Review by Choice Review
Feminists may object to the title of this book. However, the lack of academic pretension and verbosity may lead one to forgive this commission, as well as an occasional historical inaccuracy, and the publisher's claim that it is the first detailed study of the Chinese diaspora. It is an ambitious attempt to record the history of Chinese emigration to five continents. Although the book lacks depth and breaks no new ground, it still has merit, especially for the general reader who will find interesting the minibiographies of Madame Wellington Koo, Aw Boon Haw of the Tiger Balm fortune, Bruce Lee, Li Ka-shing, the forefather of Cory Aquino, and Lee Kuan Yew. Four chapters and an epilogue cover four periods of Chinese emigration: 1500-1870; 1870s-1920s; 1920s-1960s; and 1960s-1980s. The narrative is interspersed with case studies of key individuals in different geographical locations. The book illuminates the internal and external causes of Chinese emigration, the complexity of Chinese organization and transformation overseas, and the impact of the diaspora at home and abroad. Pan is an emigre, thus she offers unusual empathy and insight on the 30 million people who constitute the Chinese diaspora and their descendents. There are 28 photographs (about half from the 19th century) that complement the literature. -H. T. Wong, Eastern Washington University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Approximately 30 million Chinese now live in 109 countries. Pan, herself an emigrant from Shanghai, has written a sweeping history of the Chinese diaspora from 1500 to the present. Four major tides of emigration are analyzed, including the impetus for the largest waves occurring in the second half of the nineteenth century, when "China was violently changing under the stresses of overcrowding and Western penetration." Pan details the horrors of the coolie trade, the ravages of opium addiction, and the lot of young women who were bought and sold as unpaid servants or prostitutes. The extreme prejudice and sanctioned discrimination the Chinese faced is described along with vivid depictions of the old Chinatown in San Francisco and the Limehouse section of London. A memorable and engrossing account of how the Chinese have triumphed over adversity and adapted to life in other lands and cultures. Notes; to be indexed. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A savvy journalist working out of Hong Kong has written a lively, well-researched history of emigrant Chinese communities: why and how they left China, their political and cultural adaptations in the face of almost universal hostility, and their roles in the contemporary world. Pan makes a major, eye-opening contribution in this text that ranges in time over four centuries and in place from the Philippines to Peru to France to North America. She clarifies her potentially confusing panorama with opinionated anecdotes and gossipy biographies, as well as wonderful chapters on the role of Chinese food and the comparative anatomy of Chinatowns. Highly recommended for general readers and scholars interested in Asia, cultural diversity, or in seeing Chinese-American experience in wide perspective.-- Charles W. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
From a woman born in Shanghai, educated in England, and now living in Hong Kong, an absorbing look at the reasons for centuries of Chinese emigration and its impact on the emigrants. Pan relates how the incursion of Europeans into historically insular China in the 16th and 17th centuries caused many Southern Chinese to establish homes in Singapore, Malaysia, and islands in the Indian Ocean. Driven by commercial motives and a desire for a better life, and despite repressive Manchu prohibitions against trading with foreigners, Chinese commerce flourished. Subsequent Chinese emigration has been so vast, Pan reports, that today there are approximately 30 million people of Chinese origin in over 109 countries around the world. Pan describes how the ""floodtide"" of Chinese emigration occurred in the second half of the 19th century, when the Opium Wars and exploitation of China by Europeans caused the decline and ultimately the collapse of the Manchu state. The British market for ""coolie"" labor caused emigration of Chinese throughout the British Empire, while other Chinese were lured by hopes of a better life to San Francisco, Australia, or South Africa. Everywhere, the Chinese suffered the peculiar fate of enterprising minorities--institutionalized racial discrimination--which sometimes exploded into violence, while at the same time distinctive customs were often forgotten as the Chinese melted into the indigenous population. For almost all emigrant Chinese, however, the Chinese homeland has remained their spiritual center--even if, as Pan writes, they ""love China best when they live well away from the place."" Informative and free of pedantry, a fine historical examination. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
