Eating Huaqiao” and the Left Behind: the Moral and Social-Economic Consequences of the Return of Overseas Chinese to a South China Village
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“Eating Huaqiao” and the Left Behind: the moral and social-economic consequences of the return of Overseas Chinese to a South China Village Meixuan Chen UCL Thesis submitted for the examination of Doctor of Philosophy July 2013 I, Meixuan Chen, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis draws on 18 months of participation observation in a Hakka-speaking, lineage-dominated village in Guangdong Province in South China. It is concerned with the perspective of the village locals interacting with the return of huaqiao (Overseas Chinese) since the 1980s. Huaqiao contribute significantly to the village infrastructure and welfare provision. This thesis asks: do lineage-village community traditions and values necessarily hinder the individualisation process; and how do we understand the individualistic pursuits in the notionally communal projects? The thesis documents the moral, socio-economic impact of the return of Overseas Chinese on the local villagers. This is done by examining key events, individuals and rituals. The ethnographic data includes the disputed demolition of a public building and the naming of private houses; two key individuals, a vengeful son who returned and an “actually existing matriarch”; and the co-existing practices of earth burial and cremation. The thesis analyses the power of lineage elite elders; individualism and traditional collectivism; the local logic of success and bitterness; women’s power in the lineage-dominated community and social differentiation. The return of huaqiao exposes the dual nature of village practices and events, which are often seen as communal and family projects. The tension between individuals’ pursuit of autonomy and their aspiration to identify with the traditional values of community is explored. I argue that the traditions and values of the small-scale community such as the lineage or village do not necessarily hinder Chinese individualisation, contrary to Yan Yunxiang’s theory. The expansion of both communal and individualistic space can mutually facilitate each other. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Allen Abrahamson (UCL) and Charles Stafford (LSE). I would like to thank in particular Charles, who has truly expanded my knowledge of Chinese anthropology. I should also like to thank my initial supervisor, Michael Stewart (UCL), for encouraging me to do a PhD in the first place. Chris Russell always provided timely administrative support. I thank the following program for the financial support throughout my study in London: a Shell Centenary scholarship, an Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS), and a Hong Kong KC Wong scholarship. I thank Dr. Luke Freeman and Professor Michael Rowland in the department for reading some of the chapters. I would like to thank those of my colleagues, peers and friends, who were generous in discussing ideas and reading over various drafts of my thesis: Deborah Soothil, Beata Switek, Fabio Gygi, Dimitra Kofti, Matan Shapiro, Magda Craciun, Jennie Siu, Shuli Wang, Vicki Spence, Shin Dee Liew. Catalina Tesar in Romania and Carolin Morlock in Germany read the whole draft with encouragement and critical suggestions. I would like to thank in particular Dr James Johnston (LSE) for his comments and excellent proofreading. I am indebted to all those people in Mashan, Dabu County of Guangdong Province in China that I was able to talk to, for their generosity and laughter, and the time and patience they took to answer my questions. Finally, I would like to thank my parents Chen Xiulan and Chen Shiquan in China and my in-laws in New Zealand, who have been supportive of my studies; and last but not least, my long-suffering husband, Ben Yong. 4 Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 6 Chapter One: Methodology and Research Setting .................................................. 27 Chapter Two: Overseas Visitors, Local Anxieties—The “Left-behind” Face the Problem of Returning Huaqiao ............................................................................... 59 Chapter Three: The Fragility of Lineage Elite Power—The Demolition of Happiness Garden ................................................................................................... 83 Chapter Four: Overseas-Dependency and Self-Reliance—Building and Naming New Houses .......................................................................................................... 112 Chapter Five: The Local Logic of Bitterness—A Vengeful Son’s Return ........... 145 Chapter Six: An “Actually Existing Matriarch”—A Village Woman Beyond the Family Threshold .................................................................................................. 176 Chapter Seven: Symbolic Differentiation in the Disposal of Bodies—Cremation and Earth Burial .................................................................................................... 210 Conclusion: Leaving the village, history and individualisation............................ 238 Bibliography ......................................................................................................... 251 5 Introduction 1. Prologue During my first few months in the village in 2007, a ten-year-old girl, called Wisdom, would come to study English with me for half an hour every evening. During these lessons, she told me much about her life as a grade-five student in the village primary school, which had been a lineage school in the pre-1949 era. Among the many things she told me about her life, such as her vivid descriptions of her fierce mother and the barbaric boys from the rival lineage, were her accounts of the visits that huaqiao (华侨, Overseas Chinese) made to the village. She complained about her obligatory participation in the staged receptions for these huaqiao, which were organised by her school. “Every time some huaqiao come back, we have to wait by the village road to welcome them, even if it is very hot and we are sweating a lot in the sun. Sometimes we must stand for several hours. And there’s no water to drink. The school headmaster and all our teachers are there too.” When these visits took place, Wisdom and her schoolmates were told to bring a bouquet of plastic flowers, and they were lined up in single file along both sides of the road near the entrance to the village. Upon the arrival of the huaqiao, they raised the bouquets chanting loudly in a concerted manner, “Welcome! Welcome! A joyful welcome!” Given that the village is located in a sub-tropical area of south China, Wisdom’s complaints about the heat and suffering were by no means an exaggeration. Before my fieldwork, when I was reading the magazine produced in the village to celebrate its Overseas Chinese connection, I had already encountered many repetitive narratives about this kind of elaborate public reception performance. Later, I also watched some videos of various huaqiao receptions, which featured the same classic public greeting rituals involving students and other locals lining up along the roads to welcome the returning huaqiao. Obviously, Wisdom did not personally know any of these returning huaqiao, who had left the village about 40 years earlier, long before her birth. Yet, together with the other children, she was supposed to repeatedly demonstrate her ecstasy at the “homecoming” of huaqiao on these official occasions. The “joyful welcome” in which she was required to 6 participate was probably not proportionate to any personal feeling of hers. Nevertheless, during her daily life in the village, she must have learnt about the importance of huaqiao on many occasions. For instance, she studied in classrooms and played on the basketball courts named after certain overseas donors. She walked on the village paths and across the bridges financed by and named after the village’s overseas compatriots. Her grandparents were members of the village- based Elders’ Association, the activities of which were mainly financed by huaqiao. The most elaborate ancestral tombs she attended to worship were re- established by huaqiao after the 1980s. And, as I later learnt, her mother married her father in the first place partially because of his household’s overseas connection, which was perceived to be a privilege. Faith was the 19-year-old daughter of my fifth hostess in the village. A quiet and sensitive young woman, her anxiety and ambition was shaped by her experience of growing up in this qiaoxiang – an ancestral village to Overseas Chinese. Most of her village peers, including her younger brother, had left to work in factories in Guangzhou or Shenzhen after secondary school at the age of 15. However, Faith was one of the limited few who had made it to university. She had gone to Jiaying University, in the local municipal capital of Meizhou Prefecture, to undertake teacher training. Yet, she was frustrated because her university was only two hours’ bus journey from the village and, consequently, she was not counted as someone who had really left or “gone out the door” (chumen, 出门): an important indicator of someone’s success. In fact, as she pointed out, her result