TY - BOOK AU - Ong,Soon Keong TI - Coming Home to a Foreign Country: Xiamen and Returned Overseas Chinese, 1843–1938 SN - 9781501756184 AV - DS797.26.X536 O64 2021 U1 - 305.9/06910951245 23 PY - 2021///] CY - Ithaca, NY : PB - Cornell University Press, KW - Return migrants KW - China KW - Xiamen (Xiamen Shi) KW - Return migration KW - History KW - Anthropology KW - Asian Studies KW - HISTORY / Asia / China KW - bisacsh KW - Treaty port Xiamen, Returned overseas Chinese, The construction of Chinese identity, Urban reconstruction in Xiamen N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Measures, Weights, and Currencies --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction --; 1. Defining Xiamen: Trade and Migration before the Opium War (1839–1842) --; 2. Opening for Business: Xiamen as a Treaty Port --; 3. Facilitating Migration: Xiamen as a Migration Hub --; 4. Manipulating Identities: States and Opportunities in Xiamen --; 5. Transforming Xiamen: Urban Reconstruction in the 1920s --; 6. Making Home: Xiamen as Destination and Home --; Conclusions --; Bibliography --; Index; restricted access N2 - Ong Soon Keong explores the unique position of the treaty port Xiamen (Amoy) within the China-Southeast Asia migrant circuit and examines its role in the creation of Chinese diasporas. Coming Home to a Foreign Country addresses how migration affected those who moved out of China and later returned to participate in the city's economic revitalization, educational advancement, and urban reconstruction. Ong shows how the mobility of overseas Chinese allowed them to shape their personal and community identities for pragmatic and political gains. This resulted in migrants who returned with new money, knowledge, and visions acquired abroad, which changed the landscape of their homeland and the lives of those who stayed. Placing late Qing and Republican China in a transnational context, Coming Home to a Foreign Country explores the multi-layered social and cultural interactions between China and Southeast Asia. Ong investigates the role of Xiamen in the creation of a China-Southeast Asia migrant circuit; the activities of aspiring and returned migrants in Xiamen; the accumulation and manipulation of multiple identities by Southeast Asian Chinese as political conditions changed; and the motivations behind the return of Southeast Asian Chinese and their continual involvement in mainland Chinese affairs. For Chinese migrants, Ong argues, the idea of "home" was something consciously constructed. Ong complicates familiar narratives of Chinese history to show how the emigration and return of overseas Chinese helped transform Xiamen from a marginal trading outpost at the edge of the Chinese empire to a modern, prosperous city and one of the most important migration hubs by the 1930s UR - https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501756207?locatt=mode:legacy UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781501756207 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781501756207/original ER -