Ethnic Heritage as a Tourist Attraction: the Peranakans of Singapore

Singapore's multiculturalism is an important theme in the country's destination marketing and the paper explores the manner in which ethnicity is depicted in promotional material and the forces shaping the decision-making process. The nature of Peranakan culture, a unique synthesis of Chinese and Malay influences, is the subject of particular discussion and its actual and potential role as a tourism resource is analysed. State authorities are seen to exercise considerable power, making use of tourism images to reinforce political ideologies through the communication of messages about preferred versions of identities. However, tourism representations also convey something of the complex realities of identity in Singapore and perhaps can assist in increasing awareness of, and protecting, the cultural heritage of more marginalised groups. Insights are thus offered into the relationship between tourism and ethnic heritage in plural societies and its management.     

分层融合视角下族群融合的弥合机制研究——以新加坡华族为例

在“沙拉碗”式融合理念下,新加坡华族内部存在的诸多融合裂痕,也使华族新成员面临融合困境。论文借鉴分层融合理论中的弥合思路,分析了新加坡社会中的制度性、组织性及互惠网络弥合机制及成效,总结了新加坡华族新移民的融合模式,探讨了其中政府政策与社会接纳间的关系以及亚文化的形成。     

中国传统文学在新马的传播--兼论土生华人的作用

中国传统文学在新马流播极早,它们主要是通过早期劳工口头传播、私塾授受传播、文人沙龙传播、华人社团传播、峇峇群落马来文翻译传播等渠道,使中国传统文学在当地被广泛接受,中国传统文化得以延续.中国文学由此对当地的华人与华文文学产生巨大的影响.     

The Little Nyonya and Singapore’s national self: reflections on aesthetics,ethnicity and postcolonial state formation

Singapore’s postcolonial state formation process has combined the appeal/distress of a multiracial society with the nationalistic pride of economic development. In recent years, the city-state has witnessed a revival of Peranakan culture and history, referring to the descendants of early Chinese immigrants who integrated into Indigenous societies before becoming prized mediators for British colonisers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We question how these references are strategically deployed as part of the process of postcolonial state formation and how their aesthetic representations support public discussions and debates about what defines contemporary (Chinese) Singaporean identity. By examining Peranakan representations in the television series The Little Nyonya from a Deleuzian perspective, it will be argued that Peranakan history and culture are mobilised to de-territorialise previous meanings of national ethnic markers, specifically Chineseness, and to re-territorialise a local sense of Indigeneity. In reaction to concerns over Mainlander identity, representations of Peranakan culture and history in The Little Nyonya support the indigenisation of a specific Chinese identity that is accessible to all Singaporeans, offering an aesthetic framework in which the ongoing process of negotiating between Singapore’s national self and other unfolds.     

Learning by ‘design’: how undergraduates in Singapore learn to become engineers

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore the evolving norms and dispositions of creativity and enterprise of engineering students using data gathered from a newly established technology and engineering-focused university called ‘UniTech’ located in Singapore. Based on interviews with students, we seek to explain (1) what they learn, reject, adopt and appropriate; (2) the kinds of challenges they face and (3) the unexpected and serendipitous outcomes of their learning. Through an integrated engineering curriculum focusing on design, students learn to be technically competent, creative and entrepreneurial persons. This paper considers how the curriculum works as a set of formal procedures preparing students for a future ‘knowledge-based economy’ imagined to be technology-intensive, dynamic and filled with opportunities but also increasingly uncertain. We analyse how students at UniTech negotiate this design-focused curriculum where experiences of creativity, open-ended possibilities and holistic perspectives intersect with the national economic agenda of a knowledge-based economy.     

The acculturation experiences of Asian immigrants in Singapore

This study aims to understand the acculturation experiences of Asian immigrants to Singapore. A qualitative exploratory study using focus group discussions was conducted among 40 permanent residents and new citizens. Each of the seven focus groups had an average of six participants and lasted 1–2 hours. Immigrants described Singaporean culture as a blended culture featuring multiracialism. Their acculturation strategies were influenced by the way they were perceived and treated by the host society, based on their country of origin and whether they had been members of a minority community there. Although the respondents valued multiracialism, they also faced challenges in maintaining interethnic contacts. Implications for further enhancing existing acculturation models are discussed.     

漫画：儒学在新加坡传播的另类方式

漫画与儒家思想的结合,始于20世纪80年代后期台湾出现的蔡志忠诸子百家漫画系列,这些漫画在中国及东南亚流传甚广。在新加坡,通过漫画传播儒家思想及中华文化,形成了不同的方向。受中国崛起影响,在新加坡,华文教育及传承中华文化的需要日益增加,但英文是教育主流,华文教育水平滑落。本着灵活、轻松学习华文和中华文化的宗旨,漫画这一方式在新加坡的教育体系中创造了新的空间,逐渐成为教材和教学的组成部分。本文将简述儒家思想在新加坡传播的现状,分析20世纪80年代新加坡学校推行儒家伦理课程受挫的原因,将其与新加坡华文教育的大背景结合,探讨漫画传播儒家思想和中华文化如何在新加坡重视华文教育的新形势下获得肯定,并逐渐成为其教育体系的组成部分。     

Queering the transnational turn: regionalism and queer Asias

In recent years, queer studies has increasingly interrogated the racial and colonial unconscious embedded in the earlier studies of non-normative genders and sexualities through the critical frameworks of queer of color critique and queer diaspora studies. This article aims to ‘queer the transnational turn’ by considering what critical edge ‘regionalism’ might bring to the investigation of queer modernities in Asia from both contemporary and historical vantage points. The introductory section of the article provides a broad overview of the ‘transnational turn’ in queer studies, what we diagnose as the ‘area unconscious’ of queer studies in its exclusive critique of Western colonial modernity, and the related binary of cultural particularism versus Eurocentric universalism. Alternatively, we argue that the concept of regionalism can be productively mobilized in order to study the various scales of queer sexualities that traffic within and circulate across Southeast Asia, Australia, imperial China, and contemporary Sinophone cultures (Sinitic-language communities on the margins of or outside mainland China). Through a paired reading of Johann S. Lee’s Singaporean queer novel, Peculiar Chris (1992), and Su Chao-Bin and John Woo’s Sinophone martial art film, the Reign of Assassins (2010), our inquiry accounts for how the spatial–temporal telos of global queering get materially translated across multiple regional hubs of sexual differences. Queer regionalism in Singapore, China, and the Sinophone worlds encompasses relational dynamics, power differentials, and subnational and supranational linkages. Finally, queering regionalism can open up new analytical frameworks for the study of sexualities and corporealities across transcolonial relations and wider temporal and spatial connections.     

Chinese migrant women as boundary markers in Singapore: unrespectable,un-middle-class and un-Chinese

This article argues that the intersection of ethnicity, class and gender foregrounds the contestation of Chinese-ness in a context of migration in Singapore. I argue that the presence of co-ethnic mainland Chinese migrant women has heightened Chinese-Singaporean women’s anxieties. In lieu of ‘convenient markers’ of language and ethnicity, Chinese-Singaporean women have had to look elsewhere for the production of difference. This article argues that the Chinese-Singaporean woman favourably contrasts herself with the newly arrived mainland Chinese migrant woman in regards to the notion of respectable femininity – the latter being a key marker of middle-classness. Specifically, Chinese migrant women are perceived as unrespectable through charges of excessive materialism and of transgressing the Asian/Chinese family. By emphasising Chinese migrant women’s perceived lack of respectability, Chinese-Singaporean women can (re)establish their own respectable femininity, middle-classness and Chinese-ness.     

Defining the Aesthetics of the Nyonyas’ Batik Sarongs in the Straits Settlements,Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century

The Javanese way of decorating textiles using batik techniques was popular among the Peranakan in the Malay Archipelago, largely because the range of batiks produced by the Javanese Peranakan incorporated Chinese aesthetics. A whole new range of batik, known as Batik Peranakan or Batik Cina (Chinese Batik) was produced for a largely Peranakan Chinese market, including the Straits Chinese in the former British Straits Settlements. This paper examines the Peranakan Chinese aesthetic values that are revealed in these batiks, focusing on three different aspects – motifs, colour schemes and applications. Examination of the batik sarongs worn by the Straits Chinese women, or Nyonyas, however, shows different criteria in relation to these three aspects. The differences in aesthetic values made the batik sarongs used by the Nyonyas in the former Straits unique, and showcased their distinct identity.