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Chinese History Books and Other Stories CHINESE HISTORY BOOKS AND OTHER STORIES BY Kenneth Chan AN EXEGESIS AND STORIES SUBMITTED AS A CREATIVE WRITING PH.D THESIS IN THE SCHOOL OF CREATIVE COMMUNICATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA AUGUST 2005 CONTENTS Abstract Acknowledgments Note PART I. CHINESE HISTORY BOOKS AND OTHER STORIES: AN EXEGESIS ZNTROD UCTZON 2 1. CHINESENESS, IDENTITY, AND HYBRIDTY 3 [a] Framing Chineseness: Western Anxieties and Discourses 3 [b] Framing Chineseness: Issues of Authenticity and Essence 13 [c] Framing Chineseness: Some Issues of Identity I7 2. FAMILY AND SELF [a] My Father's Family [b] About Myself ANAL YSING THE FICTIONS [a] Aspects of Narrative (i) The role of the narrator in the transmission of the narrative (ii) The narrative unity of fiction (iii) Narrative and time (iv) Repetition in narrative [b] Tone and Structure in the Fictions [c] Between Life and Fiction: Why the stories are not a personal or family memoir [dl Making Narratives: Predominant Motifs (i) Reconstructing memory (ii) Identity and temperament (iii) The sense of loss (iv) Compulsiveness/Obsession (v) Home as a focal point of family life 4. SITUA TING THE FICTION 5. SITUA TING MYSELF 6. LANGUAGE, SILENCE, AND VOICE CONCL USZON REFERENCES PART 11. CHINESE HISTORY BOOKS AND OTHER STORIES LEICA (DIS) TEMPER ALL THE TEA IN CHINA COMPULSIVE DISLOYALTY CHINESE HISTORY BOOKS OTHER PEOPLE'S LETTERS BROTHERLY LOVE THE NAME IS CHAN, CHARLES CHAN ABSTRACT My thesis is a creative writing doctorate which focuses on one Chinese family's adaptation to living in Australia in the mid-twentieth century. The thesis is in two parts. Part I is an examination of Chineseness and identity within the context of the short stories that make up Part I1 of the thesis. In Part I, I have looked at the place of the Chinese within the larger, dominant cultures of America and Australia. In particular, I have discussed the way in which the discourses of the dominant culture have framed Chineseness; and also what it might mean to describe authentic and essential qualities in Chineseness. The question I ask is whether the concept of Chineseness shifts according to time, location, history, and intercultural encounters. This leads me to try to "place" my family and myself. I provide some background on my family and on specific incidents that have served as springboards for the fiction. Part I also discusses some aspects of narrative theory in relation to the stories and considers the stories within the context of other Chinese- Australian fiction and performance. Ln Part 11, I have written a collection of nine short stories about the lives of a fictitious family called the Tangs. The stories can be described as a cycle that is unified and linked by characters who are protagonists in one story but appear in a minor or supporting role in other stories. Composing a linked cycle of stories has given me the opportunity to extend the short story form, especially by giving me scope to expand the lives of the characters beyond a single story. The lives of the characters can take on greater complexity since they confront challenges at different stages of their lives from different perspectives. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS These stories could not have been written without the encouragement and wise counsel of Jen Webb, Jacquie Lo, Leslie Chan, and Alison Chan. Jen persuaded me to take on a creative writing thesis at the University of Canberra, assiduously read successive drafts of the stories and the exegesis, and gave, at every step, critical but always perceptive feedback. I thank her for maintaining a steady and sure tiller that has steered the work to completion. Jacquie proferred helpful feedback at an early stage when I was developing my ideas on what I wanted to write. Her encouragement has been positive and her suggestions for who to read in Chinese-Australian fiction and what to read on concepts such as Chineseness, identity, and hybridity guided me through what is a proliferating literature. Leslie and Alison, apart from having to live with the writer of the thesis, have given insightfbl comments which have greatly improved the flow of the writing. I thank, as well, others who have read drafts of the stories and provided helphl comments including Maureen Bettle, Lynn Fong, Beatrice Sochan, and Geoffiey Chan. Some of the ideas for the exegesis were presented at postgraduate seminars in professional writing at the University of Canberra and I thank both staff and students for their critical and positive advice. Auriol Weigold was instrumental in putting my name forward to the organisers of the Independent Scholars Association of Australia Conference on diasporas in 2001. The paper I gave there on my family in Australia was published subsequently in the ISM Review in 2002 and I have drawn on parts of it for my exegesis. The School of Creative Communication at the University of Canberra has been generous in its support during the writing of this thesis. I am gratehl to the University for the chance to visit Shanghai late in 2004 and wish to thank Sam and Xiaowei Gerovich for taking care of me so well while I was there. Finally I want to thank my mother Sally. Her conversations about her experiences in Shanghai and Sydney have contributed greatly to my understanding of family life. NOTE A number of the stories in this thesis have snatches of conversation in Cantonese which I written in a Romanised form. My use of Romanisation has been taken from two sources: Oakman 's Cantonese-English Dictionary (1 971), Hong Kong: New World Publishing; and Janey Chan, (1992) A Practical English-Chinese Pronouncing Dictionary, Tokyo: Charles E Tuttle Publishing. Where the Cantonese has been translated I have done the rendering into English. In the text of the exegesis all page references to the short stories follow the pagination in Part I1 of the thesis. INTRODUCTION The short stories that form a substantial part of this thesis focus on one Chinese family's adaptation to living in Australia in the mid-twentieth century. In composing these stories, what it means to be Chinese was always there as a question that needed to be interrogated. It could hardly be ignored because being Chinese defined my family in many ways and shaped our response to many events. The stories explore this from different perspectives and in different settings. Stories, of course, are one way of saying. An exegesis allows other ways. Central to what I want to examine are notions of Chineseness and identity. I have taken this as my starting point, focussing on the location of the Chinese in the larger, dominant cultures of America and Australia. 1 look at two broad issues: how the discourses of the dominant culture framed Chineseness; and what do we mean when we speak about Chineseness. The assessment of Chineseness provokes additional questions. Are there essential qualities that define what it means to be Chinese? Does the concept of Chineseness shift according to time, location, history and intercultural encounters? In examining the last of these questions I try to "place" my family and myself. This leads to a consideration of the fiction itself. Here, I provide some background on the family and family incidents as springboards for the fiction. At the same time, I underline the point that the fiction is not the family itself and that the stories, as written, are a fabrication in the fillest usage of that word. In dissecting the fiction itself, I look at narrative theory and its relation to my stories as well as some of the predominant motifs in the stories. In this section I discuss some aspects of the role of the narrator, the narrative unity of fiction, the connection between narrative and time, the pattern of repetition in narrative, and tone and structure in the stories. The motifs that I consider are: the reconstruction of memory, including the elusiveness of the past; the connection between the past and the present; the use of past events as invention or reinvention; identity and temperament; the sense of loss; compulsiveness, especially in relation to gambling; and the idea of home as a focal point of family life. Finally, I try to place my stories within the context of other Chinese-Australian fiction and performance and of my own experiences. I look briefly at the work of writers and performers like Brian Castro, Beth Yahp, Ouyang Yu, William Yang and Anna Yen. Of my own experiences, I give some accounts of how I have been misperceived by being mistaken for being Japanese, American Indian, and, on one occasion in Rome, Timothy Mo. 1. CHINESENESS, IDENTITY, AND HYBRIDITY [a] Framing Chineseness: Western Anxieties and Discourses What does it mean to be Chinese if you are no longer living in China? If you have arrived in a land where there are not many Chinese: a place like Australia or America? How does the new place regard you and how do you regard it? To ask these questions draws us into thinking about Chineseness and how it has been framed within the discourses of the host culture. Andy Quan subtly captures the mystery and paradox of being the other in his poem "Mr Wong's Children": we learned how not to stand out from insults what not to wear we waited for silence to tell us that we were good students though speaking with no accent was as easy as water the eyes were a little hard to hide (200 1 : 25) How, Quan seems to be asking, do we negotiate difference if we know we are not the same? Not the same as what, you may ask? Not the same as those who don't have to try to hide their eyes.
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