On The Loss And Construction Of Chinese Americans’Cultural Identity In China Men

In the history of Chinese American literature, Maxine Hong Kingston is generally considered to be the most distinguished writer for her prolific and outstanding works. Published in the1980s, China Men is honored the National Book Awards and The National Book Critics Circle Award. In this novel, Kingston represents her male family members in four generations with their spectacular deeds which have evoked the collective memories of the Chinese ethnic, further to concern on their cultural identity.There is a non-lineal structure in the novel, namely, the time and plots presented inconsecutively, two lines mixed in it and representing family history and cultural imagination respectively, both of which gather the cooperative strengths to construct Chinese Americans’cultural identity. Through the factual line the author traces the course of her ancestors pioneering in America to rewrite the official American history, memorizing the collective contribution made by Chinese ethnic groups which has been earthen. The story has concentrated its light on Kingston’s Great-grandfather and grandfather, who take part in pioneering the sugar plants in Hawaii and building the Transcontinental Railway of United States. The virtual line firstly focuses on the self-response from the silenced state reflected by Kingston’s father, as the transitional role in family genealogy, the consequence of his silence will leave a vast vacant memory about Chinese culture treasure. Moreover, it confines his children into a passive role. Then the virtual line shifts to the bachelor life in Chinese community, especially her father suffering "castrated" but he never loses his heart, on contrary, he adjusts himself positively and finally achieves the family reunion.The process of three male generations constructing identity is filled with the struggling between Chinese ethnic and white mainstream cultures, which is not unilateralism as the white take oppression upon the ethnic, but a bilateral interaction. Based on the interactions with the white, Chinese Americans positively integrate into the mainstream society and accept the western values from one aspect, while their own ethnic advantage whisper and wish them to rewrite by the vast scope of cultural imagination and to start its routine on rummaging roots from cultural level, therefore Sino-US culture form hybridity when meeting and clashing. The postcolonial scholar Homi K. Bhabha illustrates the cultural phenomenon on the basis of technique of hybridity, which emphasizes the subjectivity of the weak culture, guides it penetrating into the dominant culture and adulterates it in order to deconstruct the authority. In China Men, the author inserts a lot of fairy tales, folk legends, literary allusions, and rewrites them with both Chinese and western literary classics, which deconstruct the sacred status of western culture further.The action is not enough, and the issue still exists. In Vietnam War, the brother has practiced an idealistic role. But the Chinese ethnic with its double cultural identities is doomed to wandering, in pursuit of the imagined homeland under the culture hegemony, until their spiritual world is close to the Third Space which is one part of Bhabha’s postcolonial theories, which is an intangible, abstract space with no physical dimension; In it, two or more entities mix to create a third, these interaction is not juxtaposition but transformation, on the process, boundaries between entities are blurred, even erased; it is not a closed and fixed space, but is open and fluid.The brother lastly constructs "the third space" in his spiritual belief world while experiencing the war, the belief of pacifism. It offers a space for the marginalized and injured characters belonging, which is an universal value beyond race shared by all human beings.