Sometimes I think about how if singapore is so worried about Chinese disinformation and espionage (and they are), a very easy antidote to that is to really lean into our southeast asian identity.
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Sometimes I think about how if singapore is so worried about Chinese disinformation and espionage (and they are), a very easy antidote to that is to really lean into our southeast asian identity. Personally I grew up seeing myself as a person of Chinese origin with pan-SE Asian heritage and culture. That’s because I speak Malay / Hokkien. I know my peers who don’t, don’t, and feel detached from the region.
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Any attempt to build a ‘Singapore Chinese’ identity that is further detached from our regional identity is always going to be sterile and weird and not organic in any way.
It’s all there, lean harder into it.
I would never voluntarily ID myself as ‘Singapore Chinese’ the way the govt wants me to (it’s corny, and Mandarin is not my identity), but I have no problem seeing myself as part of a larger diaspora.
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan last edited by [email protected]
US / Canada style ‘X and Chinese’ identity does not really work for any country in that region. Other than Singapore, long histories of repression and pogroms of Chinese diaspora (in Malaysia and Indonesia specifically) that is definitely causing Chinese diaspora there to feel drawn to China in some way, because of home country rejection.
Singapore Chinese experience is different (we repress others!) but at the same time it is such a new and sterile identity.
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Ecch... without wishing to contradict you in the slightest - my first contact with Greek culture was in Lagos, Nigeria.
Of course, the Greeks have a long history of forming distant colonies, a seafaring people. They've harmonized their multiple identities, by and large.
Yeah, trying to identify as 'Singapore Chinese' is never going to work, imho.
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Adrianna Tanreplied to tuban_muzuru last edited by [email protected]
@tuban_muzuru well in this case, Greece probably isn’t sending spies and money and social media disinfo to build up some Greek diaspora identity to absorb Greeks in Queens to secede. China is.
The Singapore govt is trying to counteract that by building a strong Singapore Chinese identity. China sets up a Chinese cultural org, we do the same but for Singapore Chinese culture. It’s all geopolitical, not real people
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@skinnylatte Apropos of nothing, but you reminded me of it, I just read a wonderful SciFi book where one of the key characters is a Teochew lesbian from Singapore who lives in the Bay Area.
It's The Future, by Naomi Alderman.
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@PublicWolf what!!! How odd!