Qiaopi is one of several names given to the “silver letters” Chinese emigrants sent home in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These letters-cum-remittances document the changing history of the Chinese diaspora in different parts of the world and in different times.
Dear China is the first book-length study in English of qiaopi and of the origins, structure, and operations of the qiaopi trade. The authors explore the characteristics and transformations of qiaopi, showing how such institutionalized and cross-national mechanisms helped sustain families separated by distance and state frontiers and contributed to the sending regions’ socioeconomic development. Dear China contributes substantially to our understanding of modern Chinese history and to the comparative study of global migration.
Dear China Emigrant Letters and Remittances, 1820–1980
About the Book
Reviews
"Makes substantial and significant contributions to our ongoing struggles to attain better understanding of migration as a most human, yet greatly disruptive, element of our global society and economy."—Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review
"A pertinent contribution to extant scholarship on the history of Chinese migration and diasporic ties between 1820 and 1980. . . . Students of oral history, social memory, in addition to migration researchers, will find this book an intelligible and informative read."—International Migration Review
"No matter what a reader of Dear China might think they know at the beginning, by the end of their perusal of this intensively researched and wide-ranging work they will know and appreciate a great deal more."—Journal of Chinese Overseas
"This fascinating volume by Benton and Liu proposes many noteworthy arguments for Southeast Asian history research because it pays heed to overseas Chinese society as one of the key factors in the region’s historical changes."—Southeast Asian Studies"Dear China is the first and only book of its kind in the English language, and its excellent evidence-based and source-driven scholarship will form the benchmark for all future English-language studies on the qiaopi trade."—Glen Peterson, author of Overseas Chinese in the People's Republic of China
"In Gregor Benton and Hong Liu’s new volume, the materials and references alone will open up new venues for us to rethink and trace the routes, legal and illegal, of Chinese migration worldwide. Dear China is one of the most significant contributions in the field in twenty years."—Jing Tsu, author of Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora
Table of Contents
List of Maps and Tables
Foreword by Wang Gungwu
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Genealogy of Qiaopi Studies
2. The Structure of the Qiaopi Trade and Transnational Networks
3. The Qiaopi Trade as a Distinctive Form of Chinese Capitalism
4. Qiaopi Geography
5. Qiaopi and Modern Chinese Economy and Politics
6. Qiaopi, Qiaoxiang, and Charity
7. Qiaopi and European Migrants’ Letters Compared
Conclusions
Appendix: Selected Qiaopi and Huipi Letters
Glossary
Notes
References
Index
Related Books
New Fourth Army
Gregor Benton
Dictionary of the Ben cao gang mu, Volume 1
Zhibin Zhang, Paul U. Unschuld
Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, Volume IV
Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki
Dictionary of the Ben cao gang mu, Volume 3
Zheng Jinsheng, Nalini Kirk, Paul D. Buell, Paul U. Unschuld
The Chinese Pursuit of Happiness
Becky Yang Hsu, Richard Madsen
Dictionary of the Ben cao gang mu, Volume 2
Hua Linfu, Paul D. Buell, Paul U. Unschuld
A Fourth-Century Daoist Family
Stephen R. Bokenkamp
Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule
Norman A. Kutcher
All under Heaven
Tingyang Zhao