Fujian qiaoxiang diaocha: qiaoxiang rentong, qiaoxiang wangluo yu qiaoxiang wenhua (review)

A spate of policy and academic studies on qiaoxiang, or homeland of Chinese Overseas, have come into view in China over the past decade, heralding a new trend — the study of Chinese Overseas. Of these, the volume edited by Li Minghuan is the latest and a welcome addition to the scholarship in the field. Unlike previous undertakings, this work is a product of collaboration among scholars from three universities in Fujian Province in South China. A careful reading of the contents pages will reveal that the editor has taken great pains in structuring the book chapters by six authors from four different disciplinary backgrounds, each presenting his/her research findings based on fieldwork conducted at different locales of Fujian qiaoxiang. As indicated by the book title, the editor has skillfully conceptualized their studies in binding the six chapters together under the theme of identities, networks and culture in qiaoxiang. The book is divided into two sections comprising six main chapters and two chapters of introduction and conclusion. While the first section examines three typical qiaoxiang villages and one farm based on case studies, the second section attempts to explore in-depth the social transformation and dynamics of emigration waves in Fujian's qiaoxiang from different theoretical perspectives.

The first chapter authored by Liu Chaohui is a particularly interesting study of Xin'an Village, a traditional qiaoxiang village near today's Xiamen (Amoy). Using a cultural, anthropological approach, it studies two lineage temples established by the same Qiu (Khoo) clan in southern Fujian and Penang of Malaysia, and analyzes the relations and interactions between a Chinese community overseas and its ancestral village over the past one and a half centuries. The author vividly shows how qiaoxiang ties can be maintained in an institutionalized way by Hokkiens overseas. What is especially notable is a case study of an unsuccessful real estate investment project initiated by clansmen of the ancestral village in 2000. It convincingly shows that qiaoxiang ties and clan connections sometimes do not necessarily lead to FDI (foreign direct investment) from ethnic Chinese communities overseas even as regular overseas remittances and donations are expected. Economic benefit is usually given priority when Chinese Overseas invest in the Chinese mainland. Unfortunately, while a fairly large part of the chapter is devoted to the description and discussion of the Khoo community in Penang, almost all the discussion on Penang's ethnic Chinese community has been drawn from the works of a local historian, Teoh Shiaw Kuan, as the author himself has never visited Penang. In addition, it seems he is not familiar with the scholarship on the history of the Chinese in British Malaya, judging from his discussion of the Chinese kongsi in Penang.

Unlike the first chapter which is a study of a traditional Chinese qiaoxiang village, a newly emerged qiaoxiang village is purposely chosen for discussion by the editor in the second chapter to present a totally different pattern of emigration from present day China. Zhan Guanqun mines government documents, statistics and personal interviews for a richly detailed account of the formation and development of a new qiaoxiang village in mountainous northern Fujian. The author probes into the current emigration mechanism of rural China with Sha'xi Village as an example and points out that the new emigration waves from China are mainly facilitated by two factors — immigrant network and non-governmental credit system. The editor who was also involved in the fieldwork, emphasizes that the phenomenon of migration in qiaoxiang villages which have mushroomed in South China actually represents a new type of transnational labor movement operating in a non-governmental context and targeting labor markets of developed countries. As she stresses in the introductory chapter, scholars of Chinese migration should view her hypothesis as a basic premise when observing and analyzing current transnational...