1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910845477803321

Autore

Yao Souchou

Titolo

Gifts to the Sad Country : Essays on the Chinese Diaspora / / by Souchou Yao

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Singapore : , : Springer Nature Singapore : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2024

ISBN

9789819715985

9819715989

Edizione

[1st ed. 2024.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (162 pages)

Disciplina

305.8951

Soggetti

Asia - Politics and government

Emigration and immigration

Ethnology - Asia

Culture

Asian Politics

Diaspora Studies

Asian Culture

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

1. Moving Story -- 2. Revolution Comes to Zhang Chun Village -- 3. The Postman -- 4. Grandfather’s Two Households -- 5. Things That Bind -- 6. My Sister’s Grave -- 7. Homebound -- 8. Revolutionary Romance -- 9. Soft Trauma.

Sommario/riassunto

The 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. 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: Essays on a small distant war (2016), The Shop on High Street: At home with petite capitalism (2020), Doing Lifework in Malaysia (2020). He lives with his wife, the artist Simryn Gill, in Port Dickson, Malaysia, and Sydney, Australia.