Page 97 - On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West

BEYOND ASIA: DECONSTRUCTING DIASPORA

allegiance collapse ancestral loyalties. If this book may be said to have a
constituency, these foreign Chinese are it.
(Pan 1998: 15)

Note this peculiar term ‘foreign Chinese’! The most interesting segment, however,
is circle D, the ‘assimilated’. These are described as ‘those of Chinese ancestry
who have, through intermarriage or other means of assimilation, melted into
another people and ceased to call themselves Chinese’. To which is added: ‘Whether
they will call themselves Chinese at some future date must be left an open question,
however, because it has been known to happen’ (ibid.: 15). Here then the
ambiguous and uncertain boundary between ‘Chinese’ and ‘non-Chinese’ is most
clearly spelt out and acknowledged. Circle D is the nebulous and fuzzy border
zone where the Chinese/non-Chinese boundary is decidedly up for grabs,
indeterminate and unsettled.

Figure 4.1 Symbolic representation of varieties of Chinese
Source: Pan (1998). Reproduced with permission from the Chinese Heritage Centre,
Singapore.

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