Remaking a Global Cantonese Community with Television and Social Media
Simin Li
Vernon Press: 2024
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Simin Li’s Remaking a Global Cantonese Community with Television and Social Media reminds us that assertions about the singularity of Chinese culture and politics belie the pluralism and diversity of the Sinophone tradition. Although modernist state-building projects in China and elsewhere have created a strong impression of a North China-derived orthodoxy, the variety of languages and practices that constitute the broad Sinophone constellation is still part of the lived experience of many people across the world.

The Sinosphere consists of knowledge and cultural production and practices that draw from traditions and languages derived from places and peoples in China, loosely construed. There’s no requirement for them to be based in some Chinese polity or state. This parallels cultural and knowledge production in languages such as English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. Anglophone literature can, for example, be from and solely about the Caribbean, just as Francophone work can come out of West Africa or Québec.

• Tags: China, Chong Ja Ian, Issue 39, Simin Li