On Not Speaking Chinese

"In this new book, cultural thinker Ien Ang engages with urgent questions of identity in an age of globalization and diaspora. The starting-point for Ang's discussion is the experience of visiting Taiwan. Ang, a person of Chinese descent, born in Indonesia and raised in the Netherlands, found herself 'faced with an almost insurmountable difficulty' - surrounded by people who expected her to speak to them in Chinese. She writes: 'It was the beginning of an almost decade-long engagement with the predicaments of "Chineseness" in diaspora. In Taiwan I was different because I couldn't speak Chinese; in the West I was different because I looked Chinese.'" "From this autobiographical beginning, Ang goes on to reflect upon tensions between 'Asia' and 'the West' at a national and global level, and to consider the disparate meanings of 'Chineseness' in the contemporary world. She offers a critique of the increasingly aggressive construction of a global Chineseness, and challenges Western tendencies to equate 'Chinese' with 'Asian' identity." "Ang then turns to 'the West', exploring the paradox of Australia's identity as a 'Western' country in the Asian region, and tracing Australia's uneasy relationship with its Asian neighbours, from the White Australia policy to contemporary multicultural society.