Negotiating new cultured identities through stylizing <i>Wenyan</i>: the case of young Chinese in China and the Netherlands

Abstract This article focuses on cultured identity construction via linguistic stylization among young domestic and external Chinese migrants. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Beijing, China and the Netherlands, this study contends that self-defined Hanfu fans stylize the classical Wenyan register to invoke and align with a persona who is a member of the socioculturally recognizable Chinese literati. During this process, the use of the Wenyan register embodies the higher-order meanings of “cultured,” “elegant,” and distinctly “Chinese,” while Hanfu carries the indexical significance of a cultured distinction, distinguishing educated people, who are expected to be familiar with it, from those who are less educated. Hanfu fans appropriate these cultured attributes to construct a Cainv (lit. ‘talented woman’) identity in the Chinese context but a cultured Chinese identity in the Dutch context. These identities render them distinct from other migrants, thereby linking the cultured attribute to a new migratory identity. Linguistic stylization and the pursuit of a cultured identity are ingrained within the mainstream narrative in China while at the same time transnationally reflecting the efforts of young Chinese to resist the marginalizing stereotypes of Chinese migrants.