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Notes
1. Chua Beng Huat, ‘Southeast Asia in Postcolonial Studies: An Introduction’, Postcolonial Studies 11(3), 2008, pp 231–240, p 231.
2. Robert J C Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p 17.
3. Chua, ‘Southeast Asia in Postcolonial Studies’, p 232.
4. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1991.
5. More than ignoring Southeast Asia, postcolonial scholars have fixated on Western nations as agents of imperial expansion. When postcolonial theory ‘ignores both modern and historical East Asian empires’, it runs the risk of retrenching a dichotomous ‘West and the Rest’ critical model. See Shu-mei Shih, ‘Theory, Asia and the Sinophone’, Postcolonial Studies 13(4), 2010, pp 465–484, p 473.
6. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
7. Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World, London: Verso, 1998, p 5.
8. Recent examples include Karen Laura Thornber, Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009; Faye Yuan Kleeman, Under an Imperial Sun: Japanese Colonial Literature of Taiwan and the South, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003; Naoto Sudo, Nanyo-Orientalism: Japanese Representations of the Pacific, Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2010; and Travis Workman, ‘Locating Translation: On the Question of Japanophone Literature’, PMLA 126(3), 2011, pp 701–708.
9. Nanyang is also often translated as the ‘southern ocean’.
10. Shih, ‘Theory, Asia and the Sinophone’, p 478. For more on Shih's definition of Sinophone studies, see her essays ‘The Concept of the Sinophone’, PMLA 126(3), 2011, pp 709–718; and ‘Against Diaspora: The Sinophone as Places of Cultural Production’, in Jing Tsu and David Der-wei Wang (eds), Global Chinese Literature: Critical Essays, Leiden: Brill, 2010, pp 29–48.
11. Anna Johnston and Alan Lawson, ‘Settler Colonies’, in Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray (eds), A Companion to Postcolonial Studies, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005, pp 360–376, p 363.
12. Fang Xiu (ed), Ma Hua xin wenxue daxi [Compendium of Sinophone Malayan new literature], 10 vols, Singapore: Xingzhou shijie shuju, 1970–1972.
13. Nirmala Srirekam PuruShotam, Negotiating Multiculturalism: Disciplining Difference in Singapore, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000, pp 32–39. The Baba-Nyonyas are a Creole community descending from intermarriages between Chinese settlers and Malays as well as other indigenous groups of maritime Southeast Asia. Legends trace their lineage to Chinese castaways left behind in the Sultanate of Malacca by the Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He during his transoceanic voyages of the fifteenth century. However, many who belonged to this community, which eventually established a niche in the nineteenth-century British colonial Straits Settlements, originally migrated there from Java, the Riau Archipelago and other areas of the Dutch East Indies where ‘Peranakan’ communities had formed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Jürgen Rudolph, Reconstructing Identities: A Social History of the Babas in Singapore, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, pp 77–84).
14. Philip A Kuhn, Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times, Lanham: MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008, p 62.
15. Rudolph, Reconstructing Identities, pp 107–131; Anthony Reid, ‘Chinese and Malay Identities in Southeast Asia’, PROSEA Research Paper No. 34, Taipei: Academia Sinica Program for Southeast Asian Area Studies, 2000; William Roff, The Origins of Malay Nationalism, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp 94–116; Kuhn, Chinese among Others, pp 102–148.
16. This term was used in a critical volume comparing the historical role of Chinese Southeast Asians to Jewish Europeans. See Daniel Chirot and Anthony Reid (eds), Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Europe, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.
17. Tee Kim Tong (Zhang Jinzhong), Nanyang lunshu: Ma Hua wenxue yu wenhua shuxing [South Seas discourse: Sinophone Malaysian literature and cultural attributes], Taipei: Maitian chuban, 2003, p 135.
18. The riots were a response to Malaysia's 1969 general election, in which the ruling Alliance Party lost several seats to opposition parties, mainly the Democratic Action Party and Gerakan (the Malaysian People's Movement Party). A counter-rally held by UMNO supporters and inflated reports of opposition gloating touched off a period of ethnic violence that resulted in, according to conservative government reports, 196 dead, 409 injured, and destruction of or damage to around 6,000 Kuala Lumpur residences (Barbara Watson and Leonard Y Andaya, A History of Malaysia, 2nd edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, pp 297–300).
19. Kuhn, Chinese among Others, p 306.
20. George Cho, The Malaysian Economy: Spatial Perspectives, London: Routledge, 1990, p 261. According to the 2000 Malaysian Population Census, the nation's ethnic demography is divided accordingly: 53 per cent Malay (which includes Islam as a defining characteristic), 12 per cent other bumiputera (predominantly indigenous non-Muslim Dayaks from the East Malaysian states on Borneo), 26 per cent ‘Chinese’, and 8 per cent ‘Indian’. See Maznah Mohamad, ‘Malay/Malaysian/Islamic: Four Genres of Political Writings and the Postcoloniality of Autochthonous Texts’, Postcolonial Studies 11(3), 2008, pp 293–313.
21. Kuei-fen Chiu, ‘Empire of the Chinese Sign: The Question of Diasporic Imagination in Transnational Literary Production’, Journal of Asian Studies 67(2), 2008, pp 593–620, p 597.
22. Chong Fah Hing (Zhuang Huaxing), ‘Ma Hua wenxue yu Malai wenxue: ruhe dingwei?’ [Sinophone Malaysian literature and Malay literature: how can their positions be determined?], Renwen zazhi [Journal of Humanities] 44(11), 2000, pp 14–18; Lim Kien Ket (Lin Jianguo), ‘Weishenme Ma Hua wenxue?’ [Why Sinophone Malaysian Literature?], in Chan Tah Wei, Choong Yee Voon and Woo Kam Lun (eds), Chidao huisheng: Ma Hua wenxue duben [Equatorial echoes: a Sinophone Malaysian literary reader], Taipei: Wanjuanlou chubanshe, 2004, pp 3–32, p 21.
23. Tee Kim Tong (Zhang Jinzhong), Introduction, ‘Wenhua huigui, lisan Taiwan yu lüxing kuaguoxing: “zai Tai Ma Hua wenxue” de anli’ [Cultural return, diasporic Taiwan and travelling transnationalism: the case of ‘Taiwan-based Sinophone Malaysian Literature’], in Lim Chin Chown, Qiandao Nanyang [South Seas archipelago], Selangor Darul Ehsan: Malaiya tushu youxian gongsi, 2005, pp 8–26. Also see Tee, Nanyang lunshu, pp 135–150.
24. Chiu, ‘Empire of the Chinese Sign’, pp 609–613.
25. Anjali Prabhu, Hybridity: Limits, Transformations, Prospects, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007, pp 5–6. For brief introductions to creolization theory, see Supriya Nair, ‘Creolization, Orality and Nation Language in the Caribbean’, in Schwarz and Ray, A Companion to Postcolonial Studies, pp 236–251; and Dominique Chancé, ‘Creolization: Definition and Critique’, J Everett (trans), in Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih (eds), The Creolization of Theory, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011, pp 262–268.
26. Robert Chaudenson, Creolization of Language and Culture, S S Mufwene (trans), London: Routledge, 2001, pp 5–13, 95.
27. Quoted in Nair, ‘Creolization, Orality and Nation Language in the Caribbean’, p 238.
28. Nair, ‘Creolization, Orality and Nation Language in the Caribbean’, p 239.
29. Homi K Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994, p 178.
30. Bart Moore-Gilbert, ‘Spivak and Bhabha’, in Schwarz and Ray, A Companion to Postcolonial Studies, pp 451–456, 463.
31. David Theo Goldberg, ‘Heterogeneity and Hybridity: Colonial Legacy, Postcolonial Heresy’, in Schwarz and Ray, A Companion to Postcolonial Studies, pp 72–86, p 73; Moore-Gilbert, ‘Spivak and Bhabha’, p 461.
32. Nair, ‘Creolization, Orality and Nation Language in the Caribbean’, p 242.
33. Ng Kim Chew (Huang Jinshu), ‘“Ma Hua wenxue” quancheng: chulun Malaixiya de “Huaren wenxue” yu “Huawen wenxue”’ [The complete title of ‘Sinophone Malaysian literature’: a preliminary discussion of Malaysia's ‘Chinese literature’ and ‘Sinophone literature’], in Yun Lifeng (ed), Ma Hua wenxue daxi pinglun, 1965–1996 [Criticism on the Compendium of Sinophone Malaysian literature, 1965–1996], Johor Bahru: Caihong chuban, pp 19–28; Tee, Nanyang lunshu, pp 127–128.
34. Ng, ‘“Ma Hua wenxue” quancheng’, pp 20–21.
35. G William Skinner, ‘Creolized Chinese Societies in Southeast Asia’, in Anthony Reid (ed), Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996, pp 51–93.
36. Ng Kim Chew (Huang Jinshu), Ma Hua wenxue yu Zhongguo xing [Sinophone Malaysian literature and Chineseness], Taipei: Yuanzun wenhua, 1998, pp 56–57. My translation of this essay, entitled ‘Sinophone/Chinese: “The South Where Language Is Lost” and Reinvented’, will appear in Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai and Brian Bernards (eds), Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013 (forthcoming).
37. Ng, ‘“Ma Hua wenxue” quancheng’, p 25. Ng's notion of ‘bazaar Mandarin’ suggests that the vernacular Sinitic script in Sinophone Malaysian literature constitutes a pidgin, but not yet a Creole. Chaudenson notes that the origins of the word ‘pidgin’ likely come from the English word ‘business’, as these were contact languages employed in the marketplace or bazaar (Creolization of Language and Culture, pp 16–17).
38. Choong Yee Voon (Zhong Yiwen), Ye bandao [Wild peninsula], Taipei: Lianhe wenxue, 2007, pp 11–14, 90–134.
39. Choong, Ye bandao, pp 127–136.
40. Choong, Ye bandao, p 152.
41. Ho Sok Fong (He Shufang), ‘Bie zai tiqi’ [Never mention it again], in Tee Kim Tong and Ng Kim Chew (eds), Bie zai tiqi: Ma Hua dangdai xiaoshuo xuan, 1997–2003 [Never mention it again: contemporary Sinophone Malaysian fiction, 1997–2003], Taipei: Maitian chuban, 2004, pp 290–293.
42. Ho, ‘Bie zai tiqi’, p 293.
43. Shih, ‘Against Diaspora’, p 48.
44. Ng Kim Chew (Huang Jinshu), Tu yu huo: tanah Melayu [Earth and fire: tanah Melayu], Taipei: Maitian chuban, 2005, pp 63–67. Orang Asli (Malay: ‘original people’) is a general term given by the Malays to the indigenous, non-seafaring and traditionally non-Muslim peoples of Peninsular Malaysia. The Orang Asli are composed of ‘at least 19 culturally and linguistically distinct groups’, but their total population of roughly 150,000 is divided into three major categories: ‘Aboriginal Malays’, the Senoi, and the Semang. See Christian Wawrinec, ‘Tribality and Indigeneity in Malaysia and Indonesia’, Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 10(1), 2010, pp 96–107, p 96.
45. Ng, Ma Hua wenxue yu Zhongguo xing, p 135.
46. Chan Tah Wei (Chen Dawei), Kaojin Luomoyanna [Approaching the Ramayana], Taipei: Jiuge chubanshe, 2005, pp 156–160.
47. Chan, Kaojin Luomoyanna, p 160.
48. Chan, Kaojin Luomoyanna, p 170.
49. David Der-wei Wang (Wang Dewei), ‘Hei'an zhi xin de tansuo zhe: shilun Li Zishu’ [Explorer of the Heart of Darkness: on Li Zishu], in Li Zishu, Shan wen [Mountain plague], Taipei: Maitian chuban, 2001, p 4.
50. Wang, ‘Hei'an zhi xin de tansuo zhe’, p 5.
51. Li Zishu, ‘Guobei bianchui’ [National frontier on the north], in Tee and Ng, Bie zai tiqi, pp 243–262.
52. Li, Shan wen, p 102.
53. Li, Shan wen, pp 112–114.
54. In this respect, the type of creolization in ‘Mountain Plague’ is similar to that depicted in Sinophone Malaysian literature on the Borneo rainforest. The much more fluid ethnic boundaries of Malaysian Borneo (East Malaysia), where the Dayaks (rather than the Malays) compose the indigenous majority, challenge the presumably irreconcilable ethnic boundaries and hierarchical multiculturalism of Peninsular Malaysia (West Malaysia). The Taiwan-based author Chang Kuei-hsing (Zhang Guixing, 1956–) is arguably the foremost architect of the Borneo imaginary in contemporary Sinophone Malaysian fiction. For more on his work, see Andrea Bachner, ‘Reinventing Chinese Writing: Zhang Guixing's Sinographic Translations’, in Tsu and Wang, Global Chinese Literature, pp 177–196; and my essay ‘Plantation and Rainforest: Chang Kuei-hsing and a South Seas Discourse of Coloniality and Nature’, in the forthcoming volume, Sinophone Studies.
55. Tee, Nanyang lunshu, p 145.