What role does diasporic Chinese media play in the process of Chinese migrants' adaptation to their new home country? With China's rise, to what extent has the expansion of its "soft power" swayed the changing identities of the Chinese overseas? A Virtual Chinatown provides a timely and original analysis to answer such questions. Using a media and communication studies approach to investigate the reciprocal relationship between Chinese-language media and the Chinese migrant community in New Zealand, Phoebe Li goes beyond conventional scholarship on the Chinese Diaspora as practised by social historians, anthropologists and demographers. Written in an accessible and reader-friendly manner, this book will also appeal to academics and students with interests in other transnational communities, alternative media, and minority politics.

Anderson charts the construction of Chinatown in the minds and streets of the white community of Vancouver over a hundred year period. She shows that Chinatown -- from the negative stereotyping of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to its current status as an "ethnic neighbourhood" -- has been stamped by changing European ideologies of race and the hegemonic policies those ideas have shaped. The very existence of the district is the result of a regime of cultural domination that continues to exist today. Anderson clearly rejects the concept of "race" as a means of distinguishing between groups of human beings. She points out that because the implicit acceptance of public beliefs about race affects the types of questions asked by researchers, the issue of the ontological status of race is as critical for commentators on society as it is for scientists studying human variation. Anderson applies this fresh approach toward the concept of race to a critical examination of popular, media, and academic treatments of the Chinatown in Vancouver.

Xuya Zhao runs from America to China, running away from her American problems. However, China is full of surprises for her, all kinds: the secrets her family has kept over the years, the unbreakable bond with her girlhood buddies, the magic power of her grandmother, the mystery of the jade pendants, the reunions and encounters with friends, sweethearts, acquaintances, and old enemies. Now she has a chance to settle those unsettled en en yuan yuan (passions and resentments) from the Cultural Revolution and to make sense of her complicated lives in both China and America. Thus, her return-home adventure turns into a journey of self-rediscovery.

Amidst the growth challenges encountered by numerous Chinatowns across America, this timely work offers insightful perspectives on a sustainable model for urban and community development, as demonstrated by the transformative journey of Houston’s New Chinatown.