Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A History of the Chinese Diaspora (Kodansha Globe) [Paperback]

Lynn Pan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1568360320 | ISBN-13: 978-1568360324 | Publication Date: June 15, 1994

THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S GREATIEST CONTINUING MIGRATION

The Chinese Diaspora stretches all over the world. It represents the most widespread and prolonged series of migrations by one nation ever. Chinese emigrants have been tycoons in Hong Kong and America, coolies in Peru and South Africa, underworld gangsters in San Francisco and Bangkok. Today, whether as near-slave laborers on illicit planes and freighters, or as bankers and traders from a world network of high finance, the Chinese are on the move as much as ever.

In this rich blend of history, biography, and travel, noted author Lynn Pan recounts why emigrants have left China; how their dispersal has been shaped and stimulated by imperialist Western powers; and how the all-male frontier groups were transformed into complex communities organized by clan, dialect, and secret society. In the process, she takes us inside the supposedly closed world of the overseas Chinese and shows how, in a curious boomerang effect, these expatriates are currently changing the supposedly eternal face of China-perhaps forever. A new afterword by the author comments on the ironies that result when multiculturalism and emigrant culture meet head-on.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

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.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha USA (June 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568360320
• ISBN-13: 978-1568360324
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #316,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An informative traipse through history, January 23, 2000

By 

Ryan Brenner (Texas, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A History of the Chinese Diaspora (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

First of all, let me say that this is not light reading. Lynn Pan was on a mission when she began researching this book and she left no stone unturned. The immeasureable hours that she must have put into the preliminary parts of the actual writing shine through brightly. Miss Pan obviously was or became well traveled in preparation for this book seeing as how it covers the Chinese diaspora all across the globe. Her personal experiences in England and some in the U.S. no doubt were the cornerstones of the inspiration for this monumental work but the immense scope of the finished product is a true gift to the Chinese community. Tracing the immigration patterns of the Chinese focusing mainly on the last two centuries, Sons of the Yellow Emperor is an in depth look at the hot spots across the world where the Chinese have taken up residence. From Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the U.S., England, Canada, Australia and so on, Miss Pan has outlined the defining characteristics of the places and people dwelling therein down to the very mainland roots of the different Chinese sects, Hokien, Fukien, etc., and their influences in the regions they spread into as well as how they were influenced by those regions. To top it all off, Miss Pan breaks each section down into short biographies of certain influential historical figures, showing their relevence to their time and place and what bearing they had within the history of the Chinese diaspora. I won't pretend to be educated on this topic at all, but I can tell you that Lynn Pan has eked out a summation of a new branch of history, and done so in such a manner as to be exhaustively informative and delightfully entertaining. Recently, I was in a bookstore and saw her newest work. I suppose it is an addendum to Sons of the Yellow Emperor. It is an Encyclopedia of the Chinese Diaspora huge and filled to the brim with captioned photographs and more insight into this branch of historical writing. Well done; and both works certainly fill a void and bring something of great interest to light for anyone curious.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative, instructive, easy reading, entertaining, September 7, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A History of the Chinese Diaspora (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

A very well researched, well written book. The author has apparently done a lot of legwork. This book surpasses all others I have read so far in this category. It's a history book. It is sure to become a standard reference text for anyone researching in the area of Chinese emigration.

It is well balanced, too. It doesn't treat any one particular region of the world where Chinese emigrated to. It has dealt with the whole idea of diaspora of the Chinese people worldwide -- from Southeast Asia, to Central America, and of-course, North America. It traces the origin, and subsequent ordeals, of the early Chinese sojourners. It also dealt with the reasons for their departure from home-- all the historical, political, social, economics, and personal reasons that any Chinese would want to leave their home.

A good book and an easy read. It has plenty of references so it is scholarly. But it is written in an easy-to-read narrative format so it is also easy to digest.

The only complaint I have is that I wish she had put down (printed) the original Chinese text (in Chinese characters) that she had used throughout the book. This way a reader can refer back to the original Chinese words to know how it may have been translated into English. This would also give an idea of how a Chinese phrases / words / ideas have been transliterated into a foreign language.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read, December 20, 2004

By 

Ping Lim (Christchurch) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A History of the Chinese Diaspora (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

This book makes an ideal anthropological study of Chinese that immigrated overseas, particularly to the South East Asian countries. My Western friends had this discussions with me before that he's fascinated by the fact that no matter where he travelled to in all corners of the world, even at far reaching places such as a town bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, there stood Chinese restaurant! Therefore, I always posed this question, why do Chinese end up where they end up? Don't they want to go back to China (home) or that they are already home? The author endeavoured to analyse what motivated the Chinese to leave their homeland at the first place. It was new to me to discover that at earlier stages of Chinese vovage to present day, we were at the short end of the slave trade. There were indepth discussions of "Yellow Peril", of obstacles that had been implemented to obstruct the flow of Chinese immigrants to the host countries including USA. Poignantly, it brought to the fore about the double standards of America then where it had the Statue of Liberty to welcome immigrants from Italy and Ireland and yet, the President of the time signed the creed to prevent Chinese from getting through. There were discussions about love and hate relationships between the natives and the Chinese, and colonists and the Chinese. Whilst they despised Chinese, they couldn't and wouldn't live without them either. Once in a while, violences would be inflicted to the latter and then, they would go away as quickly as they appeared. There were lively discussions of the well-to-do overseas Chinese such as Madame Wellington Koo, Tan Kah Kee, Aw Boon Haw & Par (who brought us the famous Tiger Balm), Lee Kuan Yew, Bruce Lee, Liem Sioe Liang, Li Ka Tsing, et cetera to give us different perspectives of how those people saw themselves fitting into the social contexts of the time. There was also mentioning of fictitious characters created by Westerners such as Fu Manchu that stereotyped Chinese to have those Chineseness traits. As the saying goes, people eat to live whilst Chinese lives to eat. How true. A chapter is dedicated to that and the author even managed to demyth about the origin of fortune cookie and Chop Suey! A session was dedicated to the formation of the Triads, their hierarchies, different organisations, and their motivations. The part that I found close to my heart would be the differences between the first, second, and third generations of immigrants. All of them have had different way of seeing themselves, seeing China, having different kind of mentality and values. The book continued to describe about the immigrants to South East Asia who would subsequently immigrate to Western countries. By then, the kind of immigrants have changed from the previous that needed to start from scratch to the present that are already well-to-do. The book questioned if there's anything to present China that would attract the overseas Chinese to finally returning home. Please be mindful that the book was written in 1990 and she wouldn't have anticipated dramatic transformation in China that would make Napoleon's prophecy coming true: the dragon has and is finally awakened, and thus, the whole world shudders by its sheer might. Thumbs up to Lynn Pann for covering thoroughly the local politics in various countries, and thumbs up to her for writing such an insightful book that's definitely not piece-meal but thorougly researched. It's impressive that she could tackle such complex subjects & condense them into a constructive & cohesive book that's so much enjoyable to read. Her epilogue is succinct but true, that is, we yearn to be Chinese only when we are far away from China. Highly recommended.