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Changed by the Crossing: Purity, Hybridity and Identity in Shinebourne’s The Last Ship

Jan Lowe Shinebourne stands as a phenomenal force in the examination and traversing

of literary discourses on the Caribbean Chinese experience. In Chinese Women, she comments

that, “[i]n the Caribbean the Chinese were the most tenacious of all the ethnic groups, in how

they settled there in spite of the inhospitable conditions, and domiciled themselves stoically in a

hostile society” (78). According to Looklai, the “entry of Asian labour into the Caribbean

plantation system” began soon “after the end of British Caribbean slavery in 1838”(3). This

system of indentureship was all in an effort to supply the growing demands and accommodate

the changing “conditions surrounding the regional sugar industry in the nineteenth century”

(Looklai 3). The migration of the Chinese to the Caribbean “occurred largely in two “waves”:

1853-1854 and 1859-1866” (Lee-Loy xiv). Shinebourne’s The Last Ship, however, centres

around Clarice Chung and other Chinese people who would have arrived on the last ship to

British Guiana in 1879 which correlates with the third and final attempt to revive the Chinese

experiment. In this essay, the concept of pure Chineseness,the importance of traditions and

personal, reconstructed histories will be explored in Shineboure’s prose fiction work,The Last

Ship.

Clarice Chung is the protagonist of Shinebourne’s The Last Ship and she is determined to

“maintain Chinese culture and customs in British Guiana” (Roopnarine 343). Moreover, this

overzealous traditionalist worldview is largely influenced by her belief that she is a pure Chinese

person who descended from the Punti clan and her ancestor is Emperor Chengzong (Roopnarine

343). She is obsessed with the idea of her children marrying pure Chinese spouses and frowns on

her husband’s family, the Wongs, due to their Hakka background. Clementi mentions that the
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Punti, Hak-lo and Hakka clans were among the Chinese indentured to the Caribbean (Lee-Loy

xv). According to Johnson, the Hakka (meaning guest people) and Punti (meaning people of the

earth) were the two main ethnic groups in Guangdong (36). Moreover, the Hakkas were

“considered like gypsies and were rugged, clannish and adventurous possessing their own culture

and Hakka language” and eventually provided the manual labour for lands owned by the Punti

(Johnson 36). Tension between the two grew and eventually it culminated in the Taiping Revolt

(1851-1864) which started in Guangdong by Hong Xiu Quan, “a hakka who claimed to be Jesus

Christ’s younger brother” (Johnson 37). Clearly, these negative emotions and grudges were not

changed during and after the great crossing to the Caribbean. Clarice’s attempts to maintain

ethnic and cultural purity are in vain when pitted against the forces and natural flow of creole

societies. Clarice herself is a cultural hybrid and this is evident from her use of language. She

speaks a form of creole to the customers who visit her shop in Canefield, Berbice. However, she

is careful to not speak it with her family. Chung laments that “[w]hen she arrived on a ship, the

Admiral, in 1879, she and her family had to stop speaking their language, had to stop being

Chinese because people laughed at them” (15). It is for this reason she speaks in a “mixed

Creole” with Mandarin and Hakka words mixed in (15). Her grief of possessing a corrupted

sense of Chineseness also includes her children who she bemoans as “not real Chinese and

would never be real Chinese because they did not speak Chinese or have any Chinese culture”

(15). This hybridity is characteristic of Shinebourne’s fiction as Lee-Loy postulates that it

“resists essentialized concepts of Chineseness in favour of a more flexible understanding of

identity that is profoundly aware of being shaped by the specifics of her Caribbean experience”

(291). Similar sentiments are expressed by Ang who advocates for an “open-ended and plural

‘post-Chinese’ identities through investments in continuing cross influences of diverse, lateral,

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unanticipated intercultural encounters in the world at large” (241). Therefore, it can be

speculated that these ‘post-Chinese identities’ can be placed on a spectrum in terms of the

amount of creolization which is evident in their hybridized cultural identities. Clarice Chung

occupies the side of the spectrum that is somewhat closer to the original of

Chineseness, at least in this literary work. Her children and grandchildren, on the other hand, are

dispersed on the other side of the spectrum which is closer to a Caribbean identity which is

influenced by the creole culture born out of the dominant Indo and Afro-Caribbean cultural

practices, artifacts and customs.

In addition to language, clothing is another way Chineseness is either embraced or denied

in the novel. This concept is embodied by the character foiling of Clarice Chung and Susan Leo.

Clarice is described as wearing “one of her many thickly woven black Chinese silk pajamas”

(19). Contradistinctive to Chung’s embracing her Chinese identity through her choice of dress,

Susan denied her Chineseness and embraced an East Indian identity since she wore a “pale

cream floral dress” with “a short white organza ornhi….nose ring, gold bangles, earrings and

necklaces” (18-19) This obvious example of mimicry and assimilation is common in Caribbean

literature. However, in Shinebourne’s texts it is often used to question and challenge Chineseness

and how one can reject the Chinese identity. Joan Wong, Clarice’s granddaughter, rejected her

“ancestral ties” to embrace her freedom after a visit to China at the end of the novel (151).

Additionally, Joan always preferred to think of Susan as her favourite grandmother probably

because she epitomized the notion of creating an identity of one’s own free from ties of blood

and race. Through the vehicles of simile and contrast, Shinebourne is able to expertly delineate

Clarice’s stance on purity and Chineseness as being out-dated by comparing her to a “heavy

black statue” since similar to a monument she is a reminder of antiquity but has no great
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influence on the progression of the future while Susan is contrasted as being the epitome of

softness and airiness like a blessed fairy (19).

Furthermore, marriage is an important institution in many cultures. Marshall defines

marriage as “a legally recognized relationship between an adult male and female that carries

certain rights and obligations” (306). Qiu further postulates that marriage in the Chinese context

is a “process of exchange” (10) This exchange is both economic and social in nature and during

the process of exchange families gain and lose something. This gain and loss is not limited to the

couple but their families, as well (Qiu 10). This is evident in the novel with the discussion of

paying for the wedding and even paying for the bride. First of all, Arnold Chung, Clarice's uncle,

insisted that the wedding should be an authentic traditional Chinese wedding and “would go

down in history as the first true Chinese wedding in the colony” (45). Arnold Chung even went

further to use his influence to have a newspaper carry an article detailing the process of the

Chinese wedding creating much pageantry and fanfare. This symbolically renders the often

shallow and forced outward show of Chineseness that many of the Chungs desperately attempt to

cling to when realizing that they have been changed by the crossing. Allusion is masterfully

utilized by Shinebourne when describing the matchmaking process and the reference to “Yue

Lao, the Chinese God of Matchmaking” whose sketch was included with Clarice and John’s

marriage announcement (46). The newspaper further included exuberant lies such as astrology

was used to determine the most appropriate wedding date and that the intended couple with feet

tied with red thread prostrated themselves before the statue of Yue Lao to ask for his blessing

over their union. Arnold Chung was a hypocrite. Although he appeared to be a zealous

traditionalist, he was simply using the wedding as a publicity stunt to concretize his status among

the elites in Georgetown society.

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Another traditional role of the Goodluck woman was conferred on Arnold’s wife.

Margret, whose role was to bathe and dress the bride before the wedding. Clarice refused and

locked herself in the bathroom but eventually she was forced to obey their demands. This a

symbolic foreshadowing of her falling victim to the false sense of duty to a nation and culture

which she can no longer claim as hers since she is “a different person in British Guiana” (15).

John also rebelled against the tradition of bowing before the ancestral tablets that Arnold Chung

had installed and then bowing to his parents before being capped with a cap of cypress leaves.

He claimed that “he was not a slave or a servant to bow to anyone” (50). This is a stark contrast

between traditional Chinese perceptions towards family and acceptable behaviour traits as

against Western ones which would have moulded John’s attitude and behaviour. Moreover, his

bowing to the ancestral tablets would have been symbolic of his agreement to let antiquated rules

and customs of a culture that was no longer his to dictate his destiny. He had, like many Hakka,

created his own destiny detached from his ancestral ties and had no interest in retrogressing to

their realm, progress was creating a creole way of life on his own terms. Another important

symbol is the wedding sedan which was built by Clarice’s father. He built it from memory based

on what he remembered wedding sedans looked like as a boy in China. It is described as an

“improvised tall wooden wheelchair with bicycle wheels, painted...red and upholstered….in red

satin and….embellished with tassels and bells” (51). Arnold referred to it as a “donkey cart”

(51). This description by Arnold is not a mere insult to George but it also captures the absurdity

of what the Chungs were attempting. Their form of Chineseness was a mere “donkey cart”, a

shallow, cheap and obviously inauthentic version of genuine Chineseness from the homeland.

They failed to realized that their Chineseness had evolved to the point at which there was no

need to look at the old ways of China to measure the authenticity of their identity.
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Finally, Chineseness in the Caribbean is not fixed or rigid. On the contrary, it is dynamic

and it is constantly having its “boundaries of ethnicity” and the relationship to homeland

contested (Lee-Loy 295). In some narratives, part of this process of negotiation of native self

and role self involves the personal reconstruction of family history. This is evident in

Shinebourne’s The Last Ship when Clarice Chung reveals to Mary the different aspects of their

history. The novel portrays two histories to the reading audience; a true and false one which can

be analyzed as a symbolic reversal of the usual dimensions of the postcolonial psyche. The

fabricated, lofty Chinese history is the false/role self while the very West Indian and

Christianised version represents the true/real self. Clarice’s fabricated history consisted of claims

of being a Punti and having royal blood ties to Emperor Chengzong. She also held obvious

disdain towards Hakka Chinese in spite of the fact that she was a Hakka herself. This shows

self-contempt which proves her identity crisis and provides an insight into her need to create a

false history to mask the truth. She goes on to claim that “Me whole clan, Chung clan, all ah we

work fo’ dis emperor. From ahwe, he get plenty soldier and civil servant, an’ we look after he.

He give we castle to live in, land to farm and plant, in a place name Heilonggiiang. Look me

uncle Arnold write down de name on dis piece of paper” (66). Cultural artifacts are used to

corroborate this tale of greatness. These artifacts include a scroll painting of the Emperor and silk

pouches filled with old coins and seeds which were supposedly brought from China.

The true narrative is contained in a small notebook located in the same trunk with the

“false ones” as revealed by Frederick, Clarice's younger son, to his wife, Mary.This notebook

was written by Uncle Arnold and details how the family had converted to Christianity and helped

them build four churches in Hong Kong and from there they were invited to go to the Caribbean

to continue their work as builders and missionaries but instead found themselves as labourers on
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the sugar plantations. They eventually ventured out into business, shopkeeping and carpentry.

Joan finds out the truth about her family at the end of the novel. The American historian reveals

that the Chungs were actually Hakka and not Punti. They were also described as being “full of

pretensions….they did it to get superior treatment but the priests saw through them” (150). They

were also described as being “good converts” and “strong Christians” (150). Moreover, all of the

artefacts that they claimed to have brought with them from China were “tourist rubbish” (150).

The family heirlooms were lies and myths.The Chungs created a false history to fulfil some

personal desire to feel connected to their homeland in a more prestigious manner but it simply

proves that the Chineseness they so desperately tried to capture was all an illusion since their

identifies were changing since they became converted by the church. Therefore, they pushed the

false history to the surface and buried the real one to hide their rootlessness and give themselves

a false sense of authenticity.

In conclusion, indentureship played a major role in identity formation and changed the

relationship indentured labourers had with their homeland. Chineseness in Shinebourne’s work is

redefined by the blurring of boundaries and the recognition of it as diasporic identity which is

plural and not singular. Its authenticity is not based on its similarity to the homeland but in the

personal reckoning of Chineseness with one’s cultural identity while recognizing hybridity as

being fluid and complex. Clarice Chung and her family were changed by the crossing and this is

shown in their notions of Chineseness, appropriation of wedding traditions and reconstructing

their family history.

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Works Cited

Ang, Ien. "Can One Say No to Chineseness? Pushing the Limits of the Diasporic Paradigm."

Boundary 2 25.3 (1998): 223-42. Print.

Johnson, Kim. Descendants of the Dragon: The Chinese in Trinidad 1806-2006. Kingston: Ian

Randle, 2006. Print.

Lee-Loy, Anne-Marie. "Introduction." Introduction. The Chinese in British Guiana / by Cecil

Clementi, Government Secretary of British Guiana, Lately Assistant Colonial Secretary

of Hongkong ; Introduction by Anne-Marie Lee-Loy. By Cecil Clementi. Georgetown,

Guyana: Caribbean, 2010. Ix-Xxi. Print.

Lee-Loy, Anne-Marie. "Saying No to Chineseness: The Possibilities and Limits of a Diasporic

Identity in Janice Lowe Shinebourne's Fiction." Journal of Chinese Overseas 5.2 (2009):

291-309. Print.

Look-Lai, Walton. The Chinese in the West Indies, 1806-1995: A Documentary History.

Kingston, Jamaica: The, U of the West Indies, 1998. Print.

Marshall, Gordon. A Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.

Qiu, YueYi. "Chinese Marriage Traditions: Exploring Contemporary Changes." Diss. Lund U,
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2013. Print.

Roopnarine, Lorna. “The Last Ship Review.” The Caribbean Writer. (2015): 343-344. PDF.

Shinebourne, Janice. Chinese Women: A Novel. Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2010. Print.

Shinebourne, Janice. The Last Ship. Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2015. Print.