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Home > JOURNAL > Vol. 3 (2014) > Number 1

 

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of the forced relocation of a Chinese Hakka village community on its social identity. The relocation into a “New Village”on the outskirts of Kuching was an official policy to counter communist insurgency in Sarawak in the 1960s. Their original dwellings are now abandoned but the temple remains. The community still returns to the temple as a place of worship and reverence. It has become an entity that draws the community together, and back to their village of origin. The link and identify with the past are negotiated through the presence of the temple. It is the temple and its symbolic significance that the community seeks affiliation to rather than to their ancestral village in China from which their forefathers had come. It has become a direct link to their rich historical past to which the community clings on to proudly.
This paper examines the reasons behind the role of the temple as an important unifying factor in community solidarity and preservation of historical continuity of the community. The discussion will focus on the action of the government and its social impact on their physical relocation and their spiritual “relocation” of their social past to a temple which stands as a testament to their beginning. Between the phenomenal action of relocation and the transcendental throwback to the past, the community seeks to preserve its links to its history and shared experiences in the old settlement and to remind itself of the painful process of being forced to relocate.

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