Product Description
This book is a highly original study of transnationalism among immigrants from Taishan, a populous coastal county in south China from which, until 1965, the majority of Chinese in the United States originated. Drawing creatively on Chinese-language sources such as gazetteers, newspapers, and magazines, supplemented by fieldwork and interviews as well as recent scholarship in Chinese social history, the author presents a much richer depiction than we have had heretofore of the continuing ties between Taishanese remaining in China and their kinsmen seeking their fortune in “Gold Mountain.”
Long after the gold in California ran out and prejudice confined them to dismal Chinatowns, generations of Chinese—mostly men from rural areas of southern China—continued to migrate to the United States in hopes of bettering the family’s lot by remitting much of the meager sums they earned as laundrymen, cooks, domestic workers, and Chinatown merchants.
Economic hardships and U.S. Exclusion laws extended the immigrants’ separation from their families for decades, “sojourns” that in many cases ended only in death. Men lived as bachelors and their wives as widows, parents passed away, and children grew up without ever seeing their fathers’ faces. Families and village communities had to adapt to survive the stress of long-term, long-distance separation from their primary wage-earners.
At the same time, men raised in the rural communities of a faltering imperial China had to negotiate encounters with an industrializing, Western-dominated, often hostile world. This history explores the resiliency and flexibility of rural Chinese, qualities that enabled them to preserve their families by living apart from them and to survive the intertwining of their rural world with global systems of race, labor, and capital. The author demonstrates that through migration to dank and narrow enclaves, they came to live, and even to flourish, in a transnational community that persisted despite decades of separation and an ocean’s width of distance.
Long after the gold in California ran out and prejudice confined them to dismal Chinatowns, generations of Chinese—mostly men from rural areas of southern China—continued to migrate to the United States in hopes of bettering the family’s lot by remitting much of the meager sums they earned as laundrymen, cooks, domestic workers, and Chinatown merchants.
Economic hardships and U.S. Exclusion laws extended the immigrants’ separation from their families for decades, “sojourns” that in many cases ended only in death. Men lived as bachelors and their wives as widows, parents passed away, and children grew up without ever seeing their fathers’ faces. Families and village communities had to adapt to survive the stress of long-term, long-distance separation from their primary wage-earners.
At the same time, men raised in the rural communities of a faltering imperial China had to negotiate encounters with an industrializing, Western-dominated, often hostile world. This history explores the resiliency and flexibility of rural Chinese, qualities that enabled them to preserve their families by living apart from them and to survive the intertwining of their rural world with global systems of race, labor, and capital. The author demonstrates that through migration to dank and narrow enclaves, they came to live, and even to flourish, in a transnational community that persisted despite decades of separation and an ocean’s width of distance.
I am Chinese American, specifically Hoisanese American. The Hoisan people is what this book specifically focuses on, their history in the US as well as China during the same time period. It is the chronicle of one culture that lives in two places, and how each group affects the other, and how they each lead such different lives that would not be possible without living apart.
This is a must read for people who wish to learn the particulars of the early Chinese immigrants to the US and the lasting effect to this day. This is not the same group of Chinese who are still migrating, it is a very different group from a much smaller region, and many people nowadays don’t realize that Chinese American history started with this particular group. Our dialect has become unpopular, and we are thought of as peasants and farmers by the more official and polished sounding speakers of Mandarin and Cantonese. This book recognizes and documents the huge and dedicated efforts by the Hoisanese people to pave the way for Chinese Americans of today, and one would be ignorant of one’s own Chinese American history without this knowledge. Many American-born Chinese do not even realize that their roots tie back to this group. It is a humbling read.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book is written by one of the foremost scholars on Chinese immigration. It gives a broad overview of the circumstances of immigration from China, focused primarily on the years during the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943) – when my grandfather emigrated. The book talks about what was going on in China at that time, particularly southern China where most immigrants came from, what their old/new lives were like, family structure, economic challenges and rewards, and how the Chinese navigated the immigration minefield during this period.
Because we grew up knowing so little about my grandfather, this book was a revelation – it explains why so many Chinese came, how they survived and protected themselves, how and why they prospered (or didn’t), and what became of their families back in China. A must-read for anyone with Chinese ancestors!
The only reason I gave it 4 stars is that the book is a little academic and contains a bit too many data tables. More photographs (of which there are several) and anecdotes would have made this more entertaining.
Rating: 4 / 5
I ordered Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home in early August. After over five weeks of waiting, the book
has not arrived. I received a few e-mails from Woody’s, but I do not have the book or a refund. I would not recommend this seller.
Rating: 1 / 5