Learning to orient toward Myanmar: ethnic Chinese students from Myanmar at a university in China

ABSTRACT Based on a larger ethnography (Li, 2017. Social Reproduction and Migrant Education: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Burmese Students’ Learning Experiences at a Border High School in China. (PhD), Macquarie University. http://www.languageonthemove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/LI_Jia_Social_reproduction_and_migrant_education.pdf) and focusing on 14 international students from Myanmar but of Yunnan origin, this paper aims to offer a nuanced account of their perspectives, learning experiences and trajectories during their Putonghua-medium degree programs at a Chinese university, and to shed light on the complex interplay of language, culture and state that international students experience in China and beyond. Informed by the concepts of linguistic nationalism and banal nationalism, the study examines how, while many of them had self-identified as ‘Chinese’ and aspired to study in their imagined ancestral homeland, their lack of legitimate forms of speaking and writing Putonghua and Chinese citizenship challenged their sense of authentic Chineseness and negatively impacted their academic attainment. We also analyse how the university essentialised Myanmar cultural and linguistic practices, and gradually oriented them to identify Myanmar as their (f)actual ‘homeland’ instead. We argue that the PRC government values other national languages as resources in global market and takes a reciprocal approach in promoting Putonghua. However, complicated by linguistic and cultural essentialisation in discourse and practice, this approach in effect may reproduce the linguistic hierarchy between standard/ national language(s) and other linguistic varieties already exists in China and beyond.