Cultural Sustainability and Loss in Sydney’s Chinese Community

Abstract

IntroductionIt is often supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.1There are many challenges for those who move from one country to settle in another. Since 2001, I have investigated the issue of gain from loss in the Chinese community of Sydney. Noting the wealth of musical genres at both community and professional levels, I decided to focus on three groups that have responded to the issue of cultural loss in diverse, yet similar ways. These groups are the Australian Catholic Chinese Community (ACCC), the Buddha's Light International Association, Sydney (BLIA SYD), and the Australian Chinese Teo Chew Association (ACTCA), three collectivities within the larger Australian Chinese community of Sydney. These ethno-specific organisations comprise Chinese immigrants and their descendents with diverse migration histories and settlement patterns. Countries of origin range from Mainland China, Taiwan and the Hong Kong Semi-Autonomous Region (SAR) to Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Timor-Leste. Drawing inspiration from Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands: Essays and criticism, 1981-1991, this paper will show that where there might be considerable loss through the migratory process, there is also much that can be gained. My study applies to Chinese Australians who have chosen to create a new home in Australia, rather than diasporans who might be classed as 'cosmopolitans' in their constant movement from country to country.Migration BluesIt is a well-known fact that migration is often accompanied by feelings of loss at various levels. There is, for instance, financial loss due to an acute change in employment and environment.2 Further contestation of traditional values might follow with wives and teenage children finding employment to help support the family.3 There is also an overriding sense of cultural loss experienced by many from different age groups4 who may give up on their home culture in a process that sociologist Chan Kwok-Bun terms 'passing'.5 The various efforts to cope with this and other complex issues of migration help locate and maintain the identity of diasporans in the process of assimilation and adaptation.6 Recreational places where music is performed indeed aid with maintaining a sense of home in the new country. This is revealed in the work of Casey Man Kong Lum7 and Frederick Lau,8 who have studied with great detail the function of the Chinese karaoke scene in California and Bangkok respectively.In Chinese communities everywhere, social networks have been established to facilitate a range of religious and voluntary socio-cultural organisations such as schools, religious institutions and the age-old clan system of Chinese societies; much scholarly research has been conducted in this area.9 Kuah-Pearce found that this type of social network construction assists migrants in dealing with homesickness and residual feelings of loss in several dimensions.10Religion and the 'Ethnic Event'In this paper, I propose that religious centres help instil a similar sense of belonging and future in the minds of migrants as a direct response to cultural loss. As the investigator and a member of the Sydney Chinese community (or one who has come from the same cultural zone), I began my research with the premise that the ethno-specific religious centres of a city are where one is best able to observe diasporans, and analyse ways in which they have come to approach their post-migratory experiences of cultural assimilation or preservation, or both. This perspective is inspired by Herberg's11 study of Judeo-Christian, white (non-Anglophone) immigrants in the United States. Herberg found that, as part of their adjustment process in the pre-1960 period, immigrants would cling to religion while surrendering everything else connected to the mother country. The transmission of religion into later generations remained heavily significant for the purpose of ethnic identification, while languages were often lost within the second generation. …