Indonesian Chinese as Rootless Transnationals: The Story of One Family, Three Continents, and Multiple Languages

Abstract

Transnationality research has emerged in the past 20 years in cultural anthropology, population studies, economics, social and cultural geography. Research in sociolinguistics, however, has produced little on the linguistic practices and ideologies of the flexible transnationals (Ong 1999). Wang (2009) reports nearly half a million Indonesian Chinese ‘returned’ to China in the 1950-1960’s. “‘Return’ meant re-embracing Chinese ethnicity, culture, and a political decision to join the new Chinese nation. However, their journey to China turned out to be painful and traumatic due to the Chinese state’s refusal to recognise them as ‘one of us’”. Because of their disappointment in China, 250,000 returned Indonesian Chinese left for Hong Kong and Macao in the 1970’s, and they were yet again marginalized as new immigrants in Hong Kong (Godley and Coppel 1990). “Returned” Indonesian Chinese in China and Hong Kong retain distinctive language and cultural practices. They are typically multilingual in varieties of Huaqiao Guoyu , Indonesian languages, Chinese dialects of Chiuchao, Hokkien, Hakka, etc. They listen to and dance with Indonesian folk songs, wear Indonesian attire, enjoy Indonesian and Baba-Nyonya food, maintain close kinship ties with Indonesia, and have an ambivalent attitude towards their identities. This research takes Indonesian Chinese in Hong Kong as a starting point for investigation by focusing on one family with members “returned” to China in the 1950’s and subsequently moved to Hong Kong in the 1970’s, as well as the rest of the family who remain in Indonesia or migrated to Singapore. It examines the linguistic practices and ideologies of these social participants in the backdrop of sweeping political and social changes in Asia. Methodology includes recording of natural spontaneous speech for code-choice and code-switching analysis, participant observation, in-depth interviews, ethnography and research on the social history of Indonesian Chinese.