Being Eurasian: Memories Across Racial Divides

Chapter 1: The Vanishing Community?

1 > 1 *> • O » <» • I < The Vanishing Community? They do not realize that, after all, there is no gulf between a Chan and a Smith amongst us and that underlying superficial differences in names and outlook, the spirit of kinship and brotherhood burns brightly We Eurasians with the blood of Old China mixed with that of Europe in us, we show the world that this fusion, to put it no higher, is not detrimental to good citizenship (Eric Ho, 9) t i s true tha t th e Eurasian community wa s (and stil l is ) only a very minute segmen t o f the Hon g Kong society. Yet its presence i n thi s city could hardly be ignored. Numerous attempts by the Hong Kong Census, between 189 7 and 1931 , reflect a gross under-estimation o f th e size of the Eurasian community. The figures that appeared in these reports strongly point to the fact that a great number of Eurasians often declare d themselves a s Chinese and , in some cases, Europeans. As a result of th e fluid collectiv e identit y o f the Hon g Kong-Eurasia n community , the y were often perceived as not being truly and authentically representativ e of Hong Kong — a city which has always had a dominating majority o f Cantonese. Partly becaus e o f their ambiguou s an d ofte n unstabl e identity , th e writings of Hong Kong-Eurasians could be said to suffer from the 'traumat a of insignificance', a phrase that Patrick Bellegard-Smith applied to Haitian writers (quote d i n Lionnet, 6) . This fateful marginaht y o f Hong Kong Eurasian autobiographers can be explained in several ways. First, memoirs 8฀ Being Eurasian Memories Across Racial Divides had never been taken as a very serious genre, and had never been popular in Hong Kong until the memoir boom in the mid-1990s.1 Second, the vibrant bourgeois community invoked in these autobiographical writings, that had so much influenced Hon g Kong, was already something of the past at th e time the y wer e written . Sinc e th e Secon d Worl d War , th e Eurasia n community had joined th e diaspora to England, Australia an d America . The los s of Hong Kong as their 'home' is poignantly represented i n these writings. Even during the pre-war period, the community had never bee n more than a small-insulated minority , belonging to a small British colony nestling next to a vast Chinese nation. It is the belief of many Eurasians of the pre-war generation that they should not be beguiled into thinking tha t they could represent anyone other than themselves . Whether i n Hon g Kon g o r othe r Europea n colonie s i n th e East , Eurasians had often bee n perceived as the living embodiment of colonial encounters. They belonged to a marginalized and isolated colonial category that straddle d racial , ethnic and sometimes national boundaries . Racia l crossings ca n b e extremel y worrying , 'becaus e i t threatene d bot h t o destabilize national identity and the Manichean categories of the ruler and the ruled' (Stoler, 1997,226). In Hong Kong, the isolation of the community was much less obvious and discrimination less consistent than elsewhere in Asia, e.g. India (Gaikward), Indonesia (Wittermans) an d Malaya (Crabb). 2 (One obviou s reason for this was undoubtedly th e Eurasians' economi c and political influenc e withi n th e colony. ) Bu t on a subterranean level , their sense of marginahzation and isolation was perhaps much more acute and insidious in its own way, compared to that of Eurasians in other parts of Asia, a s they found themselve s strande d betwee n tw o mutually aloof , a t times mutually contemptuous, cultural worlds. In Hong Kong, they were often forced to celebrate and enhance their native side at certain moment s in order to play the perfect native for the European rulers. Precisely because of the marginalized an d perhaps forgotten statu s of this now dispersed community, Eurasian autobiographical writings can be seen as the focalizing literature which offers, to borrow Olney's description of the importanc e o f autobiography fo r African America n an d women' s studies in America, 'a privileged access to an experience .. . tha t no othe r variety of writing can offer.... [Ajutobiograph y renders in a peculiarly direct and faithful wa y the experience and the vision of a people. ...' (1980 , 13). The Vanishing Community7 9 It is as the voic e of a vanished cultura l experience tha t thes e texts hav e their primary value. Apart from th e access they offer t o a privileged minorit y experience , another reaso n for my interest i n these memoirs i s the ambiguous ethni c identities expressed in them, which provide a fertile site for an exploratio n of the shiftin g boundarie s o f racial an d ethni c identities . The Eurasia n authors here, in their respective autobiographical acts, have reconstructe d and retranslated their lifelong process of identity formation and reformatio n and their memoirs are both a record of that process of identity (o r identit y as process) and a crucial part of the process itself. Their protean and nebulous social and ethnic identities, as I shall show, not only challenge the essentialist assumption o f a stable, immutable, unified sens e of self and identity , bu t they also subvert the notion of closed and rigid boundaries between socially constructed categorie s o f race, ethnicity an d othe r divides . The work s examined i n this book foreground an d privilege the intermediar y space s where boundaries are rendered porous and binary modes of division collapse into each other . The thre e memoirists, Joyce Symons, Jean Gittins, and Irene Cheng , all belonged t o importan t branches of the Hong Kong Eurasian families . The first to be considered i s the memoir of Joyce Symons (1918-2004), a Hong Kong educationalist, who retired to Walton-on Thames, England i n 1985. Symons was principal of the Diocesan Girls' School for more tha n three decades. She prided herself as a member of the Hong Kong Eurasian community and was a committee member of the charitable organization for Eurasians calle d Th e Welfar e League . He r view s on Eurasia n identit y formulation depen d t o a large extent o n class and economic factors. Sh e sees th e Chin a Coas t Eurasia n communitie s a s intricatel y boun d t o compradonsm and the history of European traders m China. The second memoirist to be discussed is Jean Gittins (1908-1995) wh o left Hong Kong for Australia right after the Second World War. Her notion of Eurasianness is less distinct, less clearly delineated. It is an identity tha t is often based on undecidabihty and indeterminacy. 'Ethnic Indeterminacy ' of the Gittins chapter deals with her positioning of the subject within th e Confucian-Victorian world s m her family. The second section of the chapter, 'Ethnic Options' , i s devoted t o examining he r experienc e a s a Eurasian internee in the infamous Stanley Camp during the Japanese occupation of 10 Being Eurasian Memories Across Racial Divides Hong Kong. Comparisons will also be made between Gittins's narrative of life i n th e cam p a s a Eurasian an d othe r cam p narrative s b y Europea n internees. The last of the three Eurasian authors to be considered is Irene Cheng. The older sister of Jean Gittins, she was born in 190 4 and left Hon g Kong in 196 7 for Sa n Diego , USA. As an educationalist, Chen g was a school inspector and later principal of the Confucian Tai Shtng School. The notion of Eurasianness is an issue that is more often expresse d through silence and precariously handled through passing allusion. One purpose of this chapter is to juxtapose th e autobiographica l work s of these two Ho Tung sisters, their ver y differen t representation s o f th e H o Tun g family , an d thei r commonly shared events and experiences. The work of Florence Yeo, the youngest o f th e H o Tun g girls , will also b e referred t o i n thi s chapter . Particular attention will be paid to the contrasting cultural identificatio n and political orientation expressed in the respective memoirs and the way these ideological factors produce a radically different modalit y in the sisters' memoirs, eve n whe n the y ar e recallin g th e sam e even t o r people. Th e omissions and silences in some of the sisters' narratives will be shown to be often particularl y eloquent . Certain passages of memory occluded by one sibling are frequently expresse d and celebrated by the other. It is sometimes the unsaid , untol d an d th e deafenin g silence s concernin g thei r ow n Eurasianness that constitute the poignant autobiographical ethos in these memoirs. Eurasian a s a n ethni c categor y o r sub-categor y ha d neve r bee n recognized officially o r unofficially b y the Chinese or British communitie s m pre-war or post-war Hong Kong. The sense of Eurasian culture and tha t of a Eurasian ethnic community have been gradually effaced an d forgotte n by the process of immigration abroad and assimilation into the dominating Chinese ethnicity . Thes e memoir s have helped t o redeem an d preserv e through languag e the identit y of Eurasians as an ethnic group, a political power and a privileged and exclusive social clan in pre-war Hong Kong. In asserting personal memory , th e memoir s serve as resisting voices t o th e collective amnesi a o f the post-war , post-colonia l an d post-comprador e capitalist Hong Kong. These memoirs are, to a certain degree, a revenge on history3 — a history that threatens to consign them, individually and tribally to imminent oblivion . The Vanishing Community7 11 These autobiographers wrote not for lofty introspective, philosophical or aesthetic purposes. Their works contrast markedly in terms of aesthetics with canonical autobiographies. But in their own prosaic form, these memoirs are fascinating in their rhetoric and manifest valuable pluralistic modes of thoughts from the cultural margins of Hong Kong. ...