The Chinese have been one of the most diasporic peoples in the world. In China and the Chinese Overseas, Wang Gongwu traces the history of the Chinese Diaspora by citing the abolition of slavery in the West as what as what propelled the Diasporic moves. He wrote, "Indentured Chinese and Indian laborers were used as replacements for African slaves on plantations in the Caribbean or shipped to the Americas, Australia and parts of Southeast Asia to work in the mines, the railroads, and farms." This is known as the "coolie pattern", which was derived from the "migration of large number of laborers most of whom were landless peasants or urban poor." Then came the "trader pattern", which refers to "merchants and artisans who went abroad to set up bases at ports and trading cities." Finally, there is the "re-migrant pattern", a "migratory phenomenon whose importance has greatly increased in the last 30 or 40 years, in which Southwest Asians of Chinese descent or Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan re-migrate to Western Europe, North America, and Australia. This pattern is made up mostly of highly educated professionals whose Western education empowers them to, in the words of Rey Chow, "unlearn that submission to their ethnicity...as the ultimate signified." This is the inspiration for Lin Huai-min's Homecoming.
“Homecoming” recounts the events of Chen Chi-hou’s hometown visit to the harbor city of Hsin-Kang before he departs for further studies to the United States. The plot is not strange to Filipino readers because the central character of this story is similar to many Filipinos who leave their mother country to continue their studies abroad. In the field of Sociology, education is seen as one of the negative causes of migration because the presence of schools in the rural areas encourage the younger population to further their studies in the cosmopolitan areas where better educational facilities and opportunities are found. Lin Huai-min uses the character of Chen Chi-hou to effectively depict the cultural displacement that takes place when one longs to fit in to another world.
"In the postcolonial context," wrote Marie-Paule Ha of Ohio State University, "the term DIASPORA refers mainly to the political and cultural situations arising from Western colonialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries since diasporic moves are defined invariably as a displacement from the underprivileged former colonized Third World to the metropolitan centers of the formerly colonialist West." The diasporas in question are what he calls "metropolitan diasporas", that is, diasporas that have found a home away from home in the very heartland of former colonialism." Another critic-writer, Wang Gongwu, noted that, "due to the more privileged background (of re-migrants), these cosmopolitan diasporic Chinese develop yet another kind of relationship to their ethnic identity as some of them leave behind the Chineseness (cultural identity) issue and seek to make their mark in the outside world free from the weight of their ancient heritage." Such is the case of Chen Chi-hou, the character created by Lin Huai-min who fits the perfect representation of the modern Chinese.
Chen Chi-hou is a native of a small harbor city known as Hsin-Kang. He belongs to a family whose members have become residents of America. He himself is leaving Taiwan to be with his family and to earn his degree abroad. In this selection, he is seen fulfilling a filial order to go back to his old hometown and visit the ancestral graves before his departure. As the story unfolds, Lin Huai-min presents to us the changes that happen when a native rejects his own culture in order to adopt a new and foreign one, a process known as cultural displacement. The whole narrative is plagued by symbolism. With the author’s masterful hand, the problem of cultural displacement was effectively depicted in Chen Chi-hou’s attitude towards his ancestral home, the symbolic burning of the death certificates of his ancestors, and his not fulfilling his father’s wish to visit the ancestral graves.
Lin Huai-min relied heavily on his characterization of Chen Chi-hou to develop the narrative. The first paragraph alone carries a significant amount of information about the Westernization of Chen Chi-hou. One can easily point out the contrast between the modern young man clothed in Western style—in blue shirt and sunglasses—and the relatively traditional backdrop of Hsin-Kang with its sugar cane fields, dusty roads, and old houses. One of the pieces of evidence that points to the central character’s displacement from his culture is his disregard of his hometown and his ancestral home, in particular. The author tells us that Chen Chi-hou, who has since moved to Taipei, was already alienated from his hometown as he casually said to himself, “It’s really miserable to be back anyway.” Then he gently reminded himself to be patient, “After all, this is the last time I’ll ever set foot on Hsin-Kang.” Lin painted a vivid picture of a tragic sight: “The east wing chambers had been torn down to the ground. Tiles and bricks were piled up in a corner of the courtyard. The withered lawn within was a yellowish color. A broken stone table stood pale in the moonlight.” But instead of returning its lost glory, Chen Chi-hou immediately thought to himself that the house was beyond repair and that the sensible thing to do would be to sell it off because “Nobody would come back and settle here anymore.” The only resident of the house now was Uncle Hsiao-hsin who was only his grandmother’s nephew, and therefore not a part of the Chen family. Hsiao-hsin was, according to Aunt Five-Flower, “a reckless boy who was so ungrateful he won’t even take good care of your house!” Lin had not merely described the ancestral house, he symbolically used its image to describe what exactly happens to the culture of emigrants when they turn their backs on their traditional culture. He likened the emigrants’ culture to the ancestral house “which stood crumbling, enveloped in darkness, deserted by the ungrateful people who used to stay under its roofs for protection.” The fact that Chen Chi-hou preferred to sell the house instead of trying to save it showed that he was willing to let go of his traditional culture so he could learn a foreign culture that would soon shape his identity.
As Chen Chi-hou was writing a love letter for his sweetheart Weiwei in Chicago, he ran out of ink. He reached into the drawer but there was no ink; instead he found a bundle of yellowish paper inside. He pulled them out out of curiosity and realized they were copies of death certificates signed by his grandfather. From the death certificates he learned that his family members died of heart attack, tuberculosis, gastric carcinoma, and cholera. Chen Chi-hou felt uneasy and in a rage, he took the papers out to the back veranda and lit them with his lighter. Chi-hou’s actions were symptoms of the guilt that he must have been feeling. The death certificates reminded him of his ancestors who lived and died in Hsin-Kang, never leaving their hometown to seek treatment elsewhere even when they were suffering from their “ailments.” That was why he must have felt uneasy, because his guilt gnawed at his conscience upon seeing the documents. The burning of the death certificates was an attempt to make the guilt go away. It could also signify his want to be free of the confines of his culture and of their family’s past.
When the fire died down, the burnt-black ashes that remained of the documents floated above the floor. Chen Chi-hou hastily stepped forward and stamped down the ashes, erasing the last traces of his ancestors. Afterwards he felt relaxed: at last, his guilt had been eased with the scattering of the ashes all over the veranda. Now, there’s nothing to remind him of his ancient traditions.
Chen Chi-hou’s reason for going to Hsin-Kang was really to visit the ancestral graves, which was an order from his Father. The significant of visiting the graves for him would have been to pay his last respects to his ancestors. Unfortunately, he overslept the following morning and he had a train to catch at 11:30. Chen Chi-hou, in his hurry to go back to the metropolis, readily made up his mind: “I can tell Father that I’ve visited the grave and he’ll never know the difference.” When the train was delayed, Fate was actually giving Chen Chi-hou a last chance to “go back to where he came from”, but as in the previous events, he stubbornly opted to wile away the time at the station instead of “reaching out” to his ancestors who serve as his links to the past. At the beginning of the story we were made to believe that the ancestral graves would play a big part in the development of the narrative. But the author did not dwell much on the subject of the ancestral graves, instead he shifted his focus on the Chen’s ancestral house where much of the action happened. Nevertheless, we can draw from Chen Chi-hou’s actions that he was impatient to leave his own hometown behind (and everything it stands for) as he kept reminding himself to be patient, after all, this is the last time. And when he leaves Hsin-Kang behind, it also means leaving his cultural traditions behind: his ancestral home, his other relations, and the ancestral graves.
Lin Huai-min is like Chen Chi-hou in some ways. He was also an emigrant to the United States and an M.A. degree holder from Iowa University's Writer's Workshop. We can safely say, therefore, that this story probably comes from the author's first-hand experience. But unlike the character he had created, Lin Huai-min went back to his roots to teach at the Chengchi University in Taiwan, proving that some emigrants shy away from the opportunities the US offers in order to go back to the confines of their native culture. According to Marie Paul-Ha, "Diasporic Chinese have had to device for themselves diverse cultural, ethnic, and political identities to meet the multiple challenges from both their native and adoptive homelands." Chen Chi-hou chose the easy way: he chose to displace his culture in order to adopt the culture of the Americans. But turning one's back on one's native culture isn't that easy: one has to suffer the consequences of cultural displacement. In this instance, Chen Chi-hou was plagued by the feeling of guilt. The tablet which hung above the ancestral shrine (with the inscription: Nourish the root and stabilize the foundation for one's everlasting glory; Some like cassia and grandsons like orchid preserve the tradition), the death certificates, even the aged peddler in the train station who made Chen Chi-hou felt uneasy with his strange state, all served to reinforce Chen Chi-hou's guilt. No wonder he was impatient to leave Hsin-kang! Guilt must have burned inside him like a candle burns a moth. Try as he may to make the guilt go away, he could never really escape the consequence of cultural displacement, for he carries it with him wherever he may go. Chen Chi-hou is a popular Chinese name meaning "to carry on ancestral tradition and to blaze new trails for posterity."
Conclusion
Lin Huai-min stressed the importance of balancing education with other things in this selection. He couldn't have put it more clearly when he made Great Uncle speak out: "It's good for you young men to study and work hard, but you should have come back more often. Otherwise, you might have forgotten which direction your old home faces." He also stressed that grandmothers are the "glue that keeps the family together." In the Chen family, after their grandmother left for the US, the other family members went on separate ways, which leads us to another effect of diaspora: the loosening of the bonds that bind the family. "After your grandmother left," Great Uncle tells Chen Chi-hou, "the east-wing chambers practically fell apart and the walls tumbled down."
Lin Huai-min also made Great Uncle deliver the sad sign of the times: “What a time it is. Every young man with feet is leaving. No one stays at home to farm. More than thirty persons from Hsin-Kang have gone to America. Five members of your family have gone. And now, you, the eldest grandson, are leaving too,” he observed.
And so the story of Chen Chi-hou ends. But the diaspora of Chinese and other races, including us Filipinos, continues. This makes me question: How far do we really go to erase the traces of our ethnicity in order to fit in?
Author's Note: This paper was a final requirement (dated October 2004)for Professor Merlie Alunan's Asian Literature class. It was recently unearthed from one of my electronic folders when I decided to clean up my emails. Unfortunately, I can no longer find the short story.
1 comment:
Photo by H.L. Tam
Post a Comment