03588nam a22005415i 4500 978-981-97-1598-5 DE-He213 20251030111741.0 cr nn 008mamaa 240323s2024 si | s |||| 0|eng d 9789819715985 978-981-97-1598-5 10.1007/978-981-97-1598-5 doi JQ1-1852 JP bicssc 1F bicssc POL054000 bisacsh JP 1F thema Yao, Souchou. author. aut http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut 73860 Gifts to the Sad Country [electronic resource] : Essays on the Chinese Diaspora / by Souchou Yao. 1st ed. 2024. Singapore : Springer Nature Singapore : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. VII, 161 p. 1 illus. online resource. text txt rdacontent computer c rdamedia online resource cr rdacarrier text file PDF rda 1. Moving Story -- 2. Revolution Comes to Zhang Chun Village -- 3. The Postman -- 4. Grandfather’s Two Households -- 5. Things That Bind -- 6. My Sister’s Grave -- 7. Homebound -- 8. Revolutionary Romance -- 9. Soft Trauma. The book is a study of an ethnic-Chinese family in Malaysia as it struggled with the upheavals in China during the Land Reform (1945-1953) and the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). Based on fieldwork in Malaysia and in a village in Dabu County, Southern China, it tells a story of a family whose existence straddled two nations, two political systems. Emigration is shown to be both a positive experience and a source of despair. The study redefines the conventional narrative about the Chinese diaspora as economically driven and politically expedient; mobility, personal freedom and transnational journeying were a part of their cultural history. The book highlights the fact that Chinese homeland, even under communist rule, offered the people a means of identification under difficult circumstances. During the time of radical reform, the diaspora adapted themselves to the conditions in the homeland, and for some China remained a place of longing and emotional attachment. Souchou Yao is a writer and a former staff member of the Department of Anthropology, the University of Sydney, Australia. Among his publications are Singapore: The State and the culture of excess (2007), The Malayan Emergency: Essays on a small distant war (2016), The Shop on High Street: At home with petite capitalism (2020), Doing Lifework in Malaysia (2020). He lives with his wife, the artist Simryn Gill, in Port Dickson, Malaysia, and Sydney, Australia. Asia Politics and government. 69658 Emigration and immigration. 58113 Ethnology Asia. 66900 Culture. 59159 Asian Politics. 69661 Diaspora Studies. 66472 Asian Culture. 66902 SpringerLink (Online service) Springer Nature eBook Printed edition: 9789819715978 Printed edition: 9789819715992 Printed edition: 9789819716005 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1598-5 ZDB-2-POS ZDB-2-SXPI 58615 58615