Creating and Negotiating "Chineseness" Through Chinese Restaurants in Santiago, Chile

Chinese restaurants, like Chinatowns, can create a restrictive delineation of space, evoking a narrowly conceived cultural tradition. They may also challenge understandings of Chineseness by repackaging “Chinese food” or aesthetics. This chapter examines the dynamic ways in which “Chineseness” and contemporary Chinese identities are being articulated and contested in Chinese restaurants of Santiago, Chile, in dialogue with historic representations and perceptions of Chinese persons in Chilean cultural media. Through participant observation of Chinese restaurants in Santiago, semi-structured interviews, and follow-up informal conversations with 20 ethnic Chinese women, men, and youths working in these restaurants, we interrogate how ethnic Chinese persons and their families in Chile reproduce and/or subvert enduring and changing representations of Chinese persons and businesses. Employing a discursive approach to Chineseness and focusing on Chinese restaurants, their histories, and actors within them, we investigate how Chineseness operates in practice, including how self-identified ethnic Chinese persons articulate their subjectivities —such as through presenting food and talking about tastes—vis-à-vis other Chinese or Chilean persons. This chapter thus sheds light on the relevance of ethnicity, nationality, and cultural and financial capital in the power dynamics of reproducing or contesting meanings and practices associated with Chineseness or being Chinese in Chile, while simultaneously showing how social imaginaries of Chineseness are shaped by their (dis)connection with the local community and their histories, politics, social identities, and transnational networks.