A Chinese-Portuguese connection?
“In one way, I’ve never strayed far from home in my studies—the only ‘fieldwork’ I’ve ever done has been in my own hometown of Macau. I have a PhD in modern and contemporary Chinese literature and I wrote my doctoral thesis on the literature of Macau during the 1980s-1990s. Until 1999, Macau was a Portuguese colony; it is now a Special Administrative Region of China.

While things have changed somewhat in recent years because of the casino boom there, Macau remains relatively unknown outside of the region. Even more unknown is Macau literature, which only really began to emerge in the 1980s. In my thesis, I argue that Macau literature has made use of cultural and politico-economic marginality in order to navigate its peripheral position in a newly reintegrated Chinese nation. As a small literary field, Macau literature has had to develop marginality to its own advantage, coming up with innovative ways with which to productively engage with the past colonial narrative as well as find its place within the future postcolonial moment.

So, while my research site is ‘home’, it is also a bit more complicated than that. As with many of our students here at International Studies, I grew up far from the country of my birth (Portugal), so ‘home’ is a bit of an ambivalent concept. Although home is a tiny peninsula along the South China Sea, it is also a home in which I am very much an ‘other’, both ethnically and linguistically. Because my childhood coincided with the last few years of Portuguese colonialism in Macau, my home was one in which I was part of a very small, privileged minority.

On being an insider and an outsider
I suppose it was these facts that first drew me to the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from Macau, a topic I thought I knew well by virtue of sharing a hometown with its authors. So it would come as a series of gradual surprises to me to discover, as my research progressed, that this was not exactly the case. Although I’d grown up critical of the colonial society around me, and I spoke decent Cantonese (the local Chinese dialect), this, of course, did not mean that my reality was immediately the same as that of the city’s many authors. Home, I slowly realized, could be a different experience for its many locals.

In going back to study my hometown, and especially its Chinese-language literature, I had to accept my double status as both insider and outsider. I was, of course, a local, and had some thoughts about my research topic (plus as a local I knew all the good spots for food—well, at least the ones that had remained the same since my childhood), but I also tried to embrace my role as an outsider—not only as a foreigner, but now as a researcher. The combination turned out to be fruitful: as an insider I already had an extensive network of people I could draw on, but as an outsider, I could permit myself to ask research questions that as an insider I might otherwise not even think of asking.

Taking fieldwork beyond the library
Importantly, accepting my status as an outsider also reminded me to listen to what others were saying. As a literary scholar, most of my research consists in reading books in libraries. This means that I don’t do fieldwork in the sense that, for instance, a social scientist might. That said, throughout my studies I’ve always thought it was important to spend as much time in the place I was studying as I could, so I can say that I’ve been doing some sort of fieldwork in one way or another, for the nearly two decades since I started my academic journey. During my research trips to Macau, besides spending my days in the libraries, I also tried to talk to as many people as I could. Essentially, I was interested in speaking to novelists and poets—often people whose works I’d been reading—but also to a variety of people who worked with culture in some way—musicians, film-makers, university professors, and even government officials in the cultural and educational fields. Some of these conversations were more structured (some were actual interviews), but mostly I wanted to hear about people’s experiences about the literary and cultural field, and to test out some ideas I’d been developing alone in my long hours of reading.

My advice to students in humanities
My first piece of advice to young researchers in the humanities is do your reading, formulate your ideas, but don’t forget to come up for air every once in a while. Speak to people both inside and outside of your field, share what you’ve written or thought about so far, and ask: “What do you think? Does this make sense to you?”

And second, remember that you don’t actually have to go abroad to gain ‘international and intercultural skills’. Of course, if you can, then that’s excellent and you should do it, but don’t overlook the possibilities in front of you right here in The Hague. At International Studies, regardless of your nationality, you are all ‘studying abroad’ in one way or another, enjoying the benefits and challenges of a hugely diverse undergraduate program in a language in which most of you are not native, and located in a country that is itself incredibly diverse and linguistically rich. So my suggestion would be to take all the advice we usually hear about studying abroad (i.e. don’t be afraid to something new, listen to people and try to understand their perspectives, etc.) and also apply it to your life here. I suspect that whether you were born here or you have just recently chosen to make this country your home, even if for only a few years, perhaps you’ll come to agree with me that ‘home’ is a rich and varied experience, and that we all have something to learn from those with whom we share it.

Rosa Vieira de Almeida's university profile page can be found here.