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Foreword This is a bold project recording the lives of a particular group of Southeast Asians in a distinctive framework. For more than a hundred years, various writers ranging from trade and government officials to journalists and scholars have studied the traders and workers from South China now spread around the world. Most of those adventurous people left China and headed towards neighbouring ports,kingdoms and colonies that are now recognized as a single geographical entity, hence the grouping in this volume of the lives that have contributed in their various ways to the new Nanyang, the strategic region of Southeast Asia. If the authors of the biographies had to trace their respective subjects back to an earlier past, they would have been confronted by many different names for these merchants and adventurers overseas. For example, Europeans like the Portuguese, Dutch and English followed those in the Malay Archipelago by calling them China or Chinese, while they would normally refer to themselves as Tongyan, Denglang or Tangren . In China, they would be described as MinYueren , people from Fujian and Guangdong and, for a while under the Mongol Yuan dynasty, they were known as Nanren or southerners ; later, they were likely to have been referred to as the subjects or chenmin of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Locally, in Southeast Asia, there were also a variety of names, like the Baba or peranakan for Chinese whose first language was Malay;and there were others like the Lukchin,the Sangley and the Hoa among those who lived alongside the Thais, the Filipinos and the Vietnamese. Chinese records rarely recorded the achievements of individuals and were not always polite when referring to those outside China, often purposely emphasizing the illegal status of those who had left their homes in China without official permission. Most of the people whose biographies are included here have settled down in the ten countries that constitute the region. Each of them has either self-identified as Chinese or is comfortable to be known as someone of Chinese ancestry.There are also those who were born in China or elsewhere who came here to work and do business, including seeking help from others who have ethnic Chinese connections.With the political and economic conditions of the region in a great state of flux for the past two centuries, it is impossible to find consistency in the naming process. Confucius had stressed that correct names make for the best relationships.In this case,Professor Leo Suryadinata has been pursuing for decades the elusive goal of finding the right name to give to the large numbers of people who have,in one way or another,made their homes in,or made some difference to, Southeast Asia. I believe that, when he and his colleagues selected the biographies to be included here,they have taken a big step towards the rectification of identities for many leading personalities. In so doing, he has done us all a great service. I notice that he has modestly not included a biography of himself in this volume. Allow me therefore to say a few words about how he meets the criteria for entry into the volume splendidly, and also why I am proud to be associated with his lifework. I had the fortune to meet Professor Surydinata when he first embarked on his lifelong study of the Chinese in the Malay Archipelago. He has always been in a good position to capture in his writings the ambiguities that surround his subject of research. Born in Indonesia of Chinese parents, speaking and writing Bahasa Indonesia fluently, and fully immersed in the lives of those who have long settled in the country,he was formally educated in a Chinese school.The school was one that originally set out to redefine an identity that would fit in with the strong modern state that the new generation of Chinese leaders was building in China.After World War II, however, the school went through a time of radical transitions. Hard choices, therefore, had to be made. His arrival in Singapore to study at the newly established Nanyang University brought him deep into the heart of one of those transitions.This was a time when Chinese who faced the rise of new nations were asked to differentiate themselves from a revolutionary China that was beginning to sow alarm among its smaller neighbours. That was more than 40 years ago. From the start, he faced a world of...

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