Being Chinese Voices from the Diaspora

Chinese have traveled the globe for centuries, and today people of Chinese ancestry live all over the world. They are the Huayi or "Chinese overseas" and can be found not only in the thriving Chinese communities of the United States, Canada, and Southeast, but also in enclaves as far-reaching as Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Peru. In this book, twenty-two Chinese living and working outside of China -- ordinary people from all walks of life -- tell us something about their lives and about what it means to be Chinese in non-Chinese societies. In these pages we meet a surgeon raised in Singapore but westernized in London who still believes in the value of Chinese medicine. A member of the Chinese Canadian community who bridles at the insistence that you can't be Chinese unless you speak a Chinese dialect. Individuals all loyal to their countries of citizenship who continue to observe the customs of their ancestral home to varying degrees, whether performing rites in memory of ancestors, practicing fengshui, wearing jade for good luck, or giving out red packets of lucky money for New Year.Djao, Wei is the author of 'Being Chinese Voices from the Diaspora' with ISBN 9780816523023 and ISBN 0816523029.