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Reviewed by:
  • Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among the Sino-Burmese by Jayde Lin Roberts
  • Sharon Carstens (bio)
Jayde Lin Roberts. Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among the Sino-Burmese. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2016. xvii, 200 pp. Hardcover $50.00, isbn 978-02-95-99667-7.

This compelling and well-written monograph examines the historical and contemporary experiences of the Chinese in Rangoon, revealing both their similarities with other overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia as well as their more specific adaptations to the demographics and shifting political landscapes of colonial and post-independence Burma/Myanmar. This is groundbreaking ethnographic research, carried out over two years (between 2006 and 2009) during the final years of a long period repressive military rule, at a time when most locals remained fearful of contacts and communication with foreigners, even those like Roberts, whose Chinese ethnicity and facility with standard Chinese, Hokkien, and Burmese allowed her to partially blend in. The resulting focus on place and mapping appear to derive (at least in part) from Robert's experiences as a researcher, where people were reluctant to share their thoughts, and she was forced to focus on walking the streets, watching and listening, visiting temples and other locations where people gathered and gradually being allowed to participate in some of their activities.

The book title suggests some of the many ambiguities involved in understanding the Chinese of Burma, a category that can include those who came via the maritime route from Southeastern China; the Yunnanese Chinese who have come overland from the north; and sometimes even other ethnic groups, such as the Shan. The book title includes two terms: Chinese and Sino-Burmese–there is a Chinese Rangoon and then there are the Sino-Burmese. We learn that identities shifted over time, with dialect-based identities such as Hokkien and Cantonese dominant in nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Chinese nationalist identities significant in the mid twentieth century; and a shift to more local based signs of identification following anti-Chinese riots in 1967, including the adoption of Burmese style dress, the disappearance of Chinese education, and a muting of Chinese public symbols. The long-term Chinese residents of Rangoon, who originated from Southeast China, clearly distinguish themselves from the Mandarin speaking Yunnanese, who are identified with the growing Chinese cross border trade in the north and Chinese investment aligned with Burmese generals that has spurred resentment. However, it is noteworthy that the more acculturated 'Sino-Burmese,' who are the focus of Roberts' study, do not use this term and interchangeably use such labels as huaqiao (overseas Chinese), zhongguo ren (Chinese national), or tang ren (people of the Tang Dynasty: an old term for Chinese from southern China). Roberts argues that this is because the people she studies are not interested in labels associated with ideology and the state [End Page 226] but rather in the "actual practices of everyday life" (p. 7). Given the circumstances of Robert's research, where probing questions were disallowed, this may well be how people represented themselves to her, but it would have been useful for Roberts to more directly clarify her use of Sino-Burmese in the context of current debates about the positionality of ethnic Chinese living outside of China.

The chapters of the book are organized around key places where Chinese in Rangoon established themselves historically and where they continue to come together as Chinese through their associations, temples, schools, businesses, and public displays. The theme of mapping is most clearly evident in chapter 2. The chapter focuses on the built environment and place making, beginning with the British establishment of Rangoon as a commercial port in 1852, which was designed along a grid pattern to meet the needs of the colonial state for trade and control in a way that was totally alien to Burmese ideas of space (and largely excluded Burmese from the city). A small number of Cantonese artisans and Hokkien merchants had settled in Rangoon before the British, in an area that is still known as China Wharf, and the expanding business opportunities of the colonial state brought many more who began to build temples and clan...

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