THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE CHINESE OVERSEAS
Edited by LYNN PAN
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. (First published Singapore: Landmark Books, 1998.) 399 pages, $59.95
Eva Shan Chou
The book achieves historical depth, while also being admirably up-to-date. Each of its many essays begins with the earliest historical stages of the Chinese ¨¦migr¨¦ population and includes information up to the late 1990s. It is profusely illustrated-every two-page spread of text contains three or four informative, well-placed but unobtrusive photographs. Profiles of special topics and of individuals-including artists, writers, businessmen, and political activists-are set off in boxed features throughout. Typical of the sort of information included in these features is a wonderful two-page spread, in the first section, on the large houses built with ¨¦migr¨¦ money in Guangdong Province in the 1910s and 1920s. This subject is then brought up-to-date by the inclusion more of photographs, scattered throughout later sections of the book, of similarly funded houses (and one university, in Shantou) built during the last two decades. This is an encyclopedia that can be either read continuously or dipped into.
The volume begins with four sections that give an overview of Chinese emigration. The first section discusses the four areas in China-Fujian, Guangdong, and Zhejiang provinces and Hainan Island, once part of Guangdong, but now a separate province-from which most emigration occurred in the past or is now occurring. When, why, and how most emigration emanated from these particular areas is clearly explained. Much interesting information emerges-for example, we learn of a village in Fujian Province in which every family has an emigrant member, and of a city, also in Fujian, where 70 percent of the population of 1 million are returned emigrants or dependents of current emigrants. The other three sections that treat general issues are just as well done. Their topics are as follows: the types and periods of migration (labor, trade, student, and so forth), the institutions that emigrants have created or recreated in their new land, and the relations of emigrants both with China and with non-Chinese in their host countries.
The fifth and final section of the encyclopedia takes up the bulk of its pages-a little over half-and focuses on overseas Chinese country by country. For example, a chapter is devoted to each of the ten countries of Southeast Asia and one each to Japan, Korea, and India. The information provided here is rich and shows the long history and great diversity of Chinese settlements throughout Asia. Here you can find why Chinese account for less than .19 percent of Japan's population and 29.4 percent of Malaysia's; how Chinese emigration is linked to the colonial histories of Britain, France, and other European powers in Asia; why there is now enormous growth in the Chinese population in Australia and almost no growth in the Chinese population in Vietnam; and what issues are important to Chinese settlers in each country today.
There is so much interesting and important information in this encyclopedia and it is so intelligently conveyed that the most suitable recommendation is-read it!
Eva Shan Chou, a professor at City University of New York, Baruch College, writes frequently on Chinese literature. Her study of the eighth-century Chinese poet Tu Fu was recently published by Cambridge University Press.