Performing Chineseness: Gambling and the Non-Linguistic Connectivity in Overseas Chinese Communities

• In Event: Gaming Rounds the World: The Worldwide Circulation of Chinese Gambling Games in the Long 20th Century

Abstract

When considered as a transnational phenomenon, gambling has been seen by previous research to be solely concerned with economic competition. This paper challenges that stereotype and attempts to discover the unseen history of gambling with emphasis on its non-economic motivation, experiences, and consequences: sometimes the money is just left behind. Based upon extensive records of Chinese migrants’ journals and interviews, various accounts and reports on Chinatowns in North America, novels and poems, as well as actual gambling-related tools and objects, this paper traces two inter-related studies of overseas Chinese communities. First, the case of the “white pigeon” lottery ticket in the late nineteenth century will be explored. The Chinese Exclusive Act, which was passed in 1882, prohibited Chinese migrant workers from being naturalized as citizens and bringing their families to America. Many workers turned to the “white pigeon” lottery, which was operated in the China proper, as a way to maintain connections to their homeland. Second, this paper will analyze the friendship and memories created at the Mahjong tables among newly migrated Chinese women after WWII, when the Chinese Exclusive Act was revoked. Mahjong allowed migrants to network in and outside of their community and bridge generational gaps. In both cases, gambling performed “Chineseness.” The gambling experiences were repeatable in different contexts, despite being altered during re-contextualization. There was also a wealth of non-linguistic cultural continuities expressed in accounts of overseas gambling activities. This non-linguistic connectivity functioned both vertically (across generations) and horizontally (cross-culturally). Gambling, as a diasporic play, created a community imagined on a scale more modest than that of a nation, yet more inclusive, and portable.

Author

• En Li, Washington University in St. Louis