The PRC “Foreign Talent” Scholars and Their Singaporean “Other”: Neo-Occidentalism Amidst Intercultural Contact in the Context of Higher Education Student Mobility

Abstract

This chapter approaches interculturality and issues of Orientalism and Occidentalism from an empirical case of higher education student mobility. Specifically, it focuses on the experiences and discourses of a group of mainland Chinese undergraduate students funded to study at a Singaporean university by the Singapore government’s “foreign talent” scholarship programmes. Through ethnographically showing the ways in which these “PRC scholars” develop certain stereotypical imaginations about their local Singaporean peers—arguably an act of neo-Occidentalisation—this chapter illustrates that intercultural prejudice, essentialisation and misunderstanding occur in more complex contexts and directionalities than the simplistic scenario of the West orientalising the East. This chapter further argues that, on the one hand, the Chinese students’ Occidentalisation of their Singaporean “other” should be interpreted in view of the former’ own educational and sociocultural backgrounds, and on the other hand, it should also be understood as a form of coping mechanism against the frustration and failure of their desires to develop meaningful contact and deeper communication with their local hosts.