Originating in the 1820s and used for 150 years thereafter, qiaopi is the name given in Chinese to letters written home by Chinese emigrants to accompany remittances. Their key function was to preserve family ties. Although such correspondence focused principally on the provision of economic support, the qiaopi also touched on cultural, political, educational, and gender themes. This book therefore seeks to examine the qiaopi from two interconnected perspectives. One views qiaopi from a political and institutional angle, the other from a financial and social angle. Bringing together the extensive research of a group of international scholars, this multi-authored volume sheds light on the larger significance of the qiaopi for modern China. Taking an empirical, evidence-driven approach, the contributors employ a wide range of primary sources in both Chinese and English and relate their findings to scholarship in both the Chinese-speaking world and in non-Chinese interdisciplinary fields. In so doing, this book helps to bridge the gap between Chinese- and English-speaking researchers in the field of qiaopi studies. As one of the first books in English on the qiaopi trade and its significance, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese history and Chinese migration, as well in Migration Studies and Diaspora Studies more generally.

Qiaopi is one of several names given to the “silver letters” Chinese emigrants sent home in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These letters-cum-remittances document the changing history of the Chinese diaspora in different parts of the world and in different times. Dear China is the first book-length study in English of qiaopi and of the origins, structure, and operations of the qiaopi trade. The authors explore the characteristics and transformations of qiaopi, showing how such institutionalized and cross-national mechanisms helped sustain families separated by distance and state frontiers and contributed to the sending regions’ socioeconomic development. Dear China contributes substantially to our understanding of modern Chinese history and to the comparative study of global migration.

Native and foreign speakers, mother tongues and national languages have jostled for distinction throughout the modern period. The fight for global dominance between the English and Chinese languages opens into historical battles over the control of the medium through standardization, technology, bilingualism, pronunciation, and literature in the Sinophone world. Encounters between languages, as well as the internal tensions between Mandarin and other Chinese dialects, present a dynamic, interconnected picture of languages on the move. --

Made in Chinatown delves into a little-known aspect of Australia’s past: its hundreds of Chinese furniture factories. These businesses thrived in the post-goldrush era, becoming an important economic activity for Chinese immigrants and their descendants and a vital part of Australia’s furniture industry. Yet, owing to an exclusionary vision for Australia as a bastion of ‘white’ industry and labour, these factories were targeted by anti-Chinese political campaigns and legislative restrictions. Guided by Chinese manufacturers’ and workers’ own reflections and records, this book examines how these factories operated under the exclusionary vision of White Australia. Historian Peter Gibson uses previously untapped archival sources to investigate the local and international factors that boosted the industry, and the business and labour practices associated with factory operation. He explores the strategies employed in efforts to resist injustice, and the place of Chinese furniture factories within the contexts of Australian enterprise, work and consumerism more broadly. Made in Chinatown argues that Chinese Australian furniture manufacturers and their employees were far more adaptable, and the White Australia vision less pervasive, than most histories would suggest.

The study of contemporary China constitutes a fascinating yet challenging area of scholarly inquiry. Recent decades have brought dramatic changes to China′s economy, society and governance. Analyzing such changes in the context of multiple disciplinary perspectives offers opportunites as well as challenges for scholars in the field known as contemporary China Studies. The SAGE Handbook of Contemporary China is a two-volume exploration of the transformations of contemporary China, firmly grounded in the both disciplinary and China-specific contexts. Drawing on a range of scholarly approaches found in the social sciences and history, an international team of contributors engage with the question of what a rapidly changing China means for the broader field of contemporary China studies, and identify areas of promising future research. Part 1: Context: History, Economy, and the Environment Part 2: Economic Transformations Part 3: Politics and Government Part 4: China on the Global Stage Part 5: China′s Foreign Policy Part 6: National and Nested Identities Part 7: Urbanization and Spatial Development Part 8: Poverty and Inequality Part 9: Social Change Part 10: Future Directions for Contemporary China Studies

This ground-breaking edited collection draws together Australian historical scholarship on Chinese women, their gendered migrations, and their mobile lives between China and Australia. It considers different aspects of women’s lives, both as individuals and as the wives and daughters of immigrant men. While the number of Chinese women in Australia before 1950 was relatively small, their presence was significant and often subject to public scrutiny. Moving beyond traditional representations of women as hidden and silent, this book demonstrates that Chinese Australian women in the twentieth century expressed themselves in the public eye, whether through writings, in photographs, or in political and cultural life. Their remarkable stories are often inspiring and sometimes tragic and serve to demonstrate the complexities of navigating female lives in the face of racial politics and imposed categories of gender, culture, and class. Historians of transnational Chinese migration have come to recognize Australia as a crucial site within the ‘Cantonese Pacific’, and this collection provides a new layer of gendered comparison, connecting women’s experiences in Australia with those in Canada, the United States, and New Zealand. ‘Locating Chinese Women is a path-breaking book. By exploring the experiences of Chinese Australian women during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the authors have opened new and compelling avenues of inquiry about the history of Chinese Australian women. In this landmark work, they have brilliantly recast the history of Chinese Australia.’ —Joy Damousi, Australian Catholic University ‘Locating Chinese Women breaks new ground in Australian and transnational Chinese women’s history by making the lives of remarkable Chinese Australian women visible. Photographs, testimonies, Chinese-language newspapers, and digitized archives help document the women’s agency and activities as they navigate public lives between and within Australia and China during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’ —Shirley Hune, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Washington

Qiaopi is the name given in Chinese to letters written home by Chinese migrants to accompany remittances, in the 150 years starting in the 1820s. Qiaopi had numerous functions and dimensions, ranging from economic and social to cultural and political. In June 2013, the Qiaopi Project was officially registered under UNESCO's 'Memory of the World' programme, set up in 1992 because of 'a growing awareness of the parlous state of preservation of documentary heritage' in the world.This book presents around one hundred letters from Singapore, China, Malaysia, Thailand, the USA, and Canada, including photographic reproductions of the original letters, transcriptions in Chinese characters, and English translations, where necessary with explanatory notes. Most of the letters collected in Chinese and non-Chinese archives, and in this sourcebook, were products of the Qiaopi system as traditionally defined. A few, especially some to and from North America, especially in the second half of the twentieth century, went through the Post Office, and were not handled by Chinese remittance companies. Not all the letters accompanied remittances.侨批是指海外华人移民通过民间渠道寄回侨乡，附带家书或简单留言的汇款。侨批涉及经济、社会、文化、政治等各方面的内容。 2013年，中国侨批档案成功入选《世界记忆名录》，成为人类共同的记忆遗产。本资料集收集了来自新加坡、中国、马来西亚、泰国、美国、加拿大等国家的100多封侨批与回批的原始文件副本，编者对这批资料进行了整理、转写、校对、翻译。这些原始资料不仅包括传统定义上的侨批（即侨汇和侨信），同时也包括了一些华人移民书信，有些是华人移民与中国国内亲人的往来书信，有些则是移居不同地区的华人移民之间的往来书信。