The banana [re]public: A study of trans/national popular culture consumption among young Chinese living in the Netherlands

Public discourses on the Dutch ‘multicultural drama’ have consistently omitted the Chinese. While other ethnic minorities, particularly the younger generations, continue to be framed and visualized in Dutch society as a problem, the young Chinese remain largely invisible, hidden by the dominant Dutch imagery of ethnic minorities as problematic. Such invisibility may suggest they have become so integrated that they are simply indistinguishable from their fellow Dutch youth. Indeed, some members of older generations of Chinese occasionally call their children with a mixture of cynicism, (self-)accusation and lament ‘bananas’, yellow outside, white inside. But then, if their invisibility implies seamless integration and total assumption of Dutch identity, a key arena of their everyday lives suggests otherwise: trans/national popular culture.