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Theme: 2. From Oceanic Crossroads: Empires, Networks and Histories
Nicholas Y. H. Wong
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Nicholas Y. H. Wong
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Yi Li
Aberystwyth University, United Kingdom
Beiyu Zhang
Jinan University, China
The 1950s to 1970s witnessed a heady mix of nationalism and Third World internationalism that reshaped ethnic Chinese relations in Southeast Asia and the world. Given the priority of nation-building in decolonizing projects during this era, how did cultural movers such as popular historians, novelists, painters, and curators from Indonesia, Myanmar, and Singapore view the interplay of culture and knowledge formation beyond the Cold War dynamics of state diplomacy and international governance? The four papers here view cultural expression as harbingers of how to do politics differently, using what we call “archival moments” to shape alternative discourses of national ethnicities (often in the minority), guiqiao (returned overseas Chinese), Bandung, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. How does inter-Asian writing and art, produced from a minority angle, document their present, and how are such intentions transformed in wider contexts of reproduction, promotion, and dialogue? Based on archival research and neglected, multimedia and multilingual sources, the four papers evaluate the efficacy of how inter-Asian writers and artists back then draw on existing scales and networks to define critique from the margins, and what that means for Asian Studies today.
Drawing upon cultural experiences from across Southeast Asia, including writing and painting from the Indonesian archipelago, Yiqing Li views Sino-Indonesian cultural exchange via individual and collective artistic productions and communications between China and Indonesia in the 1950s; Yi Li explores history writing in Chinese-medium newspapers in post-WWII Yangon in relation to China-Myanmar entanglements that was parallel to Myanmar’s road to military dictatorship during the 1960s; Nic Wong examines why “coolie” literature, or historical fiction about migrant labor experience in Indonesia, had a resurgence in China in the 1970s; and Beiyu Zhang articulates the visual language of Chinese artists in articulating “Merdeka” in Singapore and Malaya. Together, this panel explores the artistic representation of ethnic Chinese, situating on the margin of state-based narratives and at geographical and temporal crossroads in post-war eastern Asia, through creative works in writing and art.
Presenter: Nicholas Y. H. Wong – The University of Hong Kong
Presenter: Yi Li – Aberystwyth University
Presenter: Beiyu Zhang – Jinan University