 7.2.2 Marrying Vietnamese, not that bad? ...... 89 7.3 Gendered roles within intermarriage ...... 91 7.3.1 The woman’s role in intermarriage ...... 92 7.3.2 The man’s role in intermarriage ...... 96 7.4 A multi-ethnic family case ...... 99 8 Conclusion ...... 102 8.1 Summary...... 102 8.2 Discussion ...... 104 References ...... 108 Appendix ...... 115 Overview of participants ...... 115 Teochew-Vietnamese participants ...... 115 Non-Teochew participants ...... 124

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1 Introduction

Ethnic communities are separated from each other by boundaries, which frame the ethnic identity of such communities. The boundary, community and ethnic identity are therefore related to each other. Ethnic boundaries are crucial for understanding ethnic identity (Barth, 1998). A person’s ethnic identity is partly defined by the boundaries between them and ethnic others. Boundaries are manifested and reinforced by various boundary making and crossing practices. Since boundaries are constructed in relation to others, ethnic identity, communities and even culture are constructions in relation to the outbound groups. It is important to know that the boundaries are not fixed and it depends on the context and what the individuals view as significant differences between two communities. One’s identity comprises of multiple layers of selfhood (Kondo, 2009). The imposed identity and multiple layers of selfhood are subject to a person’s social positioning within multiple contexts. To research boundary making and crossing practices, it is interesting to look at communities within culturally, ethnically and linguistically diverse environments. One of such communities is the Teochew in Vietnam, which is a subgroup within the ethnic Chinese. A commonly used idiom by the Teochew is: Teochew Nang, Gaginang. This means: Teochew people are our own people. This idiom is frequently used between the Teochew, to indicate ethnic cohesion. This cohesion is to such an extent, that social and financial resources may be exchanged with the gaginang, which would not be exchanged with another. This makes it interesting to examine the strength of this idiom in real life. Therefore, I focus on how the Teochew-Vietnamese negotiate their boundaries with the neighbouring ethnic groups in city (HCMC). In the remainder of this thesis, I will use Saigon to refer to HCMC, because the Saigonese use this name to refer to the city. During fieldwork in Vietnam, I noted that the Teochew-Vietnamese use different names depending on their interlocutor’s ethnicity. One day, I was having an appointment with Linh, asked me to meet her at the store she is working at. When I did not see her upon entrance, I asked her colleagues where she was, pronouncing her name as how she has introduced herself to me, her Teochew name. Her colleagues, who were all Vietnamese, did not recognize this name. After making a phone-call, she appears out of the warehouse. Her colleagues approached her with a different name, an abbreviation of her Teochew name in

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Vietnamese and her official name according to her birth certificate. She later explained to me that the Vietnamese do not know her by her Teochew name, only the Teochew know her by that name. This really shows me how identity can be performed. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the heterogeneous society of Saigon by looking at two interrelated processes of boundary-making and -crossing. One is within the Chinese community, between the Teochew and the Cantonese. The second is the relation between the Teochew and the Vietnamese community. There has been relatively little research done on the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Most research done on diasporic Chinese is based in , Taiwan, and the US. Many ethnic Chinese have moved to Asian countries in the 19th and 20th century, most research on these Chinese is done in , and . In the past century, Saigon was subject to multiple rulers, with different policies and treatments against the Chinese. It was the capital of the French colony of Cochin , it was under military dictatorship and now it falls under a communist regime. Under the French rule, the political environment was favourable towards the ethnic Chinese, while under the other rulers, the ethnic Chinese became marginalized (Cooke & Li, 2004; Corfield, 2013). Now, the policies are directed towards full assimilation of the ethnic Chinese (Tran, 1993). It is interesting to see how these policies are translated into the relations between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese. I found that the Teochew-Vietnamese are heavily influenced by the Vietnamese, because they live side by side with each other. Nevertheless, they were able to maintain their ethnic identity. This shows how the construction of the identity is an open- ended process. The ethnic Chinese is a heterogeneous group. Chineseness has been contested in several researches. There is no absolute nor universal idea of Chineseness and there are multiple forms and layers within the Chinese identity (Ang, 2001; Mathews, 1997). The Teochew-Vietnamese, therefore, need to be treated separately from the other ethnic Chinese. Most of the ethnic Chinese live in Cho Lon, the largest in Vietnam, which is situated in Saigon. Within the Chinese community, I choose to focus on the relation between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Cantonese-Vietnamese, because these are the two largest ethnic Chinese groups (Tran, 1993). The other ethnic Chinese communities, the Hakka, and Fukien are relatively small-sized. Because of the length of this research, I

5 decided not to include them in this thesis. Furthermore, it is notable that the among the ethnic Chinese is Cantonese. The adaptation of the Teochew-Vietnamese towards the Cantonese-Vietnamese shows the complexity of the process of the Teochew-Vietnamese identity construction. This introductory chapter contains the theoretical background that explains the multiple dimensions of boundary-making and -crossing practices and it sets out the research question. In the first section, I show that there are multiple meanings attached to being Chinese. The Teochew-Vietnamese are ethnic Chinese and are part of the Chinese diaspora. Being Teochew is part of their identity. It segregates them from the Cantonese-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese. The segregation goes through cultural and social boundaries between communities. How boundary-making practices may segregate and boundary-crossing practices may congregate the three groups is explained in the second section. Furthermore, the boundary-making and -crossing practices reflect one’s selfhood and identity. These practices are a strategic way of how people deal with their imposed identity and are subject to a collective sense of belonging through a plethora of commonalities which are made significant depending on the context. In different contexts, they can either blend with or counter the other. The last section explores the complexity in identity construction through boundary-making and -crossing practices.

1.1 Multiple meanings of being Chinese

Gordon Mathews (Mathews, 1997) argues that the identity could be seen as a ‘Chinese plus’ identity. To some it is Chineseness plus cosmopolitanism, to others it is Chineseness plus English or Chineseness plus rights. Lok Siu (Siu, 2007) gives an interpretation of the identity of the Panamanian Chinese. The Panamanian Chinese collectively identify as Chinese, but their Chineseness is influenced by ideological debates about being Chinese between the mainland Chinese government and the Taiwanese government. Taiwan claims that its Chinese ideology is ‘more’ authentic than China’s. The Panamanian Chinese deal strategically with their identity by the accumulation of different forms of cultural capital from, and the formation of transnational networks with, Panama, Taiwan, China and the US. The difference between my research and that of Mathews and Siu

6 is that the Chinese community in Vietnam is divided within subgroups. The Teochew- Vietnamese need to negotiate their position with Vietnam, China as the nation-state, but also with the neighbouring Chinese ethnic group, the Cantonese-Vietnamese. Mathews and Siu, however, treat the Chinese in Hong Kong or in Panama as one community. There is thus not an essence in Chineseness. Ien Ang (2001) also contests the idea of an absolute and universal idea of Chineseness. Not only the Chinese in China lay claim of being Chinese but also the diasporic Chinese, but in different ways. Based on her life, she describes the complexity of her belonging to the Chinese community, despite her lack of speaking Chinese, her being born in Indonesia and raised in the Netherlands. Her story shows how diasporas create imagined communities whose boundaries are sustained by both real and symbolic ties to China and a negotiation with the host country. Her situation is similar to the environment in Vietnam; the Dutch colony made place for the Indonesian rulers and the French colony made place for the Vietnamese rulers. Such as the Vietnamese, the Indonesians pressured the Chinese to assimilate and schools exposed children to nationalism. Ang (2001), as a child, developed a desire to assimilate and to let go of her Chineseness through continuous marginalization as the alien minority. However, the feel a deep emotional connection to the homeland. This self-identification of the overseas Chinese, under which the Teochew in Vietnam, is complex and full of contradictions. Diasporas are transnational, according to Ang (2001), there is a tension between the host country and the homeland. They have a position of ‘in- betweenness’, which is a liminal space and need to be given form in a creative way, leading to hybrid cultural forms. Within that space, not only the homeland defines a person’s identity, but also the host society gives meaning to this identity. My goal, exactly, is to examine this liminal space for the Teochew in Vietnam. Chineseness, therefore, needs to be seen as an open signifier of the Teochew, and the boundaries between the Teochew and the other groups construct the ‘new’ Teochew-Vietnamese identity. The Teochew-Vietnamese reinvent their identity vis-à-vis the Vietnamese, China and the other Chinese groups in Vietnam. The difference between Ang and the Teochew-Vietnamese is that the Teochew-Vietnamese ties to their Chineseness do not seem to come from oppression, but from pride.

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1.2 Boundary-making and-crossing practices

It is clear that ethnic identity does not have an essence. Fredrik Barth (1998) explains that it is constructed by boundary-making. People define the identity of the self in opposition of the identity of the other. Boundaries are made on perceived cultural differences. Within an ethnic community, social relations and networks are kept and reinforced by the upholding of a strong ethnic identity and the structural principal of kinship (Barth, 1998). Boundaries frame the ethnic community and these are visible there where two ethnic groups segregate or interact. Besides ethnic segregation, this means that ethnic cohesion within a community form the diasporic identity (G. C. Cheung, 2004). Scholars have investigated processes of boundary-making. Lan (2012) shows that the Hong Kong immigrants in the US differentiate themselves from mainlanders by stressing the class status. They construct a distinctive Hong Kong identity to resist their categorization as Chinese imposed by the mainstream white society. The mainland Chinese identity is associated with being uncultured and backwards, while the Hong Kong identity links to cosmopolitanism (Lan, 2012). In comparison, (2010) found that the Cantonese resented the Fukien-Chinese in the US, because they caused restaurant competition and tarnished the local image of the Chinese by staying undocumented. The Fukien reacted by separating themselves from the Cantonese (Zhao, 2010). These examples show that boundaries are formed based on fundamental differences, such as norms and values, and social class. These perceived fundamental differences cause stereotyping and stigmatization, which may lead to tensions and conflicts between ethnic communities. Barth’s (1998) point is that an ethnic group defines its own identity by defining the other. However, it cannot be predicted which differences would be more relevant in creating boundaries to what extend these boundaries create conflicts. Boundaries are continuously constructed, deconstructed and crossed and the practices differ per context. I aim to search for the significant differences that construct boundaries between the Teochew- Vietnamese, the Vietnamese and Cantonese-Vietnamese. However, in Saigon it seems that the ethnic Chinese community do not segregate themselves in order to resist being categorized as one community. In fact, they pose a united identity towards the Vietnamese as one community, this is shown in Chapter 4. Fundamental differences, however, do sometimes lead to interpersonal conflicts. For example, in the situation of mixed marriages as described

8 in Chapter 7. In addition, I also explore boundary-crossing practices within different contexts, such as linguistic adaptation, interethnic business relations, ethnically mixed work and school environments, acculturation within religion and rituals, interethnic friendships and intermarriage. It contributes to the relative sparse literature on boundary-crossing practices.

1.3 Identity construction

The critical focus of investigation here are the social boundaries, not the cultural content. Some scholars have written about identity construction and performance through boundary- making and -crossing practices. With their knowledge, this section provides an understanding of how ethnic boundaries construct ethnic identity. Based on her experience, Dorinne Kondo (2009) argued that the meaning attached to one’s identity and selfhood comprises of the negotiated understanding of the self and the imposed identity by others.

Identity is not a fixed ‘thing’, it is negotiated, open, shifting, ambiguous, the result of culturally available meanings and the open-ended, power-laden enactments of those meanings in everyday situations. (Kondo, 2009, p.24)

One’s identity comprises of multiple layers of selfhood; it is the performance of different aspects of identity for smooth relations. The identity that comes to the surface depends on the other and on multiple contexts (Kondo, 2009). The Teochew-Vietnamese are subject to the dynamics of interaction and power relations to others: other Teochew-Vietnamese, the Vietnamese and the Cantonese-Vietnamese. In Kondo’s (2009) case, she crossed a boundary by deconstructing her Japanese- selfhood and constructing a Japanese selfhood to fit in with the Japanese society. The Teochew may also construct their social surface this way and ‘blend’ with their interlocutor’s social surface depending on the context. This is mostly notable in Chapter 4, in Saigon, the Teochew-Vietnamese seem to cross boundaries by for example speaking Cantonese. In a different research, performed by Takeyuki Tsuda (2000) about the Brazilian born Japanese in Japan, the construction of boundaries takes place through counter-hegemony resistance. The Brazilian-Japanese express themselves by constructing an identity in opposition to the dominant majority group, and show their unwillingness to assimilate to the

9 culture of this group. They do this through practices by displaying overt signs and signals of Brazilian culture, such as wearing Brazilian clothing, speaking Portuguese out loud, exaggerating Brazilian behaviour and introducing themselves as Brazilians when meeting Japanese for the first time. The Teochew-Vietnamese may also perform counter-hegemony resistance and emphasize their Teochew selfhood against the mainstream Vietnamese society. This will be mostly noticeable in chapter 5. They resist assimilation through choices they make in their occupation, for example by refusing to work in Vietnamese companies. Tsuda (2000), furthermore, suggests that migrant groups that are ethnically related to the host society are confronted by more cultural pressure. In Japan, the Japanese Brazilians are under more pressure than other foreigners to adjust to the host culture, because their Japanese ethic identity and appearance creates the expectation that they behave ‘Japanese’. It is interesting to compare the pressures placed by the Vietnamese and the Cantonese- Vietnamese communities on the Teochew-Vietnamese to assimilate with their respective identities. The Cantonese-Vietnamese do not seem to pressure the Teochew-Vietnamese to behave more ‘Chinese’, in fact, the Teochew-Vietnamese consider themselves ‘more Chinese’. This is shown in Chapter 6. Boundaries are not only formed between the Teochew and the civil society in Vietnam. The state’s policies also play a role in boundary-making. The state has its strategical ways to pressure the Teochew to assimilate, which the Teochew-Vietnamese need to deal with. Vietnam was ruled by the French colony. Research has been done on the importance of Chinese communities in Cochin China, which consisted of Vietnam, and . Tracy Barrett (Barrett, 2012) found that the French colonial authority’s policies caused competition and conflicts between subethnic Chinese groups which generated both ferocious rivalries and devoted partnerships between the Chinese communities. However, Vietnam is not being controlled by the French colonizer anymore. State control in shifted to the Republic of Vietnam (ROV) in 1955, and to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) in 1975. I am extending Barrett’s study by incorporating the boundary making practices of the ROV and the SRV in post-French colonial Vietnam. At last, boundaries are not only instruments to conform to or to converge from the interlocutor. Boundaries also frame ethnic identity. Gerd Baumann did an ethnographic study in Southall, London (Baumann, 1996). Southall is an ethnically diverse neighbourhood, where

10 different communities need to negotiate their position in everyday life. Baumann introduced dual discursive competence. This means that there a discrepancy between how people talk about cultural differences and boundaries and what they do in real life. First, is the dominant discourse. This discourse essentializes culture, community and ethnic identity and leads to ‘self-other’ talk. The identity of the self is formatted in opposition to the perceived identity of the other through ‘self-other’ talk (Keenoy et al., 2009). The self-other talk initiates the formation of stereotypes, and essentializes differences between cultures. The second discursive practice, Baumann calls the demotic discourse. This shows that identity is flexible and complex. Life ranges across a multitude of communities and the belonging to one community depends on the context. Communities are built on a variety of variables and there are multiple perceived heritages that predicate a community. One community may cross multiple communities. The Southallian youth, for example, constructed a new ‘Asian’ community, where people of different religions or castes are placed together under new brackets (Baumann, 1996). Baumann (1996) found that residents in Southall often move back and forth between the dominant discourse and the demotic discourse. The dual discursive competence shows that the construction of identity is a complex, ongoing process of making and remaking a collective sense of belonging throughout different contexts, rather than a construction that is essentialized and functions to label isolated groups (Baumann, 1996). For this reason, it is important to ‘listen’ to the Teochew-Vietnamese about both boundary building and demolition, instead of only focusing on differences in ethnic cultural content.

1.4 Research question

The Teochew-Vietnamese seem to adapt to the other groups by using Vietnamese names or speaking the Cantonese language. Despite the close relationship with the other groups, I also note a trend that the Teochew-Vietnamese are rediscovering their ethnic heritage. Joshua, for example, a 24-years-old Teochew-Vietnamese, states: “We have a lot of Teochew [in Vietnam]. They really want to contribute to our roots.” At the same time, he says: “My family is almost losing their [Teochew] roots; my parents can't speak Teochew. Only I really want to keep the roots, because I'm proud of being Teochew.” Note the paradox in his story. On the one hand, the Teochew seem to ‘lose’ their cultural heritage. On the other hand, the Teochew are trying to preserve it. 11

In this thesis, I try to unpack this paradox by examining some of the tensions and complexities in the development of Teochew cultural identity through the angle of boundary- making and -crossing practices. Because identity construction depends on a multitude of variables, it is crucial to deconstruct the paradox into multiple spheres. These are the spheres of linguistic adaptation, interethnic business relations, ethnically mixed work and school environments, acculturation within religion and rituals, interethnic friendships and intermarriage. Furthermore, I move beyond methodological nationalism by exploring how the Teochew-Vietnamese construct their ethnic identity in relation to China’s region and Taiwan. And I explore how the Teochew-Vietnamese understand themselves in the nature of their lives in Vietnam, but also in the nature of their belonging to China or Chaoshan, their native land. This research attempts to answer the following research question:

How do the Teochew-Vietnamese negotiate ethnic and cultural boundaries with the Vietnamese and the Cantonese-Vietnamese in Saigon?

The main research question is divided into the following sub-questions:

1) What are the impacts of changing Vietnamese state policies on the Chinese community in Saigon? 2) How do Teochew-Vietnamese construct their ethnic identity through strategic linguistic practices? 3) How are boundaries crossed over in daily social activities, in the sphere of education, work and business? 4) How are boundary-making practices reflected on religious practices? 5) How are boundary-crossing practices manifested in intermarriages?

The remainder of the thesis is focused on answering these questions. In Chapter 2, I show the setting of the fieldwork, and the methodology used to answer the research questions. Chapter 3 gives a detailed historical background of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam, and shows how the political changes in Vietnam results into different cohorts within the Teochew-

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Vietnamese community. Chapter 4 shows how multiple layers of the identity is constructed through language practices. Chapter 5 displays how boundaries are crossed over throughout the life of the Teochew-Vietnamese in the sphere of education, work and business. Chapter 6 answers how religion is a social activity where boundaries are crossed. Chapter 7 elaborates how crossovers are manifested within intermarriage. And at last, chapter 8 gives the conclusion and remarks for further research.

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2 Setting and Methodology

This chapter starts frames the setting and methodology. I start with the setting of the fieldwork. Then, I frame the research population. Next, I explain my position as a researcher vis-à-vis my research subjects. At last, I discuss my research methodology.

2.1 Setting

To learn how the Teochew-Vietnamese understand themselves in relation to the Vietnamese and the Cantonese-Vietnamese, I was settled in Cho Lon for a period of three months from January to march 2017. This is an area in Saigon known as the Chinatown. It extends over 5 and 6 and parts of district 8 and 11. It used to be a Chinese fortified settlement, established by the Fukien and Cantonese in the 18th century (Cooke & Li, 2004). The Cantonese is the largest ethnic Chinese group in South Vietnam, while the Teochew being the second largest (Tran, 1993). The table below shows the make-up of ethnic Chinese groups in South Vietnam.

Table 1: Distribution of the Chinese in South Vietnam, by ethnic subgroup Ethnic Chinese 1924 1950 1974 1989 subgroup Cantonese 35% 45% 60% 56.5% Teochew 22% 30% 20% 34.0% Hakka 7% 10% 6% 2.5% Fukien 24% 8% 7% 6.0% Hainanese 7% 4% 7% 2.0% Others 5% 3% - -

Derived from (Tran, 1993, p.31)

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Figure 1: Map of the Inner districts of HCMC

Derived from (Leseman, 2013)

In the latest population count per ethnic group in 2009, there were 823.071 ethnic Chinese in Vietnam, accounting for 0,96% of the Vietnamese population (Nguyen, 2010). Of which 50,3% live in Saigon, making 5,78% of the Saigonese population ethnic Chinese. At most 39,17% of Cho Lon’s inhabitants are ethnic Chinese, assuming that all ethnic Chinese live in Cho Lon. Despite the relatively small number of ethnic Chinese, they control about half of the economic activities in the city and dominate most markets (Corfield, 2013). In Cho Lon, the Teochew-Vietnamese, Cantonese-Vietnamese and Vietnamese live side by side. The Teochew originate from Chaoshan, the Vietnamese ancestry originate from the Kinh, who originate from present-day and Southern China, and the Cantonese-Vietnamese originate from Cantonese speaking regions in . Both the Teochew and Cantonese originate from Guangdong, China. They carry out boundary crossing practices such as intermarriage, trading and the lingua franca among the ethnic Chinese is Cantonese. The relatively powerful position of the Chinese in Saigon and the ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse environment of Saigon make Saigon an interesting place to investigate the boundary-making and -crossing practices. The Chinese-Vietnamese refer to themselves as People of the Tang Dynasty (PTD).

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PTD is a popular term used among overseas Chinese, for example in Japan, Malaysia, and the US (, 2005; Chun, 2001; Tan, 2005). In Chinese, there are multiple terms that can be used to indicate a person’s Chinese heritage, such as people of the or zhongguoren (the latter is made popular during the and usually indicates the Chinese connected to China’s state), overseas Chinese may also be called huaren (people with Chinese cultural heritage) or huaqiao (Chinese nationals living overseas) or huayi (Chinese descendant living overseas with an foreign nationality) (D. . Wu, 1991). The choice of which term to use has political connotations. The Chinese in particularly dislike using zhongguoren, because of its nationalistic and patriotic associations (Chun, 2001). Tang and Han Dynasties were the most powerful dynasties in China’s history. The usage of either of these terms refers to people who are ethnically Chinese, without reference to China’s state. Both terms can be interchangeably used. However, the term PTD remains more popular among the Southern Chinese (D. Y. Wu, 1991). Since most Chinese-Vietnamese originate from Southern Chinese regions and do not feel a connection with China’s state, PTD is used. Once in a while, I encounter people who use huayi. In Vietnamese, they and the Vietnamese call the Chinese-Vietnamese người Hoa, which is a literal translation of huaren. The languages spoken by người Hoa is called Hoa language, which indicates . The remainder of this thesis uses either PTD or người Hoa to refer to the ethnic Chinese To compare the boundary negotiation of the Teochew-Vietnamese in Saigon, I also spend three days in Bac Lieu. Bac Lieu is also known as one of the Teochew along the Delta. Bac Lieu is inhabited by the Vietnamese, the Teochew-Vietnamese and . The presence of the Teochew is great there. One of the Vietnamese folklore songs goes as: “Bac Lieu is the land, under the river, the shore of ”. Meaning that the Teochew sojourners settled there in such great numbers, that Bac Lieu may be considered part of Chaozhou, the native land of the Teochew. Comparing Bac Lieu with Saigon gives me the opportunity to extract findings which are specifically related to Saigon’s unique environment. According to official numbers in 2009, only 2,34% of Bac Lieu is ethnic Chinese (Nguyen, 2010). According to the inhabitants, however, 30% of the citizens are Teochew- Vietnamese. This disparity of official numbers and the experience of the inhabitants may be because of ethnically mixed families. Furthermore, administrations sometimes make mistakes in categorizing the people. Some ethnic Teochew-Vietnamese, with parents who are

16 registered as Chinese, are registered as ethically Vietnamese in their birth certificates, which means that the numbers on the ethnic Chinese population in Vietnam may be heavily underestimated. As a consequence, I cannot fully rely on official data.

2.2 Research population

The population examined during fieldwork consists mainly of people, born and living in Vietnam, with ethnic Teochew ancestry, who are not immigrants from other Southeast Asian countries, such as Cambodia. Vietnam’s state has freed Cambodia from the regime in 1978. During the Pol Pot regime, many Teochew-Cambodians migrated to Vietnam. These are excluded from my research population, because their trajectory is different than that of the Teochew-Vietnamese, whose family directly migrated from Chaozhou to Vietnam. Other groups that are included in this research are the ethnic Vietnamese and the ethnic Cantonese residing in Saigon. When referring to the ‘Vietnamese’, I mean the Kinh-Vietnamese. Vietnam knows 53 ethnic minorities. The largest ethnic minority in is the Khmer Krom. The Hoa are second largest (Nguyen, 2010). the Khmer Krom, are excluded in this study. They mainly live in the countryside along the , in places such as Bac Lieu. Only 24.000 live in Saigon, making them the second largest ethnic minority in Saigon, but still small as compared to the Hoa, who have 414.015 people (Nguyen, 2010). In total, I have spoken to 113 people. I have used snowball sampling to gain access to the field through several access points. Snowball sampling is the usage of the network of the people who are relevant to the research question (Bryman, 2012). The greatest gateway for collecting respondents is through Facebook. Facebook is widely used in Saigon. I have placed multiple messages on Facebook communities and like-pages targeted to ethnic Teochew living in Saigon (Cộng đồng người triều châu - việt nam.2017; Người triều châu - sài gòn, 2017; Người triều châu - teochew - 潮 州人.2017; 潮人在越 ( người triều châu ở vn ), 2017; 潮州義安會館交流會, hội giao lưu triều châu, 2017; Gaginang, 2017; 義安會館 - nghĩa an hội quán, 2017). Furthermore, I attended the Teochew culture and language class to gain access to more participants. Nghia An huiguan became my primary point to connect to people. A huiguan is an ethnic Chinese voluntary association that is organized along the lines of the

17 surname clan, district, region and dialects. Ethnic Chinese temples are usually connected to a huiguan. , one of the volunteers at Nghia An huiguan, stated: “If you come to Saigon, and you are searching for a Teochew person and you come to us, you are guaranteed to find that person. We have the largest network of Teochew people.” In total, I gained access to seven gatekeepers through Facebook and two through Nghia An huiguan, I used these gatekeepers to gain data through a combination of snowball sampling, stratified sampling and theoretical sampling. Stratified purposive sampling is the gathering of participants in a strategic way to answer the research question, criteria are determined beforehand (Bryman, 2012). By this, I mean that I purposely search for candidates that are diverse in age, fitting within four age categories that I established. Generation one, born before 1950, generation two, born between 1951 and 1965, generation three, born between 1966 and 1985, and generation four, born after 1986. These four generations have experienced different state policies in Vietnam, because of this they have experienced different attitudes of the host country towards the ethnic Chinese. These attitudes and actions have led to generational differences in the attitude of the Teochew-Vietnamese regarding the Vietnamese. The attitudes play a significant role in the development of their self-identity. I go in-depth about the political circumstances in chapter 3. To draw a clearer picture, all six generation one confidants speak Teochew, One out of thirteen generation two does not speak Teochew, this one however is an anomaly, because he grew up as an orphan. Three out of thirteen generation three and 23 out of 31 generation four does not speak Teochew. Their ability and fluency in speaking the ethnic language, explained in chapter 4 is a product of state policies. Therefore, the generations play a significant role in this research. Moreover, I used theoretical sampling. Theoretical sampling is a form of non- probability sampling, which is an ongoing process where additional samples are made based on the theory that emerges from the data (Bryman, 2012). The sample is adjusted towards questions that rise out of the gathered data. For example, when participants claim that it is difficult to learn Teochew language, because they spend relatively little time with parents, I would aim to search for participants with a) the same characteristics, b) different ages, and c) children that adhere to similar characteristics.

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The number of Vietnamese confidants is large, because I have spoken to 29 of 39 during the street interviews, in which I did not go in-depth about their personal life, I have only asked them about their knowledge of the Teochew-Vietnamese. To create an understanding of intermarriage, I have spoken to eleven interethnic couples. Most of them are in a relationship with Vietnamese. Intermarriage with Vietnamese occurs due to the spatial convergence of the ethnic Chinese and the Vietnamese. More information will be given in chapter 7. Furthermore, to have an overview of the daily lives of the confidants, I have focused on their occupation. Note that 34% of the Teochew-Vietnamese own a business, and out of the people who are retired, the majority used to own a business. 22% of the confidants have a daytime job, but only 33% work for Vietnamese, and 59% work for a foreign company. It must be added that the Teochew-Vietnamese who have (had) a job are generally generation three and four Teochew-Vietnamese. This information shows that the Teochew- Vietnamese tend to separate themselves from the Vietnamese by owning a business or working for a foreign company. I go in depth about this in chapter 5. For a detailed overview of the participants, see appendix.

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Chart 1. Overview of participants

Ethnic identity Teochew-Vietnamese: Teochew-Vietnamese: gender Place

1% 8% 8%

48% 52% 34% 57%

92%

Teochew-Vietnamese Female Male Saigon Bac Lieu Vietnamese Cantonese-Vietnamese Cantonese & Vietnamese

Teochew-Vietnamese: Teochew-Vietnamese: Teochew-Vietnamese: Generations Parents Relationship status

10% 8% 39% 20% 44% 50% 12% 20% 92% 5%

Single Generation 1 Generation 2 Teochew Dating/ married to Vietnamese Generation 3 Generation 4 One non-Teochew parent Dating/ married to Cantonese Dating/ married to Teochew

Teochew-Vietnamese: Teochew-Vietnamese: Teochew-Vietnamese: Occupation Work Retired

2%

9% 20% 17% 11% 33% 2% 59% 22% 8% 34% 83%

Foreign company Used to work Students pre-school Work Business Teochew company Used to own a Retired No occupation Vietnamese company business Other 20

2.3 Position in the field

During fieldwork, I have noticed that the Saigonese, especially the Teochew-Vietnamese, seem discrete and introvert. It is difficult to gain the amount of trust to establish fruitful interviews. Because of this, my position as a researcher is crucial in gaining access to the field. At IzyEnglish community, I was planning to give a presentation about being Viet Kieu () and hand out a survey to the audience to measure their familiarity with the Teochew-Vietnamese community. Unfortunately, IzyEnglish disapproved the survey. They could not accept surveys asking about personal experiences, because it was “too sensitive”. Therefore, I learned to establish more personal and intimate relations with the participants. Moreover, the confidants dislike the interview setting. It makes them uncomfortable and bored, after which they change subjects, get distracted or plainly ignore me. They prefer an informal setting, where the main activity is social in nature. I have decided to adhere to their preference, and focus primarily on participant observations and conversations. Spending relatively more time with individuals or groups helps me to gain trust and become part of the mundane everyday lives of the participants to gain a genuine view on the boundary-making and -crossing practices. The field is relatively close to me, because I am of mixed Teochew, Vietnamese and Cambodian heritage. I am able to speak or understand the languages that the participants use: Teochew, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese and English. This makes it easier for me to gain access. Furthermore, the variety of languages functions as a tool to discretely have conversations. My participants feel the security to make less reserved, because others in the same space are probably not able to understand us and they do not want to come across as racist. This makes the conversations relatively more honest. More importantly, I was able to pose multiple layers of identity towards my research subjects. As I am ethnically mixed, my appearance is both ambiguous in age and ethnicity. I am able to pose as Vietnamese, Teochew, Cantonese or foreigner, or any combination of those. While, I am using an overt approach as a researcher, I selectively specify my background. When people seem to highly respect foreigners, I pose my foreign identity. When I sense that I can make use of ethnic cohesion, I would adapt to my interlocutor’s ethnic identity. When I want to appear authoritative, I pose as an elder. To those who demand respect, I pose as a young girl, asking questions out of sheer innocence and curiosity.

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Furthermore, the foreign identity helps me to act uninformed, creating an incentive for participants to comprehensively clarify questions. As a fellow-Teochew, I am included in the Teochew community. Joshua explained: “At first, I did not want to meet you, I don’t have time. But because you are gaginang, I felt the obligation to help you.” Also, my family members are respected in the Nghia An huiguan, making the people connected to this association willing to direct me towards others and trust me. Yat stated: “How do you know Trien? He is rich, I have seen him on YouTube. You are acting so casual. These rich Teochew never allow interviews, instead he is inviting you.” Despite my close relation to the field, I am able to look at the field from a distance and objectively. As I am raised in the Netherlands, I can point at extraordinary behaviour using my practices in the Netherlands as a contrast. This gives me the possibility to gain information out of otherwise perceived as mundane conversations, attitudes and practices. This way, I can strategically take advantage of my layered identity. During a hiking trip up a mountain with a group of Vietnamese, I have encountered cultural differences. The group’s inertia due to differences in physical condition bothered me and hiking on their pace seems to me as a waste of time and resources. Half way up, I decided to go ahead by myself. Two hours after I reached the top, one of the people yelled my name, Hiro. He asked me to return to the group, but I refused. He watched me with amazement: “Li Li, we are here with the group. You are supposed to stay with the group. You can’t do like this.” Hiro climbed the rock and started to lay down next to me, looked at me with a stern face and says: “You are my responsibility. I can’t leave you.” I felt offended by this statement, but decided to ignore it. Once down, I noticed that the people did not care to talk to me anymore. I watched their behaviour, and no one approached me nor included me in conversations. In the hotel, one girl came to me and asked: “Li Li, do you like us?” I answered that I really do like them, which I really did. “Well, some people think you don’t like us.”, she answered. At one point, Hiro tells me. “You’re an Asian girl, but also a European girl. […] Sometimes, you behave exactly like an Asian. You know how we think, do. But sometimes, you are so foreign. Just like a European.” I learned about the strength of the cohesion within groups in Saigon out of this experience. They would stay together no matter what. Group culture is strong in the

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Saigonese society. People rarely go out by themselves or one on one. Most of their outings are in the form of a group, and often it is the same group. In contrast, in the Netherlands, I was used to going out in groups. But once we are at our destination, the group would easily separate and interact with others. In the Saigonese society, this would be highly exceptional. When I go to cafeteria’s or other places in Saigon, I find it very difficult to mingle with the people there. It is clear that the groups are closed, and mingling is not expected. The cohesion within groups may make friendships seem stronger, but many people, especially people who have not grown up or studied here, have great difficulty making friends. This lesson, I apply to the social circle of the Teochew-Vietnamese. This anecdote reflects my position as a researcher in Saigon and how I am able to look at the field at a distance. Since, I am of Teochew-Vietnamese heritage, I have learned about some of the cultural practices and norms during my lifetime. At some extend, I am close enough to the field to understand how to behave and what the Saigonese expect from me. However, I am raised in the Netherlands and am used to the lifestyle in Amsterdam. In my position, I am able to use the way I look, the language and anticipation of the expected behaviour to gain trust from the people in the field. People easily invite me into their lives and behave naturally around me. They perceive me as one of their own.

2.4 Operationalization and methods

Central to the research project is the question how the Teochew-Vietnamese negotiate boundaries with the Vietnamese and the Cantonese-Vietnamese in Saigon. These communities are divided by ethnicity. Negotiating boundaries between the Teochew- Vietnamese and the two other ethnic groups involves boundary-making and -crossing practices. During fieldwork, I take a look at these practices through the sphere of politics, language, education, business, occupation, religion, and intermarriage. The practices are explored through participant observation and conversations, life history interviews, unstructured interviews, street interviews and one group-interview. A detailed overview is placed in appendix A. I examine how the Teochew-Vietnamese are pressured to either blend with or resist the other groups and in what context they blur or solidify the social boundaries. And I examine how they construct their identity through boundary-making and -crossing practices. Note that I will not focus on cultural content, but on the practices around the 23 boundaries instead. Through these methods, I contest a universal notion of Chineseness by exploring how the Teochew-Vietnamese develop their ethnic identity in the context of post- French colonial Vietnam and transnational connections to Chaoshan, and China.

2.5 Ethical considerations

Alan Bryman (Bryman, 2012) uses the four ethical principles of Diener and Grandall. I apply them to my research methods. First, since freedom of press and speech is strongly restricted in Vietnam, to protect the safety of my participants, I made sure that I did not ask any political sensitive questions in public using . Second, I introduced myself to all participants as a researcher. However, because of the nature of my research, the participants may lose track of my research intension. Whenever I perceive information as possibly sensitive, I always ask my participants for consent. Third, the generally overt method I am using gives participants the opportunity to refuse invasion of their privacy. Moreover, I decided to use pseudonyms referring to each participant. The generated data is saved in files on an external hard-drive.

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3 “I would rather die than living in Hanoi”: The impact of Vietnam’s state policies on the Chinese community

To research the positionality of the Teochew-Vietnamese in Saigon, we must understand the historical context of how Vietnam has influenced the lives of the Chinese population. The relationship between the Vietnamese community and the Chinese community has been marked by economic rivalry and geographical disputes. In the first section, I cover the trajectory of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. The next section explores the transformation of Chinatown, Cho Lon, into a multiracial place after the reunification of Vietnam. Then, I show how the marginalization experienced after the American war influences the attitude of the Teochew-Vietnamese against the Vietnamese. Based on political circumstances, I make a division in cohorts of the Teochew-Vietnamese confidants. This division is set up in the last section.

3.1 From sojourner to citizen, the position of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam’s state

This section shows the history of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. The attitude towards the Chinese reflected in Vietnam’s state policies were fluctuating under different regimes. The shared history among the ethnic Chinese and the marginalization of the ethnic Chinese by Vietnam’s state influence community cohesiveness. It is likely that the Cantonese-Vietnamese and the Teochew-Vietnamese feel a strong bond with each other, because of the shared history.

This chapter attempts to follow the Teochew trajectory in Vietnam and how this results in the construction of the ethnic identity. The presence of the Teochew in Vietnam, along the Mekong Delta, has been known since the 18th century through the junk (a type of ancient Chinese sailing ship) trade (Cooke & Li, 2004). Cho Lon is the Chinatown in Saigon. The origins of Cho Lon come from the Tay Son Rebellion, a peasant uprising in Vietnam from 1769 until 1802 (Corfield, 2013). Vietnam was ruled by the , but most of the Chinese population were supporters of the Nguyen lords, who were the effective rulers of South Vietnam. The forces of Tay Son attacked the Chinese and many of them sought in Cho

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Lon during the mid-1770s. The peasants disliked the Chinese because of their wealth and influence and attacked and killed the Chinese. The Chinese thus fortified this settlement and it became known as Tai Ngon (‘Embankment’ in Cantonese) (Cooke & Li, 2004).

With the establishment of the Nguyen Dynasty, 1803 – 1866, the Chinese economy in Cho Lon flourished (Corfield, 2013). The Nguyen court encouraged the immigration by the Chinese (Tran, 1993). They had a strategic interest in collaborating with China, which may be useful to fend off Western powers. Almost all commercial transactions were conducted in Cho Lon (Cooke & Li, 2004). During the second half of the 19th century Chinese migration into Vietnam increased (Tran, 1993). In China there were political upheavals, causing its people seeking for better conditions overseas. After the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, Western powers occupied Hong Kong and treaty ports were opened. The Chinese authority had no control of the movement of their people in and out of China. With the treaty of Peking in 1860, Britain and France literally compelled the Manchu authorities to recognize the right of Chinese workers to seek a livelihood abroad.

In 1867, France colonized six of southern Vietnam, which formed Cochin China, and established protectorates in central and northern Vietnam in 1884. The French colonization resulted in the policy of the colonial government to recruit Chinese labour for Vietnam (Tran, 1993). They allowed the Chinese to deal freely and gave other legal rights, including the right to own land, to travel without restriction, and to establish commercial organization. In 1872, the Cho Lon had about 80,000 inhabitants, after Saigon it was the largest city in Vietnam (Corfield, 2013). The influx of Chinese migrants continued. Data estimates that about 1.2 million Chinese arrived in Vietnam between 1923 and 1951 (Tran, 1993). This high number correlates with the security situation in China. In the periods 1924- 1927 and 1946-1949 China was experiencing civil wars and in 1936-1938 Japanese military started to invade China. By 27 April 1931 Cho Lon and Saigon merged into one city called Saigon-Cho Lon (Corfield, 2013). In 1952 Saigon-Cho Lon’s population consisted for about 34% of Chinese (Tran, 1993). 45% of the ethnic Chinese were Cantonese, and 30% were Teochew. The ethnic Teochew came to live in Vietnam as sojourners. Chaozhou at the time was impoverished. Families had to say goodbye to their husbands and sons, who went to Vietnam to make a fortune. They always had the intention to return to China. However most of them remained (S. Wu, 2012).

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After Vietnam gained independence from France in 1955, ‘Cho Lon’ was dropped from the city’s official name. Descriptions of Cho Lon, by the British writer Norman Lewis, who visited it in 1950, state that Cho Lon is a purely Chinese city, which for some reason is supposed to be more typically Chinese than the great seaports of China (Corfield, 2013). Before 1975, 80% of the residents in Cho Lon were Chinese (Tran, 1993). 60% were Cantonese and 20% were Teochew. According to the memories of my confidants, 99% of the shop owners in Cho Lon’s market were ethnic Chinese. They spoke Cantonese or Teochew and they rarely interacted with the Vietnamese. It seems that they lived in a Chinese bubble in Cho Lon. The Chinese were spatially segregated from the Vietnamese and Cho Lon was a self-providing space, the institutions were strictly Chinese.

In 1954, Vietnam was divided into the non-communist Republic of Vietnam (ROV) in the south, and the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in the North. The French colonial administration practised the ‘divide and rule’ policy, which gave a separate legal status for the Chinese community. However, after the French left, President Ngo Dinh Diem of the ROV government, declared, in 1956 in decree 48, that all ethnic Chinese born in Vietnam to become Vietnamese citizens, irrespective of their own wishes. With Decree 52, all Vietnamese citizens had to adopt Vietnamese names within six months or pay a heavy fine, and decree 53 prohibited all foreigners from engaging in eleven different trades, all of which are dominated by the Chinese. Within 6 months to 1 year, the non-Vietnamese citizens were required to liquidate their businesses and transfer their ownership to Vietnamese citizens. In 1963, a new nationality law passed where foreign-born Chinese were allowed to opt for Vietnamese citizenship. However, ethnic Chinese citizens of the ROV were required to be identified as Vietnamese of Chinese origin in official papers and documents.

In the north, the DRV were less favourable towards the Chinese. Around 1967, the relationship between the DRV and China deteriorated because of some differences regarding Cambodia (Szalonta, 2009). The DVR required the Chinese to take Vietnamese citizenship, however the majority was determined to keep their Chinese nationality. The DRV attempted to seize their passports, but the Chinese refused to hand them in. Discriminatory measures were then applied. The authorities ceased to hire Chinese translators or who work with frequent contact with foreigner, such as hotels and customs. Moreover, the

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Chinese were rarely hired by the army, and even if they are in the army, they are mainly involved in logistics and not in the first-line combat troops.

During the American war, confidants remember that the Chinese supported ROV and the American army, because they were against the communist regime. After the war, the DRV conquered Saigon. In 1976, Vietnam was reunited under the name of Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) and Saigon was renamed as (Tran, 1993). By this time, the Chinese population made up of 2.6% of the total Vietnamese population. After the , the fortunes of the Chinese in Saigon changed rapidly. Because the ethnic Chinese community intermarriage between the Chinese and Vietnamese was common a significant number of officials have Chinese ancestry (Corfield, 2013; Tran, 1993). The Chinese, therefore, have a disproportionately large economic and political influence in Vietnam. The SRV made moves to break the economic and political powers of the Chinese in the form of property confiscation and physical expulsion (Corfield, 2013). Unaware of the deteriorating Sino-Vietnamese relations, the Chinese staged demonstrations in HCMC in March 1978 in protest against discrimination and persecution (, 1982). At one demonstration, the Chinese requested the return of their Chinese citizenship and carried portraits of Mao Zedong. The Vietnamese authorities crushed these demonstrations with force.

The SRV reacted by a complete clamp-down on all bourgeois activities in the country (Chang, 1982). Thousands of northern cadres were transferred to the south. On March 23, a special force made up of 30,000 policemen, cadres and students were mobilized and dispatched to rope in the entire Cho Lon section of HCMC. Under the pretext of taking inventory of the goods and assets, the special force searched and ransacked every house and shop in the district, and confiscated goods and valuables of 50,000 retailers. This operation continued to mid-April. On March 24th, the SRV announced that all private and manufacturing businesses were required to be nationalized (Chang, 1982; Corfield, 2013; Tran, 1993). Around 30,000 businesses were closed in HCMC. On March 31, the SRV banned all private trades in the country, which affected thousands of small traders. The Chinese community desperately resisted the police, as a result the streets in Cho Lon were reported by witnesses to be full of corpses. Above all, those whose properties were confiscated and businesses liquidated were forced to move within one month to new economic zones in the remote border provinces to reclaim virgin land and become agricultural producers (Chang, 1982). A

28 part of them were drafted into armed forces and sent to the Cambodia-Vietnam border to fight. Others were sent to re-education camps. The Chinese considered these three options as death sentences. On top of that, on May 4th, the SRV announced the single currency policy (Chang, 1982; Corfield, 2013). All residents had to surrender their old and foreign currencies for the new Vietnamese dong. However, there was a limit to this. Each couple could at most exchange US$100 worth of the new currency, and US$25 for each child. And no more than US$250 could be exchanged by any city family and no more than US$150 by a rural family.

Before 1979, the SRV was mainly concerned with controlling economic activities in HCMC and China’s influence on the local Chinese population. On the contrary, during the 1980s the SRV seems to be concerned over improving the relations with the remaining Chinese population (Ungar, 1987). They feared the possibility of political uprisings by the ethnic Chinese. In 1986, the state started đổi mới (open-door policy). In the present, Cho Lon still contains many shops, restaurants and enterprises with Chinese storefront signs. In Cho Lon, the schools teach Chinese as a foreign language. The penal laws are translated into Chinese. It offers . News and propaganda is translated in Chinese and HCMC also airs radio programs in Chinese. This all functioned as an effort to integrate the Chinese more successfully. With the freeing of the economy in the 1990s, it has been estimated that although the Chinese make up 3% of the total population in HCMC, they control about half of the trade and dominate most markets (Corfield, 2013).

3.2 Transformation of Cho Lon into a multiracial place

Take note that the Chinese population of Saigon-Cho Lon was 34% in 1952 and there was a staggering drop to 3% in 1989. In 1989, 56.5% were Cantonese and 34% Teochew (Tran, 1993). The start of the new regime resulted in drastic changes in the environment of the remaining Chinese. This section explores the transformation of Cho Lon.

My confidants remember the robe-in of Cho Lon in horror. Families lost their fortunes and family members have committed suicide out of desperation. Many, therefore, hold a grudge against the Vietnamese. The marginalization of the Chinese caused resentment against the Vietnamese, which played a key role in boundary making between the two communities. The Chinese were desperate to leave Vietnam. The discriminatory events 29 resulted in a mass exodus in the following years (Chang, 1982; Corfield, 2013; Tran, 1993). The people who used boats to reach other countries, came to be known as the boat people. Many have died on their way to freedom (Caplan, Choy, & Whitmore, 1991). Many of the Teochew confidants have family members who died on their way to the US. The pain of their losses during the discriminatory policies is still alive today.

Due to the exodus, the proportion of the Chinese population of the Vietnamese total population had dropped to 1.5% in 1989 (Tran, 1993). The Chinese government accused the Vietnamese government of discrimination against the Chinese in Vietnam. However, the SRV claims that these harsh measures do not necessarily target the Chinese population but capitalism. Since the Chinese population constituted the majority of businessmen, they happen to be most affected by the communist regime. Also, the demonstrations by the Chinese population in HCMC were triggers for these harsh measures to be taken against all bourgeois elements in Vietnam regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. However, one could also say that the operations were planned and designed to challenge China (Chang, 1982). My confidants state that the SRV are liars, they are highly suspicious of the state.

The state was involved in the high exodus of the ethnic Chinese. The Public Security Bureau has set up offices for registration and approval of applicants wanting to go abroad, which were primary geared towards the ethnic Chinese. The costs of the departures were fixed prices between 3.5 and 4.5 of gold per person, in total the proceeds are estimated at 115 million dollars (Tsamenyi, 1983). My confidants have stated that the price was 5 taels of gold, and the ones who could afford it would leave. The Chinese were the second wave of boat refugees. In 1975, there was the first wave of boat people, who were the highly- educated Vietnamese, who backed the ROV. In comparison to the first wave, the second wave were highly entrepreneurial, but less affluent and educated (Wood, 1997). The internal makeup of the ethnic Chinese in HCMC has drastically changed when the richest have left.

Next to the out flux of the ethnic Chinese, there was an influx of ethnic Vietnamese in Cho Lon. Confidants remember that the state has given the Chinese the opportunity for a short term to build houses on their land. The land which the Chinese did not make use of was confiscated by the state and distributed among the ethnic Vietnamese. As the Chinese lost their liquid assets, they could not afford to construct buildings within this period. The Kinh-

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Vietnamese arrived, mainly from Northern and and started to live among the ethnic Chinese.

With the exodus of the ethnic Chinese, a pool of people competent in the Chinese language and left. After the Vietnamese interference with Cambodia, stopping the genocide of the Pol Pot regime, the relations between Vietnam and China deteriorated further. In 1979, the relations between the two countries were severed. Chinese language, together with French and English, became the language of an enemy. Ethnic Chinese schools were nationalized and the state only enforced Vietnamese education. The acquisition of foreign languages outside the education became suspect (Wright, 2002).

The environment of Cho Lon transformed from typically Chinese, to a place that is dominated by the Vietnamese and the state. Anti-Chinese policies may have established boundaries between the ethnic Chinese and the Vietnamese. However, spatial conjunction of the ethnic Chinese and the Vietnamese, and the Vietnamisation of the institutions may have led to boundary crossing practices.

3.3 Four generations of Teochew-Vietnamese

This section creates an understanding of the sentiment of today’s Saigonese citizens on the Vietnamese state and how this sentiment applies to the Teochew-Vietnamese in the process of boundary creation and crossing. The median age of the Vietnamese population is 30.8 years-old (Viet Nam population, 2017). As the robe-in of Cho Lon was in 1975, this means that the majority of the people have not experienced the anti-Chinese attitudes of Vietnam’s state. However, the memories of the horrific situation after the American war are still echoing in HCMC. An interesting fact is that the Saigonese refuse to use HCMC as the name of the place they inhabit. They stubbornly call it Saigon, which suggests that the negative memories against the reunification are still present. Therefore, I will proceed by using Saigon from now on. Moreover, the elderly Teochew-Vietnamese are still pleasantly memorizing the French colonizer. The period that France ruled Cochin China has been the most flourishing period for the ethnic Chinese. The Teochew-Vietnamese are influenced by the changing environment. The different experiences of the Teochew-Vietnamese explain particular mind-sets and

31 practices. This section sets out categories of Teochew-Vietnamese in relation to the collective memories of the different regimes and policies.

The three events that most influenced the life of the Teochew-Vietnamese today are 1) the fall of the French colony in 1954, 2) the reunification of Vietnam and the robe-in of Cho Lon in 1978, and 3) the commencement of đổi mới in 1986. Therefore, I am placing the Teochew-Vietnamese into four categories.

First, generation one, these are the Teochew-Vietnamese born before 1950. They have overcome different attitudes of Vietnam’s state regarding the ethnic Chinese. They have the clearest memory of the prosperous period for the ethnic Chinese under the rule of France. Some of them state that the French loved the ethnic Chinese, welcomed them in Vietnam and cooperated with them. The Teochew sojourners were the parents or grandparents of this generation. China’s economy was highly developed commercially compared to Vietnam, therefore the Chinese filled in the entrepreneurial gaps (Y. Wu, 1983). This is in line with the memories of my confidants. Furthermore, they have experienced the fall of the Cochin China and the regime of the ROV. The anti-Chinese policies of the ROV only indirectly affected this generation. As they were born in Vietnam, they were declared to be Vietnamese citizens. My confidants state that the Teochew-Vietnamese did not interfere with politics at the time, because the ethnic Chinese were business people and did not care about political affairs. The temporariness of sojourning made them politically disinterested. Because of this disinterest, they did not form a threat to the colonizers. This made them thrive economically (Y. Wu, 1983). Their daily lives did not change much under the regime of the ROV. They still lived in Cho Lon, the Chinese bubble within Vietnam.

This generation has also experienced the American war and their generation was the one that demonstrated to regain their Chinese citizenship. The latter shows that they have relatively strong relations with China. They or their peers or family members have fled the country, were sent to economic zones, re-education programs, or the Vietnamese army. In comparison, 34% of the Vietnamese born in Australia are ethnic Chinese, they and their parents, who are of the same age as generation one, have painful memories of the persecution in Vietnam. This distances them from the Vietnamese community in Australia towards the Chinese community (Thomas, 1997). Some of the peers and family members of generation one died after the war. And they were the victims of the purge during the robe-in 32 of Cho Lon, or witnessed it from within. The traumatic events pushed them towards the identification with China. This is similar to the sentiment of the Chinese-Indonesians, who sided with the Dutch colonizer as opposed to the indigenous Indonesians as described by Ang (2001). During the fieldwork, I noticed that this generation has the strongest anti-Vietnamese sentiment due to the negative memories of the state policies. In the present, they mainly befriend fellow Teochew-Vietnamese and PTD. They rarely go outside and live relatively secluded from the Vietnamese community.

Second is generation two. This generation is born between 1951 and 1969. These are children of generation one. During their childhood, they have lived spatially segregated from the Vietnamese. They experienced the American war and like generation one, the negative outcomes of that war. Many of this generation had also fled Vietnam, to seek for a better life elsewhere. The ones, who were teenagers after the American war, were often recruited for the army or as cadets to patrol the city to imprison suspected individuals. Their lives are the most drastically changed after the transformation of Cho Lon, because they did not seclude themselves from the Vietnamese community. In fact, they learned that they depended on the Vietnamese. This generation was the first, who started to acquire the Vietnamese language.

Third, generation three is born between 1970 and 1985. Their parents are usually categorized as generation one or generation two. While, some of them have experienced the war and its outcomes, they do not remember much of it. Others are born after the war. The environment, which is mixed with the Vietnamese, is the only environment they know. They speak fluently Vietnamese. However, they, too, have negative emotions towards the state. Confidants have pointed at elementary schools that used to be owned by the ethnic Chinese and show their sorrow of the loss of the schools and the language. One woman, Chi, stated that she was imprisoned at the age of 6 together with her classmates and for two weeks, after she was caught attending a Chinese language class. Furthermore, this generation relive the American war through stories told by their generation one and two, and are influenced by the negative attitude of generation one towards the Vietnamese. Their experience is comparable to that of Ang (2001). Different from Ang, they were not as much affected by and did not grow the desire to assimilate with the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese peers in Saigon did not pressure them to assimilate. This may be because that the Saigonese have anti-state sentiment themselves. During fieldwork, all

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Saigonese, including the ones whose family originate from the North express their ‘hatred’ towards Northern Vietnam. The Northerners are seen as intruders. Many Saigonese express that they would never want to visit , especially Hanoi, because they “hate the Northerners”. Some confidants go as far as stating that they “rather die than be in Hanoi”. Northern Vietnamese themselves remember how they were discriminated against in Saigon and pressured to change their accent. The Teochew-Vietnamese have not experienced such marginalization from their peers.

At last, generation four has lived their lives after đổi mới, 1986. Their environment has always been dominated by the Vietnamese. The life-expectancy of people in Vietnam born in 1936, is estimated to be around 30-35 years, and of those born in the period 1950-1955 is estimated 40.4 years (Merli, 1998). This means that the majority of the people born before 1950 (generation one) are likely to be no more in the 1990s. This, thus means that generation four is the least influenced by generation one. This generation, however, is most assimilated with the Vietnamese society. Most of them do not speak the ethnic language. They are, like Ang (2001), assimilated due to state oppression that happened before their birth. Despite the new policies of the state to welcome , they are deprived of Chinese institutions in order to learn the culture of their ancestors.

The division of the different generations is important because every generation has encountered different effects of state policies and attitudes. These have influenced their attitudes towards the Vietnamese, and their ability to develop knowledge and skills to maintain their ethnic culture. This translates into different boundary-making and -crossing practices and gives meaning to the ‘self-other’ talk, which places them against the Vietnamese and towards the Cantonese.

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4 “Teochew speak Teochew”: Language choices and identity construction

Time and again Teochew-Vietnamese state: “Teochew people speak the Teochew language.” This suggests that many view that the ability to speak Teochew is quintessential in the Teochew identity and heritage. Studies have found a positive relationship between the proficiency in the ethnic language and the ethnic identity (Bankston III & Zhou, 1995; Phinney, Romero, Nava, & Huang, 2001). Through language individuals express, enact and symbolize their ethnic identity (Baker & Jones, 1998). This means that the ethnic language is a tool belonging to a specific group and it provides ethnic cohesion within the group. Ethnic cohesion is reflected in the example where Joshua has decided to meet me, because we are gaginang as mentioned in section 2.3. Similarly, the usage of this term shows that language may also be a boundary that creates contrasts between ethnic groups. In this case, it functions as a boundary between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the neighbouring ethnic groups in Saigon.

Many Teochew-Vietnamese in Saigon, however, are multilingual. The most common languages that I have encountered are Vietnamese, Teochew, Cantonese, Mandarin and English. Some have studied French, Japanese, Korean or other languages, but the five languages mentioned first are by far the most common. Many Teochew-Vietnamese take pride in that their ethnic subgroup is able to speak various languages. My confidant, Yat, generation three, expresses his pride by stating that from all overseas Chinese only the Teochew-Vietnamese are able to speak multiple languages and Chinese dialects, this is what makes him think that the “Teochew are the best”.

The reasons why the Teochew-Vietnamese use many languages encompass their identity and the instrumental value of speaking multiple languages. This chapter explores why the Teochew are using these languages and what it means to them. The first section shows how the Teochew language is maintained and what challenges the Teochew-Vietnamese face to maintain the language. The second section summarizes the multiple layers within the identity of the Teochew-Vietnamese that are reified through the spoken languages. This chapter shows that the Teochew-Vietnamese are able to construct multiple identities, while maintaining their ethnic heritage. 35

4.1 Challenges in the maintenance of Teochew language

74% of generation four does not speak Teochew, as opposed to 23% of generation three. All of generation one and two speak Teochew, except for one orphan. The Teochew-Vietnamese also express challenges in the maintenance of the ethnic language. This section explores these challenges by looking at factors that influence the ethnic language maintenance.

The expression and enactment of cultural identity starts with the family, study has shown that parents are contributors to the ethnic identity of the children in host countries (Phinney et al., 2001). Therefore, it is important to take a look at the influences of the family in the maintenance of the Teochew language. Teochew-Vietnamese elders take pride and boast about it, when their grand-children are able to speak Teochew. To diminish the threat of losing the Teochew language, many parents prefer their children to marry Teochew- Vietnamese. Many believe that it is inevitable that children become Vietnamese or Cantonese, when marrying a non-Teochew spouse. Andy, generation three, explained:

Teochew speak Teochew and the Vietnamese don't. If the father is Teochew, and the mother is Vietnamese, the children will not be able to speak Teochew. […] The children will also become Cantonese […] If you marry Cantonese, you will communicate in Cantonese.

The construction of the ethnic heritage depends on the parents. However, not only ethnically mixed families encounter challenges in the maintenance of the Teochew language. In fact, most of my confidants whose parents are both ethnically Teochew-Vietnamese, have varying levels of Teochew language speaking skills. People with a lower proficiency get shamed by their environment. This is noticeable when I am participating in a group. I grew up in an environment where only my parents speak Teochew. Nevertheless, my proficiency is high compared to many Teochew-Vietnamese. The Teochew language teacher has praised me and shamed her students: “Look at her, she has nobody to talk to, but she speaks better than you.” Parents have pointed it out to their children and said out loud: “You are great, because you speak Teochew. My children are useless, they all became Vietnamese.” It seems that the Teochew face challenges in continuing their language. During the fieldwork, I found that several factors influence the maintenance of the ethnic language.

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4.1.1 Influences on the maintenance of the ethnic language

The amount of time that is spent with Teochew grandparents is a factor in their proficiency. Grandparents of my confidants are usually generation one or two. People with a relatively high proficiency in Teochew explain that they have spent a lot of time with their grandparents, and that their grandparents stimulate them to speak Teochew and to identify as Teochew. People who have a relatively low proficiency or are not able to speak Teochew, state the opposite. In comparison, a study on the ethnic language maintenance for the Chinese in the has shown a positive association between the grandparent- grandchild cohesiveness and the grandchild’s ethnic language maintenance (Luo & Wiseman, 2000). This influence may be larger than the direct influence of state policies.

As explained in chapter three, the majority of generation one is likely to have passed away in the 1990s. Generation four is thus least likely to spend time with grandparents. In comparison, generation three is more fluent in the language, while they also grew up in a Vietnamese environment, in a time with more anti-Chinese policies. However, they have spent more time with grandparents. This supports the association between grandparent- grandchild relations and the grandchild’s ethnic language maintenance.

Also, Teochew-Vietnamese parents’ influence is of importance in the maintenance of the language. Many Teochew-Vietnamese with a lower proficiency in Teochew state that they spend little time with their parents. Likewise, parents with children who do not speak Teochew have stated that they spend much time working and do not have time to teach the language. Furthermore, children spend most of their time at school. Children in Saigon are physically attending education six days a week, up to twelve hours a day, these are both regular school hours and tutoring. Children, thus, spend relatively little time with their parents in general. As a result, generation four is often unable to speak or understand Teochew. Similarly, in the same study mentioned before, the researchers have found a positive association between the parent-child cohesiveness and the child’s ethnic language maintenance (Luo & Wiseman, 2000).

At last, besides family, the environment plays a role in the maintenance of Teochew language. The daily environment of the Teochew-Vietnamese, especially the ones of generation three and four, is predominantly Vietnamese. The daily environment consists

37 mainly of peers. The previous study has also shown that peers who speak the dominant language have a negative influence on the maintenance of the ethnic language. This negative influence may even overwhelm the positive influence from parents (Luo & Wiseman, 2000). Generation four encounters the greatest challenge in maintaining the language, since they are most heavily exposed to the Vietnamese society.

One case is Mee, generation three, whom I met at the coffee corner. Sometimes, Mee lets her children play outside. Time and time again, she warns her children not to run around and to beware of the scooters using Teochew language. She would also tell her children to greet me in Teochew language as she knows that I am a fellow-Teochew. However, her children solely respond in Vietnamese. After her children’s response, she would also reply in Vietnamese. I asked her, why her children do not speak Teochew and she explains: “At home, I try to speak Teochew to them. But they have started school and learned Vietnamese there. They don’t know how to speak Teochew anymore, since they started school.”

Similar to this woman, many generation two and generation three Teochew- Vietnamese parents have stated that their children spoke Teochew when they were toddlers, but forgot the language as soon as they went to school. Many generation four Teochew- Vietnamese have confirmed this phenomenon. For most Teochew-Vietnamese, generation two, three and four, the influence of speaking the dominant language with peers have had a negative impact on their ability or proficiency in speaking Teochew, despite the efforts of parents and grandparents. Generation four seem to have little Teochew-Vietnamese peers in their environment. Linda, generation four, states: “It has been rare these days to have Chinese friends.” Research has shown that cohesive ethnic communities positively influence the language maintenance (Phinney et al., 2001). Smaller circles of in-group friends of the Teochew-Vietnamese lead to lower ethnic language proficiency.

4.1.2 The Cantonese language maintenance

The Cantonese are in a similar position as the Teochew in Saigon, however, they seem to be more successful in maintaining their ethnic language. Cantonese language also seems to negatively influence the maintenance of the Teochew language. Yat, generation three, explains: 38

My laima [grandmother from father’s side] speaks Teochew, but she passed a long time ago. We live in a Cantonese neighbourhood. My father is a boss, so he hires Cantonese workers and they work at my home. At home, we speak Cantonese […] a lot of my friends are Cantonese.

Both Linda and Yat do not speak Teochew. They both perceive that their environment plays the greatest factor in their inability to maintain the language. In Yat’s case, the death of his grandparents is emphasized. Moreover, his family is highly influenced by the Cantonese. Apparently, the Cantonese are persistent in speaking Cantonese in such a way and that it influences the Teochew-Vietnamese to speak Cantonese, rather than Teochew.

Within families, the Teochew are more flexible in the language choice than the Cantonese are. Many Teochew-Vietnamese explain that the Cantonese-Vietnamese consume Hong Kong media, which makes them more proficient and determined to speak Cantonese. Hong Kong media is popular among the diasporic Chinese and it helps them to maintain and update the Cantonese language. Media exposure enforces the acquisition of language (Kuppens, 2010). The degree of proficiency in the ethnic language positively influences the usage of the ethnic language (Phinney et al., 2001). The Cantonese-Vietnamese are more able to express themselves in Cantonese than the Teochew-Vietnamese are in Teochew, and thus are more likely to use their ethnic language.

This may be a reason why the Teochew-Vietnamese ‘lose’ their language faster than the Cantonese-Vietnamese. The flexibility of the Teochew-Vietnamese can be seen in the case of Mee. Many Teochew-Vietnamese address their children in Vietnamese, when the children use Vietnamese. To them, speaking Vietnamese, and sometimes Cantonese, at home seems easier. It makes communication between family members faster. When the children attend school, they stop speaking Teochew and speak exclusively Vietnamese or Cantonese at home.

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4.1.3 The attitude towards speaking the heritage language per generation

It seems likely that Teochew language may disappear in Saigon. The median age of Vietnamese citizens as of 2017 is 30.8 years (Viet Nam population, 2017). This may mean that roughly half of all Teochew-Vietnamese are born after 1990s and not likely to speak Teochew. It is unlikely that the remaining who do speak the language are able to adequately pass over the ethnic language. The sentiment, however, of this gradual loss of their linguistic heritage is controversial. Here follows a generational analysis of the challenges in the maintenance of the heritage language.

Generation one shows disappointment of the low proficiency of the ethnic language by their (great)grandchildren. Many of them have difficulty communicating and feel a disconnection with their (great)grandchildren. Generation two and three are somewhat disappointed, but they feel that the loss is natural. They express that it is more difficult to them to teach their children the ethnic language, since their own proficiency is not perfect. When there are no generation one Teochew-Vietnamese in the family, the generation two and three Teochew-Vietnamese have no one to turn to, to ask about words and definitions. They, themselves, use other languages as aids for expressions.

For generation four, the results are not as straightforward. Some of them sense a strong disappointment and longing to get closer to their ethnic heritage through language. This longing is paired with feelings of shame and to some with anger. They blame the Vietnamese state for this loss, after all, the exodus of ethnic Chinese citizens and abolishment of Chinese schools is due to the political circumstances and anti-Chinese policies of the state. However, most of generation four seem indifferent about this loss. In Saigon, the Teochew language is not used outside the sphere of the family. Because family members usually speak Vietnamese, Teochew language loses its usefulness. Language symbolizes the ethnic identity, but does not embody it. The construction of the Teochew identity does not depend on the ethnic language. Likewise, Ang (2001) identifies as Chinese, without speaking Chinese.

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4.1.4 Exceptional case

Of course, there are some exceptional cases. Kim, 19-years-old, is fluent in speaking Teochew. I may say that he is more fluent than some generation two Teochew-Vietnamese. He lives with his mother and aunt, who are generation one Teochew-Vietnamese. His mother has been a Mandarin teacher and stimulates her son to acquire as many languages as possible. Therefore, he has obtained an interest in learning languages, as he majors in Applied English and studies Mandarin, French and Japanese. On top of that, he is strongly connected to his cultural heritage. He is the only Teochew-Vietnamese, I encountered, who knows the script and lyrics of certain Teochew opera shows. None of the other Teochew-Vietnamese, who are of generation two to four have the ability to fluently understand the script. This case shows that the connection that people have with their cultural heritage is positively associated with the acquirement of the ethnic language. Research has confirmed this connection (Phinney et al., 2001). As Kim’s fluency is related to his mother’s generation, I suggest that parent-child cohesiveness has a more important impact on the ethnic language maintenance than suggested by research, providing that the parent has a high proficiency in the ethnic language, an attitude that strictly enforces the maintenance and a relatively low proficiency in the dominant language. Generation one people are associated with a deeper connection with the cultural heritage, a stronger sense of belonging with the Teochew-Vietnamese community and a greater cultural distance with the Vietnamese. Their positionality highly influences their (grand)children’s selfhood.

Diasporas exist on a shared imagined idea of the self. This idea is confirmed in ‘self- other’ talk in opposition with the Vietnamese and based on the ethnic Chinese position and community before the American war and the traumatic events after the American war. These memories are most vivid for generation one. Whereas, generation two have lived their young adulthood after the war, and generation three and four did not experience the war and the situation before the war. The latter two generations rely on stories from the (grand)parents, they have a greater distance with this imagined community. The people whose generation one family members have passed away are less subject to this sentiment. As opposed to Kim, the other generation four Teochew-Vietnamese do not have a generation one parent. The shared memories, to them, are less vivid. This does not mean that the Teochew-Vietnamese community is meaningless to them, they have reinvented a ‘new’ form of this community. A 41 community which is less based on the deep connection between the members of the community, but based on a sense of being and pride.

There appears to be a discontinuation of Teochew language in Saigon, because of external influences that negatively impacts ethnic language acquisition of children. Parents are becoming less invested in passing over the ethnic language and Teochew language does not seem appealing to many, like Cantonese does. However, many (grand)parents worry that the ethnic identity of children gets lost together with the loss of the ethnic language. Generation three and especially generation four have a different connection to the community than they have. I have found that generation four Teochew-Vietnamese feel Teochew, because of their family lineage and the attitude to maintain the cultural heritage of their parents and grandparents. Several studies have come to this conclusion (Luo & Wiseman, 2000; Phinney et al., 2001). When parents promote cultural maintenance, it has a positive effect on the ethnic language maintenance (Phinney et al., 2001). Teochewness still plays a prominent part of their selfhood. The Teochew identity is not the only ethnic identity that the Teochew-Vietnamese carry. The other layers of their identity are shown in the next section.

4.2 Multiple layers of the identity through languages

The Teochew-Vietnamese cultural identity consists of multiple layers. One way to enact on their identity is through languages. However, the identity of the Teochew-Vietnamese is more than the identification as Teochew and the Teochew language. They also identify as pan- Chinese, people of the Tang Dynasty, Teochew-Vietnamese and cosmopolitans. The acquirement of a multiple layered identity gives the Teochew the flexibility to change colour when needed.

4.2.1 Pan-Chinese identity

One layer of the ethnic identity of the Teochew-Vietnamese is being pan-Chinese. Many expressed their Chineseness through their ability to speak Mandarin, they state: “I am Chinese, of course, I speak Mandarin.” Being Chinese to the Teochew-Vietnamese means 42 being a member of the larger Chinese society, including , Taiwan and the overseas Chinese.

The Teochew feel pride in being Chinese because of the rich history of China as opposed to the Vietnamese history. Vietnam is perceived as a young country that is highly influenced by the Chinese culture. Many state that Vietnam would not have a ‘culture’ if the Chinese did not influence it. I suggest that the Teochew-Vietnamese perceive that taking the pan-Chinese identity gives them an elevated status, better than the Vietnamese. Speaking Mandarin is used as a symbol to confirm this heightened status as it links them directly to mainland China. Cantonese or Teochew languages do not necessarily fulfil this purpose, and these languages do not connect to China as a whole.

I suspect that the Teochew-Vietnamese have an ambiguous relationship with the pan- Chinese identity. After the American war education became monolingual. Vietnam’s state aimed to increase Vietnamese literacy among her citizens, to decrease the relation between the Chinese-Vietnamese and mainland China, and to support the assimilation of the Chinese- Vietnamese citizens. In a monolingual society, the minorities need to negotiate their identity, because their ethnic language is oppressed (Blackledge & Pavlenko, 2001). In response, the Chinese-Vietnamese felt suppressed and the policy created a greater division between the Chinese-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese. After đổi mới, the state decided to implement Mandarin as a foreign language in educational institutions, which the Chinese-Vietnamese eagerly made use of. Likewise, some states in the US have started bilingual education programs in order to assimilate the ethnic minorities into the dominant culture (Bankston III & Zhou, 1995). While ethnic Chinese schools in Vietnam originally used ethnic Chinese languages, schools are now teaching Mandarin.

Their identification as pan-Chinese is pragmatic. Mandarin is not part of the cultural heritage of the Teochew-Vietnamese, whereas the Teochew language is. China is multilinguistic, and Mandarin happens to be the . Speaking Mandarin creates job opportunities, both in Vietnam as well as abroad. The Teochew-Vietnamese apply Mandarin on the work floor when they work at Taiwanese companies. And many dream of leaving Vietnam to start a career elsewhere. They go to Singapore, Taiwan and to start a new life. Mandarin gives them the opportunity to communicate with a broader audience and increase their mobility. 43

Furthermore, the Teochew-Vietnamese pose their Chineseness in front of other ethnic Chinese by speaking Mandarin. Language is a tool for ethnic cohesion, and the Teochew- Vietnamese make use of this benefit. Strategic use of language influences the evaluation of the listener of the speaker’s identity (Blackledge & Pavlenko, 2001). People, who seek social approval and communication efficiency, use the strategy to adapt their language to their interlocutor’s (Cargile, Giles, Ryan, & Bradac, 1994; Dragojevic, Gasiorek, & Giles, 2015). In confirmation of my understanding, I found that the Teochew-Vietnamese state that they would pose a Vietnamese identity towards foreigners, if Vietnam would be a ‘better country’.

Mainland China does not appeal to the Teochew-Vietnamese. According to the Teochew-Vietnamese, they read in news stories that China is selling low quality, even poisonous products in Vietnam, such as food and fabrics. The negative attitude towards China is influenced by the Vietnamese media. News read by the Teochew-Vietnamese are mainly Vietnamese, and are controlled by the Vietnam’s state authorities. The distance between the Teochew-Vietnamese and mainland China confirms that the pan-Chinese identity and Mandarin is merely pragmatic. It also shows that China loses its position in the negotiation of the identity of the Teochew-Vietnamese between China, the home country and Vietnam, the host country. The imagined Chineseness of the Teochew-Vietnamese excludes the negative associations with China imposed on them by Vietnam, therefore the Teochew-Vietnamese identify more closely with the Taiwanese or the other diasporic Chinese. They do not reject their Chineseness, they reconstructed Chineseness.

4.2.2 People of the Tang Dynasty

Part of the reconstruction of Chineseness is that the Teochew-Vietnamese identify as PTD. During interviews, they call themselves PTD more than Teochew. The PTD, the Teochew- Vietnamese are referring to, are all Chinese-Vietnamese, including the members of the Teochew, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka and the Fukkien communities, and the Chinese- Vietnamese who moved overseas, but excluding the recent arrivals of the Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese. The latter is always mentioned separately from the PTD. Chinese born in other countries of Southeast Asia are also referred to as PTD, however, the host country is

44 mentioned in their identification. For example, the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia are called: PTD with Cambodian Huaqiao (referring to Chinese nationals living overseas).

The Vietnamese translation for PTD is Người Hoa. When one refers to Hoa language, one usually refers to Cantonese. In Saigon, the lingua franca among the PTD is Cantonese. Many of the Teochew-Vietnamese speak Cantonese, and speaking Cantonese has become part of their identity. This separates them from the Vietnamese society, but also from most Mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese in Vietnam. One encounter went as follows. During a night out at a bar, one person within the group was a young man from Taiwan. Most PTD in the group were able to speak Mandarin to him, except one Teochew-Vietnamese man. This Teochew-Vietnamese man tried to communicate in Cantonese with the Taiwanese man. The Taiwanese was unable to understand him, upon which the Teochew-Vietnamese man got frustrated and exclaimed: “He can’t even understand Cantonese. Every người Hoa must understand Cantonese. My Cantonese is bad, but he can’t even understand the simplest things.” As he considers the Taiwanese as one of his own, an ethnic Chinese, he tries to make a connection, this failure in communicating with the Taiwanese is seen as a failure of the Taiwanese man to fit in the PTD community. This way, Cantonese is a tool that provides social cohesion within the PTD community. It furthermore shows that the lack of speaking Cantonese is associated with social segregation between the PTD and the Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese.

The social cohesion Cantonese gives, triggers the interest of many Teochew- Vietnamese to speak Cantonese. They express that Cantonese is more useful to learn, to connect with the community. Some Teochew-Vietnamese even think that it makes speaking Teochew redundant, because speaking Cantonese is sufficient to connect with other Teochew and it makes it possible to connect with a greater community: that of the PTD.

The Vietnamese, however, are generally unable to differentiate between the ethnic Chinese groups. Only the Vietnamese, who live in Cho Lon or work or do business in Cho Lon have ethnic Chinese in their social circles. Despite knowing ethnic Chinese, and being familiar with the existence of the different ethnic Chinese groups, the Vietnamese are unknown about the differences between the groups and unknown about the ethnic group membership of their Hoa acquaintances.

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In my understanding, this means that the Teochew present themselves as người Hoa. The Teochew-Vietnamese state that they do not feel the need to disclose their specific ethnic identity and are reserved concerning personal information. The ethnic identity is perceived only to be important when facing other PTD and not when facing the Vietnamese. This is not because of possible oppression by the Vietnamese. They state that they do not feel discriminated, but the disclosure is of value when facing PTD and meaningless to the Vietnamese. However, being PTD or Teochew is not a secret. All of them add that when asked specifically, they would give an honest answer. But this question is rarely asked. Some say no Vietnamese has ever questioned their ethnic identity. Others say that some Vietnamese have asked them, because they look Hoa, carry Hoa names or happen to be speaking Hoa. But, when these types of questions are asked, they would simply answer that they are người Hoa and do not feel the need to go further into detail. The reason is simply: “the Vietnamese wouldn’t understand”.

I have encountered many of such situations, because I mainly speak Teochew to my confidants. At Minh and Tak’s pre-wedding photoshoot, a Vietnamese makeup artist asked what language we were speaking. Minh answered: “We speak Teo… Hoa language.” While the word Teochew was starting to roll out of her mouth, she quickly corrected herself midsentence by changing it into Hoa. In my understanding, she is simplifying her answer to the Vietnamese. I suggest that the lack of understanding of the Vietnamese of what it means to be PTD and the unwillingness of the Teochew to elaborate it shows that the Vietnamese are excluded.

Per contra, the Cantonese are well aware of the different ethnic Chinese groups and would question the ethnicity. Most Teochew-Vietnamese do not speak Cantonese as well as the Cantonese themselves do. Many Teochew-Vietnamese state that the Cantonese- Vietnamese sometimes question their ethnicity, because their Cantonese vocabulary is smaller, they speak too slow, or they pronounce words wrong. Other Teochew-Vietnamese have expressed that their Cantonese-Vietnamese friends shame them by laughter when they mispronounce words. However, the Cantonese-Vietnamese do show them the right way to pronounce, making it easier for them to learn the language. In this sense, there is an easily permeable boundary between the Cantonese-Vietnamese and the Teochew-Vietnamese.

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The Cantonese-Vietnamese would automatically start speaking Cantonese when they find out that their interlocutors are PTD. In Cantonese restaurants, the waiters would approach guests in Cantonese, while at Teochew restaurants the waiters usually approach guests in Vietnamese. It is less useful to approach in Teochew language, because the probability is low that the guests speak Teochew. As mentioned in the previous section, the Teochew-Vietnamese are losing their ethnic language and it is probable that half of them do not speak Teochew. Per contra, the Cantonese assume that the majority of their customers in Cho Lon are PTD and assume that all PTD speak Cantonese to a certain extent, and therefore approach guests and customers using Cantonese.

One example is when I went to the gym in district 6. This gym is owned by . The man working behind the desk is Cantonese. When I was discussing the fees with my cousin, he asked: “What language are you speaking?” My cousin answered: “Hoa language.” He replies: “Of course, I know it is Hoa. I am Hoa, I know that. But which, Teochew.. Hokkien?” She answered: “Teochew.” After this, he started speaking Cantonese to us. Every time he approached me, he would speak Cantonese despite the fact that I am more fluent in Vietnamese than in Cantonese. Also, when I approach him in Vietnamese, he would answer me in Cantonese. This example shows that the Cantonese assume that all PTD are supposed to speak Cantonese. The Teochew-Vietnamese I have spoken to confirm this.

Additionally, speaking Cantonese is fashionable according to the confidants. They state that Hong Kong dramas and music has been popular among the PTD since the 1980s, making the Cantonese language popular. It is perceived as more dynamic and modern, containing fun phrasing, that the Teochew-Vietnamese like to use. Teochew media has never gained popularity in Vietnam. Hong Kong pop culture has influenced the Teochew-Vietnamese, in such an extent that they favour speaking Cantonese over Teochew.

I suggest that speaking Cantonese, in the eyes of the Saigonese, is quintessential for being ethnic Chinese in Saigon. Here, many interviewees admit that their Cantonese is better than their Teochew speaking skills. In comparison, Teochew-Vietnamese who grew up in neighbouring areas such as Soc Trang and Bac Lieu do not speak Cantonese. In those areas, there are little Cantonese people, there Cantonese is not the dominant language among the PTD.

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Because of Cantonese as the lingua franca, there is an internal cohesion within the community of the Tang Dynasty in Saigon. Even though, the differences between the ethnic Chinese groups are perceived as mainly existing of the languages and cuisine, the fact that most PTD speak Cantonese makes them one group vis-à-vis the Vietnamese society. Many Teochew state that they cannot always recognize another Teochew-Vietnamese because in Cho Lon they speak Cantonese. Because of this, they would view them as PTD and not specifically Teochew-Vietnamese. However, Cantonese language may still form a boundary between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Cantonese since the Cantonese are able to distinguish the Cantonese and non-Cantonese-Vietnamese out of the level of proficiency in speaking Cantonese.

4.2.3 Teochew-Vietnamese identity

In contrast to the Cantonese language, the Teochew-Vietnamese agree that Teochew is more difficult to learn than Cantonese. Teochew language in Vietnam is not uniform. As the Teochew spoken in Vietnam is different than the Teochew spoken in China, the Teochew- Vietnamese identity is a construction that is developed under negotiation with the environment in Vietnam.

The degree of language maintenance or shift depends on many variables and differs in each diasporic community (Wei & Hua, 2010). There are many variations of speaking Teochew in Vietnam. The dialect can be split into several branches. It depends on which city the ancestors come from in China, ‘when’ they arrived in Vietnam, and on the neighbourhood where the family is settled. It thus depends per family. Kim, who is highly proficient in Teochew, calls this “Teochew slang”. He states that “every home has their own slang. They borrow words from other languages. […] The word ‘meat’ in Hokkien is ‘nek’, many Teochew use this word instead of ‘bah’.” Because of family slang, many Teochew, who consider themselves ‘able’ to speak Teochew do not understand each other.

The reality is that the Teochew-Vietnamese are unable to speak modern-day Teochew. Many confidants have given anecdotes of moments they or family members have spoken to Teochew from China, where they have encountered troubles expressing themselves and understanding the interlocutor. Their Teochew vocabulary is ancient. Teochew in China has 48 evolved over time. Modern words, for example referring to technologies are unknown to the Teochew in Vietnam, as those things did not exist when their ancestors arrived in Vietnam.

Teochew is taught over generations by mouth, there is no formal education of the Teochew language in Vietnam. Making Teochew spoken in Vietnam, distinct from the Teochew spoken in Chaoshan, China. Gina also states “we are actually not really speaking Teochew, we speak a salad of languages.” The Teochew-Vietnamese mix several languages within one sentence. For example, when two interlocutors are Teochew-Vietnamese and able to understand Cantonese, Mandarin and English, the sentence may contain five languages. Other researches have shown that heritage speakers’ proficiency in ethnic language usage is influenced by the languages spoken by the neighbouring ethnic groups (Isurin & Ivanova- Sullivan, 2008; Montrul, 2004). Both grammar and vocabulary is influenced by the neighbouring ethnic languages. Since Cho Lon is a multi-ethnic environment, Teochew is influenced by a multitude of languages.

Since the language differs from Teochew in China and the Teochew-Vietnamese have a negative attitude towards China, the Teochew-Vietnamese identity is distinct from the Teochew and pan-Chinese identity and it is specifically for the Teochew in Vietnam. The Vietnamese part of the Teochew-Vietnameseness is due to their identification with Vietnam. The first reason is that they are born in Vietnam. The Vietnamese citizenship makes them Vietnamese. The second reason is that the Teochew-Vietnamese live side by side with the Vietnamese. They are familiar with the Vietnamese language and culture and these influence the Teochew-Vietnamese in their daily life. Besides generation one, the Teochew-Vietnamese are fluent in speaking Vietnamese.

Especially for generation four, it is becoming harder for them to get to know PTD. Many state that it is easier to pose as Vietnamese and be part of the Vietnamese society. As discussed before, the Teochew-Vietnamese do not disclose their Teochewness or Chineseness to the Vietnamese when it is not questioned. Generation three and four Teochew-Vietnamese furthermore use less and less Cantonese. Their Cantonese peers are also blending more with the Vietnamese society. Groups of friends become multi-ethnic. But, because the Vietnamese do not speak Cantonese, the language used is Vietnamese.

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In my understanding, this means that the Teochew-Vietnamese feel a greater connection with Vietnam than with China. Because they have been living in Vietnam for multiple generations, the Teochew culture and language among the Teochew-Vietnamese has evolved separately from that in China, and influenced by the neighbouring ethnic groups, making them more part of the Saigonese environment than China. They creatively developed a ‘new’ language and a ‘new’ identity.

4.2.4 The cosmopolitan identity

The last identity that I want to put emphasis on is the cosmopolitan identity. While, the Teochew-Vietnamese identify themselves within several ethnic groups, under the umbrella of the pan-Chinese identity, they also state that they are world citizens. None of the Teochew I have spoken to were attached to Vietnam in such a way that they do not want to emigrate. Likewise, none has mentioned emigrating to China. Many of them dream to migrate to a Western country, in the , Europe or Oceania. The Teochew-Vietnamese, who can afford it, let their children go to international schools. Many wish that their children study abroad and start a life there. Most important are the opportunities that those countries provide.

In their opinion, cosmopolitans need to be able to speak English to enlarge their mobility in the world. In a similar way, the Teochew-Vietnamese value speaking Cantonese and Mandarin. Next to these languages, many Teochew-Vietnamese are showing interest and taking classes in Korean and Japanese. Popular culture is a means that motivates people to study a foreign language (C. Cheung, 2001). Korean and Japanese became fashionable in Vietnam through popular media. Learning multiple languages does not only increase mobility, the other purpose is personal satisfaction. Among generation four it is becoming less important to speak a certain language for a sense of belonging to an ethnic community. Likewise, a study has shown that diasporic Chinese are developing a distinctive identity as transnationals, as they perceive themselves to be multicultural and multilinguistic (Wei & Hua, 2010). Many generation four Teochew-Vietnamese view themselves as such.

The cosmopolitanism, however, is highly influenced by the West, not only linguistically but also culturally. Many Teochew-Vietnamese have shown that they favoured the imagined 50

European and American lifestyle. By this, they point at the liberal and individualistic mind-set, as opposed to the perceived backwards and collectivist mind-set of the Vietnamese and the Chinese.

This mind-set is due to the multi-ethnic environment of Saigon. Saigon has been Vietnam’s capital, when it was part of the French colony. Therefore, Saigon is highly influenced by the French. Moreover, Cho Lon is the largest Chinatown of Vietnam, where multiple ethnic Chinese groups live among the Vietnamese. At last, Saigon has many foreign expats, mainly from Japan, Taiwan and Korea, but also from China and other Western countries. The Teochew-Vietnamese in Saigon are used to living in a multiracial environment. In contrast, the Teochew in Bac Lieu seem more ‘traditional’. The act of wearing sneakers works ostracizing, locals wear flip flops or dress shoes. The Saigonese are easily recognized by their footwear. The Teochew who study in Saigon are asked by their parents to switch footwear when they visit Bac Lieu. Ones who do not obey get chastised by their parents. This example shows that the Teochew-Vietnamese in Saigon are more open-minded towards foreign cultural influences.

As some Teochew call themselves world-citizens, they do not judge individuals on ethnic or local prejudices, but rather their personal characteristics. This softens the boundaries between individual Teochew-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese and Cantonese. Although, they still view themselves as members of specific ethnic groups, the boundaries between ethnic groups are not rigid. The multi-ethnic environment of Saigon has influenced the construction of their identity.

4.2.5 Ethnic chameleons

Even though, the Teochew-Vietnamese highly value their ethnic heritage, they seem to be flexible and perform multiple identities as they have an instrumental understanding of their identity. As the Teochew-Vietnamese have a multiple-layered identity, and view themselves as cosmopolitans, they are flexible in adjusting to other ethnic groups, or ethnic groups they partly identify with. The Teochew-Vietnamese may be classified as ethnic chameleons, as they change colour whenever they need it.

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In comparison with Kondo’s (2009) explanation of blending with the host society, as elaborated in the introduction, they do not feel the pressure by the Vietnamese or Cantonese to blend with their societies. In fact, I suggest that they make a conscious choice to remain flexible and adjust to their interlocutor’s social surface. While the Teochew-Vietnamese take pride in their ethnicity, in practice the Teochew-Vietnamese chose not to disclose their ethnic identity, unless it is questioned. They choose to speak the preferred language of their interlocutor, because they find it useful, it increases their mobility and their speaking skills of the foreign language.

The construction of identity is an ongoing and open-ended process, and it may be constructed and deconstructed. It encompasses both the understanding of the self and the imposed identity of the other (Kondo, 2009). The real feeling of the Teochew-Vietnamese lays close to their ethnic heritage, but they use language to perform other identities. Communication strategies are to either converge to or diverge from the outgroup languages, while either maintaining or abandoning their ethnic language (Dragojevic et al., 2015; Tong, Hong, Lee, & Chiu, 1999). The Teochew-Vietnamese use the strategy to converge to the other groups. As the Teochew language is slowly disappearing, and generation four, who are the majority group, are not speaking nor seeing the usefulness of the ethnic language. I may state that the Teochew-Vietnamese are abandoning their ethnic language, while maintaining their ethnic identity. I suggest that this is the new marker of the ethnic Teochew identity. They are able to maintain their ethnic heritage successfully in an unconventional manner. I use unconventional, because identity is essentialized in the dominant discourse, where the loss of heritage language equals the loss of ethnic heritage and identity. The open-endedness of the construction of identity makes it possible to maintain ethnic heritage, while deconstructing and constructing markers of that ethnic heritage.

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5 “I will never work for the Vietnamese”: Shifting and ambiguous interethnic relationships in the business and occupational sector

This section focuses on the mundane life of the Teochew-Vietnamese. The occupation is the cornerstone of the everyday environment of the individual. Of all Teochew-Vietnamese I have interviewed who are not students, 57% owns a business or works in a family business, 31% works for others and 12% never had an occupation and remains housewives. In these numbers, I included the past occupation of those who are retired. Of those who work, the majority works for a foreign owned company, mostly Taiwanese. Notice that only a small fraction of the Teochew-Vietnamese workforce actually works at a Vietnamese company. The numbers may not represent the Teochew-Vietnamese population in Saigon, because the sample size is too small. However, it gives an indication of how unpopular it is to work for a Vietnamese company.

It is important to explore the occupation because people built relations in the spheres of education, work and business. These relations affect the social life. These three spheres have in common that they force people to interact for a span of time, they are part of the daily lives of the people and they lay outside of the family context. Within these spheres, I perceive it most likely social relations are created. The relations built in these spheres reflect boundary building and crossing practices. First, I explain what it means to the Teochew-Vietnamese to be self-employed and how self-employment is a means to resist assimilation with the Vietnamese. Then, I describe the interethnic relations in doing business, and how stereotyping the other is used to confirm the Teochew-Vietnamese identity. At last, I present a case of a family business to show that the multi-ethnic environment in the family business does not affect ethnic cohesion within the Teochew-Vietnamese community.

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5.1 The meaning of self-employment versus employment

The first clue I found of the aversion against working for others was that the confidants state that the PTD usually do not pursue higher education. The time spend on education is better spent earning money. It costs money rather than bringing in money. In their perception, a degree is only needed when applying for work. This, however, is not needed, because most Teochew-Vietnamese families own a business. Furthermore, they do not understand why one would place so much effort in study, while one could also use this effort to start up a business. This section attempts to formulate the meaning behind self-employment for the Teochew-Vietnamese. The notion of working for another is being stigmatized among this community. However, the reality is full of contradictions. While many look down on working, there is a trend among generation four to opt for a job instead of being self-employed. Also, more and more Teochew-Vietnamese are following higher education. This section shows how the occupation and its transformation remain a representation of the Teochew-Vietnamese identity in Saigon.

5.1.1 Self-employment as the marker of PTD-identity

The Teochew-Vietnamese favour being self-employed, mainly, because it is connected to their cultural identity. The aversion against education and employment, at a personal level and at the level of the family unit, reflects that the Teochew-Vietnamese allocate their resources in self-employment. Entrepreneurship seems to give more a sense of security and agency than working outside of the family context. This idea is evoked from the Teochew- Vietnamese heritage. As many other overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, their forefathers were sojourners, who came to Vietnam to free themselves and their families from poverty. China’s economy was highly developed commercially compared to the host countries. The Chinese filled in the entrepreneurial gaps in these countries (Y. Wu, 1983). The Chinese possess qualities that endorse the progressive expansion of the Chinese businesses in Southeast Asia. These qualities were a) the inclination to save and reinvest, which secures internal financing, b) a strong devotion to secure better education for their children, which would be applied to carry on the business with the means of upgrading the business and c) a

54 strong sense of loyalty and obligation to provide and take care of family members (Y. Wu, 1983).

Point b., however, seems not be reflected in the behaviour of the Teochew- Vietnamese. During the French colonisation education was primarily for the French. Schools for the locals existed, but were controlled by the French authorities with the intention to train students for administrative occupations in such a way that they would not threaten the superiority. The number of schools was low, only 3 percent of the population has completed primary school in 1920s (London, 2011). Because of this the quality of Vietnamese education was low. Most Teochew-Vietnamese do not believe that Vietnamese education is able to provide the students the necessary skill-set to apply in the ‘real’ world in order to upgrade the business. The only thing valuable in education is mathematics. Without mastering mathematics, the Teochew-Vietnamese believe one cannot successfully run a business.

The expansion of the Chinese companies in Vietnam during the French colonialism administers a sense of pride for the PTD. Business has become part of their ethnic identity and perceived culture. The sense of pride is repeatedly expressed by all Teochew-Vietnamese. Because the PTD outperform the Vietnamese, the Chinese business mind-set is a cultural marker for superiority in comparison to the Vietnamese culture. In this vein, the Teochew’s devaluing of education in mainstream Vietnamese society may indicate their resistance to assimilate to Vietnamese culture, and their efforts to protect or enrich their own business culture. Business as the marker of the PTD identity influences the daily practices through boundary building. Yat, generation four, works at a Japanese company, owns an online blog and grew up in an entrepreneurial family stated:

In business, when you are Teochew, people will trust you. I think that the Teochew in Vietnam are proud of their trustworthiness. The Cantonese trust the Teochew, and we trust the Chinese. For example, when I bought a scooter at a Chinese shop, the owner said that I can take the bike and pay tomorrow, because I am Chinese. With the Vietnamese, he will not. I think that the Chinese are well educated at home, the grandparents teach the people well and when they grow up, they become good people. For example, we don't cheat people, because otherwise you will be cheated back. We follow Buddhism.

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Notice that trustworthiness in business is part of the ethnic identity of the PTD, which translates into the trust within this community and distrust towards people outside of the community, the Vietnamese. This separation of the PTD and the Vietnamese seem to be reflected in the practices. The trustworthiness of the PTD originates from the norms and values of the community, which are passed on to the younger generation by parents and grandparents. The note that grandparents play a role in the morality of the Chinese suggests that the morality and values are culturally inherited. As the Vietnamese do not own this quality in their heritage, according to the Teochew-Vietnamese, it creates a boundary between them and the PTD. In the book written by Vietnamese sociologist Ngoc Phan (2013), he explains the Vietnamese culture in opposition to the Chinese culture. He describes the Chinese culture as one without limits; in art, literature, wealth, architecture and personal status the Chinese aim for the extremes and extraordinary, while the Vietnamese are humble and simplistic. The Vietnamese view the Chinese as extremist, while the Chinese view the Vietnamese as being lazy and inferior.

5.1.2 Employment, the choice of the disadvantaged

Among the ethnic Chinese the phenomenon of the Chinese family business is common in Southeast Asia. In these businesses, the Chinese combine ownership and management and distribute parts of the ownership and tasks over the family members. The familial cohesiveness and trust result in the preference of hiring family members over external professionals. The absence of bureaucratic decision making makes the decisions made in Chinese family businesses less formal and faster (Weidenbaum, 1996). Trust is a key factor for the ethnic Chinese. They prefer keeping their finances private, and business protocols are rarely disclosed. During my fieldwork, I have had difficulty generalizing an in-depth view on the family businesses of my confidants. They would only disclose superficial information about the business and their descriptions remain both vague and simple. Here follows a conversation with Sam, generation three who is a free-lancer in computer services and works in the family business that trades in gas.

Q: “What do you do for a living?” Sam: “I’m jobless.”

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Q: “Oh, have you done anything before you became jobless?” Sam: “I’ve always been jobless.” Q: “So, you have never worked?” Sam: “I sometimes help my family.” Q: “What kind of business is it?” Sam: “It has something to do with gas. I don’t have an official function there.” Q: “Can you elaborate?” Sam: “The infrastructure of gas, I sometimes help delivering. Nothing much.” Q: “I don’t understand.” Sam: “Gas needs to be sold and delivered, that’s all you need to understand, basically.”

Like other confidants, he did not want to disclose the revenue stream and business protocols of the family business. The Teochew-Vietnamese seem to dislike disclosing information on personal finances towards outsiders. Bear in mind that Sam would at first state that he is jobless, while he in fact runs his own business and assist at his family’s business. Many Teochew-Vietnamese who claim they are unemployed are in fact self-employed or employed by their family members. One must not confuse this with the unwillingness to disclose the financial situation. As a matter of fact, being unemployed in the Teochew-Vietnamese context means that they are not employed by people outside the family context. At the start of the fieldwork, I made the mistake by asking the Teochew-Vietnamese: “Where do you work?” This question reflects the assumption that they have a job. To assume that they are “working for another” has been perceived as an insult. Several Teochew-Vietnamese have defended themselves by exclaiming that they are in fact unemployed. Some say it jokingly, others take it seriously. The better question is: “How is business going?” Working for others is being stigmatized by the Teochew-Vietnamese. Working does not bring security, agency and shame. Disadvantage theory on ethnic entrepreneurship suggests that limited opportunities motivate ethnic minorities to pursue self-employment (Masurel, Nijkamp, Tastan, & Vindigni, 2002). Discrimination may lead to racial obstacles and the disadvantaged mobility, mainly in education and language, lead to obstacles in the market. Self-employment is a strategy for ethnic groups to support themselves while exploiting opportunities within niches that indigenous people cannot fill in. Disadvantage theory, however, suggests that self-employment is not a signifier of success but rather an alternative to unemployment. The Teochew-Vietnamese feel neither 57 marginalized nor disadvantaged, and self-employment is seen as the most effective means to accumulate capital to become successful. In the Vietnamese context, work is precarious. Work is poorly paid and households cannot be supported with the wage. Work is also insecure and unprotected. Being employed is seen as a marginalized status. The disadvantaged position is associated with employed people, those who do not have the means to invest and lack intelligence to run businesses. Hence, employment is shameful. It is an insult to ask someone where they work because the underlying assumption tells that this person is in a disadvantaged position. Wealth through self-employment is part of the imagined cultural identity which the Teochew-Vietnamese aim to confirm. The pursued of financial entrepreneurial success may be an indication of resistance against assimilation with the ‘inferior’ Vietnamese community.

5.1.3 Reasons to pursue education and employment

The marker for intelligence in running businesses is changing. The confidants stated before that the PTD usually do not pursue education because it seems not useful. In reality, the PTD are more and more devoted to education. Through multiple educational reforms, education now is different from the education during the French colonialism. While the quality of Vietnamese education is still questioned and compared with education in Western countries, the Teochew-Vietnamese perceive education as a means to gain human capital in order to upgrade (family) businesses. This is in line with the characteristic associated with overseas Chinese as elaborated by Wu (1983). The quality improvement of Vietnamese education changed education from something useless to an instrument towards entrepreneurial success. As opposed to the older generations, generation four Teochew-Vietnamese generally pursue higher education. Gina, generation four, has stated that she studied Mechanical Engineering because her father owns a plastic mould manufacturing company. Her education has the sole purpose of adding value to the family business. The only valid reason for her to ever work is to work at a competitor and bring the knowledge home. She would never consider making a career out of it by “working for other people”. In my understanding, this means that knowledge is a valuable resource. Resources should be invested towards family businesses and not be shared with others, because investment in the family business is believed to lead to relatively more 58 financial capital for the family. In contrast, working for a salary is considered a ‘bad deal’, which is an indication of lack of wit. The following case confirms my understanding. Joshua, generation four, finished his bachelor in International Business, and is going to study marketing in . His aim is to generate knowledge and competence to start a business. His ultimate goal is to become rich. And he states that it is impossible to earn “big”, when “you work for another”, which to him is the same as “filling other people’s pockets”. Not only the attitude against education changed, also the attitude towards working for others changed. The Teochew-Vietnamese are slowly letting go of their entrepreneurial heritage and opt for a job instead. This way they are gaining autonomy from the family institution. There are several reasons why working for other people is increased in value and becomes pursued. First, foreign enterprises are erupting in Saigon with reasonable wages and benefits. This makes it inviting to work for such companies as work is not as precarious anymore. Second, many Teochew-Vietnamese dislike living in Vietnam and want to pursue a better live elsewhere. These people as discussed in Chapter 2 call themselves cosmopolitan. A higher education diploma would give them the mobility to move to such countries, earn a higher wage and better their livelihood. Third, the competition in business is high in Saigon. Ownership carries high risks, while the profit margin is declining due to supply and demand. This is because Saigon is a city with about 10 million residents. These three reasons make working for others desirable. People are starting to feel more secure by working, instead of owning a business. Notice that the Teochew-Vietnamese are more willing to work for foreign companies than for Vietnamese companies. Only one-third of the confidants who work are working for a Vietnamese company. This shows that there is a continuity of the cultural tradition for not wanting to work for Vietnamese. In fact, the prospect of leaving Vietnam by working for international companies emphasizes the distance between the Teochew- Vietnamese and the Vietnamese. The foreign companies my confidants work for are either Taiwanese or Japanese. Working for the Vietnamese is most scrutinized. The pay and benefits at Vietnamese companies is perceived to be low, and Vietnamese companies do not provide transnational opportunities. Taiwanese companies do not require a degree for Mandarin-speakers. Educational investment is limited and the pay and benefits are higher, thus more desirable than Vietnamese companies. Both Taiwan and Japan are associated with good business

59 ethics, while Vietnam is not. These ethics are comparable with the Teochew-Vietnamese or PTD ethics, hence those companies are perceived to be culturally superior to Vietnamese companies. Examples of such ethics are honesty and the hard-working mindset. The business culture is driving a wedge between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese, in the consideration of working in Vietnamese companies as a valid permanent career option. Reasons for the Teochew-Vietnamese to work for Vietnamese companies are to either gain capital, internally finance their business or to pay debt or gain experience and skills from a competitor to apply to their own business. These reasons are temporary in nature. The unwillingness to work for Vietnamese companies comes from the traditional idea that working is shameful. Despite the change in the attitude towards working and education in general, the Teochew-Vietnamese protect and maintain their identity by separating themselves from the Vietnamese in the occupational field.

5.2 Interethnic relations when doing business

This section describes the interethnic relations in the business context. The previous sections showed how the Teochew-Vietnamese return to the family unit after graduation. While doing business, the Teochew-Vietnamese still interact with members of the other groups. In the business context, interaction occurs between buyer and supplier. Naturally, the Teochew- Vietnamese are subject to these roles in trading. Due to the American war, the PTD have lost market territory. While, the PTD did manage to regain a prominent position in the Vietnamese market, the reality now is that the PTD are dependent on the Vietnamese to be profitable. In this section, I will be focusing on freelancers and family businesses. Big sized Teochew companies exist in Saigon, however, I do not belief that it draws a picture of the daily interaction between the average Teochew-Vietnamese and the other ethnic groups, since only a few of the Teochew-Vietnamese own big sized companies. Furthermore, these companies usually conduct business internationally.

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5.2.1 Stereotypes in business

In Saigon, the Teochew-Vietnamese have to deal with the Cantonese and the Vietnamese, and vice versa, when doing business. To have an idea of the perception of the Vietnamese and Cantonese-Vietnamese on doing business with Teochew-Vietnamese, I have gone to shops and restaurants in Cho Lon owned by either Vietnamese or Cantonese-Vietnamese. It must be added, that I do not disclose my ethnic identity to the Vietnamese nor the Cantonese-Vietnamese, in order to have less influence on the answer of the respondents. All three of the ethnic groups describe doing business with the Teochew-Vietnamese in a similar way. They all praise the honesty and fairness of the Teochew-Vietnamese. All of the respondents used the idiom one is one, two is two to describe the Teochew-Vietnamese. This means that the Teochew-Vietnamese are unambiguous, without embellishment, honest and unequivocal. Even respondents who have never done business with the Teochew-Vietnamese describe the Teochew-Vietnamese as such. It seems that the Teochew-Vietnamese hold the stereotype of being trustworthy, upright and fair. To understand small businesses in Saigon, I elaborate how business transactions usually go. Trading seems to be simple. A buyer buys goods from a supplier. Payment may occur in two ways. One is that the buyer pays for the goods once the goods are resold. Second is, the buyer pays for the goods upon reception. In the first way, the risk and ownership of the goods is placed on the supplier. Trustworthiness is required from the buyer, in that they will pay for the goods afterwards, or return the goods when they are not able to sell it. In the second way, the risk and ownership is placed on the buyer. The Teochew-Vietnamese praise the Cantonese-Vietnamese in their efficiency. Compared to the Vietnamese, the business transactions with the Cantonese-Vietnamese go smoothly and quickly. However, the Teochew-Vietnamese perceive the Cantonese as being selfish. Sam, generation three, explains:

But when [the Cantonese], for example, sell a glass for 10 currencies. When we buy it, and are unable to resell it, we feel stressed. The Cantonese do not care about our business. They will not feel stressed that we can’t sell the glass, nor will they give us discount. Never. They can only think of themselves. Us Teochew, we are a little bit different. We are traders and have this trader’s

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mindset and think about the market value. If the value is lower than expected, but we can still earn. We will adjust the prices. The Teochew are mindful about other’s circumstances and value long business relations.

The Teochew-Vietnamese believe that they aim for the collective profitability, which according to them is unknown by the Cantonese-Vietnamese. A Teochew idiom goes as follows: You can earn, I can earn, everyone is happy. This difference between the Teochew- Vietnamese and the Cantonese-Vietnamese seems to create a cultural boundary between the two ethnic groups. This boundary is created by the dominant discourse, notice the ‘self-other’ talk. The dominant discourse frames the identity in opposition of the other (Baumann, 1996; Keenoy et al., 2009). In contrast to the Cantonese-Vietnamese and the Teochew-Vietnamese, the dominant discourse is that the Vietnamese lack trustworthiness. Quang, generation three, states: “In your face, they will say one thing. And at your back they will say something else.” Hoc Kim, generation three, adds: “The Vietnamese are cheaters. They will take many supplies, as much as they want to. And they are not always able to sell it. So, they will not return your money and not even the supplies. And people start fighting about this.” In my understanding, this means that trustworthiness is a cultural difference as perceived by the Teochew-Vietnamese between the PTD and the Vietnamese. The perceived untrustworthiness of the Vietnamese is not only noted by the PTD. The Vietnamese themselves complain about untrustworthiness when speaking of business relations in the Saigonese society. A Vietnamese man gave me the following example. His neighbour owns a small supermarket, where he sells beer. A frequent customer, also Vietnamese, ordered a large number of crates of beer for a party. The shop owner and the customer agreed that unused beer may be sold back to the shop. After the party, the customer returned several crates. Later on, the shop owner found out that only the top crate contained beer. The other crates were filled with beer bottles filled with sand. As the Vietnamese do not consider their own being trustworthy, untrustworthiness of the Vietnamese seems stereotypical in Saigon. Stereotypes are common in multi-ethnic environments. This separates the different communities from each other. Compare this, with the fundamental differences found between the Cantonese and the other Chinese in the US by Lan (2012) and Zhao (2010). These perceived fundamental differences have led to conflicts 62 through stereotyping and stigmatization in between the Chinese in US. The situation for the Teochew-Vietnamese is different. On the surface, it seems that they get along well with the other groups. The enmity between the groups is silent, as the people understand that they are mutually dependent. In the perspective of the Teochew-Vietnamese in opposition to the “untrustworthy” Vietnamese, Quang explains: “We live in Vietnam. We can’t do business, if we exclude the Vietnamese.” This is the demotic discourse. There is a disparity between the dominant and demotic discourse, as explained by Baumann (1996). On the one hand, the Teochew-Vietnamese view the Vietnamese as unreliable business partners. On the other hand, they depend on the Vietnamese when doing business.

5.2.2 Interpersonal relationships

Compared to the situation before the American war, the Vietnamese now control a much greater share of the market. It has become crucial for the PTD to speak Vietnamese. As the PTD are adjusting to the changing business environment, Cantonese as lingua franca in the business world of Saigon is being pushed aside by the Vietnamese language. Since generation three and four are fluent in speaking Vietnamese, Cantonese is not necessary for transactions to flow smoothly. As the Cantonese language is becoming less and less relevant, the group cohesiveness between the PTD seem to lose strength. This shows that the dominant discourse, which essentializes and segregates communities, does not reflect in the real life. Business is a context that forms a new ethnic boundary-crossing community, a space where people from different groups co-operate. The dual discursive competence shows how the formation of communities is contextual and it is a complex and on-going process. However, business relations in Saigon seem to be superficial. It is not common for friendships to grow out of business relations. For the generation one and two Teochew- Vietnamese seems to be more relevant than for the younger generations. Guanxi is the establishment of a connection between two individuals, which allows a two-sided flow of personal or social transactions. Fundamental is the reciprocal character of such a relationship, both parties should benefit from the transactions (Yeung & Tung, 1996). Generation one makes most used of guanxi, business relations seem to rather grow out of friendship, than the other way around. Diasporic Chinese are known to be successful in the host country through an extensive use of networks (Redding, 1995; Weidenbaum, 1996; Y. Wu, 1983). Through the 63 huiguan many Teochew-Vietnamese would establish cohesive group friendships. The huiguan provides a network of people to extract external financing or human capital from, this may be in the form of a partnership. Reliability and trust are means for the transactions to go smoothly. In order to create these interpersonal obligation-bonding relationships a strong set of ethics, as trustworthiness, is needed. Losing trust is seen as losing face, and would be extensively disgraced which may severely impair future business dealings (Redding, 1995). However, in today’s terms, the huiguan seems less and less relevant. The younger generations rely on internal financing or external financing from the bank to build businesses. This way, new businesses are not built on friendships and the Teochew-Vietnamese do not feel the need to create friendships and rely on guanxi to fund their businesses. Relations, such as the buyer-supplier relations are business, and do not interfere with the social lives of the Teochew-Vietnamese. Therefore, I had trouble finding data on interpersonal relations in interethnic business transactions. The confidants state that there is no relation, it is only a matter of receiving orders, sending goods and receiving payment, as in the perspective of a supplier. Personal relations do not occur in these business transactions. In relatively larger businesses, most transactions are done by employees, such as the account manager. The owner of the business would not interfere with it. Furthermore, because of the internet, many Teochew-Vietnamese order goods from wholesale websites. The electronical orders eliminate the need for personal interaction. This shows that the importance of the Teochew-Vietnamese community is diminishing within the business context, because the importance of guanxi is vanishing. This may indicate further assimilation with the Vietnamese. However, guanxi may also be seen as form of mutual exploitation and is highly instrumental. Even when the need for guanxi is taken away, the Teochew-Vietnamese seem to be successful in maintaining their cultural identity of being reliable and trustworthy. They treat these ethics with seriousness. This shows the complexity of identity construction, because the enactment of cultural practices is contextual.

5.4 A family business case

This section gives a close-up view of a Teochew-Vietnamese family business focusing on interethnic relationships on the work-floor of a Teochew-Vietnamese man called Trien. Trien, generation two, is a board-member of the Nghia An huiguan. He owns a family business that 64 specializes in the manufacturing stainless-steel. He is the patriarch of the family and the business, all his adult children and their spouses have managing positions in the business. He, furthermore, has 100 employees in manufacturing and 10 employees working in the office. Trien invited me to have a look at his factory. There he states that none of his employees are PTD, they are either Khmer-Vietnamese, the indigenous people of South Vietnam or Kinh, the mainstream Vietnamese. There are little Khmer-Vietnamese in Saigon, most of them live along the Mekong Delta working in agriculture, they are not the focus of this research. All employees in the office are Vietnamese and the manufacturing workers are either Khmer or Kinh. Trien explain his lack of Teochew-Vietnamese employees as:

These people apply for a job with a CV and interview. Of course, they are Vietnamese. I want to employ Teochew, but where can I find them? They don’t come here to apply for a job. They usually stay home and work with their family.

As a board-member of Nghia An huiguan, Trien has a big Teochew-Vietnamese social network. A previous study has shown that diasporic Chinese firms in Southeast Asia have the tendency to, as much as possible, engage with people of the similar culture, in other words people from the same clan or speak the same dialect (Weidenbaum, 1996). This is shown in his desire to employ fellow Teochew. Despite his network and his desire to employ Teochew- Vietnamese, even he seems unable to hire Teochew-Vietnamese. This difficulty shows that the Teochew-Vietnamese indeed rarely apply for jobs. After the tour in his factory, Trien took me to another office. This office is situated in the house of his eldest son. Four women are sitting there working behind their desks. However, the office space is in the living room of the house. I quickly notice that all these women speak Teochew. One is his daughter-in-law, three are daughters of his close friends and one, who was not present at the time, is the Vietnamese daughter-in-law of his best friend. The latter fluently speaks Teochew. Trien interacts with them in a seemingly fatherly way. He smiles at them and asks them to accompany him for lunch in a restaurant. He acted differently in the factory, where he had an authoritative demeanour. The reason for separating the Teochew-Vietnamese from the Vietnamese is, according to Trien: “This place is much more convenient than the factory, it’s closer to their homes. Why wouldn’t I let them work here?” 65

Notice that Trien actually has Teochew-Vietnamese employees, but they are not treated as such. That might be the reason that he declared before that he has no Teochew- Vietnamese employees. The Teochew-Vietnamese work in a different, more convenient setting and they have more flexible working-hours. They can run their personal errands during working hours, such as cooking, grocery shopping, and picking up children. These are all benefits the Teochew-Vietnamese have, which the Vietnamese do not have. Only the Vietnamese wife of the son of his friend is included, because she is married to a Teochew- Vietnamese and speaks Teochew fluently and is a relative of his friend. These employees are also hired in an informal way, as opposed of the Vietnamese who are hired through the formal way. The Teochew-Vietnamese employees are spatially separated from the Vietnamese employees, except for the children of Trien, who are tasked to oversee the work. The non-relatives are not needed to work for their family business. The protectiveness of the parents is in this case reflected in the sense that the parents have arranged for them a job under a trusted friend. That friend, in this case Trien, would make sure that they are working in a flexible and safe environment. Therefore, this is not perceived as a disadvantaged position. This case shows that working closely with the Vietnamese created a new boundary. One in which the Teochew-Vietnamese are more trusted and cared for than the Vietnamese employees. The ones working in the same space with the Vietnamese have an authoritative, non-personal relationship with the Vietnamese. This really shows that the Teochew- Vietnamese strategically make use of the Vietnamese environment, but resist assimilation with the Vietnamese through ethnic segregation.

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6 “I’m going to the pagoda, wanna join?”: The reflection of interethnic relations in cultural and leisure practices

Together with Jessica, generation three, I went to Binh Duong to visit nine . Of these pagodas four are Chinese and five are Vietnamese. We went there in a group of ten people. Jessica and her boyfriend are Teochew-Vietnamese. Her boyfriend’s friend, who tagged along is Cantonese-Vietnamese. Three of the women in the group were Jessica’s colleagues. Two of them are Teochew-Vietnamese and one is Cantonese-Vietnamese. These women also brought friends: two other Cantonese-Vietnamese women and another Teochew-Vietnamese woman. In total, there were five Teochew-Vietnamese (including me) and five Cantonese- Vietnamese. This case shows that religious activities are in fact social activities. Research on religious activities from churchgoers has shown that religious activities lead to social resources, such as an increased social network and instrumental support (Ellison & George, 1994). The setting of pagodas may differ from churches, but I belief that religious activities in Saigon also brings people together. Buddhism is the dominant religion in Saigon, and many Saigonese view religious activities as leisure. A question as: “I’m going to the pagoda, wanna join?” is frequently asked in the daily lives of many Saigonese. Friendships grow out of daily interaction between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the other ethnic groups. Discrepancies between the cultural practices and values form boundaries between the ethnic groups in the dominant discourse. These discrepancies lead to stereotyping and the belief that it is impossible to form interethnic friendships. The Teochew- Vietnamese are full of contradictions. In reality, they have multiple interethnic relations. They adopt the other groups’ ritualistic customs, which at the same time are seen as absolutely different from theirs. And there seems to be hybridization of cultures within the Saigonese society, because the Vietnamese participate in ethnic Chinese rituals. The social nature of religion makes such hybridization of cultures possible. First, I elaborate the stereotypes the Vietnamese and Cantonese hold in the eyes of the Teochew, which are merely discursive. Then, I point out some differences in religious and cultural practices between the PTD and the Vietnamese and the way the different cultural

67 practices are morphing. Next, I am showing that the cultural boundary cross-overs are part of the everyday social life in Saigon. And I end with remarks about ethnic cultural continuity.

6.1 Cross-overs in rituals and cultural practices

Many Teochew-Vietnamese have pointed out that critical cultural differences between the PTD and the Vietnamese make it impossible to form friendships between these ethnic groups. They are different in the religious and cultural sphere. This section shows how these boundaries are crossed, and how practices which were labelled typically ‘Chinese’ are accessible and performed by all ethnic groups. One of the mentioned differences in the religious sphere is that the Vietnamese are less superstitious than the PTD. The PTD fear anything that is associated with bad luck. Funerals in particular are considered contaminating. Phuong, generation two, explains: “Some spirits will follow you to other’s home and haunt the children. When their babies won’t stop crying, they will put the blame on you.” Some Teochew-Vietnamese claim that infant deaths are caused by such haunting. To the Vietnamese, funerals are not contaminating. Family, friends and neighbours rush to the funeral to help, and this is considered respectful. Nevertheless, the Vietnamese do have superstitions. When driving on the road with our mopeds, Hiro, a Vietnamese man, and I passed a funeral. The Teochew-Vietnamese would consider this unlucky. But Hieu surprisingly smiled and said: “Oh, we passed a funeral, that’s lucky!” He explains that it is considered lucky, because those people have “very bad luck”. Their bad luck is at such height, that it attracts our smaller bad luck when we are passing by. It is comparable with gravity, where bigger mass will attract mass. Superstition is a way of the people in the Saigonese society to interpret events in their daily lives. Every event is evaluated, and the behaviour is adjusted to this interpretation. Interpretation differs in each ethnic community, through cultural ideas and values. People attribute meanings to events and other people’s behaviour through cultural interpretation (Miller, 1984). As interpretations may differ between cultures, expectations of others behaviour and reactions on these interpretations differ. In the case of visiting funerals, it differs culturally what behaviour is expected from the visitors and what is considered respectful. The differences in what is expected and what is done may cause tension between 68 members of different ethnic communities. To create mutual understanding between two ethnic communities, frequent interaction is needed. It is asserted that individuals who have been exposed to sufficient diversity are able to understand or predict other’s behaviour (Miller, 1984). The Teochew-Vietnamese seem to be successful in assimilating to other cultures. They seem to have the ability to accept different ways of thinking, adjust to them, without adopting them. On a traditional level, my confidants have noted differences in ritualistic practices. One of such examples is the wedding ceremony. Differences are the content of the dowry, the traditional wedding gowns, or rituals such as the ceremony. The Vietnamese do not practice the tea ceremony. One thing they have in common is that the groom picks up the bride at her parental home. However, at Chinese weddings, the parents of the groom are never present during this moment. The PTD view this moment as a private one, where the bride’s family is saying goodbye to their daughter. When parents of the groom come, they would disturb this intimate moment. The Vietnamese do not have this rule to them and the parents of the groom are expected to come over to show respect. Multiple confidants claim that the ritualistic practices are mutually exclusive. However, when dealing with these differences in cultural practices, the Saigonese seem to be flexible. Before the wedding, there is a moment when both parties negotiate the dowry and organization of the wedding. Cultural practices are also discussed. In the end, both parties are able to compromise. That leads to a bricolage wedding ceremony, which contains both Teochew and Cantonese or Vietnamese elements and even elements that would be considered typically Western, such as the white wedding gown. After witnessing several of such culturally hybrid practices, I suggest that boundary creation and crossing can be seen in the performance of culture. In an interethnic social relationship, each has to deal with cultural practices of other groups. The Saigonese seem to be exceptional, because they seem to be able to negotiate the point of views from each group. After which, all communities seem flexible enough to compromise by dismissing some of their own ideas or practices and adjusting to or adopting the ideas and practices of the other.

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6.2 The social nature of religion and cultural adaptation

Religion is taken very seriously by the Saigonese. Most of my confidants visit temples every month. The visit to temples can be seen as a day out during the weekends. Regularly, the Saigonese travel far to visit temples. Such trips are often extensive, the Saigonese organize it with family, friends or neighbours. This solution is fun and cost efficient. This section explores how the social nature of religion induces mutual cultural adaptation. does not know ethnical constraints and people of all backgrounds are welcome in any pagoda. And the pagoda-goers do not seem to care about the ethnic origin of the pagodas. A woman called My, generation two, stated: “[Pagodas] all have the same function. I don’t care if it is Hakka, Vietnamese or what. […] It doesn’t matter what language is used, it’s good luck anyway.” Buddhism seems to surpass all ethnical constraints. Thim frequently goes to pagodas. She usually goes with friends or people in the neighbourhood of different ethnicities. One day, she invited me to some pagodas together with Co Ba, Vietnamese, and Mui, Cantonese-Vietnamese. First, we went to a Cantonese pagoda. Mui went to a stall and bought everyone a package with candles, rice, paper money and loose pieces of paper. Mui, then, rushed inside and the others followed. After burning joysticks at every deity, she went to an altar with a statue of a tiger. She proceeds by telling us to give our candles. She lit the candles. Then she took the loose pieces of paper and started pounding them with her feet nine times. She told us to do the same. Then we had to throw the rice. Pet the tiger. And throw the paper money in a fire. I asked Thim what this all meant. She answered:

I have no idea. This is what the Cantonese like to do. [..] No, [I wouldn’t practice these rituals if Mui wasn’t here], I don’t know about these rituals. And us Teochew, we are not that superstitious as the Cantonese. I don’t necessarily believe this would bring extra luck. […] But she’s here, and it’s fun to try.

Co Ba was standing in front of an altar with her hands folded in praying position and her eyes closed. Thim and Mui stood in a distance and laughed. I asked them why they were laughing. Mui answered:

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Co Ba is atheist. She is a Northerner; her family is communist. Communists don’t use religion, but look at her praying. […] We are friends for many years and we like to go to temples. Sometimes, Co Ba joins. Initially, because she was bored. But after all these years, she is starting to believe in it.

After this inquiry, I asked Co Ba if she was religious. She answered:

If it’s lucky, I might as well do it. [..] My family isn’t religious. I don’t know what I should do. But, if I go to the temple, any little bit of luck helps. And if it doesn’t bring luck, it doesn’t hurt either.

This example clearly depicts the boundary crossing practices in traditions and religion. The three women acknowledge the differences between the rituals and religious beliefs. However, they follow each other’s customs. The idea that interethnic friendships are not viable due to discrepancies in cultural practices seem merely discursive. In reality, the Teochew-Vietnamese and the other ethnic groups influence each other on the cultural level.

6.3 Stereotypes and interethnic relations

This section shows how the Teochew-Vietnamese negotiate their position in the sphere of social relations. The environment consists of multiple institutions out of which they choose people to befriend. The Teochew-Vietnamese use stereotypes to evaluate the Vietnamese and the Cantonese-Vietnamese. However, the evaluations through stereotypes do not seem to influence their choice of friends in practice, but boundaries are placed on cultural norms and values.

6.3.1 The Cantonese stereotype

On a discursive level, the Teochew-Vietnamese stereotype the Cantonese-Vietnamese as people who ‘go out too much’, like to show off and spend abundantly for egoistic purposes. By going out, I mean activities that do not take place at home, such as going shopping, exercising, going out for coffee etc., this excludes work and school. When raising their children, Teochew- feel the need to keep their children inside. They act

71 tense and disapproving, when their children go out. The Teochew-Vietnamese categorize going out too frequently as ‘bad’ behaviour. A good person stays at home and utilizes time to educate oneself, helping the family by doing chores or earn money. Going out is seen as an inutile practice, and a lack of care and love for the family. The family is the most important institution for the Teochew-Vietnamese. Staying home or staying with the family is perceived to be one of the elements of being Teochew-Vietnamese. When asking my confidants about the Cantonese-Vietnamese, each one of them have mentioned the playfulness of the Cantonese-Vietnamese. Take a look at the following segment. Quang explains: “I think the Cantonese really like to play around. They borrow money and spend it on anything, to do business, to play, to eat and drink. Us Teochew, we don’t borrow money for nonsense.” Quang, generation three, uses ‘self-other’ talk to describe the Cantonese, which shows that the playfulness and wastefulness of the Cantonese are characteristics that set them apart from the Teochew-Vietnamese. When regarding the wastefulness, the Teochew-Vietnamese praise modesty and frugality. Some state that rich Teochew-Vietnamese cannot be differentiated from the poor or the criminals. They wear cargo shorts and they are likely to hold a flip phone or an old Nokia in their hands rather than the newest smartphone. During fieldwork, I have encountered some of such Teochew-Vietnamese. At first glance, the social class of the Teochew-Vietnamese indeed seem ambiguous. As opposed to the Cantonese, the Teochew-Vietnamese self-identify as hard-working people. I have noticed this hard-working mind-set among some Teochew-Vietnamese. One case is with Duc and Minh, generation three. I went to the pre-wedding photography of this couple. Duc is a camera repairman on a freelance basis. Duc received a phone call from a client, who asked him to come and work. Knowing that he could earn money, Duc requested the camera crew to finish the pre-wedding shoot quickly. To my surprise, Minh encouraged him to go work by telling him to hurry there. I asked Minh why she let him go. She replied: “Why should he stay and play with me, if he has the chance to earn extra? He works hard, he knows how to save money. This is what I love about him.” Dismissing social activities in order to earn money is considered a according to the Teochew-Vietnamese. The Cantonese are said to lack this characteristic. The Cantonese-Vietnamese lifestyle is related to selfishness, inutile practices, lack of care of others and wastefulness. In other words, the Cantonese-Vietnamese are perceived to be self-centred, while disregarding the collective. 72

Many Teochew-Vietnamese express that the Teochew-Vietnamese cannot get along with the Cantonese-Vietnamese socially. They fear that the Cantonese-Vietnamese would seduce them into improper and narcistic behaviour. It is perceived to be better to avoid socializing with the Cantonese-Vietnamese in order to avoid their bad influence. This shows that there is a tension within the PTD identity. On the one hand, the Cantonese-Vietnamese are considered better than Vietnamese and equal to the Teochew-Vietnamese; on the other hand, they are criticized for their perceived problematic values and behaviour. Because they are PTD, they are expected to have a similar culture as the Teochew-Vietnamese. One of the qualities of the diasporic Chinese is their frugal lifestyle. The diasporic Chinese are known for their modest consumption and high rates of saving in order to reinvest in their businesses (Weidenbaum, 1996). Here, the hedonistic and wasteful behaviour of the Cantonese- Vietnamese is perceived to be an anomaly. In other words, the Cantonese-Vietnamese should have known better and therefore are scrutinized.

6.3.2 The Vietnamese stereotype

Moving on to the stereotypes of the Vietnamese, they are perceived to be lazy, selfish, unintelligent and meddlers. Many state that the Vietnamese suffer from lazy disease, the Vietnamese do not pursue “the best”. They always invest minimal effort and underperform. Many Teochew-Vietnamese who either employ or work with the Vietnamese express their frustration about their laziness. When possible, the Teochew-Vietnamese try to employ others. Yat, generation four, started a blog about technology products. The revenue stream comes through clicks on the links in the articles that refer to products that are advertised. This blog is written in English, but because Yat’s English writing skills are low, he hires text writers. He states that the Vietnamese writers are lazy; they demand high prices, but return low value. In his experience, they tend to copy texts from other blogs or scamp their work. Instead, he hires writers from Japan or the , because they ask for reasonable prices and perform reasonable work. This way, the Teochew-Vietnamese perceive the Vietnamese to be lazy and calculating. This characteristic frustrates the Teochew-Vietnamese. They do not want to befriend such people. Another stereotype, the Vietnamese carry, is that they are unintelligent. In one occasion, I was having a conversation with Khan, generation three. Two Vietnamese women 73 next to us were trying to involve us in their conversation. Khan turned to me and said: “The Vietnamese only talk about rubbish. I don’t want to spend time listening to them. They are not like us Teochew, who talk about interesting subjects of importance.” Khan is clearly annoyed and places their “uninteresting” discussion as typically Vietnamese. Teochew- Vietnamese state that the Vietnamese love to point at other people’s wrongdoings and gossip, while they are being the most hypocrite of all. This is the next stereotype; the Vietnamese are gossipy and meddlers. Another perception that the Teochew-Vietnamese have is that the Vietnamese are wasteful, much like the Cantonese-Vietnamese, as opposed to the Teochew frugality. Many Teochew-Vietnamese note that the Vietnamese like to use luxury items, for example the newest iPhones, while they cannot afford it, or they waste on alcohol and coffee. Interestingly, it seems that the Vietnamese also became a tool for the Teochew- Vietnamese to construct their own identity at the discursive level. Being Teochew means possessing all qualities that the Vietnamese and Cantonese-Vietnamese do not have, i.e. hard-working, trustworthy, smart, frugal, etc. This shows that culture of the self is defined by the negative portrayal of the culture of the other. The ethnic identity is a relational term and constructed on the perceived significant differences between the self and the other (Barth, 1998; Baumann, 1996). The construction of the identity is drawn out of the ‘self-other’ talk (Keenoy et al., 2009). This way, the Teochew-Vietnamese perceive themselves as more ‘Chinese’ than the Cantonese-Vietnamese. It is suggested that migrant groups who are ethnically related to the dominant society are confronted by more cultural pressure to assimilate (Tsuda, 2000). The ethnic relationship of the Brazilian-Japanese leads to higher pressure to assimilate in Japan in comparison to the non-ethnically Japanese immigrants. The Cantonese-Vietnamese would be the dominant society within the PTD in Cho Lon. However, the Teochew-Vietnamese pressure the Cantonese-Vietnamese to adhere to their constructed culture of the PTD, while they are pressured by the Cantonese-Vietnamese to adapt in other ways, such as language. I suggest that ethnically related minorities in a host society simultaneously pressure each other to adhere to a constructed joint identity. Moreover, the ethnic identity knows many nuances, being PTD may have a different meaning for the Teochew-Vietnamese than for the Cantonese-Vietnamese.

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6.3.3 Accommodation within the Saigonese society

The construction of the identity through ‘self-other’ talk, however, does not explain why the Teochew-Vietnamese seem to detest the Vietnamese. For this, I need to show, that the Vietnamese themselves hold the same stereotypes against fellow-Vietnamese. However, this does not apply to all Vietnamese. It applies to the Northern Vietnamese, who settled in Saigon after the reunification of Vietnam. Southerners consider themselves as one people separated from the Northerners. Some confidants have theorized that the Southerners are culturally different from the Northerners, because South Vietnam was part of the Khmer empire, the Khmer Krom being to indigenous people. Because of the perceived heavy influence by the Khmer culture, Southerners cannot be placed in the same category as the Northerners. The reason for the stigmatization of Northerners is due to the negative attitude of the Southerners against the Vietnamese government and the memories of the tyrannizing Northerners, when they established in Saigon. The problem for the PTD, after the American war, is that they were unable to differentiate between the Southerners and the Northerners. Most of the PTD at that time were unable to understand Vietnamese to differentiate the accents and were spatially segregated from the Vietnamese. Generation one and two are traumatized by the anti- Chinese policies and have expressed that it is safer to generalize about all Vietnamese, then to be put-upon by one. The generalization and distrust towards the Vietnamese may emerge from feelings of fear and vulnerability and a perceived threat of the enemy within, due to the ambiguity of the identity of the Vietnamese. The resistance against the Vietnamese culture has been present before the American war, however, alienation may have grown after Vietnam’s state discriminatory actions, which has led to discursive outings of ‘hatred’ against the Vietnamese. Compare the resistance of the Teochew-Vietnamese to assimilate with the Vietnamese with the situation for the Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jews in northern Jerusalem. Shilhav (Shilhav, 1984) showed that the Haredi segregate themselves because of the desire to maintain cultural dominance in a specific area and the desire to avoid interaction with other groups. They concentrate economies in such a way that they are self-providing. Likewise, the PTD have managed to self-segregate from the Vietnamese by establishing a fortified settlement, Cho Lon as explained in section 3.1. The PTD were also able to concentrate Vietnam’s economy in Cho Lon. The desire to avoid the

75 outgroup is also reflected in the attitude of the Teochew-Vietnamese. The Vietnamese culture is inferior, frequent contact may negatively influence the Teochew-Vietnamese community. Different from the Haredi, the PTD have lost territory in Cho Lon to the Vietnamese, forcing them to interact. Chapter 5 clearly shows that the Teochew-Vietnamese became highly dependent and affected by the Vietnamese. Despite the negative stereotypes the Vietnamese hold in the eyes of the Teochew-Vietnamese, daily interaction seems to flow smoothly. Many Teochew-Vietnamese explain that they want to avoid conflicts with colleagues, neighbours, employees and classmates, and thus need to be more forgiving about the cultural differences. Wastefulness or playfulness of others is harmless, as long as it does not influence them personally. In contrast, the Haredi have a fear of interrelationships, because these may be agents for transferring social and cultural values. Their relationships with the outgroup is built on minimal and culturally neutral interactions (Shilhav, 1984). In many occasions, Teochew-Vietnamese have advised me to just smile and nod, when the Vietnamese are talking. I have seen this behaviour in reality. The Vietnamese seem friendly and interested in the lives of others. Regularly, when the Vietnamese ask Teochew- Vietnamese open questions, the Teochew-Vietnamese respond by nodding, smiling and saying yes, while slowly walking away. On the surface, it seems that they have a friendly relation with each other. Many Teochew-Vietnamese are trying to avoid interaction in a non- aggressive way. Similarly, Trien, as shown in section 5.4, segregates the Teochew-Vietnamese employees from the Vietnamese. Another reality is that many Teochew-Vietnamese state that they like to befriend the Vietnamese and the Cantonese-Vietnamese, even more than fellow-Teochew-Vietnamese, because they are more approachable. Members of other ethnic groups are perceived to be more willing to organize or accept leisure activities than the Teochew-Vietnamese do. The crux is that interaction should be moderated, in order to not be negatively influenced. The boundaries that are constructed through stereotypes also seem discursive, because in practice the Teochew-Vietnamese contradict themselves. This is clear in the next example. Thim, generation one, has a Cantonese-Vietnamese best friend.

She’s a PTD. There are not that many PTD living in this street side. […] Us, PTD, it’s easier to talk with. Also, you can trust each other and help each other. [I just talk to the Vietnamese.] They don’t help you, if you help them. To them, everything is about money. 76

Here it can be clearly seen that there are boundaries between the Teochew and the Vietnamese through stereotyping. But in the three months I spent there, I have seen that Thim has intimate relations with her Vietnamese neighbours. Frequently, I have seen her watching the coffee corner of Bà Tam. Her explanation was that it is natural to help her neighbours, because they have known each other for many years and Ba Tam sometimes brings her snacks. In my understanding, this means that the practice does not entirely reflect the discourse. This highly resembles Baumann’s (1996) dual discursive competence. Thim’s neighbourhood has formed a new cohesive community. However, I suggest that the high fear of assimilation is a stubborn boundary that is not easy to cross. Also, among the younger generations, the Saigonese society seems to be homogenous. They do mundane things with their friends, such as going to movies, or have bubble tea. Within the settings of the places they go out in, they do not stand out as PTD or Teochew-Vietnamese. However, the Teochew- Vietnamese seem to successfully maintain their ethnic heritage through the resistance to assimilate. This resistance may not be so overtly as the Tsuda’s (Tsuda, 2000) Japanese- Brazilians or Shilhav’s (1984) Haredi Jews, but is more intrinsic. This shows that the identity is a performance that is constructed in relation to others and independent from the identity of the self. The Teochew-Vietnamese manage to maintain their Teochew identity by maintaining cultural values, while assimilating to the Saigonese society through cultural practices.

6.4 Cultural continuity or breakdown?

The boundaries between cultural practices are blurry in the Saigonese society. Interethnic relations have led to cultural adaptation. However, The Teochew-Vietnamese have always emphasized their unique identity and cultural practices and underline the importance of the continuity of their cultural heritage. This section explores how the Teochew-Vietnamese maintain their cultural heritage. There are signs of a breakdown of the ethnic heritage. The Teochew-Vietnamese forget their cultural practices, and adopt cultural practices from neighbouring ethnic groups. The traditional Teochew opera is disappearing, the Teochew-Vietnamese dislike watching Teochew opera. Only generation one is still interested in watching these shows, the younger 77 generations simply cannot understand the lyrics and do not like the performances. One example of how the Teochew heritage is influenced by the Vietnamese is changes made in Teochew recipes. The Vietnamese use fish sauce, the Teochew-Vietnamese have added fish sauce to many of their recipes. In order to maintain the Teochew heritage, Ngia An huiguan, the largest Teochew huiguan, organizes typically Teochew events, such as the performance of Teochew opera for three weeks during and after Tết, and they organize Teochew language classes. What I find particularly interesting in the efforts to maintain the ethnic heritage, by the huiguan, is the adoption of Teochew practices by the Vietnamese. At one Teochew temple, a ceremony started where an orchestra appeared with Chinese drums and other instruments. This type of orchestra is known as Teochew drum. The difference between Teochew drum and other ethnic groups, is the melodies they play. Each festivity has its own melodies and rhythms. Within this orchestra, there were 25 musicians, of which some as young as 13-years-old. Apparently, 40% of them are ethnic Vietnamese. Since, this type of music is typically Teochew and only played during Teochew festivities, I expected that the orchestra would contain more Teochew-Vietnamese participants. Due to the shortage of Teochew-Vietnamese participants, the huiguan decided to recruit players through Facebook and other advertisement channels. The reason of the shortage is ironically connected to superstitions. The Teochew drum orchestra is obligated to perform at funerals. Teochew-Vietnamese parents generally do not allow their children to partake in such unlucky events. The Vietnamese participate, because they are interested in learning to play instruments. The music lessons are free of charge and open to every ethnicity, and they do not have such superstitions. This example clearly shows the symbolic nature of boundaries between ethnic communities. Rituals are explicit symbolic expressions of the community, by this I mean that differences between ethnic communities can be seen within the rituals as the practices differ explicitly. Teochew drum melodies and rhythms differ from drum practices of other ethnic groups. Nevertheless, this does not mean that members of other ethnic communities cannot participate in Teochew rituals. In fact, the Vietnamese are used as a tool to maintain the Teochew heritage. The boundary is not expressed when deciding who can learn to perform the ethnic rituals. It is expressed in the continuity, the existence, of the rituals.

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To compare the continuity of Teochew heritage in Saigon with other places in Vietnam, I have visited Bac Lieu. Bac Lieu is said to be one of the Teochew towns in Vietnam, and inhabitants estimate that about 30% of the population is ethnic Teochew, or mixed with Teochew. In Saigon, the differences between Chinese or Vietnamese pagodas can be seen in the exterior and interior of the temples. Vietnamese pagodas’ decorations are sober. The walls are kept white and the interior looks bright. In contrast, Chinese temples are dark with lots of decorations, such as sculptures and reliefs. They use dark wood with dark red lacquer and gold paint. Vietnamese use white and bright pastel shades of pink, , yellow and blue. Their sculptures are made in a different style than the Chinese. Vietnamese sculptures look simple. They do not have much details or shades, often completely white and they are glossy. Some sculptures have bright pink skin colour and wear bright monochrome garment. Behind the sculptures, at the head of the sculpture there frequently is a light work with Buddhist ’s. Sometimes there is a circle of lights around the swastika, designed in such a way that it seems like it is swirling. Chinese sculptures are designed with darker colours, the garment has many different shades of colour and the face and clothing is sculpted into detail. Ethnic Chinese temples in Saigon are centuries old, the Teochew- Vietnamese, with help of the huiguan, try to preserve the pagodas and keep them as authentic as possible. The ethnic Chinese pagodas stay distinct from the Vietnamese ones, because huiguans spend 100.000s dollars to renovate the temples. However, in Bac Lieu the situation is different. The Teochew pagoda there is four years old. The Teochew-Vietnamese have collected money to build this temple. But, the architect they hired was ethnic Vietnamese, from whom they requested a Chinese style. Similar to the Chinese temples in Saigon, the building uses the Chinese artichoke leaf design. While, the Vietnamese use a pastel colour theme and the Chinese a darker theme. This temple uses bright but deep colours. The sculptures looked roughly Vietnamese style, but the designs were a little bit more detailed. They also use flickering lightworks. The interior looks sober like the Vietnamese pagodas. After inquiring about the architecture, I found that the people there do not seem to know how ‘authentic Chinese’ pagodas look like. To them, this is a typical Teochew pagoda. It doesn’t matter whether the pagoda is Chinese or Vietnamese, as long as the Teochew people believe it is a typical Teochew pagoda, it remains a symbol of Teochew

79 culture. This shows how Teochew culture can be deconstructed and reconstructed depending on the imagination of different groups of Teochew people. This chapter shows that identity construction is an ambiguous process. The imagined continuity of explicit cultural symbols reinforces the imagination of the self in opposition to the other. Cultural practices, however, is not limited to one ethnic community. Through frequent interethnic interactions, boundaries in cultural practices are disappearing. On the surface, it seems that the Teochew-Vietnamese almost fully assimilate with the Vietnamese society. The truth is that despite the discontinuity of many Teochew cultural practices, the Teochew-Vietnamese are able to maintain their ethnic heritage by the hybridization of culture. This shows how identity is multi-dimensional, acculturation here leads to different degrees of assimilation, one on the surface and one from within.

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7 “We love our daughter-in-law”: Intermarriage and the family unit

Being married or not is of great significance for a Teochew-Vietnamese individual in his or her everyday life. In the Teochew-Vietnamese society, marriage is one of the most important social institutions. The Teochew-Vietnamese society is deeply influenced by Confucian values, making the goals of marriage collectivist and institutional. Marriage is not necessarily for personal satisfaction or romantic feelings.

The family unit starts with marriage. Two people unite to start a family, and within this family they are labelled husband and wife. Patriarchy and familial piety are emphasized values within . Women will gain independency from her family by marrying into another family. From then on, the woman is part of her husband’s family. The man stays within his family, but his role changes into a caregiving and providing role. Men and their wives are expected to provide and take care of the man’s parents from the point of marriage on. It is common in Vietnam, for a husband and wife to take care of his parents. One household may consist of several generations. There is no service for elderly care in Vietnam. The elderly is dependent on homecare of which their sons and daughters-in-law are responsible for.

The Teochew-Vietnamese family unit is subject to external forces in Vietnam. Especially in intermarriage, the family needs to renegotiate its position. This chapter focuses on intermarriage because it reflects the boundaries between ethnic communities and at the same time throw light on cultural change. First, I start with the background information on why intermarriage has been increasing among the Teochew-Vietnamese. Then, I focus on how their standards for choosing a spouse reflect negative stereotypes the Teochew- Vietnamese have against potential Vietnamese or Cantonese-Vietnamese spouses. And I will show how this construction is contrasted by their daily practices. Next, I discuss the gendered roles within Teochew-Vietnamese marriage and how this applies to intermarriages. And I end with an example of cultural clashes within an interethnic family.

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7.1 Intermarriage and the deinstitutionalization of marriage

To explain why intermarriage occurs, it is important to take a look at the marriage market. Unmarried people make considerations to determine who is eligible out of a pool of potential candidates. These considerations are based on the socioeconomic and cultural resources the other had to offer (Kalmijn, 1998). The marriage market has transformed after the American war. In the present, generation four Teochew-Vietnamese seem to intermarry most frequently. 7 out of 10 of generation four, who live in Saigon and are in a relationship, are in an interethnic relationship. Two in this group are in a relationship with each other. Furthermore, the Teochew-Vietnamese themselves confirm the increased number of intermarriages.

Intermarriage is becoming more and more common because of the transformation of Cho Lon. As mentioned in section 3.2, many Teochew-Vietnamese has fled Vietnam after the American war. This event directly led to three changes in the way the Teochew-Vietnamese choose a spouse: 1) marriage alliances between wealthy Teochew-Vietnamese disappeared, because the individuals who could afford to leave would leave, 2) the inclusion of other ethnic groups as marital candidates, due to the shortage of Teochew-Vietnamese, 3) massive increase of interethnic interactions that lead to changes in attitudes towards stereotypes, 4) the abandonment of arranged marriage, because of the absence of matchmakers. The transformation of Cho Lon has indirectly led to changes in the understanding of marriage, resulting in deinstitutionalization of marriage. This section shows how these influences have led to the increase of intermarriages.

Among diasporic Chinese, the formation of marriage alliances is a strategic way to ensure the family capital and built family enterprises (Ong & Nonini, 2003). After the rope-in of Cho Lon, many Teochew-Vietnamese lost their businesses and assets. People who could afford to flee did. Tran, generation one, explains that it costs about five ounces of gold per person to flee the country with relative success. The ones who could not afford it, and did it by own means, are more probable to get caught by the authorities. With the quick outflux of the wealthy Teochew-Vietnamese and the loss of fixed and liquid assets of the remaining Teochew-Vietnamese, marriage alliances were no longer practiced as before. As mentioned in chapter 5, the Teochew-Vietnamese rely on family in building businesses. Because the ethnic

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Chinese market collapsed, the Teochew-Vietnamese’ social status diverged towards the Vietnamese.

Second, provided that marriage is random, it is more likely that members from smaller communities intermarry with the outgroup (Kalmijn, 1998). The shortage of Teochew- Vietnamese induced the marriage between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the other ethnic groups. Many Teochew-Vietnamese have difficulty finding a match. From generation three confidants, living in Saigon, 6 out of 12 are unmarried. Especially the ones who filter out the Vietnamese from the pool of eligible bachelors find it particularly hard to find a partner. It is easier to find a partner, when one is more flexible in placing criteria for a marriage candidate. Filtering out the Vietnamese would mean that the vast majority of the Saigonese population is excluded. Some of the Teochew-Vietnamese state that they never dated Teochew people. One of them is Yen, generation four. She is married to a Vietnamese man: “Honestly, I don’t know many Teochew. I don’t encounter them that much. When I went to school, all my classmates were Vietnamese. And I never actively searched for them.”

Take note that she states that she never actively searched for Teochew-Vietnamese bachelors. As mentioned in section 4.2.4, younger Teochew-Vietnamese state to live a cosmopolitan lifestyle that is multicultural and multilingual, this leads to the next change in the selection of a spouse. Because of the changed environment of Cho Lon, the Teochew- Vietnamese encounter more Vietnamese in their everyday life. The Teochew-Vietnamese, in present-day, meet Vietnamese people at school, in the neighbourhood, at the market and at work. Blending with the Vietnamese society causes a higher proficiency in the Vietnamese language, which diminishes the barrier of interaction with the Vietnamese. The spatial convergence between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese helps the Teochew- Vietnamese to understand the members of the Vietnamese community and their practices. Confidants from generation two to four, therefore, rely less on the prejudices, but on personal experiences. Both these generations tell me that it is important to judge a person on his or her actions and not on his or her ethnic background. They all underline that there are good and bad people in every ethnic community.

It has become natural to include the Vietnamese in their dating pool. Many say that even though they prefer to marry a PTD, especially a Teochew-Vietnamese, they depend on feelings of love. They cannot control who they fall in love with. Marriage has become more 83 and more self-satisfactory than institutional. The relationship between a couple is a pure relationship and not necessarily influenced by the demands of the family. A pure relationship is “an intimate partnership in which the partners enter for its own sake and lasts as long as both partners are satisfied with the emotional rewards” ( & Yen, 2011). The third change is the abandonment of the arranged marriage. The Teochew-Vietnamese, in present-day Saigon, are free to choose who they date or marry. Generation one Teochew-Vietnamese practiced the arranged marriage. In their turn, they have tried to arrange marriages for their children, who usually are generation two or three. However, due to the absence of matchmakers this has become difficult in reality. The matchmaker’s service included access to a large network of Teochew-Vietnamese. The Teochew-Vietnamese population has become scarce, and marriage alliances were no longer useful. Besides, the arranged marriage that has been practiced by Teochew-Vietnamese included an element of free-choice. The children are free to accept or decline partners that parents propose to them. These factors added together make it difficult to find the right candidate. Hence, the free-choice marriage was adopted. By the time that generation three Teochew-Vietnamese were starting to get married, the free-choice marriage was fully enforced.

7.2 Standards of choosing a spouse and stereotyping

During one encounter, Joshua, generation four, explicitly states that he is against marrying the Vietnamese: “Vietnamese are only good for one-night stands. Nothing more. I’m going to marry a Teochew girl. Teochew girls are the best […] I hate the Vietnamese, they mean nothing to me.” Clearly this example shows that the distinction is still made by the Teochew- Vietnamese of whom to marry based on ethnic identities. This section explores the construction of standards Teochew-Vietnamese have in choosing a spouse. The expected inability of the other ethnic groups to adhere to these standards leads to stereotyping. In reality, I found that these stereotypes seem to be discursive in nature.

Among generation one Teochew-Vietnamese the following is popular: “Marry the Vietnamese, sell fish; marry Cantonese, ‘fuck your mother’; marry Teochew, hold the keys.” This rhyme is in Vietnamese, but contains a Cantonese part. The first part is about how many Vietnamese women used to sell fish. The meaning behind it is that one who marries the

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Vietnamese will be poor, because the men would not provide enough and the women need to work. The second part about the Cantonese contains profanity in Cantonese. In the Teochew perception, the Cantonese use a lot of profanity, when marrying one, one should expect to get scolded. The last part is about the Teochew. Because the Teochew men are always doing business, the wife will hold the power and keep the money. This rhyme is an example of how the Teochew view intermarriage.

After several conversations and observations, I have come to the conclusion that the Teochew-Vietnamese, generally, rate ethnic groups as follows. First, they prefer their own ethnic group, the Teochew-Vietnamese. Second, they have a positive attitude towards other ethnic Chinese. Third would be Western people. And on the bottom of the list they place the ethnic Vietnamese. The Teochew-Vietnamese feel most secure within their own group. Members of the Teochew-Vietnamese community are most likely to have the same perception on the family institution and carry similar family values, spiritual practices and speak the same language. The Teochew-Vietnamese are of the opinion that the other PTD, including the Cantonese-Vietnamese, do not differ much in these values and practices. The main difference is the language. In an intermarriage with other PTD, the adjustment is expected to be small. Using the logic that the probability that the non-Teochew spouse can fulfil the role within the family determines the place in the ranking, it would make more sense that the Vietnamese would be next in the ranking. Nevertheless, Western people are placed third. Resembling the Vietnamese society, the Teochew-Vietnamese romanticize the European and American lifestyle. The differences between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese is perceived as so great, that the romanticized perception of the European and American lifestyle wins from the Vietnamese in this ranking.

7.2.1 Negative attitude towards marriage with the Vietnamese

One example of such an observation went as follows. I was having a drink with Trang and Yen, generation three, and a Cantonese friend. The women were gossiping about the dating life of another Cantonese friend. “And he is a PTD, not Vietnamese. He’s Cantonese.” After which the women start to heavily nod. Out of this, I learned two things: 1) The PTD is seen as one community, the subethnic communities seem to be each other’s equals, 2) The PTD is rated

85 significantly higher than the Vietnamese. Discourses as such happen in the daily lives of the Teochew-Vietnamese. I suggest that the boundary of intermarriage between PTD is strongly present on a discursive level.

The attitude towards intermarriage with the Vietnamese has not always been this negative. The Teochew forefathers who migrated, came to Vietnam as bachelors. Several interviewees stated that their ancestors have come here out of poverty. They came and tried to trade and earn money to send back to China. These bachelors who came to Vietnam, did not understand the Vietnamese language or the existing Vietnamese market. Marrying a Vietnamese woman was a way to improve business. The Teochew men depended on their Vietnamese wives and would need to ask their wives for consultation concerning the business. Intermarriage may have been a strategy of the Teochew sojourners to assimilate with the Vietnamese society in order to become more successful financially.

Marriage was not only strategic. The Teochew men at the time did not have a negative attitude towards marrying Vietnamese women. Hoc Kim, generation three, recites a poem he learned from some elders: “Flowers buds open and bloom red, Vietnamese girls mesmerize to death, and I, cannot return to Teoswa [Chaoshan]. No choice, but to marry Vietnamese.” It means that the Vietnamese women were seen as beautiful and nice. The Teochew men were infatuated by them. Besides that, they had to stay in Vietnam to earn money to send back to their families and had no other choice but to settle and marry a Vietnamese wife. This poem suggests that the Teochew used to marry Vietnamese women.

The boundary with the Vietnamese was constructed, when the ethnic Chinese population grew in Vietnam. The Vietnamese spouse as an instrument for economic success was not needed anymore. Furthermore, there was more choice in the marriage market to choose an individual with a similar ethnic heritage. The generation one Teochew-Vietnamese remember that their parents would not allow them to marry Vietnamese. According to them, the Vietnamese were unintelligent and their culture was perceived as inferior to the Teochew culture. This generation strongly views marriage as an institution and marriage became arranged which led to the disappearance of intermarriage. The Teochew-Vietnamese would go to Teochew-Vietnamese match-makers and marry Teochew-Vietnamese. The Cantonese- Vietnamese would exclusively marry Cantonese-Vietnamese through their match-makers. The

86 negative attitude surrounding intermarriage has been prevalent for many years, and this attitude is still echoing in the discourses of today’s Teochew-Vietnamese community.

This negative attitude towards marrying the Vietnamese rises out of the roles spouses are supposed to play within the family institution. As mentioned before, the task of the man is to provide, while the task of the woman is to raise children and take care of the family in a physical way but also in a spiritual way and to maintain family values. Differences between the values of the Vietnamese and the Teochew-Vietnamese are perceived to be so great that a marriage relationship between these ethnic groups is not viable.

On the one side, Vietnamese wives are perceived to be unable to fulfil their role in enforcing and maintaining the Teochew-Vietnamese values and by practicing the Teochew- Vietnamese rituals for spiritual maintenance. The identity of the children is a topic that many Teochew-Vietnamese ponder about, especially when they show their opinion about mixed marriages. Intermarriage with Vietnamese would disrupt the ethnic identity maintenance in Teochew-Vietnamese families.

On the other side, Vietnamese men cannot fulfil their institutional role as husbands, because they are perceived to be unable to properly take care of the family. Several Teochew- Vietnamese women have stated that it is better not to marry Vietnamese men, because of bad working ethics, domestic violence, gambling and alcohol abuse. These negative habits, the Teochew-Vietnamese perceive the Vietnamese to have make them dislike Vietnamese men. In their eyes, such men cannot take care of the family. At the coffee stand, I have seen Onh Tam, the husband of the owner of the coffee stand, Ba Tam, showing aggressive behaviour towards his wife. I have seen him shouting and swearing at his wife, when she asks him to run an errand or when customers try to pay him. For the latter, he thinks that the coffee stand is his wife’s business and he does not want to get involved with it. Thim, a generation two Teochew-Vietnamese woman, and Gau, a generation three man told me in Teochew: “Look at those Vietnamese. Vietnamese men are bad. They hit their wives.” The laziness and aggressive behaviour of Onh Tam is attributed to his Vietnameseness.

Furthermore, the Vietnamese are perceived to be disloyal to their spouses. According to the principles of Confucianism, the husband and wife relationship relies on reciprocity and mutuality (Park & Chesla, 2007). To the Teochew-Vietnamese, marriage is the promise of the

87 fulfilment of the institutional roles of the family. Loyalty has a different meaning for the Teochew-Vietnamese than for people in for example a monogamous Christian union, where one will be devoted to one person. Marital loyalty, here, means that a husband and wife have a joint responsibility to take care of each other and the family and fulfil their roles within the family. Leaving, as in a divorce, is seen as disloyalty. Marital dissolution equals breaking the bond as husband and wife, a fragmentation of the family. This will often result in either fatherless, or motherless children. These consequences are problematic for the family institution. According to the Teochew-Vietnamese the Vietnamese divorce “easily”, while among the Teochew-Vietnamese, divorce is one of the biggest taboos.

Hoc explains it as follows: “But us PTD, we love our spouses and are loyal. We say: ‘Marry a pig, feed a pig. Marry a dog, feed a dog.’ The Vietnamese aren’t like that. When they marry and they aren’t happy with the marriage, they will divorce.” This saying is the embodiment of the marital loyalty of the Teochew. When they are in an unhappy marriage, they still will not leave their husband or wife. The pig or dog refers to a bad husband or wife.

During fieldwork, I have encountered several cases of unhappy marriages among the Teochew-Vietnamese. Gau, generation three, has confided to me that he and his wife despise each other and have not slept in the same bed for the bigger part of their 20 years of marriage. He is disgusted by his wife, in such an extent that he claims he wants to hit her. However, when discussing possible emigration, he states that his wife loves the idea of moving to the US. And that he is looking for possibilities for him and his family to move. This man’s behaviour embodies the Teochew-Vietnamese marital loyalty. Being married means that he will stay being her husband and take care of her for a lifetime, which means he is taking his role as the husband. Because the Vietnamese do not seem to have the same values concerning marital loyalty or dissolution, the Teochew-Vietnamese label them as disloyal spouses. This perception is in line with the stereotype mentioned in chapter five that the Vietnamese are untrustworthy.

To confirm the perceived trend towards a lenient attitude against divorce among the Vietnamese in Saigon, I have asked a few Vietnamese about their perception of divorce. Hieu answered: “Divorce is not bad. If you get married to the wrong person, this is a chance to fix it. If you both agree to [the divorce], then it’s fine.” By ‘fixing it’ he means, fixing the relationship. The divorce is thus seen as a positive practice, among the Vietnamese in Saigon, 88 when two people are unhappy in their marriage. He explained: “the Vietnamese society lays between the Chinese and the American culture.” The Vietnamese highly value marriage, and try to reach “a perfect husband and wife lifestyle”. Vietnamese couples would try their best to maintain their marriage, but sometimes a divorce is the best solution for their problems. In the past, the Vietnamese would also frown upon divorce, similar to the PTD. But in today’s society, it is generally accepted. “The Vietnamese love European and American lifestyle”, Hieu said. The Vietnamese apparently, look up to the perceived lifestyle in America and European countries. Divorce often is relatively common in those countries and stigmatization is diminishing (Cherlin, 2004; Thornton & Young‐DeMarco, 2001). The copycat behaviour leads to a trend towards normalization of the act of divorce in Saigon. The Saigonese society is thus leaning towards a more liberal attitude towards marriage.

7.2.2 Marrying Vietnamese, not that bad?

Despite the negative attitude of the Teochew-Vietnamese towards intermarriage, intermarriage and dating between the Teochew-Vietnamese, and the Cantonese-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese occur. Joshua, as mentioned before, was explicitly against marrying a Vietnamese woman. After spending some time with him, I found out that he, in fact, has only dated and fallen in love with Vietnamese women, despite his explicit claims. The reality diverges from the discursive practices about intermarriage. He was unable to explain this reality and he reacts highly offended when I joke that he might one day end up marrying a Vietnamese woman. “Don’t say that. I don’t like Vietnamese. You are cursing me!” After which he turns his back to me and walks away. Take note that despite his confession that he only dated Vietnamese, he still would not admit that he likes to date them. There is a clear disparity between discourse and practice. The Teochew-Vietnamese explain away this disparity with some reasons they have to intermarry.

The transformation of Cho Lon, not only influenced the marriage market. It also changed the understanding of marriage of the Teochew-Vietnamese into one where the purpose of marriage is leaning towards personal satisfaction, which results in increasing intermarriages. Another way, the Teochew-Vietnamese explain away the disparity between discourse and practice about intermarriage, is the possibility for divorce.

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As mentioned before, divorce is traditionally seen as a taboo. The change has to do with the rise of social institutions that are not related to the family, such as education and work. According to my interviewees, more and more women start to work and gain financial independency from their husband, thus shifting the power relation within a marriage. Yen, a generation three Teochew-Vietnamese and married to a Vietnamese man said:

Time has changed and women are more independent than ever, which means that they have a choice. Women are smarter and can earn money. In the past, women needed to be more cautious when choosing a husband. They were scared of their husband and afraid for domestic violence. If [my husband] dares to hit me, I would immediately leave him.

In this quote, Yen shows how her independency gives her the freedom to leave her husband. As a woman, she and her child are no longer dependent on her husband and his family, she is convinced that she is able to take care of herself. When her husband is unable to fulfil his institutional role, for example if he uses domestic violence, she would have the freedom to leave him. Similarly, education and socio-economic advances in previous studies have shown increasing gender equalitarianism (Yang & Yen, 2011). This study has shown how the number of divorces has increased over the years in countries where the culture is highly influenced by Confucianism, such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea due to the socio-economic changes. The positive attitude towards divorce as a valid option to exit an unhappy marriage is positively related to advances in education and socio-economic circumstances of women (Yang & Yen, 2011). As divorce is a personal decision, marriage is also a personal decision. This is a marker that marriage in Saigon is shifting from an institution into the purpose of personal satisfaction.

In my confidants’ experience, the number of divorces among the Teochew is growing, because they are following the Vietnamese community in Saigon. The attitude against divorce of the Vietnamese community has both created and broken a boundary in marriage between the Teochew and the Vietnamese. A boundary is created, because the Teochew are more conservative in this matter than the Vietnamese are. This causes disapproval on the side of the Teochew. However, the lenient attitude towards divorce and the shift from the institutional purpose of marriage into personal satisfaction has broken a boundary. The 90 fulfilment of the roles within the family becomes less important than camaraderie between the spouses.

Please notice another disparity between what the Teochew-Vietnamese say and do. The Vietnamese are seen as disloyal, because they have a lenient view against divorce, at the same time, the Teochew-Vietnamese claim that the possibility for divorce functions as an assurance against possible negative outcomes in intermarriage. However, I must acknowledge that the divorce rate still seems relatively low among the PTD. During the fieldwork, I have not encountered any Teochew divorcees, while I have heard and seen several divorced Vietnamese individuals.

Though many Teochew-Vietnamese still claim to marry within their ethnic group, based on certain stereotypes of the outgroup, the Teochew-Vietnamese seem to be more heterogamous than homogamous. They explain away this disparity through the argument of the marriage market in Saigon, with which the importance of love and compatibility is higher than the ethnic correspondence of the partner, and through the argument of the possibility of marital dissolution. The Teochew-Vietnamese are going through a transformation in their perception of the essence of marriage. It is changing from the perception that marriage is a social institution, into the perception that marriage should fulfil personal satisfaction in the form of pure relationships. This shows that their claimed dislike of the Vietnamese, or even their hatred towards the Vietnamese does not apply to the real-life situation. This detestation of the Vietnamese is merely discursive and this discourse does not match the reality. This is an obvious case of dual discursive competence.

7.3 Gendered roles within intermarriage

The previous sections explained how the essence of marriage is transforming from having an institutional purpose into having a personal satisfaction purpose. In contemporary Saigon, the Teochew-Vietnamese lean towards both directions. The family is still the cornerstone of the Saigonese society. As a marriage between two people is a subset of the family as a social institution, the gendered roles between husband and wife is still present. The husband is traditionally seen as the provider within the family and the wife is the caregiver. The wife is mainly responsible for raising the children while maintaining the family values and she is 91 responsible for spiritual maintenance such as ancestor honouring of her husband’s family. Family values encompass the passing on of the family rules, and the religious and political beliefs. This section explores how interethnic couples deal with the institutional roles in marriage and family.

7.3.1 The woman’s role in intermarriage

The woman has thus an important role in the family as she is responsible for child rearing. The Teochew-Vietnamese, both men and women, stress the importance of the maintenance of the Teochew culture and language. However, this task is shown to be difficult, as generation four Teochew often do not speak or understand Teochew and their knowledge of traditional Teochew cultural practices is meagre. Many Teochew-Vietnamese have shown disappointment when their children or grandchildren lack knowledge about the Teochew language and culture. They expect that it would be even harder with intermarriages and mixed families. The greatest concern is about the identity of the children.

This concern is greatest when the husband in an intermarriage is Teochew- Vietnamese. The couple usually lives with the family of the husband. It is important to pass over the family values and language to the next generations. The mother, or wife, has this role. As she is from a different ethnic background, she would not be able to fulfil this role as a Teochew-Vietnamese wife is expected to do. The Teochew-Vietnamese are convinced that children will become either Vietnamese or Cantonese-Vietnamese and would not inherit Teochew-Vietnamese cultural practices, family values and ethnic language when the parents are a mixed couple. As mentioned before, the Vietnamese culture and values are perceived to be different from the Teochew-Vietnamese. The culture of the PTD is considered to be almost uniform. In marriage with the Cantonese-Vietnamese, the language is the greatest barrier. I will first focus on the intermarriages with a Vietnamese woman, since the cultural concerns are most prevalent in these. Then I will throw light on the ethnic language maintenance in intermarriages.

To create an understanding of how a cultural divergence may look like and how this affect mixed children, I am giving one example. One of my confidants, Sandy, has invited me to her home. She and her two siblings are living together. Her siblings are both married to a 92

Vietnamese person and they have children. Sandy and her siblings are categorized as generation four Teochew. Their knowledge and understanding of the Teochew culture, they are not actively involved in the Teochew-Vietnamese community and their proficiency in the ethnic language is low to non-existent. Besides family, they surround themselves with the Vietnamese and solely speak Vietnamese at home. The children of Sandy’s brother speak and understand exclusively Vietnamese. Sandy’s sister just gave birth to a pair of twins, and their mother, Khue, generation two, was there to visit.

Khue says to her granddaughter, six-year-old Ying: “Now you are a big sister again!” Ying: “I am a chị cả [biggest sister of the family in Vietnamese]” Her grandmother answers: “What are you talking about? Chị cả? No, you are dua je [eldest sister in Teochew].” Ying: “No, my mom told me that I am chị cả.” Grandmother: “Okay, whatever you want.” Then she turns to her daughters and says with a negative connotation: “The children are Vietnamese. The Vietnamese in this family are overruling us. Only the Vietnamese have this chị cả nonsense.”

The difference in the kinship terms is important, because they reflect the hierarchy within the family. The order and the kinship terms, for both the Teochew and the Vietnamese, determine the position of the family member. Chị cả implies the power Ying would have in the family. This way of thinking and ranking does not correspond with the Teochew way. Khue is dissatisfied with how Ying uses the Vietnamese terms of kinship and ranking and underlines that the grandchildren are Vietnamese, and stresses that her daughter-in-law’s Vietnamese influence overrides the family’s culture, making the family more Vietnamese than Teochew.

Besides nurturing the children, the wife is responsible for spiritual maintenance. Sim is an example of a 40-year-old Vietnamese woman, who is married to a generation two Teochew-Vietnamese man. She and her husband have been married for over twenty years.

The main difference I notice is after the death. As a daughter-in-law, I am responsible for taking care of the funeral and the ancestral worshipping. For example, at Teochew funerals the husband or wife of the diseased don’t need to wear a mourning hat as opposed to the Vietnamese. […] I keep [spiritual practices] simple. I cook simple dishes. I do it the way my mother used to do it. My husband doesn’t know much about the Teochew way and it’s the woman’s job after all. If someone

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tells me to do it differently, I will. But I haven’t met any problems yet. My in-laws have passed a long time ago. I don’t know about these things.

Sim fulfils her duty as a daughter-in-law by taking care of the ancestral honouring. However, she is aware of some differences between the practices of the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese. As many other Teochew-Vietnamese, as seen in chapter six, ritualistic practices are unknown to her and her husband. Therefore, she decided to do it in the Vietnamese way, as long she is not aware of the Teochew way. Note that without her mother-in-law’s help, she has not learned to do it the Teochew-Vietnamese way. As her husband is male, and ancestral honouring is a female task, he too, does not know how to practice it the Teochew way.

Another task of the women is to pass down the ethnic language. During fieldwork, it seems that the Vietnamese are more successful than the Cantonese are. Vietnamese wives are more willing to learn how to speak Teochew than Vietnamese husbands or the Cantonese husbands or wives. The difference between the Cantonese-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese women is that the Cantonese-Vietnamese women feel less pressure to adapt through language. Generation one elders usually do not speak or understand Vietnamese, but they often do speak or at least understand Cantonese. This means that the Cantonese-Vietnamese women do not feel the need to learn Teochew in order to communicate with Teochew in-laws at home. Moreover, the PTD like to speak Cantonese, as shown in chapter 3.

Trien, generation two, and his Vietnamese wife are an example of a couple in an interethnic marriage, where the wife is of Vietnamese descent. To him, his wife’s ethnicity is not important. Instead, he needs a wife that is open-minded and dedicated to the Teochew culture. The Vietnamese wife has learned to speak Teochew after the marriage. “She has the heart to learn the language and I have the patience to teach her. Her willingness is important.” In his opinion, his children should be Teochew, because he is Teochew. According to him, his children also identify as Teochew and PTD. They do not know better than that. Furthermore, both his children speak Teochew fluently. Trien’s wife, was one of four Vietnamese women, I encountered who are married to generation two Teochew-Vietnamese men and are able to speak Teochew. In comparison, I have encountered four cases of intermarriage with Cantonese-Vietnamese, of which none of the wives were able to speak

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Teochew. None of the mixed-children whose mother is Cantonese-Vietnamese and father is generation two Teochew-Vietnamese are able to understand Teochew.

Chapter four showed that ethnic language maintenance does not affect the selfhood of the Teochew-Vietnamese. In intermarriage, I found that the Saigonese society remains patriarchal. Ethnically mixed children, who do not speak Teochew are called ‘Vietnamese or Cantonese with a Teochew parent’. Despite, the identity imposed by other Teochew- Vietnamese, the ethnical mixed Teochew still strongly identify with their Teochew heritage. As they are members of a Teochew-Vietnamese family, the family of their father, they identify with the Teochew-Vietnamese community. All children with Teochew-Vietnamese fathers and Vietnamese or Cantonese-Vietnamese said: “My father is Teochew, so I am Teochew.” Khoa, generation four who has a Vietnamese mother added: “I grew up with my grandparents and they want me to be Teochew.” The time spend with the paternal grandparents seem to be a great factor in the knowledge of the children in Teochew language and culture and the degree they identify as Teochew-Vietnamese. This self-identification shows how deeply patriarchy is imbedded within the Teochew-Vietnamese community and family structure.

The fear of children becoming Vietnamese or Cantonese, when the wife is Vietnamese or Cantonese-Vietnamese is only partially realized. The children indeed learn and practice cultural practices of the mother’s ethnic heritage. Another fear is that a Vietnamese wife would not be able to maintain the Teochew-Vietnamese family culture as a Cantonese- Vietnamese would. In reality, this does not seem true in the language sphere. Vietnamese wives seem more successful in learning the Teochew language and passing it over to her children than the Cantonese-Vietnamese women do. They seem more willing and interested to adapt. In reality, all children with Teochew-Vietnamese fathers identify as Teochew- Vietnamese, whether their mother is Teochew or not. As the father’s cultural identity determine the children’s cultural identity, despite the magnitude of the mother’s cultural influence, the Teochew-Vietnamese and Saigonese society remains highly patriarchal.

Their Vietnamese identity may play a role in their willingness to adapt. The Vietnamese are under more pressure than the Cantonese-Vietnamese. Their otherness is highly emphasized by the Teochew-Vietnamese family, which may cause the extra pressure. This pressure is mostly felt by the Vietnamese women who are married to generation two 95

Teochew-Vietnamese, as they have to deal with pressure from their generation one in-laws and their husbands. Intermarried couples go through the process of mutual acculturation. This means that both spouses need to deal with the culture of the other and may use strategies to adapt, accommodate or discord (Crippen & Brew, 2013). It seems that the Vietnamese women use the strategy to adapt to the culture and language of their husbands.

However, the importance of spiritual maintenance is declining. Many Teochew- Vietnamese men, themselves, are unknowledgeable of the Teochew-Vietnamese ritualistic practices. The declining knowledge of cultural practices is seen in chapter six. When focusing on generation three and four Teochew-Vietnamese, who do not know the Teochew language and cultural practices themselves, these requirements are not relevant anymore.

7.3.2 The man’s role in intermarriage

As for the marriages between Teochew-Vietnamese women and Vietnamese or Cantonese- Vietnamese men, the concern is different than for interethnic marriages between Teochew- Vietnamese men and non-Teochew women. None of the Teochew-Vietnamese women, who are in a significant relationship with non-Vietnamese men, have interest in the men learning Teochew. None of the non-Teochew men have showed this interest either. They do not think it is necessary or useful for the men to learn Teochew. Yen is married to a Vietnamese man and lives with her husband’s family. To her it is natural to follow that family’s practices, since she and her child are members of that family. She solely speaks Vietnamese to her child. Furthermore, it seems more practical to her to speak Vietnamese to her child, because she spends a lot of time working and her in-laws spend relatively more time with her child.

It is a combination of different factors why her child does not know Teochew. The child is a member of his father’s family, where Vietnamese is the medium. Yen’s case shows that the Saigonese society is patriarchal, as she sees her and her child as members of her husband’s family. Besides that, her child is greatly influenced by his family as the child spends more time with the family members than with her.

As the Saigonese society is patriarchal, passing down of the Teochew culture is not perceived as important to the Teochew-Vietnamese women when they intermarry. The greatest concern of the Teochew-Vietnamese women lays with intermarriage with 96

Vietnamese men. They worry about domestic violence, gambling and alcohol abuse. These three worries are connected to the institutional roles of the husband being the provider. Husbands who gamble and abuse alcohol are usually unable to work. These practices are said to induce domestic violence.

Domestic violence is a topic that returns several times and in different conversations. Many women are convinced that Vietnamese men are generally abusive. Generation one and two state this as a fact. Generation three and four state this with the disclaimer that they have heard it from their parents. When I interviewed Trang, I found out that Onh Tam, who is mentioned in the previous section, is in fact Teochew. He only does not know anything about the Teochew culture and language as he grew up as an orphan. Onh Tam and Trang’s mother are siblings, but their parents have died, when they were children. Thim and Gau wrongly ascribed his violent behaviour towards his wife to the Vietnamese. In fact, during fieldwork, I have encountered some cases of domestic violence within a Teochew-Vietnamese household. In a neighbourhood gossip Ba Tam told me that the neighbour living on her right, a Teochew- Vietnamese man, hit his wife two days before Lunar New Year. She said she saw him scolding her and hitting her because their two years old son was running around and tripped. Because she is covered in bruises, the porch of their house is closed.

This shows that many Teochew-Vietnamese men commit domestic violence. The fear of Teochew-Vietnamese women for domestic violence when marrying a Vietnamese man seems to be groundless and hypocritical. Generation three and four Teochew-Vietnamese are more aware of this. Linda, generation four, stated. “My parents always tell me to marry Teochew, because Vietnamese hit their wives. But I don’t believe that. I think that Teochew hit their wives. I’ve seen my grandfather doing that.” It seems that the younger Teochew- Vietnamese have less prejudice against the Vietnamese, than the older generations do. This disparity comes from the transformation of Cho Lon, after which the ethnic Chinese deal more with the Vietnamese in their daily life.

Besides domestic violence, gambling and alcohol abuse were also mentioned by some Teochew-Vietnamese. Hong and My, two generation two Teochew Vietnamese, told me that the Vietnamese are very lazy and gamble and drink all day, after which they do not take care of their family. That is why they dislike Vietnamese men. However, they admit that the men of PTD are drinking and gambling more and more. In today’s Saigon, the difference of alcohol 97 abuse and gambling between the PTD and the Vietnamese is not perceived as significant. Yen added that when the Vietnamese drink or gamble they do it to a certain extent, while the PTD go to an extreme. Her Vietnamese husband used the drink a lot, when she started dating him. But he changed into a responsible husband and father, and he stopped drinking. According to Yen the PTD are either absolutely against it or they drink and gamble to the extreme that they lose their house and have major debts. Again, the concern of Vietnamese men being gamblers and alcoholics is groundless, similar to the claim about domestic violence among the Vietnamese.

The multi-ethnic environment of Cho Lon after the American war, led to daily interaction between the Teochew-Vietnamese women and the Vietnamese. The younger generations, who are most influenced by the Vietnamese do not seem to discriminate. Yen explains that female independency has helped diminishing the fear. As marriage is a choice, and the women are not as dependent on men as in previous generations, divorce is a valid option when women encounter such problems. Women, such as the woman who was hit by her husband in the neighbourhood gossip, are often too dependent of their husband to be able to leave them. The possibility to divorce and the gained independency shift the power relation within the marriage making autonomous Teochew-Vietnamese women less weary of their livelihood in general. Being in the outside world makes them basing their choice in marriage on personal characteristic of the possible partner, instead of on discriminatory prejudices. This shows that the boundaries of marriage between Teochew women and Vietnamese men, namely domestic violence, drinking and gambling, have become blurred. Marrying someone with the same background used to give women a sense of security, but since women are more actively involved in the society and are able to take care of themselves and their family they do not need to use this safety measure anymore.

Because the ethnic background of the spouse must be considered, it means that marriage is an element of the family as the umbrella. These considerations must be made, because the family and marriage is still a social institution in today’s Teochew-Vietnamese community in Saigon. However, the requirements have become more flexible and often-times these concerns are part of a discourse rather than reality. Personal satisfaction and pure relationships are another side of the reality of marriage among the Teochew-Vietnamese. It seems that the Teochew-Vietnamese are stuck between the seemingly conflicting ideas about

98 marriage, marriage with the purpose as a social institution and marriage with the purpose of personal satisfaction. However, the Teochew-Vietnamese have found a way to balance these two conflicting ideas.

In the gendered roles in the marriage and family, it seems that the Saigonese society remains highly patriarchal. In intermarriage, the couples need to deal with mutual acculturation. I have found that the couples use the strategy of cultural amalgamation. This is the process of blending cultural elements in a union (Crippen & Brew, 2013). The Vietnamese women try to adapt to their husband’s family, but since the Teochew-Vietnamese themselves lack the knowledge and understanding of their heritage culture, many practices remain Vietnamese. The Cantonese-Vietnamese women, feel less pressure to adapt culturally, but they seem successful in passing over the Teochew-Vietnamese identity to their children. The Saigonese men, do not feel any pressure to adapt, but parenting remains the task of the women, which is highly influenced by their ethnic heritage. In my understanding, the women fulfil their institutional role within a family, by passing over the husbands’ cultural identity to the children, while generally maintaining cultural practices from their own ethnic heritage as long as they do not have another option.

7.4 A multi-ethnic family case

As the Saigonese and the Teochew-Vietnamese live in a patriarchal society, the expectations of in-laws may sometimes be high for the women. The way the Teochew practice traditions are different than the Vietnamese and Cantonese. The previous sections have shown how boundaries against interethnic marriage are blurring. And that the strategy when dealing with mutual acculturation in intermarriage is cultural amalgamation. It makes it seem that interethnic marriages are harmonious. In reality, sometimes conflicts occur between Teochew-Vietnamese in-laws and their daughter-in-law based on cultural differences. Thim was the most explicit about this. Her son is married to a Vietnamese woman. And they have encountered some struggles regarding cultural differences. Relations between in-laws and the daughter-in-law are important because Saigon is a patriarchal society. Thim explains:

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When a woman marries a man, she becomes part of that man’s family. The daughter of the family will be part of another family. […] That’s why us Teochew love our daughter-in-law more than our own daughters. We take care of our daughters when they are young, but at some point, they will leave us. But our daughters-in-law will stay with us until we die.

The difficulties Thim experienced are mostly in the sphere of religious and spiritual practices. As explained earlier in chapter six, the PTD seem more superstitious than the Vietnamese. Thim’s daughter-in-law is a dedicated Buddhist and vegetarian. When people are about to die, she would go to their houses together with other dedicated Buddhists and chant mantras until the person passes. She often goes to funerals to do the same. Thim dislikes this habit of her daughter-in-law. She is afraid it brings bad luck into the family. Nonetheless, her daughter-in-law keeps practicing this. After one of the funerals, the daughter-in-law got into a scooter accident. Thim blamed the mantra chanting during the funeral for this bad luck. This escalated into a fight between them. However, friends and family have told her to accept that her daughter-in-law comes from a different culture.

Another example Thim gave, is the funeral of her late husband. Thim is old and does not know how to drive nor have the energy to do all the work related to the funeral. She depends heavily on her son and daughter-in-law to arrange the funeral. Her daughter-in-law tried her best to do it. However, she is only familiar with the Vietnamese style. At first, she arranged Vietnamese Buddhists to chant mantras and she served vegetarian dishes. About this Thim stated:

We are PTD, we need Chinese monks to chant in [our language], not in Vietnamese! And those Vietnamese, they offer vegetarian dishes! Teochew don’t do that, we have our own dishes. She did everything wrong! My husband is starving on the other side.

After a dispute about this issue, the daughter-in-law has become unwilling to help surrounding ancestral worshipping. “She never helps me, she doesn’t care.” Thim complained. When I met her son one day, he said:

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We made so many mistakes at the funeral. I did everything wrong. I honestly don’t know how to do this and let my wife arrange it. But now we are scared to do it wrong again. I’m not going to get involved in this anymore.

Even though, the daughter-in-law is fulfilling her role as wife by taking responsibility over the funeral. She did not fulfil it the correct way, according to the Teochew-Vietnamese customs. This has caused a big conflict between Ba Thim, and her daughter-in-law and her son. This conflict is in such an extent that her daughter-in-law is now unwilling to fulfil this duty. Differences in cultural practices sometimes lead to tensions within households, such as this case is showing. Not all interethnic marriages run harmoniously, from both sides flexibility and understanding is needed. However, generation one and two Teochew-Vietnamese are not as flexible as generation three and four Teochew-Vietnamese are. Cultural amalgamation seems to be an open-ended process, where the involved need to negotiate their position when dealing with instances of mutual acculturation.

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8 Conclusion

This is the concluding chapter of this ethnography. I will start with a summary of the findings, and proceed with the discussion and limitations of the study.

8.1 Summary

This section gives a brief summary of the findings in chapter 3 to 7. Chapter 3 shows that the attitude of the Teochew-Vietnamese towards the SRV is negative. Collective memories of the anti-Chinese policies in 1978 are still present today. However, the experiences of the Teochew-Vietnamese with the state lead to variations of assimilation to the Vietnamese society. Generation one seems to exclude themselves from the Vietnamese. Generation two is wary of the Vietnamese, but is also dependent on the Vietnamese. They show the first signs of boundary crossing. Generation three did not experience the robe-in of Cho Lon, but was affected by the anti-Chinese policies. Generation four is born after đổi mới and are living in an environment, where the SRV has more lenient policies towards the ethnic Chinese. They are reliving the anti-Chinese policies through the memories of their (grand)parents. Marginalization induces boundary making between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese, but shared history and marginalization breaks boundaries between the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Cantonese.

The connection between language and identity is explored in chapter 4. This chapter found that the Teochew-Vietnamese encounter challenges in the maintenance of their ethnic language. The cohesiveness between them and their (grand)parents is positively related to the ethnic language maintenance, while the influence of peers from the dominant language negatively relate to the maintenance of the ethnic language. Due to the transformation of Cho Lon’s environment, the Teochew-Vietnamese of generation four are usually unable to speak Teochew. Generation three Teochew-Vietnamese are usually raised by their generation one (grand)parents, and are more able to maintain the language than generation four. Generation one has the greatest anti-Vietnamese sentiment. This sentiment heightens the likelihood that children raised by this generation are closer to the Teochew identity.

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Furthermore, the languages symbolize identity. Through speaking multiple languages, the Teochew-Vietnamese generate multiple layers of identity: 1) Teochew identity, 2) pan- Chinese identity, 3) PTD, 4) Teochew-Vietnamese and 5) Cosmopolitan. Especially the identity as PTD reflects their identification with the Cantonese community, and the identity as Teochew-Vietnamese reflect how they are part of the Vietnamese society. The multiple layered identity shows how the Teochew-Vietnamese are able to strategically use language and surface identity by adapting to their interlocutor. Their connection to China or Taiwan as pan-Chinese, for example, is instrumental to increase mobility. Despite their adaptability, they stay true to their ethnic Teochew heritage. This shows how the construction of identity is a complex process of continuous renegotiation.

Chapter 5 shows how education and work affect the boundary-making and -building processes. The Teochew-Vietnamese have an aversion against being employed by others. Being employed is perceived to be a disadvantaged position, for people without the right cultural, financial and human capital. Furthermore, self-employment is a signifier of the PTD identity that the Teochew-Vietnamese aim to enforce, in order to resist assimilation with the Vietnamese. Therefore, many choose to work in family businesses. In order to not be influenced by Vietnamese values, the Teochew-Vietnamese create a distance between themselves and the Vietnamese. While, they are culturally heavily influenced during school, they try to control the interethnic social relationship in such a way that their values are not influenced. This indicates that the construction and deconstruction of boundaries is an on- going process, and the construction of identity is shifting and ambiguous.

Cultural and religious practices are explored in Chapter 6. In Saigon, religious activities lead to social relations. Boundaries are crossed when members of different ethnic groups get together to a pagoda and perform rituals that are originally labelled as belonging to one group. The practice of religion and rituals are no longer ‘purely’ Teochew, because of the influence of other ethnic communities. Due to the changed environment in which women are working, the Teochew-Vietnamese seem to fail in passing down the knowledge on ritualistic practices. Moreover, the Vietnamese are used as an instrument for the continuity of the Teochew heritage. On a discursive level, religious and cultural practices define the fundamental differences between the communities, which also leads to stereotyping. However, culture is a construction of the imagination of the self. The explicit symbols of

103 cultural heritage are both maintained and reconstructed to reify the Teochew cultural identity. Despite the close connection with the Vietnamese, the Teochew-Vietnamese create stubborn boundaries. These lay on cultural values. Overt practices such as rituals can be adopted, but fundamental cultural values cannot. This shows that the identity construction is a continuous, but complex process as the Teochew try to maintain their culture through others.

The manifestation of boundary-crossing in intermarriage is discussed in chapter 7. The number of intermarriage is increasing because of the presence of the Vietnamese in Cho Lon after the reunification of Vietnam, the outflux of the ethnic Chinese and the deinstitutionalization of marriage. In the present, marriage is for satisfaction and not for the family as a collective. Arranged marriages are substituted by free-choice marriage and divorce became a valid option to exit a marriage. Through stereotyping, the Teochew established criteria in choosing a spouse, in which the Vietnamese are the least desirable. The boundaries for Teochew-Vietnamese men to intermarry are cultural practices, in particular ancestral worshipping and the language and the identity of the children. Both these boundaries are blurring. The knowledge of language and rituals is diminishing in the Teochew community. The importance of the wife being knowledgeable about these practices is thus also diminishing. This means that the boundary for men to intermarry is vanishing. Teochew- Vietnamese women, on the other hand, have formed boundaries through stereotyping the Vietnamese as being lazy and bad husbands. These stereotypes are overcome because of the spatial convergence of the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese. The Teochew- Vietnamese value others based on individual characteristics instead of stereotypes. This chapter clearly shows the dual discursive competence described by Baumann (1996), because the Teochew form solid boundaries through stereotypes on a discursive level, yet practice intermarriage in their daily lives.

8.2 Discussion

The findings show the fluid nature of the identity construction. Identity, culture and communities are built and rebuilt through boundary making- and -crossing practices. The negotiation of these practices depends on a plethora of factors. Some of these are explored in

104 this research. One is the shared ethnic cultural practices, ethnic language and cultural values of a group of people. These are the perceived fundamental differences between the Teochew, Cantonese and the Vietnamese, which are continuously used through the dominant discourse and which leads to the ‘self-other’ talk, where the negative characteristics of the other are used as instruments to reify the identity of the self.

The shared history of a group of people leads to the formation of a community. Forefathers of the Teochew-Vietnamese and the Cantonese-Vietnamese were Chinese sojourners. Furthermore, they have been treated as one people by Vietnam’s state to whom the discriminatory policies are targeted. This joint marginalization has led to cohesion within the PTD community, and at the same time to separation them from the Vietnamese community. This shared history is still relevant as it is present in the collective memories of the Teochew-Vietnamese. The PTD identification in opposition of the Vietnamese identity is solidified through this negative attitude towards Vietnamese in general.

However, the boundaries are continuously crossed in reality. Space is a factor that has been playing a role in boundary-making and -crossing. The transformation of the environment in Cho Lon due to the outflux of the ethnic Chinese and influx of the Vietnamese and the Vietnamization of institutions led to everyday interactions between the ethnic groups. Continuous interaction softens the boundaries between the ethnic communities, where people use a common language. Besides ethnic identity, individuals are part of other communities. For example, they identify as members of a neighbourhood. Institutions, such as religion and school, play a great role in identity construction. The institutions determine the degree of interaction between the different ethnic groups. This shows that even the variables that mark one ethnic identity may be spilled to another community. Moreover, globalization affects community formation. Many Teochew-Vietnamese identify as cosmopolitans to surpass the restrictions within cultures and politics and to move towards individualization, which means that they are letting go of patriarchy that is associated with (South)east Asian cultures. This non-ethnic communities cross the ethnic communities, forming new communities. This is in line with the demotic discourse of Baumann (Baumann, 1996).

Most importantly, the Teochew-Vietnamese identity formation is strategic, as the pan- Chinese identity shows. Individuals pose an identity to increase mobility and opportunities, 105 which may be restricted when they commit to one fixed identity. Hence the multiple layered ethnic identity of the Teochew. They tend to perform identity to adhere to their environment, mainly through the use of language. The posing of identity goes through certain characteristics associated with an identity that comes to the surface through practices.

All these factors together show that identity is not bound to the nation-state. The Chinese identity of the Teochew-Vietnamese is not restricted to China as a nation. This identity is enforced through language, memories through history and cultural content and instrumental use. The term “Chinese” is used as a symbol to encompasses all these fundamental markers, not the country of China itself. I contest a universal notion of Chineseness by stating that Chineseness is a label to express a multitude of variables. Chineseness is an umbrella term, which encompasses multiple and interrelated identities. Ethnically mixed Chinese also identify as Chinese. Crucial to this is the collective imagination of the group and the imagination of the other in contributing to identity formation. This ethnography shows that identity formation is an open-ended and complex process of negotiation and renegotiation of the boundaries between communities depending on a plethora of factors.

I suggest, however, that even though boundaries may become blurry through frequent interaction. The imagination of the self is so strong that it may form stubborn boundaries that are hard to overcome. With stubborn boundaries, I mean fundamental cultural values. The loss of the relevance of guanxi, for example, does not affect the seriousness the Teochew-Vietnamese place on trustworthiness. The distrust towards Vietnamese, as the determinant other, echoes through all daily practices of the Teochew- Vietnamese.

As this research is an ethnography, it carries the limitations associated with ethnographies. There is a lack of quantitative data. I suggest that this ethnography is exploratory in nature, and that the findings may be substantiated through quantitative methods in further research.

The second limitation of this ethnography is the research sample. The Teochew- Vietnamese respondents have a relatively close connection to their ethnic heritage, making them traceable through Nghia An huiguan, and in connection with other Teochew-

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Vietnamese. One of the findings is that the Teochew-Vietnamese generally do not disclose their ethnic identity unless it is questioned. Many Teochew-Vietnamese, therefore, are mistaken as being Vietnamese. Generation four, who shows the least signs of their ethnic heritage, may be almost untraceable. This group of invisible ethnic Teochew-Vietnamese are interesting to research, and may add information on the complex process of identity formation.

Moreover, I suggest that future research can be carried out on ethnically mixed Teochew-Vietnamese. I have found that the Saigonese society is patriarchal. The ethnic identity of the children in mixed marriages depends on the father’s ethnic identity. It is interesting to see how far this ethnicity can be carried on through the next generation, to explore to what extent the risk exists of the discontinuance of the Teochew identity in Saigon. In this vein, it is worth investigating the relationship between patriarchy and ethnic Teochew identity construction.

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Appendix

Overview of participants Teochew-Vietnamese participants Nr Name Age Gender Occupation Other Teochew Research method Main topic language 1 Yin 83 Female Housewife Yes Life history Politics

2 Tran 80 Male Retired, used to Yes Life history Politics own a business 3 Gok 82 Male Retired, used to Yes Conversation Politics own a business 4 Bue 79 Female Housewife Bac Lieu Yes Conversation Family, intermarriage, friendships + life in Bac Lieu

5 Tiet 80 Male Retired, used to Uncle of the Yes Conversation Work (concerning the hotel)

own a business owner of a 5 star hotel 6 Thim 70 Female Housewife Yes Participant friendship, family, religious/ cultural observation, practices

conversation Generation1

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7 Trien 63 Male Owns a business Married to Yes Participant Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, Vietnamese observation, religious/cultural practices, politics (Sim) conversation, life history 8 Ming 66 Female Retired, former Mother of Kim Yes Life history Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, Mandarin religious/ cultural practices and education, teacher politics

9 Bo 56 Male Owns a business (Kim Do Yes Participant Work hepatitis observation, medicine) conversation 10 Huang 65 Male Owns a business Active member Yes Conversation Refers me to events of Ngia An 11 Lam 60 Male Owns a business Active member Yes Conversation Refers me to events of Ngia An 12 Haha 64 Female Housewife Teacher at Ngia Yes Participant Explanation of cultural practices An observation, conversation 13 My 57 Female Retired, used to Yes Participant Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, own a business observation, religious/cultural practices conversation, unstructured interview

14 Hong 53 Female Retired, used to Married to Yes Participant Family, friendship own a business Vietnamese observation 15 Phuong 52 Female Housewife Yes Participant Intermarriage, family, friendships observation,

conversation Generation2 116

16 Khue 56 Female Housewife Sandy's mother Yes Participant Intermarriage, family observation, conversation 17 Ong 50 Male None Married to No Participant friendship Tam Vietnamese (Ba observation Tam) 18 Tran 50 Male No information Leader of Yes Conversation, religious/cultural practices Teochew drum Participant Observation 19 Tiang 58 Male Owns a business Bac Lieu Yes Conversation Life in Bac Lieu 20 Kana 50 Male Owns a business Married to Yes Conversation, Education, work, Intermarriage Cantonese Participant (Mei) Observation 21 Mee 31 Female Housewife Yes Conversation, Family, friendships, religious/cultural Participant practices Observation 22 Ng 50 Male Owns a business Yes Conversation Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work

23 Sam 38 Male Freelancer Yes Unstructured Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, interview, Group religious/ cultural practices and education interview, Participant

observation

24 Pek 35 Male Works at family Yes Group interview Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work business 25 Hoc 38 Male Works at family Yes Group interview Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work

business Generation3

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26 Kheng 37 Male Works at a No Group interview Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work Vietnamese company 27 Quang 31 Male Works at a No Group interview Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work Vietnamese company 28 Tak 34 Male Freelancer Minh's fiancé No Participant Intermarriage, friendship, family observation, conversation, unstructured interview 29 Chiu 34 Male Works at a Yes Participant Intermarriage, friendship, work Vietnamese observation, company conversation, unstructured interview 30 Khan 45 Male Works at a Frequent guest Yes Participant friendships, Intermarriage Teochew of Ba Tam observation, company conversation 31 Gau 43 Male Owns a business Frequent guest Yes Participant friendships, Intermarriage, Family of Ba Tam, observation, Friend of Thim conversation 32 Duy 38 Female Housewife Yes Conversation, Family Participant Observation 33 Lan 50 Female Housewife Bac Lieu Yes Conversation, Intermarriage, family, life in Bac Lieu Participant Observation

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34 Sandy 25 Female None In a Yes Conversation, Family, Intermarriage relationship Participant with a Observation Vietnamese 35 Yat 28 Male Works at a Half No Unstructured Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, Japanese Vietnamese interview religous/cultural practices and education, company + Owns politics a business 36 Gina 27 Female Works at family No Unstructured Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, business interview religous/cultural practices and education, politics

37 Yen 30 Female Owns a business Married to a Yes Participant Family, Intermarriage, work Vietnamese observation, (Tien) conversation, unstructured interview 38 Trang 28 Female Works in Macau Yes Participant Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, observation, religous/cultural practices and education conversation, unstructured interview 39 Loang 29 Female Works in a Yes Group interview Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work

Vietnamese elementary school 40 Neng 28 Female Works at family Yes Group interview Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work

business Generation4

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41 Jessica 28 Female Works at a No Participant Intermarriage, friendship, work Taiwanese observation, company conversation 42 Minh 28 Female Works at a Tak's fiancée Yes Participant Intermarriage, friendship, family Taiwanese observation, company conversation, unstructured interview 43 Hung 24 Male Student Yes Unstructured Family, Intermarriage, friendship, interview religous/cultural practices, education

44 Kim 19 Male Student In a Yes Participant Family, religous/cultural practices, politics relationship observation, with a conversation, Vietnamese unstructured interview 45 Linda 14 Female Student No Unstructured Family, Intermarriage, friendships, interview education 46 Gok 27 Male Works at a Yes Unstructured Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, Taiwanese interview religous/cultural practices and education company

47 Jasmin 23 Female Owns a business In a No Unstructured Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, relationship interview, religous/cultural practices and education with a Participant Vietnamese observation, (Phuoc) conversation

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48 Quan 22 Female Owns a business In a No Participant Intermarriage, friendship relationship observation, with a conversation, Vietnamese/ unstructured Cantonese interview (San) 49 Luy 17 Female Student Street No Street interview Friendship, education interview 50 Jie 26 Female Owns a business Half Cantonese No Participant Business and friendship observation, conversation 51 Joshua 24 Male Student Grew up in Bac No Unstructured Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, Lieu interview, religious/cultural practices and education, Participant life in Bac Lieu, politics observation, conversation 52 Senh 24 Male None Half No Participant Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, Vietnamese, observation, religious/cultural practices and education Bac Lieu conversation

53 Ngo 25 Female Works at a Yes Participant Family, Intermarriage, friendship, work, Taiwanese observation, religious/cultural practices and education company conversation, unstructured interview 54 Hoa 18 Male Student In a No Participant Intermarriage and friendships relationship observation, with a conversation

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Vietnamese (Helen) 55 Trang 25 Female Student No Unstructured Family, friendships interview 56 Yan 25 Female Works at a In a No Participant Work, Intermarriage Taiwanese relationship observation, company with a conversation, Cantonese unstructured (Wai) interview 57 19 Male Student No Conversation, friendship, education Participant Observation 58 Phong 23 Female None No Conversation, friendship, education, Intermarriage Participant Observation 59 May 24 Female None Bac Lieu No Conversation, Intermarriage Participant Observation 60 Ying 6 Female School Half No Participant Intermarriage Vietnamese, Observation granddaughter of Khue 61 Nhu 7 Female School Daughter of No Participant Family Mee Observation 62 Kiet 2 Male pre-school Daughter of Yes Participant Family Mee Observation 63 Khoa 15 Male Student Half Yes Conversation, Family Vietnamese Participant

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Observation

64 Mian 24 Female Owns a business Bac Lieu No Conversation, Life in Bac Lieu Participant Observation

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Non-Teochew participants

Nr Name Age Gender Specification Research method Main topic 1 Mei 38 Female Married to Kana Conversation, Intermarriage Participant Observation 2 Trung 47 Female Frequent customer of Participant friendship Ba Tam, friend of Thim observation, conversation 3 Mui 40 Female Frequent customer of Participant friendship, Ba Tam, friend of Thim observation, religious/cultural conversation practices 4 Wai 27 Male In a relationship with Participant Intermarriage Yan observation, conversation 5 On Male Restaurant owner Conversation, Business and Participant friendship Observation 6 Kasing Male Gym owner Conversation, Business and Participant friendship Observation 7 Long Male Gym employee Conversation, friendship, work Participant Observation 8 Hao Male Friend of Minh and Tak Conversation, friendship Participant

Observation 9 Jenny 19 Female Friend of Hoa Conversation, friendship Participant

Observation Cantonese 10 Tien 32 Male Married to Yen Participant Family, observation, Intermarriage, conversation work 11 Phuoc 26 Male In a relationship with Participant Family, Jasmin observation, Intermarriage, conversation friendship 12 Sim 42 Female Married to Trien Unstructured Intermarriage, interview, Family, Participant religious/cultural observation practices 13 Helen 19 Female In a relationship with Conversation, Friendship, Hoa Participant Intermarriage

Observation Vietnamese

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14 Huyen Female Restaurant owner Conversation, Business and Participant friendship Observation 15 Nhi Female Barbershop owner Conversation, Business, work Participant Observation 16 Hiro Male Friend of Joshua Conversation, Intermarriage, Participant friendship Observation 17 Dinh Male Plays Teochew drum Conversation, religious/cultural Participant practices Observation 18 San 23 Male In a relationship with Participant Intermarriage, Quan, half Cantonese observation family 19 Hieu 27 Male Hired by Jie Participant Business and observation friendship 20 Phu 26 Male Hired by Jie Participant Business and observation friendship 21 Male District 1: does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 22 Male District 1: does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 23 Male District 5: Knows about Street interview Knowledge about Teochew the Teochew 24 Female District 10: Knows Street interview Knowledge about about Teochew the Teochew 25 Male District 10: Knows Street interview Knowledge about about Teochew the Teochew 26 Female District 2: Mother does Street interview Knowledge about business with Teochew the Teochew 27 Female District 2: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 28 Female District 2: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 29 Male District 2: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 30 Male Binh Thanh: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 31 Male District 5: Knows about Street interview Knowledge about Teochew the Teochew 32 Female Binh Tan: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew

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33 Female District 3: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 34 Female District 2: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 35 Male District 7: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 36 Male District 8: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 37 Male District 7: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 38 Male Binh Thanh: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 39 Female District 8: Knows about Street interview Knowledge about Teochew the Teochew 40 Female District 8: Knows about Street interview Knowledge about Teochew the Teochew 41 Male District 8: Knows about Street interview Knowledge about Teochew the Teochew 42 Male District 8: Knows about Street interview Knowledge about Teochew the Teochew 43 Female District 8: Knows about Street interview Knowledge about Teochew the Teochew 44 Male Binh Thanh: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 45 Male Binh Thanh: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 46 Female Binh Thanh: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 47 Male District 4: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 48 Female District 3: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew 49 Male District 4: Does not Street interview Knowledge about know about Teochew the Teochew

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