Gifts to the Sad Country
Essays on the Chinese Diaspora
This book is a study of an ethnic-Chinese family in Malaysia as it struggled with the upheavals in China during the Land Reform (1945-1953) and the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). Based on fieldwork in Malaysia and in a village in Dabu County, Southern China, it tells a story of a family whose existence straddled two nations, two political systems. Emigration is shown to be both a positive experience and a source of despair. The study redefines the conventional narrative about the Chinese diaspora as economically driven and politically expedient; mobility, personal freedom and transnational journeying were a part of their cultural history. The book highlights the fact that Chinese homeland, even under communist rule, offered the people a means of identification under difficult circumstances. During the time of radical reform, the diaspora adapted themselves to the conditions in the homeland, and for some China remained a place of longing and emotional attachment.
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Veröffentlichung: | 24.03.2024 |
Höhe/Breite/Gewicht | H 21 cm / B 14,8 cm / - |
Seiten | 161 |
Art des Mediums | Buch [Gebundenes Buch] |
Preis DE | EUR 128.39 |
Preis AT | EUR 131.99 |
Auflage | 1. Auflage |
ISBN-13 | 978-9-819-71597-8 |
ISBN-10 | 9819715970 |
Über den Autor
Souchou Yao is a writer and a former staff member of the Department of Anthropology, the University of Sydney, Australia. Among his publications are Singapore: The State and the Culture of Excess (2007), The Malayan Emergency: Essay on a Small, Distant war (2016), On Brittle Ground: My China Journey (2017), The Shop on High Street: At Home with Petite Capitalism (2020). He lives with his wife, the artist Simryn Gill, in Port Dickson, Malaysia, and Sydney, Australia.