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Chapter 8 Chinese of Different Nationalities, China, and the Anthropology of Chinese Culture Tan Chee-Beng Introduction The study of Chinese outside China originally aimed at understanding Chinese culture and society at a time when it was not possible to do research in post-1949 China. It was in this climate that a great deal of research was done in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Even research on the Chinese in Southeast Asia, such as the works of Maurice Freedman and William H. Newell,1 were done with an eye to understanding Chinese culture not only in Malaya, but also in China. Very soon, in the climate of the Cold War, research on the Chinese in Southeast Asia turned to the issue of whether Chinese could be assimilated and integrated into their country of residence, as pioneered by the classic work of G. William Skinner.2 Since the 1970s local Chinese scholars in Southeast Asia have been more interested in the issues of local identities and Chinese participation in the economy and politics of their own countries. It has become clear that the Chinese in diaspora3 need be studied in their own local and national contexts. The academic popularity of using transnationalism as a mode of analysis has seen the application of this model to the study of the Chinese in diaspora, too. The rise of China as a global economic power has further encouraged the use of this mode of analysis to study the transnational networks between the Chinese in diaspora and those in China. Thus the study of Chinese in diaspora has moved from being a China-centered study to study in local and national context and to transnational context involving multiple sites. Despite all these shifts in focus, the comparative study of Chinese of different nationalities (CDN) remains fruitful for understanding issues of cultural change and cultural 192 · Tan Chee-Beng continuity as well as the ethnic and cultural identities of the diverse categories of people who identify themselves as Chinese, albeit in their respective ways. For this purpose I have proposed to study Chinese in diaspora and relevant peoples in China in a Chinese ethnological field,4 since they all trace their cultural traditions from China and generally identify with Chinese civilization. For example, the study of Minnan (Southern Fujian) cultural traditions should not be restricted to studying them in China only, but should also include those practiced by the Minnan people in different parts of the world. Only in this larger ethnological context can we see the continuity and transformation of Minnan traditions and their significance to the politics of identity. While the study of the Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan (there are rather few studies in Macau) are seen as relevant to understanding Chinese culture, the traditions of scholarship on Chinese culture in China and on Chinese in diaspora have been rather separate. For example, few scholars who study popular religion in China pay attention to the research on Chinese popular religion in Southeast Asia or elsewhere , although they may refer to work done in Taiwan or Hong Kong. Scholars on China are often not so familiar with the study of the Chinese in diaspora, although relatively more scholars on Chinese overseas do pay some attention to the research on China, since some aspects are relevant to their area of analysis, including of course that on emigrant villages (qiaoxiang 僑鄉). In this chapter I seek to show that in the study of Chinese cultural traditions, there should be more interaction between discussions of China and those of Chinese in diaspora. The study of Chinese in diaspora can benefit greatly from also paying attention to cultural traditions in China. Indeed, an anthropology of Chinese culture cannot restrict itself to the geographical boundary of China. This is true of other phenomena relating to Chinese peoples in China in as far as there is worldwide migration from that country. In the study of Chinese culture—I use culture in the singular to refer loosely to cultural life, symbols, and institutions such as marriage and religious practices—it is more fruitful to look at Chinese culture not only within, but also beyond, the boundary of China, as this can enable us to compare Chinese cultural practices in different regions and national contexts. In both the scholarship on China and the Chinese in diaspora, Chinese culture is generally assumed to be about Han Chinese. For convenience, Chinese culture in this chapter refers to the Han Chinese culture. Of course, the...

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