Book Description
The Chinese overseas now number 25 to 30 million, yet the 2,000-year history of Chinese attempts to venture abroad and the underlying values affecting that migration have never before been presented in a broad overview. Despite centuries of prohibition against leaving the land and traveling and settling overseas, the "earthbound" Chinese--first traders, then peasants and workers--eventually found new sources of livelihood abroad. The practice of sojourning, being always temporarily away from home, was the answer the Chinese overseas found to deal with imperial and orthodox concerns. Today their challenge is to find an alternative to either returning or assimilating by seeking a new kind of autonomy in a world that will come to acknowledge the ideal of multicultural states.
In pursuing this story, international scholar Wang Gungwu uncovers some major themes of global history: the coming together of Asian and European civilizations, the ambiguities of ethnicity and diasporic consciousness, and the tension between maintaining one's culture and assimilation.
Average customer rating:
- mmm... accent-free?
- Great Supplemental Tool for Increasing Your Vocabulary
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Chinese/English: Set (3-Level Set): VocabuLearn: Music-Enhanced
Inc Penton Overseas
Manufacturer: Penton Overseas
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Binding: Audio Cassette
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ASIN: 0939001160 |
Customer Reviews:
mmm... accent-free?.......2004-11-01
Any study material has both pros and cons, and depending on how you use it, this material could be a great learning tool for learners of Mandarin Chinese.
Only my complain is that the Mandarin speaker in this recording sometimes mis-pronounces words (actually very frequently and I know it becuase I listened to it with my Chinese friends.) According to my native Mandarin speaking friends, approximately 10 to 15 % of the words in the entire recording are either mispronounced or do not exist.
But that means that it makes you explore the Mandarin vocabulary by yourself; checking words in a dictionary or go ask your Chinese friends what they mean, etc; which is good because since this material only provide you with word-to-word translation practices, you need to learn how they are used in sentence levels by yourself. And there is no such thing as "accent-free" anyway. Everybody thinks his/her own accent is the standard, (although those mispronounced words in these CDs are not the matter of accentual variation, but simply mispronounced.) Anyhow, it was a good practice for me to learn how to use a Mandarin-English dictionary.
Great Supplemental Tool for Increasing Your Vocabulary.......2004-10-30
The Baroque music, which plays in the background and is intended to enhance your focus, concentratin and retention of the words, doesn't run throughout the recordings, but comes and goes. The reasoning behind this, when they were creating these recordings was that if the music is played all along, you may drift too deep into a trance (I don't think that's bad for learning, though), and that it would be better if you stay closer to the conscious level.
Trying to consciously remember all the words as they are poured out may be too much, but you can have the recordings also play in the background while you're doing other things. It will help to impress them upon your subconscious mind and you may just find yourself enjoying increased comprehension; and then you'll eventually find yourself using these words with greater ease.
Each level contains 1,500 words and it will definitely help you to rapidly increase your vocabulary
Book Description
Vocabulearn - The One and Only Audio Foreign Language Vocabulary Builder Language learners know that after acquiring basic words, phrases, and grammar, expanding foreign language vocabulary is essential to developing the power to really communicate in the new language. Vocabulearn is unique in its ability to build a broad vocabulary. Words are organized into the categories nouns, adjectives and adverbs, expressions and verbs: Level 1 contains the 2500 most frequently used words and phrases. Levels 2 and 3 move on to increasingly more complex words and phrases.
Customer Reviews:
Hugely irritating.......2006-01-24
Its like going to a loud classical music concert with an English guy and a Chinese woman shouting random words at you!
I can't imagine anything more counter conducive to learning.
Presumably they imagined that they should add some value to just two people spouting words but I would have been happy to purchase just that! If I wanted to listen to loud classical music at the same time - I'll play it myself.
Great Tool For Expanding Your Vocabulary.......2004-10-30
The Baroque music, which plays in the background and is intended to enhance your focus, concentratin and retention of the words, doesn't run throughout the recordings, but comes and goes. The reasoning behind this, when they were creating these recordings was that if the music is played all along, you may drift too deep into a trance (I don't think that's bad for learning, though), and that it would be better if you stay closer to the conscious level.
Trying to consciously remember all the words as they are poured out may be too much, but you can have the recordings also play in the background while you're doing other things. It will help to impress them upon your subconscious mind and you may just find yourself enjoying increased comprehension; and then you'll eventually find yourself using these words with greater ease.
Each level contains 1,500 words and it will definitely help you to rapidly increase your vocabulary
would never have thought anything could be this awful.......2004-09-20
I will keep it simple. They have classical music playing on the audio. Not background classical music. Loud classical music! It seems just as loud, perhaps louder than the speakers. It is very difficult to catch the subtle tone inflections of the speaker. Have you ever tried to talk to someone with loud music playing in the background? You always ask them to turn it down so you can understand them right? And that is when they are speaking the same language that your are! How the producer(s) of the Chinese VocabuLearn could think this is was a good idea, it just goes beyond my understanding. It is so beyond rediculous, I will term this as Meta-rediculous.
Book Description
This collection of chapters provides a forum for the current research results and ideas on overseas Chinese archaeology. It presents a large body of history, methods, interpretation, and artifact analysis. In addition to those archaeologists specializing in Chinese American history, Hidden Heritage will be of interest to all historical archaeologists and to scholars of Asian American studies, and to persons of Asian descent.
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, large numbers of people from mainland China emigrated to the United States and other countries seeking employment. Termed "overseas Chinese," they made lasting contributions to the development of early communities, an impact which has only begun to be recognized in recent years. "Chinatowns," rural mining claims, work camps for railroad and other construction activities, salmon canneries and shrimp camps, laundries, stores, cook shacks, cemeteries, and temples are only some of the sites where traces of their presence can be found. In recent years, numerous archaeological and historical investigations of the overseas Chinese have taken place, and Hidden Heritage presents the results of some of those studies.
Topics range from urban sites in several states to structures and garden terraces in wild and scenic parts of Idaho, and include mining, artifacts, foodways, cannery workers, and women, as well as some comparative material for New Zealand. The closing chapter summarizes method and theory to date.
Ethnic identification of the Chinese presence is made easier by the fact that the artifacts found on overseas Chinese archaeological sites invariably include ones that were either brought with them or imported by them. Their table ceramics, food and alcoholic beverage containers, medicinal bottles, gambling-related objects, and opium-smoking paraphernalia are quite different in appearance from objects used by Euroamericans, and many of them are illustrated in the various chapters. Because of the variety of the subject matter, the sum of bibliographies is extensive; the book is also indexed.
Amazon.com
For many centuries, Chinese people have been emigrating and creating distinctively Chinese communities outside mainland China, even as they adjust to the foreign cultures in which they put down roots. A third-generation huaqiao, overseas Chinese, in Los Angeles is a very different person from one in, say, Manila, yet they share a heritage that may have molded their diverse experiences in similar ways. This book provides everything one could want to know about the Chinese diaspora in a very user-friendly way. Though encyclopedic in its wide-ranging detail, the information is not presented in encyclopedic form. First, essays analyze the origins of the overseas Chinese, their migrations, institutions, and relations with the motherland and with non-Chinese peoples. The rest of the book, more than half, is devoted to outlines of Chinese societies around the world: in Southeast Asia, the Americas, Australasia, Europe, East Asia, the Indian Ocean, and Africa. Maps, charts, drawings, and imaginatively chosen vintage and contemporary photographs describe the Chinese communities established in these disparate places. Questions of racial discrimination and identity in the modern world are approached rationally and dispassionately. A vast amount of history and social analysis is presented, yet editor Lynn Pan has maintained unusual clarity and accessibility in a book that could have been overwhelming in its thoroughness. --John Stevenson
Book Description
The first of its kind, this book offers a panoramic view of past and present overseas Chinese communities worldwide. From their arrival as laborers in the British colonies to their emergence as a force in Indonesia, Chinese emigrants have carried the experiences of China to other continents and civilizations, in the process modifying and enriching them. The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas reflects the diverse histories and traditions that produced this diaspora, as well as the rich and various transmutations it has produced in turn.
Arranged geographically and thematically, with country-by-country profiles of individual Chinese communities, the book includes sections on the regional and cultural origins of emigrant communities; the history and patterns of migration; social, familial, and business institutions; and interethnic relations. An invaluable reference, it is as accessible as it is authoritative, highly readable from beginning to end. The engaging design employs boxed features, maps, graphs, tables, and a vast array of pictures to make complex material remarkably clear and vivid. A glossary identifies Chinese proper names and terms with their characters, while the bibliography gives full references to Chinese, English, French, and Spanish works.
Comprising signed articles by 50 noted scholars in Asia, North America, Europe (including Russia), Australia, and Africa, with a large advisory panel of eminent experts, the Encyclopedia is an unparalleled resource, providing an unprecedented view of one of the world's largest, oldest, and most varied cultures abroad.
Customer Reviews:
Celebration of Heritage or Ethnic Triumphalism?.......2002-09-26
This is a good first reference book for those who wish for a single-volume overview of the Chinese Diaspora. However, there are a number of disturbing issues about this book which need to be brought up if the spirit of enquiry is to be preserved.
First the good points: This is the only volume which summarizes the huge diversity of experience of the Chinese diaspora, and while the volume refuses to use the term (something I will come to later), most of us outside the rabid cultural nationalist camp see very little wrong with using it (it's certainly more convenient then "The Chinese Overseas" - overseas from where? one might ask, are Taiwan and Hongkong somehow magically connected to the mainland by invisible strips of earth that only Pan and her collaborators can see?).
The introductory material presents a solid treatment of "traditional" Chinese culture at the turn of the 20th century and gives a useful overview of some of the important ideas in thinking about or studying the diaspora. There are also some good individual chapters on the various "Overseas Chinese" communities. As a non-specialist in Southeast Asia, I was most impressed with the coverage there, but there were useful contributions on Europe, Australasia and North America too. The treatment of Chinese in the Pacific Islands was a little brief, as were the sections on the Caribbean and Latin America. Had Evelyn Hu-DeHart been given a little more space, she would have been able to do her subject matter much more justice.
Now to the problems: Pan's volume begins with the premise that each of these Diasporan Chinese communities shares something called a Chinese Identity. This is in turn related to a model of Chineseness that is dominated by historical (and genetic) factors. No serious attention (with a small number of individual exceptions) is really paid to the ways in which Chinese communities and in particular, the post-World War 2 generations in these places have changed except to invoke "assimilation" in a thoroughly simplistic fashion.
No mention is made of the roles played by Asian Americans (and Chinese Americans in particular) as gate keepers in maintaining North American systems of racial privilege. Nor are the difficult relationships between Chinese and Malays or Chinese-Jamaicans and Afro-Jamaicans given much attention.
The definitional boundaries utilized by dominant interests within ethnic Chinese communities are often unproblematized so that (for example) the Chinese men who married Maori women in New Zealand and the descendants of those marriages disappear from the "Chinese" community as do many of those who married white people.
Rather than examining these points of fragmentation and conflict, the volume instead focusses on the increasing prosperity of certain segments of Diasporan communities. This coupled with the absence of much in the way of critical analysis tends to produce an overall effect of triumphalism and simple-minded praising of the self-made man ideology which is so dear to the hearts of capitalists and model minorities everywhere.
Such an emphasis is to be expected perhaps in a volume commissioned by the Chinese Heritage Center in Singapore, a body set up to promote Lee Kwan Yew's idolization of Confucian family values as the corner-stone of Singaporean Chinese identity and prosperity. This is one reason perhaps why the editors shied away from using the word "Diaspora" with its intimations of permanent rupture, preferring instead a title which asserts the centrality of "China" as a location and as an idea despite the increasingly disputed and diverse nature of the communities it claims to represent.
In summary, I would say "Buy this book but be aware of its limitations." It's not a book I would rely on for anything more than an introduction to a very complex and dynamic situation.
concise AND gripping!.......2000-11-01
It's an excellent book for anyone who is ethnically part or full-blooded Chinese, interested in their place in the extended Chinese diaspora. In this age of easy global travel/change of abode, it gave me, a woman who is half-Chinese, half-Japanese who has lived in HK, NY, CA, Jpn and now London, a good sense of having roots and belonging. It's well researched, covering every imaginable part of the world and is not just a dry academic book, but includes info from pop culture to major historical events that involve Chinese people -- a very well-organised, hard-to-put-down, easy read. I have recommended this book to friends, and intend to give a few copies away as birthday and X'mas presents.
A good book, but poor coverage of Asian business.......1999-04-02
This meticulously researched book is a must read for understanding the Overseas Chinese community in Asia. But despite their economic dominance of the region, the role of the Overseas Chinese in business is very poorly covered in this encyclopedia and almost leaves you feeling that this role has never been analyzed. I recommend that readers supplement this book with a balanced book on the Overseas Chinese in business: Having just finished "New Asian Emperors: The Overseas Chinese, their Strategies and Competitive Advantages" by George T. Haley et al., I see both books as essential to understanding the role of the Overseas Chinese community as both cover the same area from different, though extremely well-researched perspectives.
What an overview of the impact of Chinese immigration.......1999-03-28
Congratulations to the Chinese Heritage Centre for their courage, perserverance and satisfaction in publishing the first comprehensive view of Chinese migrants over the last 200 years or so. This book assembles the many of the puzzling pieces of the Chinese mosaic. Each country's contributor/researcher/academic presented their views on the Chinese communities. Overall accurate but some contributors negative views influenced their contributions. As a 3rd generation Overseas Chinese I would have appreciated if the local communities or societies had been invited to present their views.
Average customer rating:
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German/Chinese: Level 1 with Book (VocabuLearn)
Penton Overseas Inc
Manufacturer: Penton Overseas
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ASIN: 9579330808 |
Book Description
Much has been written about the rise of the Asian economies in recent decades, and their coming economic dominance in the next century. The New Asian Emperors shows how and why overseas Chinese companies are achieving dominance in the Asia Pacific. In the wake of the Asian Currency crisis, this book takes a fresh look at the role of the overseas Chinese as they continue to create some of Asia's most wealthy and successful companies.
In particular, the authors tackle the principal difference between Western and Eastern business practices. The overseas Chinese, due to their origins and history developed a unique form of management - now they maintain it as their competitive advantage.
Although Asian governments are currently floundering, the overseas Chinese networks continue to prosper. The authors explain the following to Eastern and Western managers:
the sources and characteristics of overseas Chinese management,
how to combat the overseas Chinese,
the strengths and exploitable weaknesses of the overseas Chinese,
whether overseas Chinese management practices will spread in the same way as Japanese management did,
whether Western management technologies will find themselves outclassed.
A feature of the book are the exclusive, in-depth interviews with the New Asian
Emperors since most of them avoid the press and little is known of them.
- Develops a systematic theory of the Overseas Chinese networks and how they strategize
- Draws on interviews with CEOs of major Overseas Chinese companies, many of whom have never granted interviews before to academics
Customer Reviews:
Simply Overrated.......2003-06-17
This is a good, but not a great book on the so-called Overseas Chinese, focusing on their business culture and strategy. Co-written by three professors, the work has an academic feel to it, but can also serve as a primer for businessmen wanting to learn about their SE Asian Overseas Chinese counterparts.
This book does not deserve a five-star rating. It is simplistic, and likely to be of value only to the person who has no experience or knowledge of Asia and the Overseas Chinese. Some of the text is unnecessary. Why did the authors put in a rough history of early Chinese philosophy? It's too simple to be valuable and yet takes up too much room in an already short work.
The book does have some good points. I enjoyed the sketches of certain Overseas Chinese business leaders, some of whom I knew nothing about. There is also some original research here on the business environment in SE Asia, specifically on the lack of information that helps the Overseas Chinese maintain an edge against outside competitors in their home markets.
Very insightful book.......2002-12-04
I really learned a lot from this book -- more about the culture and business environment of Asia than I thought I would from this slim book. I work as manager for Asian operations.
Excellent practical insights grounded in theory.......2002-10-27
I give this book 5 stars! I do agree with the "Economist"'s review that this is an important book. I will go so far as to say that this is an essential book for understanding how the Overseas Chinese companies operate. They are family companies --but a lot more and that's the ground this book covers.
I disagree with Boris B's review below. I certainly did not read the book he did! Other than the opening quotes for each chapter, I very much doubt he read the book! I found this book extremely clear and straightforward. I also thought all theories were presented as simply as possible (sometimes the concepts are complex) and well-backed up with examples from the authors' extensive business practice and research.
Excellent understanding of Asian business.......2002-10-26
This is a very practical and easy-to-read book on how to do business successfully with the Overseas Chinese that dominate the economies of Southeast Asia and China. The authors draw on their personal experiences with Asian executives as well as on extensive research. Despite their academic backgrounds, the authors display real hands-on knowledge of Asian business conditions. And despite being very solidly grounded in theory, the authors are never "stuffy" or talk down to you. They do an impressive job of applying theories spanning economics, strategic management and classical Chinese philosophy to understanding present-day business environments. Novices and old hands will find this an invaluable reference. I have re-read this little gem several times, and find some new insights every time. A must read!
A book that is borrowed but rarely returned..........2002-10-24
I notice that this book has generated a lot of talk and I would like to add my two cents. I am currently based in Hong Kong and travel and do business through South East Asia. I picked up this book on the airport as I deal regularly with the Overseas Chinese. I had planned to read it and discard it -- I have re-read it several times; my original, thumbed copy was "borrowed" and never returned. I have since bought another copy which I do not display in my office.
New Asian Emperors covers some very profound aspects of doing business with the Overseas Chinese and East Asians generally. However, it does so in a non-intimidating and straight-forward fashion.
This is a beautifully written and polished book. Actually, I never did locate the sentence on "Taosim" to which one of the reviewers below referred. I was particularly impressed by the chapter on Confucianism: I received a degree in East Asian philosophy and wish some of my text books had communicated the concepts so simply. East Asian philosphies and ethics emphasize duality and ambiguity. The economist who wrote the review seems unable to comprehend that this is the terrain with which the authors had to deal.
Many of the concepts first introduced in New Asian Emperors have been covered since in the popular press and "borrowed" by other authors with little or no credit given (see Frank-Jurgen Richter and Ming Jer-Chen). It's a credit to this book, its ideas and their exposition, that it still remains the leader in explaining how to do business with the Overseas Chinese, that continue to dominate the important markets of South East Asia. It's also the book most found on the book shelves of executives that are dealing with East Asian operations -- when it not borrowed ;-). I have been informed by clients and employees that they read it at university in Singapore, Hong Kong, the USA and China. This book has value.
Book Description
Chinese Overseas examines issues of cultural change and identity construction of Chinese overseas, Chinese and non-Chinese relations, and their cultural and economic performance. It offers a perspective of understanding Chinese overseas in nation-states and beyond, in a global context which the author describes as the Chinese ethnological field.
This informative and theoretically interesting book enables readers to have a deeper understanding of the issue of Chinese and Chinese-ness in the diaspora.
Average customer rating:
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The Overseas Chinese: Ethnicity in National Context
Hsu Francis L.K.
Manufacturer: University Press of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 076181163X |
Book Description
The Overseas Chinese examines the ethnic identity of the Chinese from a contextual approach through essays observing the manner of adjustment in the different areas of their dispersal throughout the world.
Books:
- The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change
- The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
- The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972
- The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class
- The Intolerable Hulks: British Shipboard Confinement 1776-1857
- The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers
- The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times
- The Political Zoo
- The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to American History (Politically Incorrect Guides)
- The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism)
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