cover image Mixed Signals: A History of the Chinese Diasport

Mixed Signals: A History of the Chinese Diasport

Crystal Dimeo, Lynn Pan. Sports Illustrated Books, $3.5 (121pp) ISBN 978-0-316-69010-2

Population explosion, poverty and corruption have driven millions of Chinese from their homeland. Emigration, persistent since the 1600s, reached a floodtide in the second half of the 19th century. Chinese cut sugar in Hawaii, worked mines in the Transvaal, built Madagascar's first roads and Manila's finest churches and hospitals. Pan, a Shanghai-born writer based in Hong Kong and England, writes with exceptional skill and clarity about a vast, complex subject. The wave of anti-Chinese hysteria in San Francisco after the boom days was not untypical of the discrimination and cruelties the Chinese faced. Pan explores Chinatowns from New York to Bangkok and discusses intermarriage, triads (secret societies), Chinese food. She paints the Chinese immigrant experience as a human drama in this moving, inspirational account of one group's survival and success. Photos. (Oct.)