Please join us for our upcoming seminar with Dr. Shelly Chan from the University of California, Santa Cruz!
Talk Abstract
The Nanyang (“South Seas” in Chinese) had been a site of mass migration before being erased by the borders of Southeast Asian and Chinese nation-states in the 1950s-60s. One of the world’s most iconic diasporic regions, the Nanyang was comparable to the trans-Pacific Gold Mountains, north and northeast Asia, and the trans-Atlantic world, where migrants contributed greatly to productivity, modernity, and cosmopolitanism. Focusing on the closure of the Nanyang provides a unique opportunity to examine how diasporas are key to understanding regional connections and disconnections, while calling attention to the erasures hidden in colonial and national narratives.
Drawing on a larger book project about the Nanyang’s disappearance as a region of diaspora, the seminar focuses on the 1950s disruptions to the lucrative trade of “southern goods” (rice, sugar, edible birds’ nests, sea cucumbers, pearls) and “northern goods” (nuts, dates, oils, fungi, ginseng). Having been based in colonial Hong Kong for nearly a century, this “south-north” commerce was handled by a powerful guild of trading houses, Nam Pak Hong, first founded in 1868. Dominated by Teochiu (Chaozhou) merchants from southeastern China, the trade relied on diasporic networks and markets across the Nanyang, parallel to the Gold Mountain trade controlled by Cantonese merchants in the Pacific world. Its importance became apparent during a 1950s crisis, precipitated by a U.S.-led embargo on China during the Korean War, import-export controls imposed by Southeast Asian states, and an influx of refugees into Hong Kong. Cut off from Nanyang goods and markets, Teochiu merchants pivoted to building ties with the new People’s Republic of China and supplying the needs of a rapidly growing Hong Kong population. Nam Pak Hong became a chief promoter of “national products” and an informal representative of the PRC state in the British colony, altering its economic geography. Studying these disruptions reveals the merit of situating Hong Kong in the Nanyang and the Nanyang in Hong Kong. It suggests how Hong Kong had been a vital node of diasporic circulations, and how the disintegration of the Nanyang region also remade post-1945 Hong Kong.
Please note: Those interested in receiving Dr. Chan’s short paper in advance are welcome to contact Dr. Leo K. Shin of the departments of History and Asian Studies.
Speaker Bio
Shelly Chan is Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of Diaspora’s Homeland: Modern China in the Age of Global Migration, published by Duke University Press in 2018. She has taught at the University of Victoria (2009-2011) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2011-2020) before returning to UCSC, her Ph.D. alma mater. Chan is also a proud alumna of UBC History Program, where she earned a B.A. and M.A. She is working toward her second monograph titled “Disappearance of the Nanyang: Remembering an Asian Diasporic Region.”