The World of Fat4

How many of you truly believed this fact, yes it is a fact, that there is chinese in almost every corner of the world? Chinese are known to be survival, migrants and entrepeneur in almost every sense and in almost every corner they venture into. But how chinese are chinese in those faraway land? Let’s assume for this case that Koreans and Japanese are not chinese (though DNA has shown that they are closer relatives of chinese). Other than China and its claims region of Hong Kong and Macau and disputed region of Taiwan, the only other country with a majority chinese population is Singapore. Malaysia comes second in that regard followed by other south east nation countries.

There is also a smallish percentage in developed countries like UK, Australia, Canada and USA. Other developed countries too have a number of prominent chinese migrants. My best experience in these caucasian based countries is best viewed from an australian perspective. So please correct me if i have made assumptions which are not valid in countries other than Australia.

If you notice Singaporean chinese are a very different type of chinese. In fact if anything, Malaysian chinese tends to identify Mainland chinese more than with Singapore chinese. Thai and indon chinese do not identify with mainland anymore as they have assimilated into their local culture and traditions. Majority of thai and indon chinese do not speak any mandarin or chinese dialects. In some ways, Singaporean chinese and Malaysian chinese speaks reasonably good mandarin or chinese dialects. The once predominantly cantonese speaking Hong Kongies has changed their flavour to suit their motherland. The same goes for Macau. Mandarin to them is needed to survive in an economic integration with their much much larger motherland.

Now let’s move on to australian borned chinese. These group of people tend to be extremely interesting. To them, to be able to speak any form of chinese is like a talent compared with us where we have taken it for granted. But from their perspective, having been living in an english speaking environment, it is quite an achievement. They use english so much more in real life, in family talk, with friends, even when they sleep that learning mandarin or chinese dialect is like us malaysian chinese learning russian. Those who learnt chinese are proud of their heritage. There are some who just couldn’t be bothered. They felt that they are aussie first, chinese second. they generally do not agree with the weird practise of chinese traditions.

I guess i can identify with those as i, too has been semi-brain washed into not believing in superstitions, not believing in ghosts, not believing in “pantangs” (is there an english word for pantang?) which in some ways make me less chinese than i would feel i want to be.

This post today, question what makes a chinese, a real chinese? occasionally in my visits to china, i have come across some mainland chinese who believes that even mainland chinese are making progress and dropping some traditional ideas in their path to modernisation. In fact it is the modern Malaysian and Singaporean (and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) chinese that has kept tradition alive. The fact is true that because we are so detached from the mainland, every believes that is being passed down from the previous generation stems from practises held in the 30s or 40s. we are being told that if we give up on traditions we may lose our heritage which is something which we do not want happening. But why are we lagging behind in traditions compared with mainland chinese whilst we have progressed so much further in economic and social development?

just an interesting trivia. Do you know there are more colonial english speaking indians in india than there are english in england?