Many of our compatriots in the Mainland believe that the huaqiao [note below] are all capitalists. Even the relatives in our hometown [Tangshan] look upon the fanke [the Hokkien term denoting lamnang, "our people," who had left China to make a living in a foreign land; literally, visitors or guests in a foreign land] as landlords and feel that going abroad is the path to prosperity. They do not understand the truth about the huaqiao. Of course there are huaqiao capitalists, but they are few in number. Eighty to ninety percent of the huaqiao are laborers, and a majority of them are small-time vendors, storekeeprs, workers, and peasants. They scrimp on food and other necessities in order to save money and return home and support their families.
[Lagalag sa Nanyang (Nanyang Piaoliuji) ni Bai Ren, salin ni Joaquin Sy. Galing sa yugtong Introduksiyon ni Caroline Hau.]
Lagalag sa Nanyang (Nanyang Piaoliuji) by Bai Ren, translated by Joaquin Sy. Excerpt from the Introduction by Carioline Hau.
Note: Huaqiao for the most part of its hundred-year history connoted enforced migration or exile, with additional meanings of official protection extended to Chinese abroad as well as self-conscious patriotism among the Chinese abroad, expressed as "cultureal" commitment to remaining "Chinese" or restoring one's "Chineseness". [...] It has also been applied to settlers who are foreign subjects.
I found this interesting. It corresponds with the stories our yaya told us of her father, who was born in 1900s Southern China (which province, she doesn't know) and migrated to the Philippines around the first quarter of the 20th century, leaving behind a family. He was very poor and sold siomai and other dimsum, I believe. He couldn't marry my yaya's mother because there were laws prohibiting the marriage of Chinese people and Filipinos.
According to Caroline Hau's introduction, author Bai Ren (real name Wang Jisheng, also a poet, novelist and dramatist) was born in Fujian in 1918. He migrated to the Philippines in 1933, traveling through Visayas then Manila in Luzon. He returned to China in 1937.
