Fuck Chineseness: On the Ambiguities of Ethnicity as Culture as Identity

that its population constitutes one-quarter of humanity. Something so well entrenched demographically, territorially, politically, and historically should be anything but an uncertain entity. It is easy, thus, to identify something called Chinese culture and society. Its political presence in the modern world system is incontestable, and the amount of intellectual discourse devoted to the study of continues to fill libraries. In short, there is much to suggest that the very idea of is an unambiguous or unquestionable entity. But what is so unambiguous about that makes it an unquestioned object of gazing? What is the nature of Chineseness, and who are the Chinese? Finally, who is really speaking here? Something called China unquestionably exists, but, more importantly, there is a multitude of expressions to denote different aspects of and Chineseness. While the Western term for appears to ac-