Do you know who you are and what makes your identity as a group of similar people? A group of people is usually identified by its culture, arts, history, architecture, habits, food and dialect etc.. Therefore even after a hundred years or more, history accounts for the identity of a group of similar people by its locally produced arts and culture, for example. As overseas Chinese , Korean, Vietnamese,.... there are huge groups of similar people overseas away from Asia, my question is do you contribute to your own cultural heritage overseas? What I mean is that, say, there are 1 million Chinese in Los Angeles or 1 million in France, what makes each group different in character, say the Chinese in Los Angeles that is different to the Chinese in Paris (same goes for Vietnamese in Los Angeles and Vietnamese in Paris or Korean etc..)? How much do you contribute to the creation of local Chinese (Vietnamese, Korean..) arts and culture? Or do you think it is a waste of time, we don't need art and cultural heritage overseas as all the art and culture are produced by the mother country? To make things simple to estimate for size contribution I am going to measure it by the amount of money spend in locally produced music, art, fashion, jewelery, paintings and film production (which is a good measure of cultural legacy). Say, if you live in Los Angeles how much money do you spend in these objects that are produced by local Chinese artists, especially those overseas Chinese who grew up locally or even born there (do not count the money that you spent on imported music, art, jewellery.... from Hong Kong, Taiwan or China). For example in the above voting options:- if you spend in one year US$1000 in Los Angeles on Chinese American produced music, paintings, jewelry and you earn US$50,000 net income then you select 2%. If you are a student and you do not have a salary income then do this calculation for your parents if they live in Los Angeles. Please select your option frankly. The main reason for knowing the results is for this: having been overseas for decades I come across ethnic artists who are second generation abroad, or even third or more generation. ONE STATEMENT that they always make to me is this: my customers are not Chinese because they buy Chinese things back home and they don't support locally produced art. For example: today I came across this really great painter who paints in a particular style of painting and he told me that all his customers are westerners and not Chinese. This is a man who is brought up locally overseas and is creating a cultural identity for the Chinese overseas and his contribution to the identity of the overseas Chinese IS NOT VALUED at all by the same group of people who are similar to him! Therefore when there are 1 million overseas Chinese in a locality, for example, this 1 million worth of civilisation has little art to show for it! In the future, in my example of paintings, archaeologist will do some digging and find that there is little demonstration art from this 1 million civilised people! In the above poll voting options "locally produced art" = fashion, paintings, sculptures, jewelry, music, films etc. that are produced by the overseas ethnic group to which you associate with or belong to overseas.
This is not a formal research. This is just to stimulate some thoughts and to get a fast poll of results as to whether overseas Chinese value the arts produced by locally home grown artists that are brought up overseas, especially when they produce chinese styles of art with fusion of western ideas. They advance the overseas culture for us all abroad, as they are representatives of our collective aspirations as part of as emigrants in the new world.
