Chineseness across Borders

Renegotiating Chinese Identities in China and the United States

Bibliographic Data

ID5836074
AuthorsAndrea Louie (corresponding author)
Year2004
Pages256
Publication date2004-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueChineseness Across Borders (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/9780822385615
OpenAlexW4247964842
Open LibraryOL29604765M
ISBN9780822385615
LanguageEN
Citations received69

Village Encounters (Beginnings)In July 1992, on summer break from graduate school, I visited my paternal grandfather's village in Heshan County, Guangdong Province, for the first time, accompanied by my fellow participants in the In Search of Roots program.∞ This program, run by organizations in Guangzhou and in San Francisco, provided an opportunity for young adults (ages seventeen to twenty-five) of Cantonese descent to visit their ancestral villages in China.My second great-uncle, Yi Suk Gung, whom I had met only a few days earlier, took the bus from Guangzhou to meet our group at the Heshan County seat and lead the village tour.On first impression, the village could have come straight out of the nineteenth century.To the Chinese American visitors, the village was a maze of narrow alleyways, old brick houses, and open sewers, surrounded by rice paddies.However, a closer look revealed electric power lines, radio cassette players, and three-story homes of gleaming ceramic tile.Yi Suk Gung took us to the ancestral home that my great-grandfather had built on returning from the United States where he worked to build the railroad ≤ along with a village watchtower (c.lau jai, pao lau) ≥ constructed jointly with his four brothers for protection against bandits.My great-grandfather's picture remained on the wall of the house, somehow having survived years of Communist reform.I paid respects at the house's altar, made special note of the open window (tianchuang) in the ceiling of the house that I remembered my father mentioning, and had my picture taken innumerable times by fellow interns helping me to record ''the moment.''The group proceeded by van to a hillside that was a fair distance from the village, then hiked up

Art · China · Chinese americans · Context (archaeology) · Genealogy · Geography · Homeland · Immigration · Literature · Media studies · Multiculturalism · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Geology · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · chinese · Cultural assimilation · Ethnic identity · In Search of Roots program

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