This study examines the politics of memory making in the process of migration and resettlement of a particular group of overseas Chinese who returned from Indonesia to China in the early 1960s and settled in the state-run Changshan Overseas Chinese Farm in Fujian province, and those members of this group who migrated again to Hong Kong in the 1980s and struggled for adaptation in the process of resettlement. The politics of memory making on overseas Chinese returnees is analyzed through examining a myriad of memories produced by different social agents at different institutional levels with different tactics and purposes in changing sociopolitical contexts.

From the perspective of official memory in the form of state-sanctioned production of mainstream culture such as songs, no...[ Read more ]

This study examines the politics of memory making in the process of migration and resettlement of a particular group of overseas Chinese who returned from Indonesia to China in the early 1960s and settled in the state-run Changshan Overseas Chinese Farm in Fujian province, and those members of this group who migrated again to Hong Kong in the 1980s and struggled for adaptation in the process of resettlement. The politics of memory making on overseas Chinese returnees is analyzed through examining a myriad of memories produced by different social agents at different institutional levels with different tactics and purposes in changing sociopolitical contexts.

From the perspective of official memory in the form of state-sanctioned production of mainstream culture such as songs, novels and films, overseas Chinese returnees have been depicted as "orphans returning to the mother's embrace," highlighting the patronage of the nation-state for overseas Chinese refugees. From the perspectives of personal memory carried in artefacts, photos and memoirs, among other forms, overseas Chinese made the decision to return based on patriotism and their pursuit of a better life on the motherland, though that was disillusioned by the institutional confinement on the farm and the restriction to farm work. Since the state farm was transformed into a provincial economic development zone in the late 1990s, memory on the overseas Chinese returnees has gradually appeared as museum exhibits and tourism theme park displays featuring Southeast Asian cultures of food, costumes, singing and dancing, while the original community of Changshan Overseas Chinese Farm has gotten marginalized in terms of population size and political status. The elite of the returnee's community actively participated in the making of collective memory, hoping to reshape their minority status by highlighting their special Southeast Asian culture and history. After remigration to Hong Kong in the early 1980s, members of the Changshan oversees Chinese farm were mobilized to form the Changshan Native-place Association to support China's economic development under the opening-up and reform policy, and, around the 1997 handover of Hong Kong's sovereignty, to support the new Special Administrative Region Government of Hong Kong. Migrants from the Changshan Farm actively pursued their collective memory of life in Indonesia in the form of cultural practices and performances featuring Southeast Asian culture to mark their distinctive identity in the hierarchical system of native-place associations in Hong Kong, and to face their double marginality---a marginal minority in the mainstream Hong Kong society, on the one hand; and an underprivileged working class compared with other more successful overseas Chinese returnees who had resettled in cities in China and therefore became more resourceful in education and career before and after moving to Hong Kong.

This study brings together overseas Chinese returnees' experiences in China's state farm and their remigration and resettlement in Hong Kong, unlike previous studies that were limited to either their Mainland experience or Hong Kong experience. This provides a more nuanced analysis on the making of memory about overseas Chinese returnees by contextualizing their unified transnational images of cultural practices and performances featuring Southeast Asian culture and Chinese patriotism, arguing that in fact they are the products of mutually constitutive official, collective and personal memory made in very special historical and political contexts related to China's opening up in the early 1980s and Hong Kong's 1997 handover of sovereignty.