Intergenerational Habitat and Memory Transition of Home Town of Overseas Chinese in Southeast China Coastal Region: An Ethnographic Study

Abstract

At the beginning of the last century, many people in Fujian, Guangdong and other Southeast China Coastal Region left their hometown and worked hard to make a living in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and other countries. Houhuang village, located in Putian City, is a famous hometown of overseas Chinese in Fujian Province of China. It is known as the “Nanyang style village” of Putian because of its unique architectural style and cultural landscape. Overseas Chinese play an important role in the construction of Houhuang village, and the precipitated overseas Chinese culture has become one of the most unique and distinctive cultural marks. However, in this village, the memory of overseas Chinese is facing the crisis of “being forgotten”, and the fresh memory of overseas Chinese in personal experience is being eliminated from overseas Chinese culture. By ethnographic research methods and discourse paradigms such as oral history and field investigation, this study explores the reasons, and comes to the conclusion that the “forgetting” of overseas Chinese’s memory in the post period is mainly attributed to four aspects: return obstruction, blood dilution, cultural immersion and no way to give back. At the same time, the weakening of overseas Chinese memory has led to three phenomena: the “otherness” of overseas Chinese groups, the “empty generalization” of identity and the “flattening” of overseas Chinese culture. In this regard, the article puts forward reflection and prospect, hoping to record the memory of overseas Chinese through network media and oral history, change the concept of villagers, and let the historical memory of overseas Chinese continue to live in Southeast China Coastal Region.