Voices of Nanyang

Project Archive

Cai Boxuan / Escape Arts Club

Overview

Voices of Nanyang is a cross-regional cultural project that explores the dynamics of cultural circulation across South China and Southeast Asia. Initiated in Chaozhou (China) during the Lunar New Year of 2026, the project subsequently unfolded in Penang (Malaysia) and Singapore.

Through a combination of talks, publishing, exhibitions, and embodied movement, the project investigates how “Nanyang” — often understood as a historical or geographical concept — can be re-experienced as a lived, contemporary condition.

Rather than presenting “Nanyang” as an object of representation, the project adopts a practice-based approach, using spatial transitions and situated encounters to examine how culture is perceived, negotiated, and reconfigured across regions.

Background & Research Question

The Chaoshan region (including Chaozhou) is commonly perceived as a highly localized cultural entity. However, historically, it has been deeply embedded in transregional networks.

Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, large-scale migration from South China to Southeast Asia has shaped enduring social, linguistic, and economic connections across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. These connections have significantly influenced everyday life — from language and food to architecture and social organization.

Yet in contemporary discourse, such connections are often reduced to historical narratives and gradually “localized” or forgotten.

This project therefore begins with a central question:

If “Nanyang” is no longer perceived as a present condition, how might it still be sensed within everyday life?

Phase I: Chaozhou (February 2026)

Re-sensing Nanyang from the Local

The project was first realized in Chaozhou Old Town as a two-day public programme, structured around three interconnected components:

Talks

Addressing diaspora, language, and social structures:

Chen Jiani: The lived body and everyday soundscapes in Singapore
Xu Zhenhua: Minnan–Teochew relations through the lens of Medan Hokkien
Huang Xiadong: Extending Nanyang into the Indian Ocean via Mauritian music

Publishing

The launch and discussion of MonsoonFish, an independent publication project focusing on Chaoshan, Minnan, and the South China Sea as a cultural field.

Exhibition & Food

Nanyang Impressions photography exhibition (Singapore-based photographers)
Culinary explorations of satay and laksa as transregional taste pathways
Special drinks as forms of cultural translation

At this stage, the project sought to transform “Nanyang” from an abstract concept into a set of tangible, sensory experiences embedded in everyday life.

Phase II: Penang (February 2026)

Reframing China from Nanyang

Following Chaozhou, the project extended to Penang, where a dialogue was held at Ruang Kongsi (COEX), emerging organically from overlapping travel routes.

Here, language became a key analytical entry point.

Through personal and familial narratives, Xu Zhenhua traced the transformations of “Hokkien” across different spaces — from Medan (Indonesia) to Chinese Overseas Farms, and to Penang Hokkien. This linguistic trajectory reveals how migration reshapes language as a living, adaptive system.

This phase marked a critical shift:

China and Nanyang are not separate entities, but mutually constitutive through ongoing cultural circulation.

Identity, therefore, is not fixed but continuously negotiated through language, migration, and everyday practices.

Phase III: Singapore (March 2026)

Multiplicity within Structure

The project’s third phase unfolded in Singapore, a highly structured and institutionalized multicultural environment.

Compared to the historical layering of Chaozhou and the hybrid complexity of Penang, Singapore presents a re-organized and systematized form of plurality. Within this context, the project expanded through multiple thematic lenses:

Lingnan Rap & Local Language

Using contemporary rap music as an entry point, this segment examined how local dialects are reconfigured within digital media and popular culture. Through the work of rapper Lan Lao, it explored how Lingnan linguistic expressions articulate social experience and resonate across South China and Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia Railway Observations

Based on a transnational railway journey from Singapore through Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, and into Southwest China, this component documented shifts in language, food systems, and everyday life. “Region” was reinterpreted not as a fixed geography, but as a continuum of lived differences and connections.

MonsoonFish Publishing Practice

The ongoing development of MonsoonFish as a long-term publishing project. Through fieldwork, documentation, and writing, it seeks to assemble dispersed cultural experiences across Chaoshan, Minnan, and the South China Sea into a sustained knowledge platform.

Mobility as Method

As the project evolved, Voices of Nanyang transitioned from a site-specific event into a mobility-based research practice.

The movement across Chaozhou, Penang, and Singapore was not merely logistical, but methodological.

This approach can be summarized as:

From China to Nanyang → rediscovering overlooked external connections
From Nanyang to China → rethinking internal diversity and fragmentation
Through movement → reframing culture as relational and dynamic

In this framework, “region” is no longer a fixed unit, but a network of shifting relations.

Methodological Position

Rather than a comparative study, the project adopts a relational and mirrored perspective:

Nanyang becomes a lens to re-understand China
China becomes a lens to re-read Nanyang
Movement generates knowledge through embodied experience

This positions the project within a form of practice-based cultural research, where knowledge emerges through action, encounter, and spatial transition.