IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section A

Abstract

The Chinese diaspora today comprises 50 million people. For over 600 years, Chinese have migrated driven by powerful cultural, economic, and political forces, forming identities that are unique to the diaspora and rich with transnational historical narratives. The paper proposes to investigate existing and lost buildings constructed and modified for use by the diaspora to draw attention to the presence of minority “otherness” across borders as a potent cultural force in its own right. The architecture of the Chinese diaspora comprises many typologies which give representation to hybridised ideas of Chineseness much affected by their local realities, such as shophouses, clan associations, scholars’ gardens, and joss houses. The paper further seeks to understand the precarity of continued existence for the buildings that remain, the few that they number, in a world increasingly dedicated to the sustaining of cultural heritage. The study will cover 10 broad regions: North America, Central America and the Caribbean, South America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Oceania, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China itself. The paper will examine the ways that cultural ideas which span national borders can be protected by national, regional, and multilateral policies, as well as by activists. The methods of advocacy for the cultural products of minority Chinese populations will be contextualised to provide a comparative critical analysis of the working methods of preservation of cultural heritage, which must combine legal force, genuine sentiment and care, and ad hoc measures to create dynamic strategies for longevity of heritage places.