Writing a “Different Type of Chinese” into Being

In the urban, multicultural ports of the British Empire, the new local elite adapted colonial structures to fit their own emergent bourgeois culture—so-called “imperial cosmopolitanism.”

And, for the English-educated Babas of Malaya, print literature was a powerful medium to negotiate a new ethnic identity as “truly a different type of Chinese,” social historian Neil Khor Jin Keong argues.

“As Straits Chinese identity was forged within imperial cosmopolitanism, its proponents linked ‘modernization’ with ‘Westernization,’” Khor writes. At the same time, this modern identity, “based on the best from both east and west,” was marked by an embrace of social welfare reforms.

To trace the evolution of the Straits Chinese approach to modernity, Khor examines the quarterly publication Straits Chinese Magazine, which ran from 1897 to 1907. Founded by lawyer Song Ong Siang and physician Lim Boon Keng, the Straits Chinese Magazine was distributed as far afield as Yokohama, San Francisco, and London. Although many reformists were trilingual, “their literary reaction to modernity, meaning social changes resulting from technology, was written in English,” Khor explains, calling the magazine’s contents “important because they were the first body of original works by Malayans in English.”

In addition to politically liberal news articles, the Straits Chinese Magazine also printed serialized short stories and translated works in its fiction section, as well as travelogues and poetry. Editors “placed a high premium on literary works,” since literature was seen as part of a modern identity and “provided an immediate link to other progressive imperial cosmopolitan societies.”

Khor observes that “[t]he fiction in the [magazine] pointed to an idealized image that the Straits Chinese community aspired to.” Contributors were especially attracted to the short story, which could convey important moral lessons through the “life-changing experience” of a single character. Such a use of this literary format drew on techniques of “allegory and juxtaposition” that Straits Chinese authors had picked up from Western literary influences, Khor suggests—especially the biblical parables that they may have encountered in their education at Christian mission schools.

The English-educated Straits Chinese elite benefited from the British colonial economy. Privileged by British rule, they internalized a definition of modernity based on technology and rationality. As such, narratives published in the magazine presented towns under British control, such as Ipoh, as modern and progressive, while neighboring cities like Bangkok in Siam or Palembang in the Dutch East Indies were depicted as disorderly, dirty, unsafe, and disgusting.

Magazine contributors also criticized what they saw as backwardness in traditional Chinese culture. They promoted causes such as female education, with Khor noting that “[w]omen, particularly in their social role, occupy a central place in Straits Chinese reform literature.”

In fact, Lew See Fah’s 1900 short story “A Vision of Bong Khiam Siap,” which riffs off Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, portrays the millionaire of the title as a negative influence who “died as he had lived—a stern and uncompromising opponent of any form of education for Straits Chinese women, and a bitter enemy of the reform party.”

Despite the authors’ deployment of Western ideas and literary forms, however, Khor cautions that “locals were never passive recipients of Western culture.” For example, the magazine played host to heated debates on the place of Christianity in Straits Chinese culture, given that some intellectuals associated Christian evangelism with attitudes of European racial supremacy.

Khor calls attention to the short story “Ada Wing’s Marriage,” which was published in 1900 under the byline Kelvin Baxter. The real author was likely magazine co-founder Lim Boon Keng, but “ethnic prejudice required the author to have a ‘European’ name,” writes Khor. He places Lim among the Straits Chinese Confucian scholars opposed to what they saw as “[t]he supremacy of Christianity” and adds that, for these secular intellectuals, “Confucianism, in its more practical form, was seen as more compatible with the modern scientific world.”

The short story begins with a critical description of a traditional Chinese funeral, reflecting reformists’ disdain for what the narrator calls a “tedious” show and “a noisy procession.”

“Essentially, this is a story that seeks to expose superficiality whether cultural or religious,” Khor writes—and it doesn’t make an exception for either Western or Chinese cultural practices. After all, the titular Ada Wing is described by the text as “the very incarnation of credulity,” and her conversion from Buddhism to Christianity comes as “[t]here was nothing she could not believe.”

Khor concludes that “the progressive Straits Chinese saw himself as a rational individual” who rejected Chinese superstitions and combined Western science with “the best of Confucianism.”

“From these stories, there is no doubt that Christian-based Western literary education had a strong influence, but again the writers were not passive recipients,” Khor writes, adding that they did not accept “Western bias” either. “For them, the answer to social renewal lay within Chinese heritage.”

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