Margaret Hillenbrand. Negative Exposures: Knowing What Not to Know in Contemporary China

Abstract

c h in se lera tu re to d ay v o l. 9 n . 2 One cannot help think of the Chinese gold rush in the nineteenth-century in America, or the Chinese migrants to Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Unlike the European settlers in these continents, the Chinese were perceived as temporary residents and were accused of being opportunists who did not want to contribute to their migration destination, but just wanted to make quick money to send back home. . .They too wanted (and many of them did) bring glory to their families and ancestors by building grand houses back home. Many of these houses, in places like Taishan and Kaiping in Guangdong Province, hometown of most early Chinese migrants to the new colonies during the Gold Rush remain intact, but unoccupied, they became historical heritage because the people who built them did not return, having settled somewhere else. (2018, 192–93)