This article is an external collaboration by Susana Ye, poet, independent documentalist and journalist.
The documentary ‘Chiñoles y Bananas’, that I produced in 2015, has just been updated with subtitles in various languages, like Chinese. This work is completely self-funded, meaning: it has not received any economical help, public or private, micro sponsors, associates’ funds or alternative platform or any other format. Outside of the cinema circuit and even the humanitarian film circuit, the project has however gained its place among academics and researchers of many disciplines in and outside Spain. Now, given its 10 years anniversary, its content gets revisited from a narrative, living experience1.
I have always been asked how I managed to tackle this issue. The real question is how nobody else though about it before shedding light on the topic in the way it rightfully deserved: with responsibility and real implication towards its subjects.
Carla and Yvette del Olmo, sisters, David Lopun and David Lei, one in Alicante and the other in Madrid, Silvia Lai and Quan Zhou, one barely getting started and the other already having a professional career deeply specialized in Asian identity in Spain, Yong Pin and Yenyun, one an extrovert, the other more introspective, Luis Sheng and Kangyun Xiao, sensitive and reflecting. They are those who, in front of the camara, manage to forget that they are being recorded, feeding from sincerity and some vulnerability on what it means to be children of Chinese migrants in Spain in that 2015 where nobody, not in the media or in the academia, had an interest on what was considered a minor issue. A minority issue. A subtopic. A very specific, poorly systematized niche that lacked method and had enough subjectivity. However, it was consulted, used as a reference, a brief quote, in posterior works both in the media or essays, and that is why, 10 years later, the topic is brought up again, but now to highlight that time is wiser than prejudice and bias.
Part of its participants come again at their back-then self, facing the beginning of an adult life and share in 2025, a decade later, who they are now, how they identify now, against how they did back then, but also regarding the future. This resource, a little secret in secret movement as the base of other careers and trajectories, is lived again to have something to say today: what does multiculturality mean when their protagonists, often subjects under scrutiny, when beyond diplomas and official positions in government, have the space and time to discuss multiculturality? What speech do they adopt and what does multilingualism mean in their homes? In 2015 these topics were already being discussed. In 2025, they are continued with the same tenderness and respect towards those who discuss it, people normally silenced, ignored, or those whose voice is seen as an anecdote, a minor note in the theoretical context and full of references of self-called “serious works”.
‘Chiñoles y Bananas’ lives, in fact, in the poetry work ‘Trashumante en arenas movedizas’, 8 years after its registration as an intellectual work in Spain, in a sort of artistic-vital pirouette which, deep down, always sheds light on the same situation, but shifting the angle to get as close as possible to that elusive, true totality. While those from ten, seven, five years ago… would see the topic as who sees a freak or a curiosity showcase, leaving it to itself as a futile instant, I, her author, would insist that the quoted topic was not a time-space anomaly, but a fact and an unimaginable social reality, unquestioned and current.
But, why the use of the term self repairment at the beginning of this post? Because 10 years have gone by, the awareness of segregation and wrongly named microracism have advanced, on the account of some intellectual, counter cultural spaces, ‘Chiñoles y Bananas’ is, moderately, taken as a referent, but there is yet to be a broader, explicit and serious recognition towards this work. One of the detected issues regarding this debate is the use of the terms ‘chiñol’ and ‘banana’, as they are seen as not rigorous or exact and, even, colloquial. Not rigorous, precisely, towards a claim that needs to be as institutional as possible. However, standardizing and demanding how every person should identify is too close to what needs to be fought: that identity is a political matter, always, but it is also personal, always. Another obstacle to the solid path, but in the shadow of the documentary there is a necessity to place one’s work as unique in its species, if only it is included to keep some coherence with the principle of diversity and inclusion, but in a way that, without disparaging her author and because it is open and without peer review, ends up left from the category of a serious, defining and contrasted work.
And, however, the term ‘chiñol’, even more than ‘banana’, is still alive and is being used by the very peoples that feel in between these two cultures, as part of these two cultures, and her very author, who writes this post, has been used in anonymous interviews to generously share her own unfiltered experience to doctorate researchers in East Asian identities. Never have I ever been able to read my own words in a research writing. Never have I ever been invited to present the documentary myself.
That is why I use the term self repairment: because during these 10 years us chiñoles and bananas have grown, made families and switched opinions and I, as an author, have learnt that intellectual extractivism is a prevalent evil not only in journalism, but also in research, multicultural environments and various disciplines.
This little work ‘Ten Years Later’, honoring the ‘Two Years Later’ by Agnès Varda that revisits her documentary ‘The gleaners and I’, not only marks an anniversary of the work made for and by those youngsters, including myself, searching for answers. It is also a claim that epistemic, intellectual justice shall not be put in other’s hands, but rather be done consistently and with an enormous compromise year after year, many years later, on the account as author who signs the work, but, even more importantly and with an elevated human beauty, on the account of those who are the vital authors, in form and content, then and now.
Not only has a roof been built in thar house that this documentary was, but it is called to broaden its foundations with subtitles in Chinese for the 1st generation, the parents and grandparents around the globe, besides the subtitles in English, German, Turkish, Portuguese and Catalan, and with Arabic, French and Tagalog in development. Everybody who reads, on the account of MIRCo, is invited to broaden the scope of available languages and to repair, even if at the wrong time, the reach and recognition of this work.
For many more years, to chiñoles and chiñolas and bananas.
- In case of consulting or using this resource, the most rigorous way to allow for the tracking of its impact formally and officially is by quoting it as follows: Ye Yin, Y. Y. (Susana yE) (September 22nd, 2015). Chiñoles y Bananas: habla la diáspora china en España. [Documentary]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7xuAIDk4CM
https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.34531.00802
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