[QUOTE]SINGAPORE — Festooned with red lanterns and banners bearing auspicious messages, the ornate façade of the 19th-century Thian Hock Keng temple in downtown Singapore seems even more flamboyant than usual. The temple is readying itself for its busiest time of the year: Over the next few weeks thousands of worshipers will make offerings and pray for a favorable Chinese New Year. It’s a time when even the least conscientious of temple-goers, like me, make an effort to maintain the customs that link them to their heritage.Such a classically Chinese setting may seem an unlikely place to start questioning one’s traditions, but to be in Singapore today means to challenge conventional ideas of Chineseness. As China rises on the world stage, it is exporting its notions of Chinese culture and ethnicity, creating new tensions within Chinese communities abroad. In Singapore, Chinese people used to be called zhongguo ren or hua ren interchangeably: The small distinction between the two terms — the former relating to people with Chinese nationality or born in China; the latter to anyone ethnically and culturally Chinese — was considered artificial. But subtle divisions of this kind have now become the crux of what it means to be Chinese here.
Three-quarters of Singapore’s people are ethnically Chinese, most descendants of Hokkien-speaking immigrants from Fujian Province in southern China who came to the island in the first half of the 19th century, when it was a British settlement. Malays and Indians, both indigenous and immigrants who also arrived in the 19th century, have long formed important communities in the territory. But it is the predominance of the ethnic Chinese that was crucial to Singapore’s formation in the first place.
In 1965, Singapore broke off from freshly independent Malaysia as a direct result of bitter disputes over the preservation of rights for ethnic Chinese and other minorities in the new Malay-dominated nation. (The two territories previously were part of a loose federation.) Today, this tiny Chinese enclave has a G.D.P. per capita about five times that of its far larger, resource-rich neighbor.
But it is precisely this upward economic trajectory that has begun to raise questions about what it means to be Chinese in modern Singapore. In 2013, the government published a white paper that laid down plans for sustaining economic growth and increasing the population from about 5.3 million to 6.5 to 6.9 million by 2030. In an already densely populated island with limited space for new construction, the plan sparked widespread debate and unprecedented public protests: Given Singapore’s low birth rate, this increase in numbers would have to be fueled by immigrants — largely, it was presumed by many, from China.
On the face of it, few cultural mergers could be more seamless. Singapore’s multilingual educational system treats Mandarin as a de facto second language after English. Almost half a century ago, the country adopted the simplified system of writing Chinese that is used in mainland China, rather than the complex forms from Hong Kong and Taiwan. In the late 1970s, the government launched a Speak Mandarin campaign to limit the use of various Chinese dialects. Familiarity with Chinese culture is presumed from similarities in food and shared customs rooted in Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism.
Yet a chasm remains between the Chinese of Singapore and their mainland counterparts, divided by contemporary social values and the very language that is supposed to bind them all.
Singapore’s lively Internet media and online forums reveal a pattern of prejudice toward immigrants from China. Mainlanders, Singaporeans often complain, are rude and uncivilized: One recent story that caused outrage on open portals such as The Real Singapore and STOMP, the Straits Times’ “citizen-journalism website,” centered on a “PRC woman” relieving herself on the otherwise spotless floor of a subway station. Chinese immigrants, for their part, are frustrated by what they perceive as aloofness, as well as a lack of fluency in standard Mandarin, or putonghua, among Singaporean Chinese — proof that their island cousins are not truly Chinese.
[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/opinion/tash-aw-being-chinese-in-singapore.html[/url]
Now, I must also stress, this issue can also be seen in countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan etc. Its really strange when you think about it, because its pretty much racism against your own race, in some ways.
also, this has been approved by Swebonny
it's definitely always been present, and to some extent i have to say that i'm caught up in it too.
fujian is one of the poorest places in china and it doesn't surprise me that singapore is mostly made up of immigrants from there.
i said this in another thread last night, but the further you go away from the big cities, the shittier (literally) places become. i think i have an uncle who literally lives in the middle of nowhere, with holes in his roof and i'm not 100% sure he even had a proper toilet. or doors.
it's sad to say that a lack of education and manners is directly correlated with a lack of money. that's why so many people immigrate to other countries, because they think it'll give them a better life than in china.
as to the snobbish opinions of mainlanders towards the chinese of singapore... well, to be quite honest, i've listened to people speaking both the jiu jiang dialect and shang hai dialect and i can barely fucking understand either of them. most people with the money to travel are from the big cities, where pu tong hua, the "accepted" government dialect, akin to received pronunciation in england, is most commonly spoken.
so they can't understand anyone either and they tend to look down upon people for sounding... uneducated.
Well I'm Chinese and I don't speak a spit of Mandarin because when I was younger I didn't see much use for it, all my friends spoke English and there was hardly anyone I came across back then that didn't.
Fast forward to now, I find myself 'naked' when I'm out and about and people come up to me and immediately start rattling off in the thickest mainland China accents I've heard.
So when I finally did decide to pick up at least a bit of it and downloaded one of those language apps, my mandarin speaking friends were like "what the hell are all these words, these are china words we don't use them here"
what do ;(
it's your choice whether you want to learn it or not. if your friends look down on you for trying to learn another language, maybe you need new friends
by all appearances, china is going to become an economic super power in the next few years (built on empty economics maybe)
[QUOTE=lintz;47340141]it's your choice whether you want to learn it or not. if your friends look down on you for trying to learn another language, maybe you need new friends
by all appearances, china is going to become an economic super power in the next few years (built on empty economics maybe)[/QUOTE]
no as in
the words that were in the app for like things like bus stop and taxi were completely different from the words they would use
Opinion pieces are not allowed according to SH rules.
[QUOTE=MoonlessNight;47340179]Opinion pieces are not allowed according to SH rules.[/QUOTE]
Reading is hard, I know.
[QUOTE=Ignhelper;47339845]
also, this has been approved by Swebonny[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Sir Whoopsalot;47340191]Reading is hard, I know.[/QUOTE]
Tell me about it.
[QUOTE=Ignhelper;47339845]Now, I must also stress, this issue can also be seen in countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan etc. Its really strange when you think about it, because its pretty much racism against your own race, in some ways.[/QUOTE]
The term you're looking for is ethnic discrimination. Both groups are racially Chinese, but it's the separation in their culture, their ethnicity, that is causing a divide.
But huh I really never knew that Singaporeans considered themselves Chinese or that they even had a history regarding Malaysia like that. I should read more about post colonial Asia seems interesting.
[QUOTE=angelangel;47340157]no as in
the words that were in the app for like things like bus stop and taxi were completely different from the words they would use[/QUOTE]
There might be some classes nearby you can take if online resources are failing you, classes usually aren't as fast as self study, but at least it's something
[QUOTE=angelangel;47340157]no as in
the words that were in the app for like things like bus stop and taxi were completely different from the words they would use[/QUOTE]
Mandarin has probably 1.2 motherfucking billion speakers dude. There's no surprise that there's a ton of regional variation from places to places. It's the same with spanish of all things, 'cause it's a cunt with things like that too.
[QUOTE=The Aussie;47346838]Mandarin has probably 1.2 motherfucking billion speakers dude. There's no surprise that there's a ton of regional variation from places to places. It's the same with spanish of all things, 'cause it's a cunt with things like that too.[/QUOTE]
Eh I still find it interesting that people are surprised at regional dialects which have different vocabularies when even we, with our 10 million population have huge differences between the two of our biggest cities.
You'd be surprised to hear that even within China, there's some subtle racism between regional cultures.
As a Northerner in Southern China or Shanghai, there's a small, although noticeable annoyance at my background.
In certain parts of Canada where there's a lot of Taiwanese immigrants, I've had my Northern Accent made fun of :v
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