Talk:Legacy of the Overseas Chinese

Nice start

This definitely has potential & you've realised some of it already. Good going.

I wonder about "smaller pockets of settlement in ... western countries". The Chinatowns in New York, Vancouver, Toronto, etc. are not at all small. Pashley (talk) 09:37, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

The only estimate I've seen said a quarter million for Toronto Chinatown, & Vancouver's is larger. Both cities have lots of Chinese out in the suburbs too. Pashley (talk) 10:27, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

I've made some more edits. I think what's different is that Chinese immigration to Western countries has mainly occurred after World War II, while prior to that, it was mainly to Southeast Asia. The dog2 (talk) 18:05, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

A great idea for an article. I'm sure there are some destinations in Southeast Asia that could be added (I was struck by how much Chinese culture I encountered when I visited Sarawak). Also, I believe the U.S. has one or two museums of Chinese-American history and culture, and I imagine there are similar museums in other countries. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:56, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

I've been to the one in Chicago. It's kind of small, but is certainly worth a visit for those interested in Chinese-American history. There's a number of museums in Singapore too, as well as in Malacca and Penang in Malaysia. Malacca's Peranakan Museum for instance is absolutely gorgeous, and I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Malacca. The dog2 (talk) 19:44, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Immigration restrictions?

The US had w:Chinese Exclusion Act and later w:Asian Exclusion Act, Canada w:Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, Australia w:White Australia policy. Likely there were other such policies I do not know about.

Do we need to mention these? Have they any travel relevance? I'd say no. Pashley (talk) 10:38, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

They could be mentioned briefly, but I'd say we can't go into too much detail. Perhaps they could be mentioned in passing if we decide to cover anything about the discrimination ethnic Chinese have faced abroad. Some of the discrimination is still very much present today; for instance, the ethnic Chinese in Malaysia cannot claim certain welfare benefits that the Malays can (though this applies to the Indians too, not just the Chinese), while many ethnic Chinese in India, Brunei and Myanmar are still stateless despite having been born there for multiple generations. There are certainly exceptions though, and I am aware that the local-born ethnic Chinese in Western countries, as well as in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia now get full citizenship rights at least on paper.The dog2 (talk) 18:12, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Changing demographics

For decades Canada (& perhaps other Commonwealth countries?) had a policy that made immigration from the Commonwealth easier than from anywhere else. It meant most of our ethnic Chinese immigrants came from Hong Kong, plus some from Singapore & Malaysia, very few from the mainland or Taiwan. Most spoke Cantonese, some Hakka or Fujian dialects, not much Mandarin.

We dropped that policy, I think in 1980 or so, and I think recent immigrants are quite a different ethnic & linguistic mix.

The history can affect travellers. I talked to a guy in about 2008 who was upset about his job application at a bank in Toronto Chinatown. Fuzhou boy, excellent English & fluent Mandarin, economics degree from a good school, experience at Bank of China, but they would not hire him because he did not speak Cantonese. Pashley (talk) 11:06, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

I'd say this is worth mentioning. Perhaps under a Hong Kong heading? Pashley (talk) 11:10, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, sure, I guess that can be mentioned. Also, many of the refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia were ethnic Chinese, because there was a lot of resentment from the native population, and the ethnic Chinese were thus targeted for purges. In particular, I encountered quite a number of Teochew speakers in Australia, who were ethnic Chinese refugees from Cambodia or Vietnam. Australia also receives a lot of ethnic Chinese immigration from Malaysia because of the relative proximity. Of course, many Cantonese-speaking immigrants come from Hong Kong, but I also remember encountering a good number from Malaysia or Vietnam. In New York City, there also seems to be quite a large number of ethnic Chinese Cubans, but of course, these guys typically speak Spanish instead of some dialect of Chinese. The dog2 (talk) 18:20, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Kinmen

Just wonder if it's OK, to keep the current classification. As we know, we treat Kinmen as part of Taiwan on Wikivoyage for practical reasons. However, Kinmen residents consider themselves to be from Fujian and not Taiwan (since it was part of Fujian before the Chinese Civil War), and in Singapore, people who trace their ancestry to Kinmen consider themselves to be part of the Hokkien community. Here's an example of an elderly woman in Singapore who was born in Kinmen, if anybody is interested: [1]. The dog2 (talk) 03:17, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Title?

I'd prefer a simpler title, just "Overseas Chinese".

On the other hand, see Wikivoyage:Votes_for_deletion/April_2013#Roma_(people) for arguments that included the plausible claim that:

I think the core question is, does an ethnic group merit its own Wikivoyage article? I think the answer is clearly 'no'.

That led to Roma People being moved to Roma culture in Europe & we also have many titles like Indigenous Australian culture. Should we work "culture" into this title? Or keep "legacy" for similar reasons?

Other opinions? Pashley (talk) 03:21, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

One complication is that there's not one single "Overseas Chinese culture". Ethnic Chinese from Thailand will be culturally different from the ethnic Chinese from Canada for instance. And while the overwhelming majority of Overseas Chinese in English-speaking countries are Cantonese, in Southeast Asia their origins are much more diverse. My idea here was to explore the impact many of these Chinese emigrants had on their hometowns back in China, with also a scope to expand on the impact Chinese immigrants had on their new homes in foreign lands. The dog2 (talk) 04:14, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

It can be renamed to "Overseas Chinese cultures", the plural making it clear that it is not a monolithic group of people. Gizza ^(roam) 04:31, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Personally I like the current title, which nicely sets the scope to include destinations both in and outside of China. —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:45, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

My issue with the title is that a legacy is something a dead person leaves behind. By comparison, heritage is something a new generation receives from past generations. So how about changing the title to "Overseas Chinese heritage"? I quite honestly still think there's something awkward about that title, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:07, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm fine with either wording. Back in those days, when there weren't really immigration controls, there was a lot of back and forth movement between China and the overseas Chinese communities, thus allowing foreign influences to be brought back to China. For instance, when I visited my great grandfather's village, I met an aunt who was born in Singapore, but ending up going "back" to China with her parents, and settled down in their village. And my grandmother also made trips "back" to her father's village even though she was born in Singapore. This movement basically stopped after the Chinese Civil War, because Singapore was dealing with a communist insurgency, and thus banned Singaporeans from visiting China without special permission, and if you went to China, you wouldn't have been allowed back into Singapore. The ban on visiting China was only lifted in the 1990s. And of course, after independence, there was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment in Southeast Asia and India, and many overseas Chinese were expelled to China, so they would have brought back some foreign influences "back" with them. These days, the number of overseas Chinese "returning" to China to settle is negligible, and there is also not much Chinese migration to non-Western countries, so the cultural exchange is probably not happening as much. The dog2 (talk) 21:12, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Ikan Kekek, I see your point about the word "legacy". "Heritage" could work. —Granger (talk · contribs) 07:03, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Any further thoughts, anyone? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:28, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:49, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent about using "Legacy" or "Heritage". The dog2 (talk) 19:54, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Jade

I'm not sure if anything can be said here about it, or if there are sites one might visit, but BC jade (a different mineral than Asian jade, but also green & valuable) has some interesting history.

Back in the late 19th century, the Chinese in BC were mostly either indentured workers on the railroad or in low-paid service jobs; many barber shops & most laundries were run by Chinese. Lots of whites were madly searching for gold, & mostly going broke doing it. Few Chinese got involved in that, but some got quite rich collecting green stones (which western prospectors completely ignored) and sending them to China. These stones were just lying about on riverbeds and some were quite large; I saw one in the 1960s that was about the size of a VW bug.

In some cases the barber with a small shop in a hotel was soon able to buy the hotel. Pashley (talk) 06:29, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

We could say something about it. I can also say that Burmese jade is generally the best regarded among Chinese people, and if you look at Jade_trade_in_Myanmar, it seems that the was a history of immigration from Yunnan to Myanmar to mine jade. In fact, you'll notice that in Mandalay and the rest of Upper Myanmar, most of the ethnic Chinese trace their ancestry to Yunnan, while in Yangon, most of the ethnic Chinese trace their ancestry to Fujian and Guangdong as a result of this history of the jade trade. And in fact, if you go to Upper Myanmar and meet the ethnic Chinese there, most of them are still able to speak Mandarin. The dog2 (talk) 16:14, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

We do mention jade at Shopping#Places_for_particular_goods, but that rightly does not go into detail. Pashley (talk) 00:56, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Illegals?

Do we need to mention illegal immigrants? I lived in Fuzhou early in this century & was told the "snakehead" gangsters managed the smuggling & most of their passengers came from Fuqing or Changle, both coastal suburbs of Fuzhou. Everyone involved was Fujianese, though a few decades earlier it had been Cantonese. Pashley (talk) 01:23, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

You may not know this, but "illegals" is a very offensive and partisan term in the U.S., nowadays. In any case, what's the importance to the experience of travellers whether an immigrant is documented or undocumented? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:27, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I do know that & don't much care. In US terms, I'm generally somewhere left of Bernie, but I still prefer "illegal" to "undocumented". I do object strenuously to attempts to apply the term to asylum seekers, though.

You're right, this has little to do with travel. But if we have this article cataloguing where various groups of Chinese immigrants came from, why not include this group? Pashley (talk) 01:55, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

OK, so now that we have that out of the way...sure, of course mention the Fuzhounese. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:06, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I mentioned them briefly, since prior to World War II, a number of them migrated to what is today Malaysia and Indonesia. I think I also mentioned something about New York City in the listing for Fuzhou. The dog2 (talk) 19:25, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Temples

I wonder if we should cover some famous Chinese temples located overseas. There are several that can rival the craftmanship of temples in China itself, an example being Khoo Kongsi in Penang. And Singapore, we have the Thian Hock Keng Temple and Yueh Hai Ching Temple, which are notable for being the few overseas temples to have been presented with plaques by the Emperor of China. The dog2 (talk) 20:09, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm a little confused about what the subject or scope of this article is. It covers both the ancestral regions from which most Overseas Chinese came and the places where they settled? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:27, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

I started with listing the ancestral regions of China where significant numbers of Overseas Chinese trace their roots to, but I've left the door open to expanding to include places with large numbers of Chinese settlers. Of course, you can find Chinese people in all corners of the globe, but the question is what places are worth inclusion. Perhaps I'm biased here, but my observation is that ethnic Chinese born in the West are usually culturally completely assimilated into the cultures of their countries of birth (at least that's my experience with those from the Five Eyes countries), while many of those from Southeast Asia are still recognisably Chinese from a cultural standpoint, though they have of course adopted many cultural influences from their countries of birth too. As an example, born-and-bred Chinese-Americans usually only speak English, while a Malaysian Chinese can usually speak Mandarin, Malay and a number of Chinese dialects, and possibly English as well.

On that note, I doubt you will find many Chinese temples in the U.S., given that the vast majority of Chinese-Americans are Christians, but if you go to Malaysia, most of the ethnic Chinese still follow their traditional religions, so you can still see many notable Chinese temples there. The dog2 (talk) 03:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

There are quite a few Chinese Buddhist places of worship in Manhattan's Chinatown and neighboring areas, and I often walk past them. They're not huge like Kek Lok Si, but they're certainly recognizable. I also really don't share your impression of Chinese-Americans. They vary in their degrees of connection to tradition and assimilation. Have you ever been to an American Chinatown during Chinese New Year? Anyway, getting back to my point, I think that someplace in the article, there needs to be a clear statement of its scope. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:51, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

By the way, if one anecdotal statement deserves another, one of my best friends is married to a Cantonese-American whose parents are from Hong Kong. He is completely bilingual, cooks home-style Cantonese food for his family, and he and his Anglo-Canadian wife are bringing up their daughter to be bilingual and bicultural. She's only about 17 months old, so we'll see how she turns out, but they're certainly putting in the effort. She's actually also being exposed to Spanish because they hire a babysitter from I think Peru to take care of her at times. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:55, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

I'd tend to disagree with "I doubt you will find many Chinese temples in the U.S., given that the vast majority of Chinese-Americans are Christians,". I've seen many people with Chinese Heritage in San Fran who still follow their original religions, and even in Sydney, only a certain few are Catholics, and those are often 3rd or 4th generation migrants. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

I guess people who preserve the connection to their Chinese heritage exist, but are probably a minority in the U.S. I know a number of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. whose American-born kids don't know a word of Chinese (or any Chinese dialect for that matter) even though both parents are from China. In fact, Chinese people tend to be surprised that I know any Chinese at all given that it was my great grandparents' generation that left China for Singapore. The dog2 (talk) 06:21, 23 August 2021 (UTC)