In search of a home(land)

An elegy of ethnic diaspora

George Town has a lengthy history as a diasporic city, existing as a “contact zone” where Chinese immigrants, as well as colonial powers such as the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and Japanese, encountered the region’s native peoples and cultures. ⁷ The earliest use of the geographical term “Penang Island” came from the Voyages of Admiral Zheng He (1371–1433/1435) in the early 15th century. The modern history of Penang started in 1786, the year in which the British naval captain Francis Light (1740–1794) landed on the island. Light later forced the Sultan of Kedah to rent out Penang to the East India Company as a naval base and he appointed himself as Governor. Thereafter, Penang became a free trade port in the British far eastern colonies. The colonial authorities declared Penang, Malacca, and Singapore the Straits Settlements in 1826. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Southern Chinese migrated to the Malay Peninsula; some of them resided in Penang permanently. In terms of their ancestral lands, blood, surnames, occupations, and religions, they sought to develop a wide range of affiliations and deeply engage with the political, economic, and cultural causes of Penang. ⁸

According to Yow Cheun Hoe, the identity of current Chinese Malaysians was not moved intact from their ancestral lands to Malaya but was constructed through the processes of inter-racial interactions and national development. ⁹ As articulated by Yow, diasporic experience features mobility and change. When the bodily subject crosses geographic, linguistic, and cultural boundaries, s/he has to face a challenging future, endure physical or psychological disorientation, and ponder over the relation between roots and routes, between ancestral lands and the current location of residence. Looi’s poem “In Search of a Home”, a record of the dreams of two generations of Chinese diaspora, addresses these themes. In the opening scene, the transnational mobility of the bodily subject is marked by a number of places: “Lingnan”, “Tsengshing”, “Shunde”, “Huanghuagang”, “equator”, “Jalan Pintal Tali”, and “Prangin Road”. Then, the history of a fictionalized “I” is narrated, concluding with the following melancholy scene: “The sunlight of the equator looks like a Ferris wheel, dimly decorating the balcony / to an early Republican patio / the star fruit tree that we have been promising / has not yet found / its birthplace”. ¹⁰ The “star fruit tree” that was once on a patio now finds itself incapable of growing on a balcony. As an ordinary tropical species, the star fruit tree is a literary landscape containing multiple significances: the source of a convenient drink for ethnic Chinese in daily life and a vivid metaphor for the common Chinese diasporic desire for a stable and happy family life.

Looi tends to embed the lived experience of the Malaysian Chinese diaspora within the framework of Malaysia’s national history. In 2000, Looi travelled on business to Guangzhou, China, where he stayed for a couple of months. This short yet rewarding experience offered him an opportunity to rethink the history and future of Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. That same year, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, had been published by Lianhe Zaobao Press and soon captured the attention of both professional readers and the wider public. Lee, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore, recalls a variety of historical events in his autobiography: Singapore’s expulsion from the Federation of Malaysia and its subsequent independence, social movements of workers and students, opposition party challenges to his own People’s Action Party, the rise of the Communist Party of Malaya, the founding and closing of Nanyang University. ¹¹ All these stories, political or cultural, are closely associated with the Chinese diaspora in Singapore and beyond. Looi’s poem “A Malaysian Young Man Reads the Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew – in Guangzhou” details how, while reading Lee’s book during his travels, he is tempted to meditate on the national histories of Malaysia and Singapore, highlighting the cultural contribution of the Chinese diaspora:

In the era of high temperatures / I saw the worker ants of the whole peninsular, they disregarded their illiteracy / agreed to shoulder their one-day’s crops to the South / With brick-like will, they built / the only Chinese-medium university on the Southern island // How time flies! Repressed by the English-speaking trend / the Chinese characters flinched, kept flinching and became the dialects / finally the University was confiscated by a pen that broke into the wall and thinking with English / it withered like a scab on the island ¹²

Towards a localized orientation

Several of Looi’s poems specifically deal with the Chinese diaspora’s experiences of what may be termed an increasingly ‘localized orientation’. Before offering an analysis of Looi’s writings on this theme, it may be helpful to expand further on its historical context.

It should be emphasized that relations between mainland China and overseas Chinese communities are changing and complex. Prasenjit Duara explores how imperial nationalists, reform nationalists, and revolutionary nationalists utilized cultural and discursive means to mobilize overseas Chinese to the national cause from 1900 to 1910. ¹³ Wang Gungwu holds that the ethnic Chinese in Malaya (and Southeast Asia in general) may be divided into three groups: the first maintain direct or indirect political affiliation with mainland China, the second show more concern with commercial issues in their countries of residence, and the third, mainly composed of Baba, Straits Chinese, and Malayan nationalists, express their unyielding loyalty to Malaya. ¹⁴

In the wake of the Second World War, local nationalist campaigns culminated in Southeast Asia. Ethnic Chinese had to make a tough decision: return to China, or reside here? In 1947, extensive surveys launched by the newspapers Nanyang Siang Pau and Sin Chew Daily indicated that 90 percent of Chinese diaspora would choose to reside in Malaya permanently and apply for citizenship instead of returning to the ancestral lands. ¹⁵ According to Wong Hong Teng, from the late 1940s onwards, the Chinese diaspora in Singapore have increasingly strengthened their “national consciousness” and reduced their sense of being “Chinese sojourners”. ¹⁶ Meanwhile, Yen Ching-hwang observes that nationalist movements within overseas Chinese communities declined drastically after the Second World War. ¹⁷ Based on empirical data, Liu Hong concludes that after the Second World War, ethnic Chinese communities in Singapore and the surrounding region underwent an increasingly localized orientation. ¹⁸ This turn to the local context was particularly notable in changes to educational establishments aimed at Chinese communities. For example, in 1980, Nanyang University (“Nantah”), which had been founded as Singapore’s first Chinese-language higher education institution through the tenacious efforts of the Nanyang (or “South Seas”) Chinese diaspora, was compelled to merge with Singapore University due to its apparent conflict with a national blueprint that promoted English as the official state language. Following the merger, English replaced Chinese as the dominant medium of instruction in the university. Such state-directed developments have resulted in the emergence of linguistic politics as a key feature of the region’s postcolonial landscape. ¹⁹

The localized identity of Malaysian Chinese literature also underwent a long, arduous journey. In 1919, when the May Fourth Movement took place in Beijing, the South Seas Chinese diaspora excitedly reported it in local newspapers and journals, and commenced their own practice of writing New Literature. ²⁰ From the 1920s to the 1930s, Lao She, Yu Dafu, and other Chinese writers sought to challenge diasporic ethno-nationalism. ²¹ In 1947, there occurred a heated controversy on “Chinese Sojourner’s Literature” versus the “Uniqueness of Malayan Chinese Literature”. The former refers to the Chinese-language literature composed by authors exiled from China to Malaya due to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War; the latter refers to the Chinese-language literature created by local ethnic Chinese writers in Malaya and displays the Nanyang Colours. Ultimately, the latter won more recognition and contributed to the success of a localized consciousness within Malayan Chinese literature. ²² A recent example is the “Shenzhou Poetic Society”; a leading literary society active in early 1970s Malaysia, it was renowned for its China-orientated manifesto and the so-called “myth of consanguinity”. ²³

A short poem called “I’ll Be Back One Hundred Years Later”, composed in 1988 when Looi was only 19 years old, suggests an eagerness to identify with his homeland:

“This is July; it is still the bronze-colored water / I’ll be descending by your side / M, in the time and space of 2008, as ever I watch over / your name / as ever / I wish to kiss you”. ²⁴ The “M” in this passage refers to Malaysia; Looi imagines that he will return to his homeland 20 years later and still would like to be with it as ever. Here, the young poet does not emphasize his ethnic identity; rather, he lingers on the national, aiming to embody his sense of belonging to Malaysia. Three years later, the same topic echoes in “The Post-Malaysian’s Suite” that talks about “C”, one of his emigrating friends. Looi sees the friend off at the airport but resolutely refuses to follow his example; instead, Looi vows to reside in Malaysia forever. Variations on this declaration appear several times in this poem: “I still would like to choose my residence here”, “I persist in not leaving this planet”. The last stanza reads:

C, I decided to stay here / let me be born here, brought up here / and die here/ After I die, dear C, /if you’ll be back, / you might as well pluck a hibiscus flower / I, and the rest of residents with different skin colors on this plant / are all inside it. ²⁵

Race, disempowerment, and recognition

The marginalization of ethnic Chinese, and the racism rampant in postcolonial Malaysia, are topics to which Looi repeatedly returns, for example in “The Earth”, “Prospect”, “The Book of Colors”, “Multiple Choices”, “The Declassified Enteritis”, “You Don’t Have a Dream”, “The Reverse Side of the World”, “Just Wearing a Pair of Yellow Socks”, and “My 13 May”. For a Chinese Malaysian like Looi, being Chinese is to be damned by Original Sin; their identification with the nation is ignored by the Malaysian authorities and they must struggle for equality, dignity, and the politics of recognition. Hence, for Looi, writing becomes an act of raising one’s voice in political critique: “We’re still short of a mind / that can bravely remove the layers of nationalist armor / and lead the tenacious body / to race against the whole world / at the scratch line”. ²⁷ Here, the “we” refers to a Malaysia that is wholly stuck in the racist system, unable to compete with other states on the international stage. Moreover, the “body” described in the poem has three interlinked implications: physical, racial, and national; to Looi’s disappointment, this body has lost its subjectivity and capacity to engage in sports vigorously.

Let us return now to Looi’s “A Malaysian Young Man Reads the Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew – in Guangzhou”. The poet writes that institutionalized racialism disempowers the Chinese diaspora and their descendants:

Then, my compatriots who know mother tongue or not / in the sweating dreamland of their own / fell down like the Dandelion / A huge red flag slowly rose up in the East / more people chose to be potted plants /…In the Peninsular, my supervisor, professor, neighbor and love rival / still get stuck in a heavily-guarded pasture / The master avoids a simple economic principle on purpose: / the dog charges the door, the horse draws the carriage / “the domestic threat matters much more than human dignity…”/ After the storm, the pasture continues offering shelter to / large stretches of soil failing to produce fine scenery / more fences are set to protect something ²⁸

Inscription of traumatic memory

Looi’s poems represent the traumatic memory of ethnic Chinese, which results from the racism rampant in postcolonial Malaysia. “Civil Service Examination, 1987 – A Sketch of Operasi Lalang” recalls a political purge launched by the Malaysian government under the Internal Security Act: “A cry coming from the playground / It urged the Malay to clean their Keris / with the blood of ethnic Chinese / the first racial scar drawn / on the biology textbook”. ³⁰ According to the Malaysian government, debates over the general election between the ruling party and opposition parties led to the 13 May Incident in 1969. ³¹ A recently declassified dossier indicates, however, that it was not a purely racial riot but a conspiracy mainly led by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) with the purpose of taking over the power of Tunku Rahman (1903–1990) and uprooting the rising political force of ethnic Chinese. ³²

At least 143 ethnic Chinese were killed in the notorious 13 May Incident, which worsened existing tensions between the Malay and Chinese people. Looi’s “Independence Day” relates the 13 May Incident to the National Day of Malaysia, revealing the authorities’ betrayal of their original promise of racial equality. On 31 August 1957, the Federation of Malaya was founded as an independent nation-state with complete sovereignty, marking the end of 446 years of colonization. At the Medeka Square, Tunku Rahman (later the first Prime Minister of Malaya) and others excitedly cried out “Independence” three times. Subsequently, 31 August was officially declared as the National Day of Malaya. Looi’s “National Day” displays a scene ironically juxtaposed with historical memory: Malaysia’s historical period under Western colonial rule, the Japanese Occupation of Malaya, Independence in 1957, the civil war between the Malaysian government and the Communist Party of Malaya, the New Economy Policy, and racial discrimination caused by the Quota System. At last, the ghost of the 13 May Incident awakens as follows:

…On a rainy day / following the Independence Day / spears and parangs were drawn out one after another to debate on the truth. / The blood of father and Chinese were sewed on the same blade / as red as the hibiscus flowers. The street was bleeding / military guards’ boots roughly trampled loud bang / in the flesh of soils. On the Independence Day, at the end of life / the colorless and odorless spirits rose up from the loosing soils / one only debate of that year already grew into a Casuarina tree / bloodstain and scar was dry, brown leaves all over the sky / they fell down lightly in an autumn-like morning ³³

The absence of postcolonial critique

It is noteworthy that Looi fiercely condemns the racial discrimination conducted by the Malay, yet surprisingly neglects British colonial hegemony in Malaya, despite the latter also bearing responsibility for the racial conflict in the region. According to Yow Cheun Hoe, before the mid-19th century when the British seized control of the Malay Peninsula, racial discrimination between Chinese and Malay communities did not exist at all. But after that point, the situation changed drastically. To develop the economy, the colonial authorities permitted Chinese and Indian immigrants to enter Malaya for all kinds of occupations while refusing to recognize them as permanent residents; thus, a divided Malaya was formed, and racial conflict soon emerged. ³⁵ In the late 19th century, in order to consolidate the British Empire’s economic power, the colonial authorities required Malay people to stay in rural areas to plant rice and Indian labourers to participate in tin mining and rubber planting, and encouraged Chinese people to engage with commercial causes. Consequently, most of the Malay community were deprived of opportunities to engage with urban development and commercial activities, and led relatively poor lives in economically backward villages, whereas the ethnic Chinese resided in the city and became very rich due to their involvement in modern capitalism with support from the colonial authorities. This social phenomenon has been termed “spatial isolation and racial exclusion”. ³⁶

Historically speaking, colonialism was one of the key factors that endangered ethnic Chinese’s identification with the nation, while simultaneously exacerbating racial conflict between Chinese and Malay peoples. Indeed, the roots of contemporary racism in Malaysia may trace their origin to British colonialism. Some Chinese Malaysian writers, such as Lee Yung-ping, Chang Kuei-hsing, and Li Zhi-shu, have forcefully engaged in postcolonial critique of British rule. Regrettably, though, any critique of colonial hegemony is totally absent in Looi’s literary world.