On Fujianese-Chinese Diaspora
Fujianese brought China to the world, carried their provincialism identity to the Nanyang (Southeast Asia), and bless us with dishes like lumpia (潤餅), bakmie (肉麵,) bakut (肉骨茶), terang bulan or martabak manis (曼煎粿), and many more.
It all started when I get ethnically conscious as a Chinese, which not so long ago. I realized how most Chinese-Indonesian are either Hokkien, Hakka, Teochew, or Cantonese, or at least that’s what I observe from my surroundings.
The aforementioned groups came from a beautiful province in China, Fujian (Hokkien Province) and Guangdong (Canton Province), okay, if those two are Hokkien and Canton Province, where’s Hakka and Teochew?
Well, Hakka is rather debatable because basically- no, literally, they are ‘guess family’ (客家人) they came from Northern China and migrated to the South during the fall of Southern Han Dynasty about 700 hundred years ago. Now, most of the speakers settled in Guangdong and Fujian, so it’s a pass from me.
Meanwhile Teochew came from Eastern Guangdong, Chaoshan region. As a non speaker myself, I cannot distinguish Teochew and Hokkien language due to the similar phonetics, but partly it is also because Teochew is considered as a subbranch of Southern Min language, which Hokkien also a part of.
In 523 AD during the Northern and Southern Dynasty, the Teochew’s Chaoshan region was reorganized to be part of Fujian. From 523 AD to 1575 AD on Late Ming Dynasty period, Chaoshan region was part of Fujian province. From then until 1915 AD, the China Republican Era, Chaoshan was reorganized to be part of both Fujian and Guangdong province. From 1915 onwards, Chaoshan become completely part of Guangdong province.
But in this article, I will put more focus on Fujianese people in particular. Fujianese in this article, refers to a dialectal group; Hokkien or Hoklo people.
In a study conducted by Wolfram Eberhard and published by University of California Press in 1965, non-physical traits stated to be charateristic of Fujian province are petty-minded, cunning, like to take risks, clannish. Perhaps, it is the risk-taking characteristic that took Fujianese sailing seas since the imperial era.
Other stereotypes of Fujianese people which is hardworking, also great in entrepreneurship and business being generalized as ‘Chinese stereotypes’ in other countries, especially my country.
Fujianese don’t mind starting from the bottom, even as a street vendors. Another thing that Northerners in China also noted about Fujianese is that they are more interested in doing business rather than being a scholar, poets, or philosophers.
Being geographically isolated by hills and mountains made Fujianese rely on their coastline and ports to trade, and eventually brought them to another part of the world, especially Southeast Asia, the southern ocean aka the Nanyang.
One of the most important city in Fujian that contribute a large number of the migrant to Southeast Asia is Quanzhou, a port city located in the southern part of Fujian. People in this city has been departed for Southeast Asia since the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907), the main reason was because of limited agricultural lands and increasing population, then families in Quanzhou developed a tradition of migration as family strategy to meet adversity and seek opportunities.
In each generations, Quanzhou saw an increasing number of population movement. In Song and Yuan dynasties (960 to 1368), Quanzhou became the embarkation point of the maritime Silk-Route and a prominent international port for the east, as a famous port for foreign traders, Quanzhou was known as Zaiton/Zayton in European historical sources.
A traveler from Zhangzhou, Cheng Rijie went to Batavia in 1730, he wrote that Batavia had a lot of people from “Zhangzhou, Quanzhou, and Hu Guang” and “for those who succeed in business, they traveled to there and then returned with a full ship of goods; those who had nothing sojourn from one place to another. Although they did become rich later, most of them then forgot about the hardship. There are at least hundreds of thousands of people like that.”
In Late Ming to Qing Dynasty, they even had a greater number of emigration. Here, things get messy for Quanzhou people and of course, Fujianese as one entity.
In the Ming to Qing Dynasty, the government imposed a series of sea ban called ‘haijin’ (海禁) or an isolationist policies that restrict private maritime trading and coastal settlement.
During one of the ban period in 1622, the Fujianese was like “uhm, don’t really care”, as the Dutch understood the desire of Fujianese for trade and migration, the Dutch armed themselves and sailed to Xiamen to demand the Chinese authorities to allow the Chinese merchants to trade with them and the Dutch even gave the Fujianese passes to come and live in Batavia. This is where the central government in Beijing started to question Fujianese loyalty.
During the reign of Kangxi Emperor aka the longest-reigning Chinese emperor, he decided to immediately halt all Chinese navigation to Southeast Asia, especially Chinese private trader operating there. He even ordered imperial fleets to seize all ships found carrying forbidden cargo, those who found guilty in violating the ban could be exiled to remote Manchuria.
Kangxi was once encouraged private overseas trade, the open door policy of 1648 led to the flourishing trade between China and Southeast Asia, but then as time goes by, the emperor grew concerned about security and the food supply. The mounting distrust between the Han and Manchu and the expansion of the Chinese diaspora especially Fujianese in Batavia and Luzon — the alleged anti-Qing rebels’ haven, it all intensified his worries about the continuation of this trade policy, and finally made his decision to ban trade with Southeast Asia in 1716. However, the trade network had already penetrated deep into local communities, many families depend their life on this industry. The ban consequently resulted in new socio-economic issues for the coastal economy.
Following the ban, the number of Chinese ships visiting Batavia suddenly dropped from eight in 1716 to two in 1720 and then zero in 1723.
The three emperors of Qing Dynasty from Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong have same concern about overseas Chinese and Fujianese regarding their loyalty to the dynasty. In Yongzheng’s reign, after the return of the twelve out of twenty-one Fujianese ships that departed from Xiamen to Southeast Asia, Yongzheng demanded local officials to not trust their words and enacted supervision for Fujianese merchants that came back from Southeast Asia to ensure loyalty.
But these emperors distrust reached its peak on Qianlong’s reign, Qianlong’s court record showed two incidences of persecuting Fujianese who returned from Java. These emperors imagined overseas Chinese as barbarized, devil-like, and dangerous, that they did not deserve sympathy or imperial recognition.
I actually like Qianlong, both his fictional and historical potrayal. I mean, my first Chinese dramas were My Fair Princess and Story of Yanxi Palace, they’ve potrayed Qianlong as a kind, loving, and cute (yes, cute) emperor. But one historical fact really broke my heart…
During the ‘Geger Pacinan’ in Batavia 1740 or the massacre of Chinese in Batavia, roughly 8,000 men, women, and children had been killed, and a massive looting, killing, and burning that destroyed the Chinese community in the present day capital of Indonesia.
The Dutch feared that reports of the massacre would stop the profitable trade with China, or probably worse, a military reprisal from the Qing government, so the Dutch sent envoy to send an apology for the emperor, the emperor having but “little regard for those people who forsake their country from the desire of acquiring riches, and put themselves under the protection of a foreign power”, tl;dr the emperor does not care about the massacre.
As Fujianese were disowned by the mainland’s government, their provincialism became more prominent. Dutch historians often neglected this point and viewed Chinese in Dutch East Indies or diaspora Chinese as a homogenous entity, when they are actually heterogenous and came with different, more complex identity of provincialism; i.e Fujianese and Cantonese.
Being a Fujianese is more than just a geographical provincial identity, as noted by Jiajun Zou, Fujianese were mobile because of traditions and a familiar cultural society that they recreated wherever they went, a diasporic community identity modeled upon Fujianese culture, including the religion, customs, and beliefs that they took with them during the migration and spread in the soil of new lands.
Fujianese brought their sea goddess, Mazu to Southern Bandengan in the Tian Hou Gong or Goddess of the Sea Temple.
They also incorporate their architecture style, mainly the 1) swallowtail roof (剪瓷雕), which quite common in Glodok and many Pecinan areas, and 2) cut porcelain carving (剪瓷雕), especially for temples and large residences.
Talking about Fujianese architecture, then we can’t possibly miss Têng-á-kha (亭仔跤), or in Indonesia we may use ‘ruko’ as a more familiar term. This kind of building is the Fujian counterpart of Canton’s Tong lau. Just like the name, ‘ruko’ (rumah = house, toko = store), it combines store and house in one building. The ground floor used for running business, like grocery store or ‘toko kelontong’, and the upper floor is used for residential purpose.
During the Dragon Boat Festival (端午節) in the 5th day of the 5th month of Chinese traditional calendar, the day when we get to eat bakcang (肉粽), in Fujianese and Cantonese culture, we would take a midday bath in the river, or if there is no river nearby, plastic basin would work as long as we do it under the direct sunlight. As the purpose is to get rid of negative energy in the 5th month (it is an unlucky month in traditional belief), sometimes people would also put ‘matcho leaves’ in the bathing water. To be very honest, I don’t know what is the proper translation of this ‘matcho leaves’. LOL. I swear I searched it up but nothing comes up.
Fujianese, particularly Hokkien language contributes a lot for Indonesian loan words. From any foods with ‘bak’ (肉) as the prefix, like bakut, bakmi, bakso, bakpau, bakpia, bakwan, to a very basic conjunction ‘kalau’ which means ‘if’, ‘kecap’ or ketchup which originated from Hokkien word ‘ke chiap’, or even nominal terms like goceng, cepe, noban.
When I was a kid, I used to think that Chinese in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore have a really weird sounding names unlike Mainlanders, I thought it was the ‘creolized’. Until I found out that the Dutch and British during the colonial era recorded Chinese names in birth certificates and other legal documents that was based in Hokkien language, because the majority of the immigrants are Hokkien.
In Indonesia, Chinese TV shows also dubbed the characters’ name in Hokkien, probably because it sounds more familiar and easier to pronounce by Indonesian. So, no one is familiar with San Guo (三國) or Three Kingdoms here, but they know Sam Kok, the Hokkien term. No one in Indonesia also use Journey to the West’s characters name in Mandarin like Tang Sanzang, Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, because it was all dubbed as Tong Samcong, Sun Gokong, and Cu Patkai.
Fujianese also blessed locals’ life with terang bulan or man jian guo (曼煎粿) which always flooded our street with its incredible smell, bakmi (肉麵), my ultimate favorite, lumpia (薄餅) aka the Fujian/Teochew-style springroll, and so much more.
Fujianese created the face of overseas Chinese everywhere in the world, bearing their provincial and Han Chinese subgroups identity wherever they go, they preserved their culture and tradition for hundreds of years, despite the fact that they have been lost contact from those in the Mainland. The Southeast Asian Chinese communities were alienated by the Ming and Qing governments in the past, undergone vicious massacre, faced yet another opression from their local settlement, and various discriminations that caused most overseas Chinese to have an identity dilemma.
Quoting from Chan (1999), that Chinese diasporas share the consciousness of Chineseness that recognizes the heterogeneity and diversity within the global Chinese diaspora community,
