Abstract
‘The exhibition shows what the Overseas Chinese have gone through’ (p. 102, quote attributed to Mr Li). The display of the movement of people and objects, the transformation of their personal histories into collective memories, and the integration of their identities within the expanding museum landscape in China in a globalized world undeniably deserve scholarly attention. Cangbai Wang’s interest was sparked by a new composite term huaqiao wenwu (华侨文物), translated as ‘cultural relics of the Overseas Chinese’. Referring to a category of objects that are not so easily defined, the term is a cultural invention of early 21st-century China. According to Wang, huaqiao wenwu carries unusual empirical novelty and a solid theoretical potential (p. 2), a neologism which allows for the confluence of two previously distant realities into one concept and two seemingly separate fields into one study.
In his work on overseas Chinese museums in the People’s Republic of China, Wang attempts to combine migration studies with heritage studies and to examine heritage-making phenomena of the Chinese diaspora in museums in China. The primary question that he poses is: how do histories of the Chinese diaspora become part of the cultural heritage of China, their ancestral homeland, through the medium of museums? (pp. 4, 20, and 143). To answer this question, Wang uses an extensive original and composite body of data collected over 10 years in various contexts with various stakeholders (p. 15) and he creates an analytical typology of museumification practices of the overseas Chinese. The book’s analytical framework emphasizes the process of making and the uses of heritage (pp. 14 and 142). Furthermore, the methodological approach focuses on the macro-museum understood as a dynamic, open museum embedded in social processes and networks and with a transnational view of heritage (pp. 13 and 145).
The book has four parts, each corresponding to a category of museum representations of the Chinese diaspora. The practices inherent in the making of diasporic Chinese heritage are respectively mediated by cultural nationalism in Part 1 and labelled as The Symbolic Museum; local socio-economic interests in Part 2 and labelled as The Branding Museum; family memories in Part 3 and labelled as The Memory Museum; and individual identities in Part 4 and labelled as The Im/possible Museum. Each chapter illustrates a single case study, drawing on specific theoretical sources. Chapter 1 deals with the Overseas Chinese History Museum of China, its new symbolic political power, as well as the invention of huaqiao wenwu as a new category of cultural relics. Chapter 2 discusses the representation of Chinese diasporas as a ‘national self/other’ in the Overseas Chinese History Museum of China and analyses the strategies of ‘exoticizing’ and ‘assimilating’ Chinese diasporas in the museum exhibitions (p. 49). Chapter 3 in Part 2 focuses on Jiangmen qiaoxiang (侨乡, translated as hometown of the overseas Chinese returning to China, especially in South China), negotiating ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ authentication strategies in diasporic heritage-making in competition with other Chinese cities. Chapter 4 tells the story of a new qiaoxiang in Taizhou, discussing its city branding and using the concept of art as agency and objects as an extension of people’s agency (p. 74). Chapter 5 in Part 3 brings us to the Quanzhou Museum of Overseas Chinese History in Fujian Province and applies a semiotic view in the display analysis; in the postage stamps exhibition, objects act simultaneously as indexical and iconic signs (not ironic as misspelled in the book (p. 99)). Chapter 6 discusses the material house as an exhibit and the materialization of identities and memories of return migration in the House Museum of the Returned Overseas Chinese from Indonesia. Chapter 7 in Part 4 presents the Chen Cihong Residence in eastern Guangdong to discuss the ‘im/possible museum’ in the non-official discourse on the Chinese diaspora coming to terms with a difficult or uncomfortable heritage (p. 126).
The reader is guided through the chapters with sharp recurring questions provoked by the author’s reflections on his fieldwork observations. Throughout the book, Wang successfully analyses and categorizes the practices and uses of huaqiao wenwu, weaving his way through people, places, events, and objects. He critically addresses the complexities of negotiating borders, mobility, memories, and identities, tackling conflicting meanings, dis/continuities of national collective and individual identities, and even cultural repatriation (p. 75). To conceptualize the making of heritage related to transnational mobilities in the Chinese context, Wang proposes the notion of ambivalent heritage, defined as spatially stretched, culturally hybrid, and politically sensitive (pp.18 and 146). This work also successfully bridges the gap between research on museums in China and the Chinese diaspora. It suggests a mobility turn in museum studies (p. 148) to add a diasporic component to the understanding of the cultural heritage and a material turn in migration studies (p. 148) to offer a new look at diaspora through the movement of objects in a transnational context.
This book is an excellent contribution to the fields of museum studies, Chinese studies, and migration studies. The author is also very effective in communicating with both specialist scholars and general readers, often pausing the analysis to point out essential background information on the museum landscape in China or the history of the Chinese diaspora. Scholars interested in Asian and global history and politics as well as the sociology of culture and anthropology of heritage will gain valuable insights from this work.