NEGOTIATING CHINESENESS IN DIASPORA: TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE AND MEMORY IN HONG KONG AND THE GREATER TORONTO AREA, 1960-2018

In this essay and documentary film, I explore the notion of "Chineseness" in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) through the lived experiences of Chinese diaspora in Hong Kong and the Greater Toronto Area.To achieve this, I conducted an oral history project with eight individuals who shared their perceptions and memories of TCM.In the thesis, I interpret their stories through the theoretical frameworks of diaspora, affect, and performance, and situate them within the translocal history of TCM from China to its cultural peripheries.I argue that Chineseness emerges in !vi Note on Transcription, Translation, and TerminologyOral history interviews were conducted in either Cantonese or English, depending on the comfort and preference of participants.Their interviews always contained both languages in varying compositions.Interviews first were transcribed in verbatim, in both Traditional Chinese and English, and then later fully translated to English.Participant quotes appear in English only (due to page limitations) and italics (to distinguish them from excerpts of literature).In this thesis I use Traditional Chinese characters, the standard character set used in Hong Kong.English pronunciations of the Chinese are italicized and are based on Cantonese dialect.Chineseness denotes Chinese identity in all its ambiguity, capacity, possibility, the vagueness of which means it can exist throughout overseas Chinese communities. Chinese Canadian refers to persons of Chinese ethnic origin who reside in Canada or are citizens of Canada.Hong Konger is a person of Chinese ethnic origin who may have been born, raised, or resided in Hong Kong.It denotes a distinct Hong Kong identity.Traditional Chinese medicine is used to describe the traditional or 'classical' system of healing practices and rituals that existed in China prior to the Communist government's integration with Western medicine in the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, and continues to be practised in overseas Chinese communities. TCM is the abbreviation of traditional Chinese medicine.Chinese medicine is used to specify the blended, modern iteration of traditional Chinese and Western medicines in contemporary China.TCD is an abbreviation for traditional Chinese doctor, used to describe TCM healers in China and Hong Kong.This is the term commonly used by Chinese in Hong Kong.TCMP is an abbreviation for traditional Chinese doctor, used to describe TCM healers in Canada.Practitioner is the official professional term in Ontario.GTA is the abbreviation for the Greater Toronto Area metropolis-specifically the municipalities of Markham, Richmond Hill and Mississauga.! 1 Chapter 1 IntroductionImagine this.A small child with a head of thick, raven hair gets an annoying cough and a drippy nose.At five or six years old, they are a little over a metre in height-barely tall enough to see over an imposing object in the kitchen.If the child stands on the tips of their toes they might be able to make out the image of someone very dear to them labouring over an odorous pot of boiling herbs and water.Only a few hours ago, they were in a similarly pungent space with jars packed full of dried herbs, fruits, seafood, insects and more.Imagine this small child was sat down in a chair, or if they are particularly small, in their dear someone's lap, and made to face a doctor.The doctor took their pulse.The doctor looked at their tongue.Then, the doctor weighed out what looked like a cacophony of dried things and gave it to the child's dear someone.They instruct the child to take it to return to harmony.Now, imagine the kitchen again.The child's dear someone pours the dark liquid into a bowl.The child takes a sip.It is bitter, but their dear someone might have placed some sweet, round, pinkish thin crisps on the table to eat with the bitter liquid.Haw Flakes ⼭楂餅 (sahn jah bang).The child is told to drink it all, and so they do.Every participant in this study shared a version of this narrative about being a child and being sick.It is a memory so ubiquitous, so obvious, as common as the common flu.Similar lived experiences will be the subject of this thesis.In this chapter, I introduce the research questions and themes explored in this project, explain my rationale for my focus, and provide the historical context of my inquiry.This qualitative inquiry demonstrates the construction of cultural identity through the microcosmic perspective of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as culture for ! 2 Chinese Canadians between two localities, Hong Kong and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).This translocal contemporary history narrates stories of TCM from 1960s Hong Kong to present day GTA.I aim to develop a space where Chinese diaspora studies, affect theory, performance studies, and oral history can convene, coalesce and create.The purpose of my research is to reveal individual and collective experiences of traditional medicine as a form for performing, negotiating, and transmitting "Chineseness."While this thesis touches on the history of traditional Chinese medicine in Ontario, my research is more interested in subjective questions of culture and identity.I survey and analyze these issues by using the lived experiences of firstand "1.5 generation" (persons who immigrated as children or young adults) Chinese migrants living between Hong Kong and Toronto and their narratives about traditional Chinese medicine collected in oral history interviews.This research aims to fill a gap in the scholarship of Chinese diaspora studies, performances studies, and oral history.The main questions guiding my research are: what role(s) does traditional Chinese medicine play in cultural identity formation in trans-Pacific Chinese communities in Hong Kong and Toronto?How is the notion of Chineseness perceived, experienced, negotiated, and narrated by TCM practitioners and users?How do their perceptions, experiences, negotiations and narrations of TCM relate to family, caregiving, and community?This study uses the oral histories of ethnically Chinese TCM users residing in Hong Kong and the GTA to disrupt discourse on cultural identity formation.I propose the following alternative approaches to thinking about traditional Chinese medicine as: translocal knowledge, embodied memory, and performed identity.I argue Chineseness is found in the liminal spaces of narrative identifications of self, in ! 3 performances and transmission of knowledge in family, and in negotiation of Otherness in the TCM community in the GTA.Themes of negotiated Chineseness, mobilities and in-betweenness, familial and intergenerational knowledge, and medicine as culture emerge using the theoretical frameworks of diaspora, affect, and performance.Hong Kong, City of Immigrants On the 1st of July 1997, Britain returned the Crown Colony of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories (hereinafter referred to as Hong Kong) to the People's Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as China or PRC) after over 150 years of colonial rule.The small islands located in the Pearl River Delta of southern China had been Britain's strategic powerhouse in the east since the 1842 Treaty of Nanking.Britain had acquired what was a collection of remote fishing ports from China after the First Anglo-Chinese War (1839-42), popularly known as the OpiumWar, and returned it as a vibrant and complex global city.In the years since the 1 imperial Chinese and British governments signed the lease for the peninsula in 1898, Hong Kong became a successful manufacturing and financial megacity, boasting impressive service, fashion, and film industries.A unique sociocultural, economic, and political system emerged, establishing Hong Kong as a transnational, cosmopolitan place that feels "at home in the in-between spaces of culture."The 2 handover was a historical transfer of sovereignty which signified the dusk of British colonial rule in Asia and the dawn of a new era for the region.However, it would be inappropriate to suggest a linear history of Hong Kong, where all pre-1997 paths lead

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