ROOTS (根) AND PATTERNS OF CHINESE MIGRATION

When dealing with Chinese migration, we often encounter terms such as guigen (归根), shenggen (生根), shigen (失根), wugen (无根), and duogen (多根). The key term, gen (根—translated as “roots”), carries multiple meanings. It can be understood as home, citizenship (as in nationality), ethnicity, local language and culture, or local traditions and society. Each of the terms indicates the varying degrees to which these migrants relate to their roots, and can be used to describe the different phases of Chinese migration in Southeast Asia.

The first, guigen (归根), describes migrants who retain their original language and culture during their overseas stay. These migrants and/or their immediate descendants do not sink roots in their host countries and instead look forward to their return to China. This is also commonly known as luoye guigen (落叶归根) or yeluo guigen (叶落归根), which translates to “falling leaves return to their roots.”

Those migrants who end up adopting local nationality and considering the host country as their homeland can be described as shenggen (生根) or luodi shenggen (落地生根), which means “to settle down and take local roots”.

Some learn the local language and culture and intermarry with local women, often losing their original language and traditions along the way. These migrants and their immediate descendants gain local roots (shenggen) and lose their China-oriented roots, a process we may call shigen. This process may take over two generations, as argued by G. William Skinner in his study of Chinese migrants in Thailand.

The last two terms—wugen (无根, without roots) and duogen (多根, many roots)—can be used to characterize xinyimin (新移民) or new Chinese migrants at the end of the twentieth century and the turn of the twenty-first century. With easy transportation and means of communication, migrants in recent decades have had a tendency not to stay in their host countries permanently. They neither sink their roots into local society nor fall into the earlier patterns of luoye guigen.