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Abstract
This paper is an attempt to integrate heritage and museum studies through exploring the complex relationship between the materiality of architecture and social memories with a house museum of return migration in Guangdong, PRC as a case study. It unveils that the ongoing process of memory is intrinsically intertwined with spatial and temporal dimensions of the physical dwelling and built environment and the wider social-historical context and power relations shaping them. I argue that it is the house as ‘object of exhibit’ just as much as the exhibits inside the house that materialises the turbulent and traumatic migratory experience of Returned Overseas Chinese, embodies their memories and exposes the contested nature of museumification. By looking at the socially and geographically marginalised dwelling of return migrants, the house draws people’s attention to the often neglected importance of conceptual periphery in re-theorising what is often assumed to be the core of heritage value. It points to the necessity to integrate displaced, diasporic, transnational subjects to heritage and museum studies that have been traditionally framed within national and territorial boundaries.
Acknowledgements
A draft version of this paper was presented at the Cultural Heritage in China: Changing Trajectories, Changing Tasks workshop in Beijing, 26–27 September 2011, as part of a larger project on Chinese heritage funded by Co-reach-64-108. I am grateful to all workshop participants for their comments. I am in particular thankful to Harriet Evans for coordinating this project jointly with Bao Jiang and for her supportive advice with this paper. I also would like to thank the editor and anonymous referees for their insightful comments that helped the revision of this paper. The most gratitude goes to Mr. L and other Indonesian-Chinese who shared with me their stories without which this paper will not be possible.
Notes
1. Yinni is Chinese translation of Indonesia. Guiqiao literally means Returned Overseas Chinese, a policy category established by the Chinese government to refer to the returnees after 1949. For more on the political categorization and control of Returned Overseas Chinese in the PRC see Wang (Citationforthcoming) ‘Guiqiao as Political Subjects in the Making of the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979’, in Xiang Biao, Brenda Yeoh and Mika Toyota eds., Return: Nationalising Transnational Mobility in Asia, Duke University Press, 83–109.
2. Abbreviations of places and interviewee names are used in this paper to protect anonymity.
3. The term huaqiao first appeared in the late nineteenth century. It became a popular term with a political flavour after the 1911 Revolution, referring to Chinese nationals residing abroad. Its equivalent in English is ‘Overseas Chinese’. See Wang (Citation1992) ‘The Origin of Hua-Ch’iao’, 1–10. In this paper, huaqiao and guiqiao are used interchangeably, both referring to Overseas Chinese who returned to the PRC after 1949.
4. See ‘Photographic Report of Overseas Chinese’, People’s Daily (overseas edition), page 6, 28 July 2009; ‘The First Private Museum of Returned Overseas Chinese from Indonesia’, Indonesia Focus, No. 25, 31 December, 2009, Hong Kong.
5. For a review of Levi-Strauss’s contribution, see Carsten and Hugh-Jones (Citation1995).
6. When HY huaqiao farm was founded in 1963, it had only over 200 people on one settlement. It had gradually extended to five settlements (also called villages) to incorporate new waves of settlers. The farm now consists of a total of five villages in which about six thousand returnees from thirteen different Southeast Asian countries reside with those from Indonesia representing the largest group (See Qingman Haiqiao Editorial Board, The Forty-fifth Anniversary of HY Overseas Chinese Farm, HY: the farm, December 2008). My fieldwork was mainly in W village, the first and largest settlement and the location of the museum. However, I also paid visits to the other four villages and had informal interviewees with returnees residing in these villages.
7. It was chaired by Liao Chengzhi, the director of State Commission of Overseas Chinese Affairs. Fang Fang, the deputy director of the State Commission headed the general office under this committee that was responsible for implementing this policy. Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Yunnan provinces were the four major designated places to receive and settle the returnees. See Editorial board (1960, 3).
8. Estimates of the number of returnees vary according to different sources. An official estimation made in the mid-1990s suggests that there are 1,135,065 Returned Overseas Chinese (excluding their families) in China, and among them, about half are from Indonesia. See Lu and Quan (2001, 284-5).
9. Editorial board (1959, 35).
10. See Fang (1961, 2); Editorial board (1962, 4).
11. State Commission was established in 1949 as the leading state apparatus to make and implement policies towards Overseas Chinese with its branches widely established at provincial and municipal levels all over China. It was abolished in 1969 at the height of Cultural Revolution, during which time the management of huaqiao farms was temporarily taken over by the provincial government. The management of huaqiao farms was returned to State Commission when it was revived in 1978 under the name of the Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs of the State Council.
12. For more on the structure and management of huaqiao farms, see Mao and Lin (Citation1993, 188–193) and Li (Citation2005, 166–169).
13. This was based on my interviews with Indonesian guiqiao on HY farm. For a more comprehensive account of the Indonesian Chinese who re-migrated to and resettled in Hong Kong, see Wang (Citation2006).
14. For detailed accounts of social and political transformation of Chinese communities in Indonesia in the first half of the twentieth century, see Willmott (1961), Skinner (1963), Suryadinata (1978a, 1978b).
15. The decision on the economic reform of state huaqiao farms was officially issued jointly by the Central committee of CCP and the State Council of PRC in 1985. However, it was not until the early 2000s that it was fully implemented in the majority of huaqiao farms.
16. For more information of the economic reform of the huaqiao farms, see Fang and Feng (Citation2001, 255–257); Lu and Quan (Citation2001, 60–61).
17. Mr L told me the farm has subsidised the running of this museum, covering electricity, water and cleaning bills. The house museum features prominently in the commemorative publication for the 45th anniversary of HY huaqiao farm. See Qingman Haiqiao Editorial Board (Citation2008, 75-76).
18. I got access to this official document during my interviews with the director of Preparation Office of Chinese National Huaqiao Museum in Beijing 2010. The architecture to house this national museum was still under construction when the paper is being written. However, the Preparation Office had worked on identification and collection of overseas Chinese heritage for some time.
19. Information come from my interview with Mr L and previously mentioned newspaper reports about Yinni guiqiao house museum.