Empire, Culture and Customs: Imperial Chinese Consuls in Singapore and Mahua Literature

In the late 19th century, the Qing government set up consulates in Singapore and dispatched consuls, a precedent in the history of diplomacy that recognized the significance of overseas Chinese communities. The consuls represented the dispersal of the literati class and the dissemination of culture; more importantly, their arrival in Singapore, coupled with their cultural undertakings and literary works, gave shape to early Mahua literature. In this paper, I pay particular attention to two distinguished Chinese consuls in Singapore: Zuo Binlong (1850-1924) and his successor Huang Zunxian (1848-1905). I attempt to delineate the ways these consuls change and reshape the literary landscape of Mahua literature. To that end, I examine these consuls’ cultural undertakings, which enriched culture and envigorated literary activities in Singapore at that time, and their literary works, which portray the experience of overseas Chinese.
The following two sets of questions will be addressed in this paper:
(1) The consuls were representative of the Chinese empire at the fore of interaction with western colonial powers, and situated within the exotic landscape and cultural imagination established by early Chinese emigrants. How do these conditions combine to transform the consuls’ literary practice and cultural mission? Furthermore, how do these consuls, through promotion of imperial awareness and establishment of social-literary traditions, shape a literary space in which the lived experience of overseas Chinese, local awareness and cultural dissemination can be portrayed?
The consuls composed a considerable amount of Han poetry. In what form and conception do these literary writings document lived experience in the colony and reflect local customs and lives of overseas Chinese? How do such literary works, incorporating the history of overseas Chinese into the terrain of Han poetry, expand and reshape the official-travel writing tradition—and mark a starting point of Mahua literature?