The Chinese Overseas

Description

"The Chinese overseas now number 25 to 30 million, yet the 2,000-year history of Chinese attempts to venture abroad and the underlying values affecting that migration have never before been presented in a broad overview. Despite centuries of prohibition against leaving the land and traveling and settling overseas, the "earthbound" Chinese - first traders, then peasants and workers - eventually found new sources of livelihood abroad. The practice of sojourning, being always temporarily away from home, was the answer the Chinese overseas found to deal with imperial and orthodox concerns. Today their challenge is to find an alternative to either returning or assimilating by seeking a new kind of autonomy in a world that will come to acknowledge the ideal of multicultural states."--Jacket.

First Sentence

When I first studied the early trade of the South China Sea, I was struck both by China's contacts in the region as early as the third century B.C. and by the range of possibilities for a growing commercial relationship between China and what looked like

Subjects

Other Editions

• The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy (The Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures)HardcoverHarvard University Press2000-05-19
• Chinese OverseasHarvard University Press2009-01-01