Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A History of the Chinese Diaspora (Kodansha Globe) - Softcover

Pan, Lynn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1568360320 ISBN 13: 9781568360324

Publisher: Kodansha USA, 1994

Synopsis

THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S GREATIEST CONTINUING MIGRATION

The Chinese Diaspora stretches all over the world. It represents the most widespread and prolonged series of migrations by one nation ever. Chinese emigrants have been tycoons in Hong Kong and America, coolies in Peru and South Africa, underworld gangsters in San Francisco and Bangkok. Today, whether as near-slave laborers on illicit planes and freighters, or as bankers and traders from a world network of high finance, the Chinese are on the move as much as ever.

In this rich blend of history, biography, and travel, noted author Lynn Pan recounts why emigrants have left China; how their dispersal has been shaped and stimulated by imperialist Western powers; and how the all-male frontier groups were transformed into complex communities organized by clan, dialect, and secret society. In the process, she takes us inside the supposedly closed world of the overseas Chinese and shows how, in a curious boomerang effect, these expatriates are currently changing the supposedly eternal face of China-perhaps forever. A new afterword by the author comments on the ironies that result when multiculturalism and emigrant culture meet head-on.

About this title

About the Author:

LYNN PAN, raised in Shanghai, Borneo, and England, now lives in Hong Kong. She is also the author of Tracing it Home (Kodansha America, 1993)

From Publishers Weekly:

Population explosion, poverty and corruption have driven millions of Chinese from their homeland. Emigration, persistent since the 1600s, reached a floodtide in the second half of the 19th century. Chinese cut sugar in Hawaii, worked mines in the Transvaal, built Madagascar's first roads and Manila's finest churches and hospitals. Pan, a Shanghai-born writer based in Hong Kong and England, writes with exceptional skill and clarity about a vast, complex subject. The wave of anti-Chinese hysteria in San Francisco after the boom days was not untypical of the discrimination and cruelties the Chinese faced. Pan explores Chinatowns from New York to Bangkok and discusses intermarriage, triads (secret societies), Chinese food. She paints the Chinese immigrant experience as a human drama in this moving, inspirational account of one group's survival and success. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kodansha USA
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1568360320
• ISBN 13: 9781568360324
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432