Everyday Modernity in China

5. Reimagining China: Xiamen, Overseas Chinese, and a Transnational Modernity

5 Reimagining China Xiamen, Overseas Chinese, and a Transnational Modernity james a. cook In a February 1920 article titled “Twentieth-Century Overseas Chinese,” an overseas Chinese originally from the Fujian port city of Xiamen argued that what overseas Chinese (huaqiao) needed was to get away from the “falseness ” of Western society.1 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the author claimed, overseas Chinese had turned the “wilderness of Southeast Asia [Nanyang]” into a “commercial paradise.” Since that time, owing to increasing contact with Western cultural forms and systems of education, many overseas Chinese had lost their cultural heritage and Chinese identity. The writer caustically commented: “We must return to the success of the values that have allowed us to achieve so much as overseas merchants.” The “splendid greatness” of Europe and the United States, evidenced by the Western colonial imprint on Southeast Asia, made it obvious that the Chinese people would need to understand Western science and technology. “However ,” the author cautioned, “Chinese identity should not rush to embrace Western values.” What was needed, instead, was “a sense of Chineseness that would embrace China’s historic past and ancient cultural values while allowing us Chinese to continue to prosper in the modern world.” This identity would be constructed around the following values: Personal rectitude [zheng ji]—If we take the personal rectification of the individual as the most important goal, then the great dreams of overseas Chinese, like the wind and the rain, will travel far. Commercial success alone cannot make us good people. For a family to be well-oª, it must also have dreams. For one’s name to grow, one must avoid conceit. Thus, for the spirit of overseas Chinese to grow, we must rectify ourselves and then bring that spirit back home to China. Favoring the group [hui qun]—People all live within a society. None of us alone are capable of producing our own food or clothing, and in our day-today lives we cannot avoid receiving the favor of the masses. Our nation’s public morality [gong de] has been weak. . . . If we are to become leaders, we must focus on more than just ourselves, but on the society and world around us. Patriotism [ai guo]—The world of the twentieth century is made up of diªerent races in competition. . . . No one reason can account for the weakness of our Chinese nation and the cruelty and insults inflicted upon us. I would argue that the [main] cause of our weakness is a lack of a strong patriotism. Our nation is one of the earliest ever founded. Moreover, our land is rich, our history is civilized, and our culture is great in comparison with other nations of the world. If overseas Chinese really love their country they will work on investing to save the nation and revitalize industry for a strong China.2 The mixture of patriotism, philanthropy, and moral rectitude that composes the author’s view of a twentieth-century huaqiao provides an insight into a transnational Chinese identity that stood at the heart of the relationship between Xiamen and its overseas Chinese community. Xiamen’s returned huaqiao characterized themselves as “modernizers” (xiandai hua zhi ren) who sought to remake the city according to their own imaginings, which had been heavily influenced by time spent in the colonies of Southeast Asia. In time their experiences in Nanyang would be invoked as the basis of a distinctively transnational modernity that would, during the 1920s, increasingly tie the city of Xiamen to the outside world in new and diªerent ways.3 Located on China’s southeast coast, Xiamen (often called Amoy by local inhabitants) had long stood as one of the poles of the huaqiao universe. Local merchants had already developed a well-defined trading network by the thirteenth century, and more than 2 million people had departed the city for Southeast Asia since the mid-nineteenth century.4 The global scope of XiaReimagining China 157 Project MUSE (2024-04-25 05:04 GMT) men’s merchants and their trading networks, the people’s historical roots in diaspora and international commerce, and the distinctive nature of huaqiao “Chineseness” combined to produce a narrative of community and development . In other words, by the republican era the process of leaving and returning that typified the sojourner experience of Xiamen’s huaqiao had become the foundation of a transnational and diasporic modernity that would flower throughout the region. While this vision of the future...