EL MUNDO DE CHEN PAN EN MONKEY HUNTING DE CRISTINA GARCÍA: CHINOS, AFRICANOS Y CRIOLLOS EN LA DIÁSPORA CUBANA

Por ello, lo vemos vestido como blanco en una escena en la novela, cuando pasea por las calles de La Habana: A chino like Chen Pan in a white linen suit and a Panama hat was something of a spectacle, like a talking monkey or a sheep in evening dress. The result of the transculturation and mestizaje (or race mixture) of Sinic cultures with those of both the Creole and the black African communities was an entirely new Sino-Cuban hybrid reality with its own idiosyncrasies and institutions (schools, churches, occupational guilds, political parties, newspaper, chambers of commerce, cemeteries, theaters, clan associations, hospitals, residences for the elderly), which challenged traditional assumptions of Chinese separatism. [...]Chinese were usually unable to marry, though some found wives in the black and mulatto communities" (135). La reconstrucción de su identidad china pasada es lo que Frank F. Scherer llama 'auto-orientalismo': This complex discursive practice, complete with Confucian ideas and certain capitalist aspirations, facilitates the articulations of difference conceived in ethnic and cultural terms by first- and second-generation Chinese Cubans and allows-at least in Cuba- for the opening of alternative spaces, where the construction of identities other than those prescribed by the Cuban state can take place.