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Illegibility and Immobility in the Social Lives of Muslim Migrants in Japan

July 31, 2025 by Yanping Ni

Society for East Asian Anthropology
John Ostermiller
March 28, 2025

Migration is not just about “getting there” but also “making it.” What does it feel like when you can’t fit in your host society as the “right” kind of migrant?

For countless Muslim migrants, Japan represents opportunity and a chance for upward mobility. Yet in a country often imagined as homogeneous and “secular,” what do opportunity and mobility look like? After all, migration is not just about “getting there,” but “making it.” How do race, power, and social class influence migrants’ experiences in Japan?

Since the 1970s, Japanese society has increasingly relied on migrants to fill a variety of jobs, although the government has been slow to acknowledge or support them. Today, three million foreign residents make up about 3% of Japan’s total population. Between 2018 and 2023, foreign labor grew by over 40% with a growing number of workers coming from South and Southeast Asia. Although the Japanese government does not record the religion of migrants living in Japan, scholars estimate that 230,000 Muslims are living there as of 2020. While an increasing number of migrants coming to Japan are from the Muslim-majority countries of Malaysia and Indonesia—the largest Muslim country by population—the Muslim community in Japan is made up of migrants from all over the world.

Credit: John Ostermiller

View of the Shizuoka Masjid (Mosque), located on the western edges of Shizuoka City, the author’s primary fieldsite. Prior to the opening of the mosque in 2019, the local Muslim organization operated a prayer room out of its offices in downtown. Of the dozens of properties, they offered to buy, the only one who would sell to a Muslim organization was on the edge of the city.

“Passing” in Japanese Society

N arratives linking “blood” to “culture” shape the experiences of migrants in Japan. These narratives posit that Japanese “blood” is unique—and without it, one cannot “truly” understand Japanese culture—a perspective that extends to social perceptions of migrants.

In Japan, migrants aren’t called imin (immigrants), but rather gaikokujin (foreigners) or the abbreviated gaijin (outsiders). Historically, Japanese immigration policies have favored nikkeijin—foreigners of Japanese descent—with the assumption that their “partial” Japanese “blood” would give them an innate understanding of Japanese customs. Unfortunately, nikkeijin have often faced harsh criticism for “looking Japanese” but not “acting Japanese.”

Foreign residents and Japanese of mixed ancestry try to “pass” as Japanese to avoid the stigma of being a foreigner. However, not all foreigners are treated equally in Japan. The Muslim migrants I interviewed mentioned that most Japanese people they encountered had little experience with Muslims or knowledge of Islam. They also discussed the unspoken interactional rules between Japanese and non-Japanese people: white westerners are often treated better than non-western, darker-skinned foreigners. In other words, migrant mobility in Japan is shaped by two factors: whether or not you can “pass” as Japanese, and what kind of foreigner you can “pass” as.

In Japan, “whiteness” is highly desirable, and blonde-haired, blue-eyed white Western men are often seen as the “ideal” foreigners. Meanwhile, Blackness and darker skin are stigmatized. Being Muslim complicates this hierarchy. Because Japanese media often portrays “Muslims” as a homogenous group of Middle Eastern people prone to religious violence, Japanese people may conflate migrants’ religion with their “race,” or fear that Muslims’ customs pose a threat to Japanese communities. My friends Hamza and Madiha share their stories as Muslim migrants living in Japan who struggled with “passing” in various situations.

Credit: John Ostermiller

Preparing for Eid in June 2024 at the Shizuoka Mosque, a converted warehouse located along Mochimune harbor’s waterfront. Because of the small number of mosques in Japan, some Muslim migrants may only visit a mosque once or twice a year for Ramadan and The Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid).

Hamza: What is White Passing?

For many Muslim migrants, living in Japan is an exercise in adaptation. Life is not organized around the five daily prayers, mosques are rare, and finding halal food can be challenging. Hamza, a Palestinian English teacher living in Shizuoka for over 30 years, said it best: “To be frank, this is a country that doesn’t do things according to Islamic law. If you want to do things according to Islamic law, why the hell are you here?” Hamza moved to Japan after meeting his future wife on a flight to India where he was attending college.

When Hamza first arrived in Shizuoka in the 1990s, clusters of schoolchildren would excitedly shout “hullo!” and “gaijin!” (“outsider”) whenever they saw him in the neighborhood. Hamza felt that his appearance was a significant barrier to finding work in Japan because he “didn’t look white.” One of the most common jobs for foreigners in Japan—especially for white Westerners—is teaching English. Hamza is fluent in English. Growing up in 1960s Palestine, he used to translate TIME Magazine articles into Arabic with his friends. Despite his fluency, Hamza’s first job was assisting his father-in-law with his struggling roofing business.

Hamza attributed his difficulty in securing a teaching job to Japanese assumptions about race and ethnicity: “In Japan, there is a kind of complex that only whites and Westerners can be native English speakers.” Hamza and I crossed paths several times at the Shizuoka Mosque before he introduced himself, and I always assumed he was a Western expatriate living in Japan. While I perceived Hamza as “white passing,” many Japanese people did not share this view.

For Japanese residents—especially those with limited personal experience with foreigners—Hamza is not perceived as white. Who counts as “white” is shaped not only by broad ideas of whiteness, but also by local assumptions about what white people “should” look like. In Hamza’s case, the expectation was that white foreigners should be blonde-haired and blue-eyed. His situation was further complicated by the portrayal of Palestinians in global media: “I couldn’t say I was Palestinian, right? Back in those days, people had the impression that Palestinians were guerillas. I couldn’t even say I was from the Middle East.” Racially ambiguous and unable to “pass,” Hamza struggled to find “real” work that paid a steady wage. With the help of his wife and in-laws, Hamza was able to secure a loan from a Japanese bank and open his own school. By marrying a Japanese citizen, Hamza gained the flexibility and mobility needed to work, live, and succeed in Japanese society.

Credit: John Ostermiller

View of Mt. Fuji from Mochimune train station. Getting to Mochimune may only be a 10-to-20 minute train ride, but the mosque itself is another 15-to-20 minute walk from the station. Commuting to the mosque is one of the major issues for Muslims in Shizuoka.

Madiha: “I don’t even feel human sometimes”

Madiha’s experiences sharply contrast Hamza’s. Madiha, an African European woman in her twenties, is pursuing her PhD in a major Japanese city. Born to African immigrants, she grew up in a small European town. Madiha’s ethnicity, religion, nationality, and gender have complicated her life in Japan.

Madiha often feels conflicted about wearing her hijab. Numerous European countries have debated whether to allow Muslim women to wear “pious” religious garments like the hijab. At first, Madiha felt that Japan was a “safe” place to wear the veil, especially in the wake of Israel’s 2023 invasion of Palestine. However, her current relationship with Japan isn’t a “love-hate,” but rather “hate-hate.”

As a dark-skinned Muslim woman in Japan, Madiha is explicitly marked as a racial, religious, and gendered subject. In the United States, some Latine persons attempt to “pass” as white by changing their names and behavior. Likewise, African men in Japan have increased their social mobility by adopting African American names, fashion, and speaking styles. But for Madiha, this option isn’t viable. She doesn’t want to be seen as African American; she wants to be acknowledged as African European. Madiha described the surprise on her Japanese friends’ and acquaintances’ faces when she told them she was from Europe: “I could see the confusion on their faces. Like they were thinking, ‘She’s (European), but she’s Black. So, she’s not telling us where she really comes from.’”

As a Black Muslim woman, Madiha deviates from the “ideal” foreigner archetype in Japanese society—typically envisioned as a white, presumably Christian or non-religious man. Madiha’s skin color and hijab are not “coded” as European in the minds of many Japanese people she encounters. While some African migrants successfully pass as Americans, this doesn’t work for Madiha. Madiha continues:

“Ever since I’ve been in Japan, I’m reminded of how Black I am. Or how foreign I am. And there are different layers. If you’re Asian or white, it will be different… But you’re going to be praised, too. Not me. I’m an overweight, introverted Black woman. I’m not super cool. People always thought I was American. This American girl that is cool and sassy. And that is not what I am at all. I do not fit the stereotype. It was a struggle. It still is a struggle. I’m still perceived as someone that is dangerous [because I am Black and Muslim]. I don’t really feel like a woman here. I don’t even feel human even sometimes.”

This struggle to be accepted and acknowledged has impacted Madiha in other ways. After enduring constant staring—especially on trains where people would avoid sitting next to her—Madiha changed the way she wore her hijab. She experimented with different scarves and head wraps, hoping to look like just “another African migrant” rather than a dark-skinned religious foreigner. This also affected Madiha’s physical mobility: she rarely goes out and works from home whenever possible. Madiha attended mosque services a few times but stopped after receiving judgmental stares from Muslims who saw her without her hijab outside the mosque. Unable to ignore her religious convictions or make herself legible to her Japanese friends and colleagues, Madiha is stuck. She feels rejected by both her religious peers and Japanese society at large.

Migrant (Il)legibility and (Im)mobility

Hamza’s and Madiha’s experiences highlight how being Muslim in Japan complicates migrants’ abilities to pursue the opportunities that initially drew them to the country. Their stories bring to light the unspoken hierarchy of foreigners in Japanese society, revealing a clear preference for white, Western men. As a result, “making it” in Japan often requires migrants to alter their appearance, speech, and behavior. However, for pious dark-skinned Muslim women like Madiha, it is as impossible to change one’s skin color as it is unconscionable to take off one’s hijab. Understanding migrants’ experiences requires us to pay attention to how multiple factors—like race, religion, gender, class—shape the opportunities and challenges they encounter. This includes recognizing that Western ideas about whiteness permeate other countries as well. Although migrants may come to Japan for similar reasons, like professional or educational opportunities, their actual experiences in Japan can differ greatly.

Alex Wolff and Yanping Ni are the section contributing editors for the Society for East Asian Anthropology.

Ambiguous Signaling: Filtering through Race and Language

July 31, 2025 by Yanping Ni

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Patty Lan
July 1, 2025

Read the article on Anthropology News

On the hunt for mooncakes for the Mid Autumn Festival in Seoul’s Daelim. Credit: Patty Lan

One day while taking the train in Seoul, two young Chinese girls were chatting in Cantonese, much to my excitement. It had been so long since I heard my native language, and I was enjoying being able to understand everything they were saying. But then a young Korean man sitting nearby turned and shouted at them in Korean to be considerate and to be quiet. The joy I felt in that moment evaporated. Even though they were not the only ones talking on the train, the Chinese girls bore the sole responsibility of being “noisy.” The immediate transformation of their attitudes from lighthearted to ashamed burned itself into my memory. During my year in South Korea from 2023 to 2024, I began to be more wary of speaking Mandarin or Cantonese in public, unsure if I would be similarly chastised or judged.

This reminded me of a previous experience. I was chatting with two Eastern European alumni of the Global Korea Scholarship program (GKS) over beer and rotisserie chicken at a restaurant in Seoul, when they looked me straight in the eye and gave me some advice for my interactions with Koreans. “You should only say you are American and keep the Chinese part a secret.” It was mainly said in jest, as the statement was accompanied with some laughter. But looking back at it now, it served as a warning that the South Korea I was in now, was very different from the South Korea I had visited 10 years prior.

In recent years, sinophobia in South Korea has increased dramatically, arguably surpassing age-old anti-Japanese sentiment. Partially due to growing economic and military tensions , Covid-19, and South Korean conservative talking points, in South Korean society, even among the younger generations, there is a growing perception that China is an authoritarian communist threat that needs to be contained. China’s continued economic and geopolitical aggression seems to existentially jeopardize South Korea’s democratic sovereignty, with conservatives united in their accusations of Chinese interference in South Korean elections. These perceptions are bolstered by popular media depictions of Chinese migrant communities in South Korea, who are often portrayed as gangsters or criminals that threaten the civility and peace of South Korean society. In addition to sinophobia, xenophobia more generally has escalated in the country in response to the large numbers of migrant workers and brides from Southeast Asian countries who were initially welcomed into the country as solutions to South Korea’s growing low-fertility and labor problems. Research is increasingly demonstrating that despite government efforts to help these communities integrate into South Korea society, entrenched racism and cultural paternalism persist. This may be partially due to the possibility that government policies relying on western frameworks of xenophobia and racism alone do not account for the discrimination Asian non-Koreans experience in South Korea. Research into the experiences of various migrant communities in South Korea reflect diverse historical, economic, gendered, and religious intersections which contextualize these disparate experiences.

A banner titled “Daelim Central Market” in Korean welcoming visitors to various shops with banners in Chinese and Korean characters. I participated in a walking tour of Daelim Chinatown which included a lecture on the history and development of the neighborhood and key functions of local businesses. It ended with a delicious meal at a local restaurant. It is run by a South Korean nonprofit organization meant to better educate the South Korean public about multicultural communities. Credit: Patty Lan

Two hundred years of engagement with the West through trade, colonialism, imperialism, militarization, and aid has combined with the region’s history of Confucian patriarchy and geopolitical positioning between China and Japan to produce a dynamic practice of racialization. Racialization in Korea is largely tied to how a particular “race” signals the corresponding country’s economic status and their proximity to being a “western developed” country. This focus on “development” as a hierarchy juggling GDP, education, technological advancement, and cosmopolitan values expands upon typical western conceptions of race focused on skin color. While colorism is present in South Korean society, it is often in combination with discrimination against “developing countries.” As labor and marriage migrants have increased, the government has taken to branding them as “multicultural families” or” 다문화 가족” in order to integrate them into South Korean society. However, government-sponsored reality TV programming about these families reinforces the stereotype of the submissive wife from the Global South performing care work while migrants from the Global North are shown to be men working in more high-skilled jobs. Even different parts of the Korean diaspora are treated unequally. Korean Americans are granted visa privileges which allow for long-term work and residency permits whereas their counterparts in Northern China are only offered single five-year work visas despite both diasporas being sizable multigenerational Korean ethnic communities. The feelings of contempt and paternalism directed at “poor developing” countries reinforces a racializing hierarchy of who and how one gets to be a legitimate person in South Korean society.

While on a walk in a busy university neighborhood in Seoul with a white French friend from Mauritania, we were stopped by an older Korean lady who walked straight out of a cafe to talk to my friend. As total strangers, the Korean woman tried to explain to my friend that she was writing an email and needed someone to help her edit her English. When we understood what was happening, my friend corrected the lady, telling her that she was French and her English was very poor, but that I, her Asian-looking friend, was from the US and would be much more helpful. The lady was a bit confused but was relieved to have some help as we walked back inside the cafe and I edited her email.

In South Korean society, language is a key process through which race becomes materialized, negotiated, and transformed. Raciolinguistics, while initially developed with a US and white settler context in mind, recognizes the socio-political relationship between race and language. Building on this approach, the South Korean context offers a useful case for thinking about how English’s relation to whiteness can expand and complicate processes of racialization. English in South Korea is a prestigious language, with South Korean parents spending up to $2,000 USD per month to have their children start learning English as early as four years old. Simply appearing white allows some foreigners to have an easier time getting hired as English tutors, in contrast to their darker skin or Asian counterparts who come from English-speaking countries. Even with English, there are hierarchies which place American English, spoken by white Americans at the top, affordable only to the most wealthy of South Korean parents, and at the bottom, other forms of accented English available at alternative locations like the Philippines and Singapore for aspiring middle-class families.

The Korean language also serves as an avenue of racialization. In experimental bilingual elementary schools for migrant children where Mandarin is offered as a language course, researchers noticed how use of Chinese outside of the classroom and creative hybrid experimentations often get labeled as linguistic deficiencies. The result is a language hierarchy which positions Korean as the only legitimate language of the classroom, despite claims of bilingual learning. How Korean is spoken is also racially marked. For North Korean refugees in South Korea, they experience discrimination for their accent, with some even being confused for Chinese. Ethnic Koreans born in China (Joseonjok) returning to South Korea as labor migrants and ethnic Chinese born in South Korea (Hwagyo) experience similar linguistic bias over their accented Korean, with South Koreans viewing their accents as signals of their inherent “Chineseness” or “backwardness”. Here, Sinophobia materializes and is transformed through the overlapping of Chinese racialization and “Chinese linguistics,” marking all who speak Chinese or speak “Chinese-accented” Korean.

A white booth tent for an outdoor festival with banners titled, “Environmental Preservation with Foreigners” and “Korean Scholarship Alumni Association”. This is a photo of the GKS Alumni booth at the Environmental Sustainability Festival in Busan. Our booth was called “Environmental Preservation with Foreigners.” We played Indian board games and passed out South Asian snacks to Korean elementary school students and their parents. Credit: Patty Lan

Coming back to South Korea in 2023 as a researcher on Fulbright, I often introduced myself as an American first, to give legitimacy to my status as a doctoral student from the US. However, as I met more GKS students and alumni, most of them coming from what Koreans consider the “developing world” such as Uganda, Pakistan, Peru, and Thailand, I realized how much my Americanness, English-use, and perceived “Koreanness” created a wall between us. All of them at our initial meeting thought I was Korean. After being in South Korea for so long, “Koreanness” to them had come to mean a dominant status quo that marginalized and othered them. Once I corrected people and told them that I was Chinese American, the conversation shifted.

Then I became “the American,” a rootless cosmopolitan from the Global North who existed as a privileged class in South Korea. But when I shared that I also spoke fluent Cantonese and Mandarin, the mood shifted again. “Hey, you are a real Chinese!”, they would say. After verifying my Chineseness, GKS recipients I talked to would immediately tell me about their affectionately close relationships with Chinese friends from school or work and show off all the things they learned about China through their friends. Being able to speak “Chinese,” the GKS community felt solidarity with me in a way I had not expected. In our conversations, they spoke more openly with me about their struggles in South Korean society, and their honest thoughts about their fellow classmates, colleagues, and superiors. “Koreans are toxic” was not an uncommon phrase. They also asked me a lot of questions about being Chinese in the US and what it was like to maintain my Chinese language skills, observe cultural practices, and survive as a low-income family. I served as a kind of portal into the future of what their lives and their children’s lives might look like if they continued to stay abroad. Being “Chinese” in these spaces meant identifying with collective struggles of migration, discrimination, and class.

Outside of the GKS community, I felt racially ambiguous in a way I had never felt in the US. Being surrounded by the hums of Korean being spoken everywhere, I felt my Chinese identity retreat the more I did not speak Cantonese or Mandarin. In my frustration, during one of my participant observations sessions at a local festival where GKS alumni were running an “Interact with a Foreigner” booth, I introduced myself as Chinese in Korean to two grade-school aged Korean girls. Both stared at me in shock when I said I was Chinese and immediately denied my claim. So I switched to Mandarin to prove to them who I was, and one of the little girls, who had actually lived in China briefly because of her dad’s job, was able to verify who I was and excitedly started to talk to me in Mandarin. I felt seen. Language continued to be a tool for me to negotiate and navigate these fluctuating racial identities of belonging and otherness.

I felt like I was living in two different worlds. One where I was Chinese, and another where I was Korean. As long as I paid attention to the right signals, I would be reminded of my potential for unsettling the sonic landscape, like when the two Cantonese-speaking women were scolded on the train. I often wondered what would have happened if it were me instead. How would I have reacted? I also wondered if my Chinese racialization would have been further complicated if I had been from Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore instead. My research in South Korea, examining the racial politics of development and education, ended up leading me back to reflect deeply on my own racialized identity in the context of Asia. In the same place where I had the privilege to disappear into the crowd, I could also signal myself as cosmopolitan, or signify as an insidious Chinese authoritarian takeover. My experiences negotiating and transforming racial signaling through language in South Korea highlight the significance of (East) Asia’s regional and global histories, development aspirations, and geopolitics in understanding racialization beyond a western framework.

Alex Wolff and Yanping Ni are the section contributing editors for the Society for East Asian Anthropology.

Design SEAA’s logo (25th anniversary)

July 21, 2025 by Guven Witteveen

Calling all creatives in our midst! Help us celebrate SEAA’s 25th anniversary by designing its logo or some sort of visual representation of us. In all of its 25 years, SEAA has had no official logo. YOU can help change that!

CHALLENGE: design a logo that represents the Society for East Asian Anthropology, to be used for all future SEAA activities
– USES: meant to be displayed as a part of the heading of the SEAA website, as well as used to mark the organization in such things as prizes and announcements. Other opportunities for display to be determined.
– ASPECT RATIO: to be determined by the artist

WHO MAY ENTER: OPEN, but preference given to current members of SEAA
You may enter more than once. But please, no more than three (3) entries per person.

DEADLINE: 09/15/25

PRIZE: registration fee reimbursement for AAA meeting in New Orleans, 11/2025
Acknowledgment on SEAA website in perpetuity

WINNER ANNOUNCED AT SEAA BUSINESS MEETING IN NEW ORLEANS!

SEND YOUR DESIGN AS PDF TO THE COMMITTEE
INCLUDE NAME, AFFILIATION (POSITION), BRIEF EXPLANATION OF YOUR DESIGN (how does this represent SEAA?)

Claudia Huang <>Claudia.Huang ATcsulb.ed
Laurel Kendall <>lkendall ATamnh.org
Laura Miller <>millerlau ATumsl.edu
David Kwok Kwan Tsoi <>david.tsoi ATouce.ox.ac.uk
Christine Yano <>cryano AThawaii.edu

CFP “Signal/Noise” Anthropology News & Society for East Asian Anthropology (SEAA)

February 20, 2025 by Yanping Ni

Hello all,

The Society for East Asian Anthropology’s (SEAA) column in Anthropology News is excited to invite abstract submissions for this quarter’s theme, “Signal/Noise.” As a section of Anthropology News (the American Anthropological Association’s member magazine), we select pieces to be published on its online forum, corresponding to themes chosen by AN as well as critical concerns of East Asia studies.

General CfP by Anthropology News (Full description available here)

We are looking for stories about how communities, cultures, and individuals distinguish meaningful patterns from background noise, interpret disruptions, and find (dis)connection amid interference. What counts as signal versus noise, and who gets to decide? How are fuzzy boundaries clarified or precarious structures disrupted? What happens when communication is both necessary and fraught, or what makes messages shared or misconstrued?

At SEAA, we are particularly interested in soliciting a piece that uses “Signal/Noise” as a lens to examine social, cultural, economic, and political processes in East Asia. We invite submissions that explore questions such as:

What insights can the duality of signal/noise (with its original or metaphorical meanings) provide to think through (mis)communication and (dis)connection within soundscapes, communities, structures, and activities in East Asia?

How can the reality and representation of “signal/noise” in East Asia help us revitalize such longstanding anthropological concepts as voice, dialogue, boundary, intervention, rapport, and distinction, among others?

How can the lens of “signal/noise” inspire us to rethink ethnographic approaches in East Asia as a particular site?

Submissions, targeted toward a general audience, can take the form of a short essay (up to 1,600 words and 3 images) or a photo essay (up to 750 words and 8 images). We invite contributions from scholars who are involved with a broad range of ethnographic methods, from archival to digital, in-person, and remote fieldwork. We highly encourage you to visit the Anthropology News website to get a sense of its accessible, jargon-free, and storytelling-based pieces. If you are interested in working with us, please send your 250-word abstract to co-editors Alex Wolff (alex_wolff@brown.edu) and Yanping Ni (yn4683@princeton.edu) by March 12th, 2025. For a photo essay, please also include 2-3 sample images. Decisions will be made one week after the due date.

The selected piece will go through one or two rounds of edits with section editors, and will be published in Anthropology News in September 2025. Although we are only able to accept one piece per quarter, we cherish every submission and will keep excellent abstract proposals in mind for future themes to come.

Anthropology News boasts a readership of about 25,000 unique views per month, providing a significant platform for your work to reach a wide audience. We publish articles from members that address contemporary issues with original ethnographic research. Scholars of all stages currently possessing or anticipating SEAA membership are encouraged to participate. To learn more about what we publish, please check out previous articles here.

Sincerely,

Yanping & Alex

Practicing Self-Care Beyond Self

December 28, 2024 by Jieun Cho

Society for East Asian Anthropology
By Jung Eun Kwon
December 27, 2024

It was a beautiful day in October 2022, and the leaves were turning vibrant shades of red and yellow. I was interviewing Yuna (all names in this article are pseudonyms), one of my interlocutors for my research on suicidality—including suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts—among young South Korean women in their twenties and thirties. Yuna, a 34-year-old woman, had been experiencing suicidal thoughts since she was around 13 and had attempted suicide multiple times since the age of 21. Throughout our conversation, I noticed that she kept glancing around the coffee shop and asked to use the restroom several times within the hour and a half we were talking. I felt a sense of concern for her, and my initial instinct was to think that I could or should help her in some way. However, what Yuna said next completely shifted my perspective.

“Usually [for me], an intense suicidal thought lasts about 15 minutes or so, no more than an hour, or it ends within 3 hours at the longest. But in the meantime, with the right intervention, you can get through it. So, I have an automatically-run protocol [created and implemented by myself]—for example, I call a suicide prevention center, and after receiving the consultation, I wait a few minutes. If the suicidal thought is still severe, I just call an ambulance [to stop myself from attempting suicide].”

An SOS suicide prevention hotline phone on a bridge in South Korea, providing help for those in crisis. This phone was not used by Yuna during her experience of crisis. Credit: Jung Eun Kwon

Her self-analysis and the creation of her own “protocol” by strategically using institutional care services left me in awe. It led me to reflect on my own assumption that I needed to help her, an assumption partly influenced by South Korea’s broader social discourse on mental illness and suicide. In South Korea (hereafter Korea), mental illness has increasingly been viewed as a psychiatric disorder that requires medical treatment, and suicidality is largely seen as an unusual condition caused primarily by depression. This framework, which stems from disciplines such as psychiatry and psychology, positions people experiencing suicidality as patients or objects of intervention, reducing them to passive recipients of care.

Since the late 1990s, Korea’s suicide rate has risen significantly, ranking among the highest globally since the early 2000s. Although young women do not have the highest suicide rate, their suicidality has sharply increased since the 2010s, in contrast to other demographic trends. In response, the Korean government launched a national suicide prevention project to expand access to psychological and psychiatric support, framing suicide, particularly for women, as a result of ‘mental difficulty” (jeongsinjeok eoryeoum). This view individualizes the issue, also overlooking the creative and diverse care practices these individuals use to manage their suicidality.

The Infographic of 2022 Suicide Motives by Gender and Age Group in South Korea. Data Source: 2024 White Paper on Suicide Prevention (Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2024). Credit: South Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare

However, Yuna’s skillful management of her own mental health made me wonder: Is Yuna uniquely skilled at taking care of herself? Or might others who experience suicidality also be this adept at self-care? If so, what do their care practices look like? As I tried to answer these questions, my interlocutors’ various care practices came to my mind.Although most of my interlocutors had received institutional care, such as medication and psychotherapy, they were dissatisfied with these disciplines’ focus on individualizing their experiences. Thus, my interlocutors’ self-care practices tended to stretch toward communal practices, extending attention to society and their roles within it.

Creative Care Practices

I regularly asked the question, “How do you take care of yourself in your everyday life?” during the interviews to explore my young women interlocutors’ care practices, and I was often met with creative and unexpected responses. What impressed me was how these women expanded the boundaries of (self-)care, diverging from institutional care, which emphasizes paying attention to one’s inner self and emotions, as seen in psychology, or to biological factors, as seen in psychiatry. Institutional care often guides individuals to immerse their attention inward, rather than allowing them to explore sociocultural factors beyond their family. Rather, their practices pushed these narrow boundaries, allowing them to reflect on themselves concerning broader social issues prevalent in Korea, such as socioeconomic inequality, discrimination, and marginalized others.

Da-In, a 28-year-old woman working at a small company and living with her mother, offered one such example.She had been writing fantasy novels since high school, a practice she began after experiencing her first suicidal thoughts at 11 and attempting suicide at 14. Initially, she started with short stories, but over time, her narratives expanded into longer works. By the time of our interview, she had completed multi-book-length fantasy novels. She hinted at the pride she felt in her lengthy writing and spoke of her love for writing novels. When I asked her what aspects of writing fantasy novels drew her in, she said it was the ability to create a better world that she hopes to see.

“First of all, [in the fictional world,] the gap between rich and poor is extremely small, there is no discrimination at all, no unreasonable things happen. [People from] this world goes around to civilize other worlds [where the gap is wider, and discrimination and unreasonable things pervade].”

I realized that the setting of her novel both reflected and subverted the difficulties she faced as a teenager. Earlier in the interview, she had spoken at length about her family’s lower economic status, which caused her significant distress during her adolescence. She also mentioned that her classmates disliked her because she was considered “weird or peculiar” for enjoying philosophical books and showing herself off with those books, leaving her isolated most of the time. My interlocutors were deemed unusual in that they desired different paths from what is considered “normal” tracks of life in Korean society. As students, for example, the focus should be on getting into an elite college, then securing a high-paying job with tenure. As daughters, they are expected to obey their patriarchal parents and aim for heteronormative relationships and families to reproduce middle- or upper-class status. The continuous norms and roles imposed throughout their lives contributed to many of my interlocutors’ suicidality, as did the exclusion they experienced when veering from these prescribed paths.

Graffiti reading “Talchul (escape, in Korean)” and “Suicide” on a construction wall in front of high-rise apartments. Credit: Jung Eun Kwon

Against this backdrop, Da-In was flipping the script through her novel on the circumstances that had caused her pain and the prevailing norms, aiming for a society characterized by equality and the absence of discrimination.Imagining and bringing to life a society she hoped to inhabit within the pages of her story brought her a sense of joy and healing. This creative self-care practice reminded me of what Da-In and my other interlocutors commonly shared with me regarding institutional care: they believed it disregarded social issues and did not question social norms, which, in fact, caused their suicidality. Although institutional care was partially helpful to continue their everyday lives through medication and temporary emotional uplift, it could not address their fundamental factors of suffering. In this vein, Da-In was turning toward seeking alternatives that gave her hope, and she was trying to raise her voice through her novel.

Yoobin and Misun, whom I met through a support group meeting, had also been practicing an unexpected kind of self-care. Yoobin, a 32-year-old woman, was a freelancer relying on unemployment benefits at the time, having previously worked as a designer for a startup NGO. Misun, a 36-year-old woman, worked full-time as a support worker for the visually disabled. At the beginning of the group interview with both Yoobin and Misun, they commonly talked about how broader social issues—specifically mentioning the Russia-Ukraine War and climate crisis—were vividly embodied in their suffering, making them feel powerless and their lives useless. They expressed having developed a “deeply rooted distrust against this world” by observing a series of disasters, both far and near.

When I asked them what they do for self-care, their answer first took me by surprise: volunteering. Their response sounded paradoxical to me because I had specifically asked about self-care, not care for others. However, I came to understand their motivations for volunteering as driven by both their own well-being and care for others, especially in light of their discussions about social issues and feelings of powerlessness. Against these feelings, Misun wanted to “feel a sense of accomplishment in this really harsh and unfortunate world,” to feel that she was at least helping others. Yoobin also stated that she is “quite selfish about” volunteering in a similar vein. Rather than being self-absorbed in their emotions and situations, as institutional care often recommends, they directed their attention outward, searching for their space to connect with others, thereby expanding self-care to include care for others and society. In doing so, they situated themselves within a broader world, seeking to contribute to a more livable society.Shedding light on these creative care practices from “suicidal” women shifts our focus from viewing these individuals purely through the lens of their suffering towards recognizing their unique capabilities and resourcefulness. In other words, we realize their active roles in shaping their own well-being rather than viewing them as passive recipients of institutional treatment. This recognition also challenges the narrow boundaries of institutional care, which urges attention inward. In contrast, my interlocutors’ practices of care are oriented not only inward but outward, expanding the meaning of self-care by situating themselves within broader worlds and seeking their roles within it. Similar to Black feminists’ radical perspectives on self-care as a tool for social justice, their care practices encourage us to rethink both self-care and institutional care, emphasizing the need to go beyond self-absorption and foster social connections and collective efforts.

Aaron Su and Jieun Cho are the section contributing editors for the Society for East Asian Anthropology.

The Moral Complexities of Delegate Children in Aging China

December 28, 2024 by Jieun Cho

Society for East Asian Anthropology
By Fei Yuan
December 18, 2024

What does it entail for care practices when non-affiliated strangers manage your property and make critical “life-matter” decisions on your behalf? Known as “delegate children,” these legal guardians fill gaps left by the state welfare system while navigating complex moral dilemmas.

Performing Care as a “Delegate Child”

It was a snowy day in late December 2022 when I accompanied Xiao Zhang on her visit to a nursing home in the Jing-Jin-Ji region of northern China. It had been a month since her client, Granny Shi, moved into the facility. A steelworker who entered the factory at eighteen, Granny Shi was highly regarded for her mechanic skills. After her child’s death, she became one of the “elders who lost their single child (shidu laoren),” overwhelmed by the pressing concern of her late-life care. As an employee at a social guardianship organization, Xiao Zhang performs the role of “delegate children” (daili ernv) to Granny Shi. In China’s legal service market, “delegate children” is a new profession. Although “legal guardians” is the more formal term, staff members at the civil guardian organization often identify themselves as “delegate children”. This label underscores the surrogate care they provide, which is akin to the support traditionally expected from biological children. In this article, I explore the divergent perceptions and expectations surrounding care duties held by elders and their guardians. Elder care is becoming a key venue for the contestations of post-socialist China’s care regime, where market-driven care models are increasingly displacing the extensive welfare benefits once guaranteed by the work unit (dan wei) system, all occurring within a legal context that heavily favors familial rights.

China is facing a critical eldercare crisis driven by a rapidly growing aging population, shrinking family sizes, and exorbitant costs of private eldercare facilities and assisted care. The repercussions of the one-child policy are profoundly evident, as it has left numerous elderly caught in a critical predicament: they struggle to access necessary care because of the lack of a family member to act as a guarantor for authorizing their hospital and institutionalized care admissions and to make medical care decisions on their behalf. Many of my interlocutors refer to this situation as a “dead end” or “impasse.”

In Granny Shi’s case, she wished to spend her remaining years in a nursing home. However, admission to such facilities requires the signature of a relative, preferably biological children. After four years of fruitless searching for a guardian, Granny Shi left her steel city home and relocated to the Jing-Jin-Ji region. This decision was prompted by the discovery of a newly founded social guardianship organization specifically designed to resolve these childless elders’ dilemmas. At the beginning of today’s visit, Xiao Zhang showed Granny Shi a list of tasks to accomplish. She accompanied Granny Shi to a nearby bank to make payments to the notary office. They then stopped by a grocery store to shop for the daily necessities Granny Shi needed at the facility. Xiao Zhang reminded Granny Shi to buy winter gloves and offered to bring a thermos from home to avoid unnecessary expenses. On the way back to the nursing home, Xiao Zhang held Granny Shi’s hands tightly, guiding her on the icy paths. These acts and gestures underscore the informal, interpersonal facets of care that are not encapsulated by the formal legal duties of guardianship.

The 2021 Civil Code introduced multiple new articles on adult guardianship, including the provision for individuals to select their guardians when fully capable. However, the government policies fail to outline practical measures, leaving a gap in the market for exploring professional standards. During my 2023 fieldwork in China, I observed various entities—including law firms, notary offices, legal service companies, nursing homes, and household management services—attempting to fill this void. The social organization where Xiao Zhang is employed exemplifies a broader trend. In their operations, the role of delegated children extends beyond traditional “care work,” which is typically limited to daily caregiving tasks. Their responsibilities encompass navigating the constraints of established systems, collaborating with bureaucracies, bridging gaps in social services, and channeling necessary care resources. Additionally, their work often requires mediating between the client’s wishes and a legal culture that favors familial ties and the rights of biological children.

Xiao Zhang walked alongside Granny Shi on the sidewalk at the nursing home. Xiao Zhang’s signature is required when Granny Shi leaves the facility. Credit: Fei Yuan

**The Nuances of “Guan” in Guardianship**

What does it mean for elders to sign a contract with a guardian organization or individuals when they cannot depend on their children for support in their later years? Through conversations with elders, I have found that many view guardianship not merely as a legal arrangement but as a promise of security. This suggests a relationship that is fundamentally about care rather than simply fulfilling legal obligations. Elders frequently seek care in the form of “guan”—a term that captures both caretaking and an element of control, indicative of the nuanced interplay between autonomy and dependency. This dual meaning highlights the elders’ need for care models that respect both their autonomy and their comprehensive care needs; moreover, as the duties of guan are customarily performed by children, the term also implies a desire for emotional attachment. Elders who engage in guardianship contracts often pursue authentic care, which implies genuine relationships that extend beyond legal ties and form kin-like connections.

Notably, understandings of care are diverse and context-dependent. For Granny Shi, the guardianship organization serves as a trustworthy work unit (dan wei), reminiscent of the comprehensive welfare systems provided by state enterprises during the socialist era, ensuring care for her needs throughout her life. The guardians, in contrast, are supposed to fulfill a distinctly contractual role—adhering to the duties explicitly outlined in their agreements. In practice, many guardians strive to fulfill the role of “delegated children,” aiming to provide both professional oversight and emotional support for their elderly clients. In fact, guardians like Xiao Zhang view their work as more than merely “a job.” One guardian described it as follows: “Guardianship enables us to forge a close relationship [with the elders], grounded not in blood but in trust, commitment, and oversight.” This perspective is indicative of how most guardians view their roles: they consider themselves both altruistic caregivers engaged in “good deeds” and professional agents, providing a level of “professional care” unmatched by actual family members.

This is a list of the services offered by a social guardian organization. They provide “all-life-course affairs services” that support elderly individuals at various stages of life, from self-independence to post-mortem affairs. Credit: Fei Yuan

Moral Dilemmas and Constraints

The notion of “professionalism” in guardianship, however, invites skepticism. Without clear professional standards, how one performs “genuine care” while maintaining professionalism lacks clear guidance. Such questions keep presenting themselves in practice. Mr. Chen, the founder of a civil organization in the process of transitioning to a guardianship organization, often finds himself facing dilemmas. As the leader of a newly established organization, he is particularly meticulous about avoiding legal disputes and maintaining the organization’s social reputation, especially given its status as a civil organization committed to philanthropy.

During a webinar I attended hosted by a social guardianship organization, a spokesperson highlighted a recent moral quandary: An elderly client collapsed. He had signed an advance directive against any form of medical intervention. Despite this wish and the doctor’s warning about the surgery’s side effects, the guardian still chose to admit the person to the ICU. The spokesperson remarked, “If it were his son, he could decide freely. However, as an organization, we are afraid of being accused of failing to save lives.” This decision highlights the moral complexities encountered by guardians, who, despite having the legal authority to act on behalf of elders, still confront judgments within the prevailing legal culture, especially when making the aforementioned “life mattering” decisions. The guardians need to heed the rights of related kin, including spouses, parents, children, and other relatives to avoid potential charges.

These guardians’ struggles raise profound questions about the nature of good care: should guardians honor the client’s own wishes and adhere to professionalism, or should they perform acts of filiality to comply with social expectations? And how to navigate the rights of biological children or other relatives within the legal framework of China?

Bridging Welfare Gaps and Offering Hope

In summary, I contend that guardians like Xiao Zhang emerge as pivotal figures within the evolving care regime, bridging the substantial gaps created by the transition from the comprehensive Dan Wei system to a market-driven eldercare model. By meeting the urgent demand of care for elders like Granny Shi and numerous older people who age alone, these organizations offer hope to elders in desperate need of guardian service. However, this hope remains tenuous, as the legal status and rights of guardians are often questioned and subordinated to familial rights. The legal framework and prevailing distrust toward non-familial caretakers present significant barriers, inhibiting their capacity to effectively execute wills and to exercise the agency of the elderly client.

The guardians’ efforts to establish professional organizations do more than just tinkering or filling these gaps; they underscore the urgent need to develop new mechanisms that are attuned to the altered dynamics of eldercare. The dilemma of care examined in this article reflects broader questions about the definition of “good care,” raising important questions about whose will should be honored, and how China’s transitional and transforming care regime can be supported by more refined legal regulations for these crucial services.

SEAA section contributing editors Aaron Su and Jieun Cho, and incoming editors Alex Wolff and Yanping Ni, all contributed to this piece.

How Beggars Help Us Understand Public Space in China and Beyond

July 25, 2024 by Jieun Cho

Society for East Asian Anthropology
By Ryanne Flock
May 28, 2024

Performances of panhandling in Guangzhou teach us about public space in modern Chinese cities and elsewhere.

Guangzhou—also known as Canton—is a city of zuo shengyi, of “doing business.” As one of the oldest trade harbors in the south of China, Guangzhou opened up early when the country’s reform program of 1978 reintroduced the importance of money and markets. As a result, its bustling shopping streets are loud and radiant, with music blaring from the stores and clerks or automated megaphones shouting out the latest offers. Uniqlo, KFC, Metersbonwe—well-established national and international brands—speak of comfortable wealth and guangjie (window shopping) as a way to relax and enjoy life (Figure 1).

Beijing Road is one of Guangzhou’s most-popular shopping streets. The picture is artificially blurred to ensure anonymity. CREDIT: RYANNE FLOCK

The greater the contrast, then, when I observed a scraggy woman asking for alms by crawling in the middle of the Beijing Road Pedestrian Area, the city’s retail center. Barefoot and with rolled-up sleeves, she exhibited her body’s disabilities: no fingers, deformed toes. Amid her stuffed and worn bags stood a crying toddler. A crowd gathered around the heartbreaking scene, and a skirted lady jumped forward to help while the urban management personnel became nervous. Usually, these patrols hired under the umbrella of Chengguan—the bureau in charge of an orderly cityscape—expel beggars from the shopping street. But this time, the officials in their dark-blue uniforms did not intervene. I was intrigued by this scene and its broader implications. How do beggars gain access to public space in Guangzhou through such performances, navigating local governance and social norms?

Scholars often define begging or panhandling (I will use these terms interchangeably) as asking for money or goods in public space. However, I found performances in China more intense and elaborate than those described in the academic literature or encountered during my travels in “Western” cities. I observed various ways of asking for alms in different urban locations for four years (2010–2014) in Guangzhou and talked to people panhandling in the present or the past. I approached beggars as a vulnerable social group, aiming to create situations of trust and free of hierarchies. We met in public places where we generally felt safe while also considering the attention of public security personnel. Most beggars I met responded to Chinese regional disparity and migrated from the deprived countryside to wealthy Guangzhou. Moreover, their capacities for physical work were limited due to age, illness, or disability, and they lacked family and state support. The turnover rate among this group was high during my fieldwork, and I cannot say how many are still in Guangzhou. Their agency, however, teaches us about public space in China and in a modern city. In the following, I will show how panhandling adapts to a changing spatial culture and the local state’s attempts to “beautify” the commons.

In Guangzhou, ways of panhandling differed according to space. There was a strong contrast between religious sites versus areas of commerce, entertainment, and transport. Some beggars slept in areas near temples and churches in the evening, stored their belongings in the bushes, and stayed longer during the day, panhandling but also chatting and relaxing with acquaintances. Visitors to these places of worship gave a few Yuan to most of them. Interestingly, at shopping and bar streets, and other commercial spaces of lively foot traffic, the performances were unusually comprehensive and layered, incorporating sight, sound, and story.

Contrasting with the middle-class environment, beggars stood out with their simple and sometimes worn-out clothes, sad demeanor, and stooped postures. Many exhibited injuries, mutilations, and burned and diseased skin. One day, I saw a healthy-looking man in his mid-30s stripping down to his underpants (Figure 2). He stood silently, his head bowed, his clothes at his feet. The skin expressed his neediness and desperation by renouncing his social “face” (mianzi). Additionally, he laid out a big poster in front of him to tell his story. Later, I realized that many beggars explained their reasons for poverty and panhandling in writing. I saw smaller notes and big declarations arranged with photos, hospital reports, and other official documents. “I suffer from rheumatism, the many years of treatment have not been effective, and I became disabled, for a long time I could not get out of bed, and [the challenges] of daily life are [still] difficult for me to handle.” The author of this piece specified his home village via province and city; others presented their ID or added phone numbers. In most of these scenes, passers-by stopped to read and some put a few Yuan in the beggar’s cup. Andrew Travers argues that begging is a staged “self-destruction” to create a hierarchy which argues: You are better off; you are in the position to help me.

The photograph shows a panhandling man from behind and someone from the audience watching from some distance. The beggar has stripped down to his underpants, put his shoes, jeans, and shirt, in front of his naked feet, and spread a poster before the cloth pile. We cannot read what is written on the poster, but in other cases, beggars often explain why they ask for alms. The beggar exposes his skin, holds his head high, but puts his hands on chest and stomach in a protective posture.

A panhandling man in his 30s in Guangzhou’s city centre. The picture is artificially blurred to ensure anonymity. CREDIT: RYANNE FLOCK

When I met 70-year-old Mr. Song, he too was lying on his stomach, moving on a rolling board. However, he was busy writing calligraphy with a moist brush on the pavement, completing an ever-growing artwork by outlining the characters with colorful chalk. Three years ago, he told me, he was panhandling by waiting for alms with a bowl in his hand. But people insulted him because they could not see his leg disease, and he feared their contempt. Thus, he started street calligraphy, feeling that he would give something back, nurturing his self-esteem. Other panhandlers combined performances of misery with music, singing, or playing an instrument. Referring to Mr. Song’s explanation, we can understand this not only as a strategy to gain more attention and alms but also to deal with the stigma of begging and handling the hierarchy toward the audience. However, his answer also made me think of the “deserving poor”—a ubiquitous discourse in Chinese society—and the words of panhandling Mr. Mo: Only when you see someone’s disability can you be sure a beggar is “real” (and therefore deserving). Could emphasizing physical challenges as part of panhandling performances be a form of empowerment to have a claim on help and even access to public space?

Today’s Chengguan Bureau was established in the late 1990s to create an orderly and “civilized” city inspired by the clean streets of other world metropolises. At the same time, however, the social issues caused by the market transition intensified and urged more “humanist” governance, according to the official jargon. Thus, on the national level, the State Council emphasized that panhandling is not forbidden; instead, those in need should be offered assistance and not be harassed in any way. Yet, on the local level, Guangzhou and other cities issued regulations defining panhandling as an aesthetic disturbance which should be punished and removed from public space. The policy contradictions leave patrols in a legally grey area when approaching beggars.

Chengguan tolerated asking for alms at religious settings. Once in a while, I saw them drive by Guangzhou’s famous Guangxiao Temple, but their patrols were nowhere to be seen most of the time. Instead, they concentrated on areas of commerce, entertainment, and transport. Mostly in groups, by foot or electrical cart, Chengguan personnel moved back and forth within the radius of their responsibility. They expelled beggars from these popular and prestigious areas, sometimes with a frown or harsh words, while most beggars avoided the confrontation. Mr. Song wrote his calligraphy near Beijing Street—not under Chengguan’s immediate gaze, but within a regularly controlled radius. He would panhandle until a patrol shooed him away, he explained to me. Watching the comprehensive performances, I realized that most beggars seemed to make the most of the time given, trying to convey the message of misery and deservingness as fast and efficiently as possible.

Moreover, variations in governance and performance relate to the specific spatial culture grown through a place’s history and social functions, connected to social norms and accepted behavior. If we think of religiosity as a market of transcendent ideas whose members gain self-affirmation through charity, then beggars belong to churches, temples, and mosques. Observing how visitors gave alms almost automatically, I understood that those asking for alms were integral to the ritual of piety and did not need to perform elaborately. However, shopping streets, tourist spots, and metro stations are different: for the Guangzhou city government, they display ideals of modernity and the city’s political and economic success. As this success is contradicted by visible poverty, the number of Chengguan personnel concentrates on those bustling areas. One could argue that panhandling performances adapted to this spatial culture of an entertainment-hungry society as they became themselves a spectacle of sight, sound, and story.

When we encounter ideas of public space—in politics, academia, or the media—the concept is often idealized and defined as open and accessible to allmembers of society. In our everyday lives, however, we recognize that space is structured; it enables, guides, and limits the agency of individuals and groups. Chengguan’s management is one example of how the state can influence the spatial order and access strategies of marginalized groups. Beggars in China develop various performance skills to fit in, be seen, be heard, and convince and deal with differentiated governance. Thus, access to public space is more than being present; the hierarchy of public space raises questions about social status and performance expectations to benefit from the commons and participate in urban society. Public space is a medium of ordering urban society—a characteristic we must acknowledge if we want to understand its future. For whom and how to lower access barriers and hierarchies, then, is another story.

This piece is part of the SEAA series “The Future of the ‘Public’ in East Asia.” Aaron Su and Jieun Cho are the section contributing editors for the Society for East Asian Anthropology. Contact them at jieun.cho@duke.edu and aaronsu@princeton.edu.

Being Global and Chinese on WeChat

February 24, 2024 by Aaron Su

Society for East Asian Anthropology
By Xinyu Promio Wang
February 22, 2024

Does using WeChat qualify someone to be “Chinese”?

“So, you are not like a real Chinese . . . I mean, you are just someone who has Chinese heritage, right?” This was what one of my interlocutors, Fangyi, said to me in the middle of our in-person interview after I told her that I do not use WeChat, except for research purposes, as none of my friends or families were on the app. Currently holding a permanent residence visa (永住者) in Japan, Fangyi came to the country six years ago from her hometown, Shanghai, initially as a student. Upon finishing her higher education, she began to work as a medical interpreter, and then later married her Chinese husband, a pharmacist who had acquired Japanese citizenship. After I inquired about the relationship between “not using WeChat” and “not like a real Chinese,” Fangyi explained to me that using the app “is like the Chinese thing. I feel close to home when I’m immersed in this Chinese-language platform while abroad.” For her, it seems like being a “real Chinese” is not simply about having Chinese “heritage,” sharing a Chinese blood tie and celebrating Chinese culture. For her, it is also about “having a constant presence in this Chinese-language environment and sharing your everyday life episodes with families and friends back home so that they can see you, remember you, and recognizing you as one of them, instead of as a bystander.”

Comments like this show how social interactions taking place in digital spaces can be an important means through which Chinese migrants negotiate and represent their senses of identity. As Fangyi indicated, digital media such as WeChat allow many Chinese living overseas to establish a unique public presence in a particularly “Chinese” space. Being seen and visible to her fellow Chinese consequently helps Fanyi not only to maintain her “Chinese roots” but also to acquire senses of being a “real,” somewhat more “authentic” Chinese. However, as I will show, Fangyi’s expression of her “authentic” Chineseness on WeChat as a migrant in Japan is markedly different from, say, that of her friends who use WeChat while living in China. This article aims to nuance the understanding of digital media’s impact on how Chinese migrants see and represent themselves. A closer look at the way people like Fangyi maintain their public presence on WeChat tells us how the use of digital media itself is shaped by desires for mobility as a privilege.

Following the launch of the app Weixin, targeted for mainland China, in January 2011, WeChat went to market in August 2012, created by Chinese tech company Tencent. WeChat and Weixin provide essentially identical functions, such as personal and group messaging, “Moments” (similar to Facebook’s “Wall” function), and news subscriptions. The difference is that Weixin is designated for users whose address is physically registered to China. Free of such territorial restriction, WeChat soon became one of the most popular apps within Chinese-language-speaking publics. Sometimes it is even considered the most important—if not the only—channel through which Chinese migrants and diaspora can maintain their emotional and familial ties with the mainland while living abroad.

While WeChat has some similarities with sites like Facebook and Twitter, it also has some differences. For example, content that users share on WeChat, such as their profiles and posts, are inaccessible to others who are not on the user’s contact list. In this sense, WeChat has a unique social logic that prefers and promotes one’s existing social relationships, rather than encouraging users to discover new connections. This closedness by design explains how Fangyi equates using WeChat with constructing a “constant presence” among her Chinese circles. Keeping up on WeChat gives her a sense that she is being recognized by her close ones as “one of them.” Being constantly present in this setting by, for example, sending out messages and updating information does not simply indicate wanting to be seen by and communicate with anonymous others, as is often taken to be a feature of exchanges on digital platforms. Rather, following the embedded logic of closed publicity, it is driven by the desire to virtually stay close to “us” among families and friends back “home.”

To this point of “staying close to us,” Fangyi stressed the importance of individual messages in managing her diasporic life. She said, “No matter how many years I’ve stayed in this country [Japan], chatting with family is an irreplaceable part of my life. It gives me a sense of intimacy and makes me feel warm.” This perspective is shared by my other interlocutors, who often emphasized that interactions in the closed social spheres on WeChat made them feel connected to “home”—in both senses, as families and as homeland. Another interlocutor, Youan, echoed this point in an interview. Despite having lived in Japan for more than three decades, he said, “Chatting with friends and relatives on WeChat is the most intuitive way to feel my Chinese [roots], like how our culture is always family-oriented, and how we try to keep our friends close [to us].”

However, interestingly, “staying close to us” does not necessarily mean that Chinese migrants like Fangyi wish to identify themselves with this “us.” For example, her “Moments” show how she tries to manage senses of both intimacy and distance as she constructs her migrant self in specific ways. On the one hand, she frequently shares episodes from her everyday life in Japan, posting several photos coupled with short writings two to three times a day. On the other hand, the majority of these posts are written either entirely in Japanese or in a combination of simplified Chinese and Japanese, being partially or completely inaccessible to those who do not understand Japanese. In fact, when I counted, out of 154 “moments” posts she created over three months, only 19 of them were fully written in simplified Chinese.

A screenshot of a man in traditional Japanese clothing talking to a rabbit; the text message below describes Fangyi’s thoughts of “loving the country you reside in.”

Screenshot of one of Fangyi’s “Moments” posts. (A screenshot of a man in traditional Japanese clothing talking to a rabbit; the text message below describes Fangyi’s thoughts of “loving the country you reside in.”) CREDIT: AUTHOR

About her Japanese posts on WeChat, Fangyi confirmed to me that most of her WeChat contacts cannot read Japanese and therefore wouldn’t be able to understand her posts. Moreover, when Fangyi wants to communicate in Japanese, she uses a separate app called LINE, arguably the most popular messaging app in Japan. When I asked her why Japanese is her main language in cultivating her online presence on WeChat, she said,

“As someone who lives in Japan, I feel naturally I should write things in Japanese because I’m part of its culture . . . and so my friends know that I’m abroad. I may not necessarily enjoy a better material life here in Tokyo compared to my friends in Shanghai. But we are different. (I want to show that) I’m not your typical, average Chinese who has never seen a different world [outside China].”

As with Fangyi, digital media platforms can inspire a complex range of self-positionings and identifications among its users. In contrast to her private messages, Fangyi’s language choice in the public realm of “moments” seems more like a strategy to distinguish herself from, instead of aligning herself with, those “typical” Chinese who are “at home.” In this sense, her transnational mobility and foreign-language skills acquired through that position serve as capital that she can leverage to perform and claim her identity to be, say, an “above-average” Chinese.

A screenshot of a picture that consists of two photos. The one on the left shows the back side of Fangyi’s head, and the one on the right is a photo of cherry blossom; the Japanese text message below translates as “both the cherry blossom and my hair wither away.”

Screenshot of one of Fangyi’s “Moments” posts. (A screenshot of a picture that consists of two photos. The one on the left shows the back side of Fangyi’s head, and the one on the right is a photo of cherry blossom; the Japanese text message below translates as “both the cherry blossom and my hair wither away.”) CREDIT: AUTHOR

In my digital ethnographic observation, I found that many Chinese migrants tend to manage their online presence in ways that are similar to Fangyi’s. Despite the fact that WeChat is a platform designated for Chinese-speaking audiences, I frequently see Chinese migrants using languages such as Korean, French, German, and Italian in relation to their respective migratory experiences. In this way, whether consciously or unconsciously, their privilege of international mobility becomes leverage that allows them to de-homogenize a uniform Chinese identity and to allude to the difference between themselves and their nonmigrant counterparts in the publicly visible digital sphere. While understanding migrants’ identities as a fluid and multilayered concept is not new, this illuminates that such multilayeredness is partially inspired by their engagement with multipublic digital spaces. In this sense, their experiences invite us to think about the way that our own identities and relationships with our home(lands) are now constructed in relation to digital connectivity and technological affordance.

This piece is part of the SEAA series “The Future of the ‘Public’ in East Asia.” Aaron Su and Jieun Cho are the section contributing editors for the Society for East Asian Anthropology. Contact them at jieun.cho@duke.edu and aaronsu@princeton.edu.

What Can White Paper Do?

January 30, 2024 by Aaron Su

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Mengzhu An, Jing Wang & Wei Ye
January 9, 2024

During #A4Revolution, protestors used blank white paper to express their voices while remaining in the shadows of state censorship and surveillance.

On November 26, 2022, a college student in black clothes, black hat, and black mask was standing on campus, holding aloft a blank piece of white paper. A middle-aged man walked up to them and ripped away the paper from their hands.

“Why did you take away their white paper?” 

“What threat does the white paper pose?” 

The questions of angry observers remained unanswered. Even after the paper was taken away, the young Chinese protestor stayed in their posture, holding nothing in their hands.

This scene at Nanjing Media College, in Nanjing, China, was captured in a video clip that went viral online. The determined image of a young Chinese person holding a blank white paper was so powerful that it became an icon in what was the then-emerging #A4Revolution protests. In small and large cities across China, people stood in the cold night air holding up sheets of white paper, silently demanding freedom from the extreme levels of surveillance and control enacted under the country’s zero-COVID policies. The protests against such policies that broke out around the world have come to be considered as the most influential public defiance in China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. What can a blank piece of paper do? As this article shows, blank white paper presents both strategic opportunities and ambiguities for social movements in China. In the case of #A4Revolution, protestors used blank white paper to express their voices while remaining in the shadows of state censorship and surveillance. 

IMAGE CREDIT: NONENULLNAN
IMAGE CAPTION: The Elephant
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A grayscale image showing a person with a baseball cap, holding an A4 paper, facing a large elephant across a diagonal divide of light and shadow. Hashtags #白纸革命 and #A4Revolution are written below.

Why White Paper

White paper originated from local protests that were triggered by a tragic fire at a Uyghur-majority residential building in Ürümqi on November 24, 2022, killing at least 10 people living there. Some blamed the incident on the government’s zero-COVID restrictions, where the discovery of one COVID case could lead to the grounding of all residents until the neighborhood became free of COVID again. Such long-term lockdowns severely limited residents’ capacity to respond to emergencies, such as the fire in Ürümqi. But people stressed that this disaster could have happened anywhere, not just in Ürümqi. One Weibo user posted, “After waiting for more than a hundred days, what we got was not freedom, but a raging fire and thick smoke.” In another viral post, Ürümqi officials’ irresponsible explanation of the fire was sarcastically rephrased as “The road is open, they don’t run,” implying that residents were at fault for not being able to escape the disaster. Such criticism against government officials was met with swift censorship. The accumulated resentment and anger were partly why people began to appear on the streets across China with blank paper on the evening of November 25, 2022.

In contemporary China, people have long strategized means of expression to deal with government censorship and surveillance. Netizens learn to maintain anonymity and adapt to the ever-changing codewords and techniques to discuss “sensitive” topics online. Such tactics of playing hide-and-seek with Big Brother were also evident in the protests against zero-COVID policies. The #A4Revolution was particularly “ghostly,” in Jacques Derrida’s terms, as it engaged in invoking the “visibility of the invisible” and “tangible intangibility.” Protests painted slogans in unmonitored public restrooms, posted flyers on telecom poles in the dead of night, communicated through anonymized channels, and stayed masked at events to avoid identification.

But this did not mean that they were immune to surveillance. The omnipresence of state censorship and violence is equally spectral. As Derrida says, “We do not see who looks at us.” In the video clip referenced at the beginning of this article, the white paper was eventually taken away without explanation from a silent protestor by a street-level bureaucrat who also remained silent. Political dissent is met by arbitrary crackdown through vague charges such as “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” (xunxing zishi) or a “pocket crime” (koudai zui). Though existing before the pandemic, such control and violence have been greatly intensified and normalized under zero-COVID policies. Always in danger, white paper protestors consciously used anonymity and silence as a counter-strategy. Not a single word was written on the countless sheets of white paper, but their silence loudly defied state tools of repression.

Protesting with provocative silence, like holding a white paper, is not unique to China. Following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian streets were swept by antiwar protests. In March 2022, the Russian Federation parliament passed a law that criminalizes the spread of “fake information” about the Russian army and forbids referring to the invasion as war. The protestors with “no to war” signs became targets for arrests based on this law. As with the #A4Revolution, Russians came up with creative ways to express dissent against their authoritarian government. One woman, for example, held a paper saying dva slova (two words), gesturing to the forbidden slogan net voine (no to war), and other demonstrators just held blank paper, like their Chinese counterparts. These show what white paper can do as a symbol of civil resistance against authoritarian regimes around the world.

A four-panel comic. The first panel draws a huge red two-dimensional code on the floor, which is erased by a person in the second panel. The third panel leaves only the person standing on the floor. In the fourth panel, many people walk around with red traces of the code on them, symbolizing the lasting impact of the trauma caused by the zero-COVID policies that cannot be erased. This four-panel comic illustrates how even though the government may have tried to erase the visible signs of violence, the psychological scars on those who experienced it cannot be easily healed.

IMAGE CREDIT: NONENULLNAN
IMAGE CAPTION: luminol
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A four-panel comic. The first panel draws a huge red two-dimensional code on the floor, which is erased by a person in the second panel. The third panel leaves only the person standing on the floor. In the fourth panel, many people walk around with red traces of the code on them, symbolizing the lasting impact of the trauma caused by the zero-COVID policies that cannot be erased. This four-panel comic illustrates how even though the government may have tried to erase the visible signs of violence, the psychological scars on those who experienced it cannot be easily healed.

From Ghostly Public to Fragmented Solidarity 

Both in China and overseas, protestors shared a common challenge of not knowing what to chant. Without a singular rallying cry, blank white paper could be used to obscure dissonant claims or internal rivalries within the movement. While some simply held up blank sheets of paper in silence, others cursed Xi Jinping and called for his removal. Fearing that such explicit words would give the police an excuse to enact suppression, many insisted on a more practical demand to end the zero-COVID policies and return to a normal life. Meanwhile, the national anthem sounded at some of the rallies, which was intended to strengthen solidarity, but also provoked mixed reactions. Some non-mainlanders who originally came to show support left the rally as soon as they heard it out of distaste for such nationalistic symbols. Beyond holding up blank paper, it was a challenge for protesters from different groups to identify any other code or symbol upon which to build connections.

The disputes over symbols, slogans, and language on-site and after the protests reflected the varied agendas within the #A4Revolution. This revolution became a reincarnation of public grievances and a gathering of revenants, including the suppressed protestors of Hong Kong’s anti-extradition movement, the Uyghurs and Tibetan victims of anti-religious policies, and feminists and young dissidents in exile. The mishmash of revenants infused the superficial solidarity with implicit fragility, which reflects the precarious conditions of civil disobedience and the limits of public protest under authoritarian rule. 

Although the vast majority of the dead and injured in the fire that triggered the #A4 Revolution were Uyghurs, some of whose families had been imprisoned in the government-run “re-education camps” or exiled overseas, the protests everywhere were dominated by Chinese-chanted slogans centered on the demands of urban Han people. One anonymous Han Chinese woman criticized this for overlooking the structural violence imposed on the Uyghur community by the Chinese state. At the vigils in two cities in the United States that some of us attended, young women spoke out against the misogynistic words that some male participants used to curse Xi Jinping and the CCP. They preferred chanting slogans such as “End Patriarchy” and “End Police Violence.” However, when such gendered frictions and disparities were pointed out in online group chats after the rally, they were dismissed by some people as “overly sensitive.” Ironically, while many women’s complaints were met with contempt, they made up the majority of those arrested and unexpectedly became the iconic symbol of this revolution.

After the Revolution

In December 2022, shortly after the rise of the #A4Revolution, the Chinese government rolled back its stringent zero-COVID policies. But it is debatable whether this was a gesture of surrender to the white paper protesters. In the aftermath of the #A4Revolution, the police continued to arrest those who were presumed to have participated in the #A4Revolution. Several female participants in vigils in Beijing were detained for about four months. The ghostly publics of the A4 movements and their temporary solidarity seemed to have dissipated, or so we thought—until a female protester suggested otherwise. With difficulty, she delivered a message from the detention center:

“Even though they made us feel like we were betraying each other during the interrogation, I still believe that we are in solidarity. On New Year’s Eve, A, B and I [all arrested protestors] had a concert through the doors of the prison, singing songs together . . . and we will join you again, start preparing.”

This message has circulated anonymously on encrypted social media platforms. It has inspired a renewed belief in the significance of resistance and the potential for solidarity. “A specter is always a revenant,” and the ghostly publics of the A4 movements will continue to haunt the future.

Some participants of the White Paper Movements made cards in solidarity with the girls in detention, with their faces drawn and names written, as well as the words “Release Our Friends.”

CREDIT: @ANOSARTOR
IMAGE CAPTION: Girls in detention.
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Some participants of the White Paper Movements made cards in solidarity with the girls in detention, with their faces drawn and names written, as well as the words “Release Our Friends.”

Acknowledgments

We want to thank Anastasiya Miazhevich for sharing her observation of the anti-war protests in Russia as a comparative perspective. We also want to thank the two editors Jieun Cho and Aaron Su for their generous feedback and editorial work.

Jieun Cho and Aaron Su are contributing editors for the SEAA section in Anthropology News. This piece is part of the SEAA series “The Future of the ‘Public’ in East Asia.” Contact them at jieun.cho@duke.edu and aaronsu@princeton.edu.

Youth, Disaster, and Collective Mourning in South Korea

December 13, 2023 by Aaron Su

Society for East Asian Anthropology
By Shinjung Nam
October 12, 2023

Following the 2022 Halloween crush disaster in Seoul, South Koreans gather to remember the young victims and the nation’s history of human-made disasters and formations of publics in furious mourning.

On the eve of December 16, 2022, thousands of people filled the main street of Itaewon, a former US camp town in Seoul, South Korea. My husband and I were standing among the assembled, feeling the temperature drop far below the freezing point as gusts of wind rushed through town. The town has a long history of foreign military occupation, transnational exchange of goods and fashion, and festivities that, like Halloween, inspire creative self-expression in public and a sense of belonging among young people. We were gathered in memory of those who were crushed to death on the night of October 29, 2022, in a narrow alley that shoots off of the one on which we were standing; 152 were injured, 159 died, including a teenage survivor who committed suicide. Most of the crowd crush victims were in their teens and 20s, out with friends on Halloween weekend. December 16 marked the 49th day of mourning for the lives lost—a day believed to be the last day spent by the spirits of the dead among the living before their final departure to the yonder. Throughout the history of contemporary South Korea, collective mourning in the streets for the wrongful deaths of youths has been central to the social and spatial materialization of publics, that is, assemblies of stranger-others woken to the reality of their common fate as citizens subject to state violence. Earlier on the morning of December 16, select family members of the crush victims had held a memorial service at a Buddhist temple, just north of Itaewon. The ritual had come to an end by burning the name tags of the lost in a metal pit amid the sounds of cries, bells, and monks chanting. About 300 of the family members then relocated to Itaewon, wrapped in red scarves to symbolize the blood of their kin to continue the memorial service among thousands of other citizens in the main street of the town. When the clock hit 6:34 p.m.—the officially recorded time of the first emergency call made to the local police on the eve of the disaster warning of possible crush deaths—the crowd closed their eyes, lowering their heads in silence. On the screen set up at the head of the assembly appeared the words of the caller, her urgent voice ringing through town, followed by the victims’ names, their portraits, and messages of longing from their families and friends.

Up until the 49th day of mourning, people had to gather for weeks before a faceless and nameless altar set up by the South Korean government in front of the city hall in Seoul. The current administration, under Yoon Suk-Yeol, withheld the backgrounds of the victims from being publicized in the news media, making it difficult for the bereaved families to contact one another. The initial footage of the victims—lying side by side on the streets of Itaewon covered in white sheets—had evoked in me much older photos from the 1980s of youths murdered by the state under military dictatorship. While interrogation, torture, and murder of youth protesters by police had become a thing of the past in South Korea, the mass loss of young people continues as they fall victim to human-made disasters in the most ordinary spaces in their everyday lives.

But the Itaewon crush also brought back memories of another recent disaster that took hundreds of lives of young people. In mid-April 2014, a ferry capsized near the southwest coast of South Korea, drowning 304 people, including 250 high school students on a field trip. As the search and rescue was prolonged amid a lack of government response, the entire country watched innocent youths disappear into the abyss, broadcast real-time on television and on YouTube. Realizing how easily the lives of youths could be forsaken in a neoliberal democracy, without guns or tear gas, people gathered across the country to mourn for the victims who had been left to die at sea. In the aftermath of the 2022 crush disaster, publics formed again to collectively remember the victims’ names, faces, and histories.

A large crowd of citizens and the family members of young crush disaster victims gather in front of the Seoul City Hall building to set up an altar for the dead on the 100th day of mourning.

The family members and their supporters stand on guard as the police readies to remove the altar from the site any moment. (CREDIT: SHINJUNG NAM)

South Koreans’ collective mourning for the young victims of state violence and human-made disasters has been long shaped by their experience of becoming witnesses. Mourners would stand in the streets, hear the names of the victims called out loud, one after the other, see their faces enlarged on screens, and shout, “The state was absent!” The assembled would bear witness to not only the fact that the lives taken away had once fully existed but also the very experience of collective mourning. Such an experience of becoming witnesses is crucial to revitalizing a public that embraces the pain of others and its roots in their shared fate of being citizens responsible for the democratically elected government and its actions.

The South Korean public’s rage has only intensified since their recognition of the government’s undeniable role in the unfolding of the crush disaster. The Yoon administration had set the large gathering of the youths at Itaewon on the weekend of Halloween celebration as a stage for what. Yoon had called “a war on drugs,” replacing the crowd control police, once regularly dispatched to the town on such festive occasions, with police officers dressed in plainclothes for their undercover operation against drug trafficking and drug use. This “war on drugs” was engineered as a key strategy for empowering the authority of the former prosecutor-turned-politicians now heading the government and for legitimating their monopoly on executive powers. And the strategy has pivoted around the criminalization of innocent youths and their occupation of the street space.

Mourning to Remember

Now occupying the main street of Itaewon that had once invited young visitors was a public in furious mourning. “Memory has such strength,” said Ms. Choi Sun-Hwa, mother of one of the high school students lost at sea in 2014, as she stood on stage on December 16, 2022, wearing a yellow scarf around her neck, facing the family members of the crush victims who sat in the audience wrapped in red scarves. For months, makeshift spaces for commemorating the ferry disaster victims had filled public spaces across South Korean cities with yellow memorabilia symbolizing the youths left to drown just when their lives were about to bloom like the forsythia of spring (Kim 2018). The main street of Itaewon now cried red and yellow.

Joined by the choir group formed in memory of the ferry disaster victims, Ms. Choi began to sing “We Won’t Forget,” promising so to the victims of the crush disaster.

We will remember, surely and everything, so not one of you feels alone.

Such were the words of promise that had brought hundreds of thousands out into the streets, awakening a public powerful enough to charge the country’s legislative bodies with an exigent sense of duty to push through the country’s first ever impeachment process in 2017. The successful impeachment of President Park Kun-Hae (2013–2017) did not stop people from remembering the loss and their duty to remember. I still regularly spot yellow stickers on the backs of people’s cellphones or yellow ribbons hanging on people’s backpacks when traveling on public transportation. Ms. Kim Sunny, whom I have known for years, is no exception.

An assortment of yellow memorabilia is laid out on a white desktop—from simple ribbon-shaped pendants to round badges of varying sizes, on all of which are written, “We are sorry, We won’t forget you.”

These memorabilia belong to Ms. Sunny Kim, a long-time interviewee of the author, who has matched each of them with one of her daily objects, including her handbags and her cellphone case. (CREDIT: MS. SUNNY KIM)

“The song was specifically written for the ferry disaster victims in 2014 by Yoon Min-Suk,” my husband whispered into my ear. He remembered Yoon Min-Suk from his college days in the mid-1980s, when the artist first started writing songs for an underground cultural movement organized as part of the student activism against the military dictatorship. The song’s promise to remember has now been stretched to address the victims of the crush disaster. Those who were young adults in the tumultuous years of the 1980s, including Ms. Kim and my husband, came of age by bearing witness to the murders of youths under the military dictatorship (Lee 2009). Adopted new roles as parents, this generation now sees their children living in an era of the state’s dereliction and abuse of power. Publics in South Korea are constituted through this chain of collective mourning, where memories of the wrongfully dead youths get interwoven across generations through colorful mantras, objects, shapes, and lyrics. This mode of coexistence has persisted against and through times of collective upheavals. Their memories of the victims and of mourning together while embodying a public resistant to forgetting and forsaking the country’s youth dwell in the most ordinary spaces, shapes, and sounds—from all things yellow and red, to the very word “memory”—beyond the spectacular moments of such a public’s materialization in space.

Bouquets of fading white and yellow chrysanthemums and a poster biding its readers to remember the young victims line up the wall along one side of the alley.

In the photograph taken on the 49th day of mourning, the poster reads, “Please, remember us.” (CREDIT: SHINJUNG NAM)

Shinjung Nam is a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Center for Liberal Arts & Basic Education at Sungkyunkwan University. She received her PhD in anthropology from Princeton University.

Nam, Shinjung. 2023. “Youth, Disaster, and Collective Mourning in South Korea.” Anthropology News website, December 12, 2023.