Chinese in SE Asia drifting from heritage
- Source: Global Times
- [22:35 December 03 2009]
- Comments
By Chen Chenchen
Cultural confidence in the Chinese mainland has reached new heights over the last 10 years. It seems common sense that Chinese language and culture are being restored to their previous glory, especially in surrounding regions where China traditionally had strong cultural infl uence, and which still have large ethnically Chinese populations.
Singapore's founder and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's recent call to make Chinese learning fun sounds quite flattering to some Chinese people, since the prospects of the Chinese language are not so optimistic in Southeast Asia.
In an address at the opening of the Singapore Center for the Chinese Language, Lee admitted that Singapore's policy on the learning of Chinese started out on a wrong footing and turned generations of Singaporeans off from the language. The linguistic policy, he said, is "not completely right but I will get it right if I live long enough."
Does this truly signal the resurgence of the power of the Chinese language, and thus a strengthened Great China cultural circle involving all the societies that have been deeply infl uenced by Chinese language and culture?
Weiming Tu, HarvardYenching Professor and New Confucian, holds that Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia should be involved in the "Great China"cultural circle, because the ethnic Chinese groups there identify with Chinese culture, although they respect local political authority. Nevertheless, he might be overoptimistic about it.
Admittedly, a language's status is often attached to the economic strength behind it. Previously in Southeast Asia, the Chinese language was never considered important, and was even resisted by some Chinese.
Surveys show that in 1970s, many ethnic Chinese in Singapore felt "regret for having acquired Chinese as their first language."
That's not hard to understand, since China at that time was more like a source of darkness and bitterness within the imagination of Chinese abroad.
