The order of empire became the reference point of modernity, the empire was recognized as universally homogeneous, and other colonies were named and reproduced as heterogeneous realms. 'Asia' has become internalized others, Westerners, and has developed to form the present. For example, in response to the question whose point of view is the image of Asia reproduced as “Asian beauty,” it is often originated from the point of view of the West (re-Westernization through Japan), that is, the empire. Asia reproduced through the gaze of others in the modern era, and modernity reproduced by internalized others, made the present appearance over time. This article begins with a curiosity about how Asia was embodied, no matter arbitrarily or unintentionally, from a heterogeneous, but universal, and homogeneous perspective.
The method of appropriating 'modernity', an external shock, is inevitably different for each country in 'Asia', and the various localities of Asia, which are not interpreted only as one-country history, are transnational from a transnational perspective beyond the boundaries of history. In particular, Singapore-Hong Kong-Taiwan tends to be re-filtered as a national-ethnic discourse under the name of 'Greater China', once again from the perspective of 'China'. However, these regions are faithfully drawing new territories within the national-nation paradigm and at the same time beyond national boundaries (transnational). Not just spatially, but ontologically, aesthetically, and politically. Therefore, I would like to examine the process of internalization of modernity forced by others in Asia and how colonists were formed in the process through the Singapore magazine <The Straits Chinese Magazine> (1897).