Chinese Latinos and an Imagined Latin America: Transpacific Family, Identity, Culture, and Memory in Hong Kong, Macau, and Southern China

Abstract Based on oral histories and archival research in Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangzhou, this article focuses on identity and cultural formation among the descendants of overseas Chinese men and Latin American women. Some of the children and grandchildren of Chinese men and their wives in the diaspora have adopted Latin American identities even when they have never been to the region. While Chinese Latinos have created hybrid linguistic, cultural, and religious expressions, notions of Latin America have been central. Considering the myriad ways people have taken up Latin Americanness and integrated it into their mixed identities in Macau, Hong Kong, and southern China, this work explores what these experiences can tell us about the Chinese diaspora, return overseas migration, and the idea of “Latin America,” showing how Chinese Latino transnational families add to and complicate our understanding of the Latin American Chinese diaspora as well as southern China as a borderlands and contact zone.