HaiYan Association in Chicago

[chansomvia]

Our family village is in HaiYan and I believe it was one of the first village in Taisan to have many of their able and enterprising young men leave to work overseas so that they could help the impoverished folks at home. I saw this HaiYan Association building in Chicago last month which was locked. I wonder if anyone knows the history of this Association. It reminds me so much of the overseas Chinese Benevolent societies formed by the elders of the immigrants in foreign countries who group together to bury their dead, collect donations to purchase tickets for the ill and poor (my late second uncle sent home from Cuba) who can no longer work or have no means to return home, have big cookins for weddings and feast days. These were the back to basics early adventurers. Sadly their stories are no longer widely known but this forum has bought some to light.

Joe

[lachinatown]

Thank you Joe. There are many such organizations in Los Angeles Chinatown.
Unfortunately, number of them are closing up.

BTW, do you know how Patrick Soon-Shiong's name came about? According to Wikipedia, his Chinese surname is Wong. Apparently his family moved to South Africa.

[chansomvia]

Hi lachinatown

Sorry to have missed you in Los Angeles last month as it was a blur in the short time there, getting the auto rental and meeting friends, and getting the wife to the Outlets. I feel the nostalgia of hearing the Haiyan dialect spoken inChicago and it is the first time I realised that there were Associations for the Haiyan Clan in Los Angeles. Sadly the clans are no longer bound to the common need to unify to assist each other as their descendants are usually enterprising hardworking well educated individuals who have no need to look to the Associations for help. The culture and language is also a barrier as the new generation find that with the old folks around them puts them out of their comfort zone. In retrospect the Associations have fulfilled the need and we are there to pick up the pieces and if possible document their history.

There is no mystery of how Chinese names are registered in the Western world. The English will use the last name as the surname so when e.g. a Wong Soo Chan is being registered initially the real Chinese surname Wong as spoken by the person when asked his name will have his name written out as the surname of Chan as the person will more likely say the name is Wong Soo Chan as spoken in Chinese. Even when the registration officer is Chinese and can read the Chinese characters you will see as an example the same family with the English written registration one being a Yeoh and the other registered as a Khoo depending whether the officer is a Teochew or Cantonese. As in my case a Hakka would register me as a Chin in English, a Hokkien or Teochew officer will write me down as Mr Tan, the Foochow will write down as Mr Ting, Chan is my Cantonese name and so on in other dialects. Hence in this forum all you experts ask quite rightly for the Chinese Name in Chinese. More confusion as the surname in Chinese can be written in short or traditional characters.

Confusion again as many are paper sons who were smuggled in taking the sponsor's surname. I really do not know how the richest doctor in the world Patrick Soon-Shiong from South Africa got his name but it can be in any of the above round about way, and there are many. I was born in East Africa and am as poor as a doormouse when compared to the South African doctor now in the US.

This forum has put me in contact with a Zimbabwe Chinese couple and we have become great mates, this forum has also got me in contact with a Chinese now living in Melbourne whose parents were in Beira Mozambique, their Chinese friend's children left Africa due to the bad political situation there and are now happily in San Francisco. They are keen to trace their roots and hopefully the Zimbabwe and US group can meet with us Malaysians in New Zealand.

Thank you for helping out so many people on this forum.

Joe of Christchurch

[helen]

China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa
Howard W. French Reviewed by Nicolas van de Walle


Over one million Chinese citizens have moved to Africa in the last two decades, where they have established a wide array of businesses, from small farms to large construction companies. In this perceptive account, backed by numerous and often insightful interviews with people in a dozen African countries, French makes clear that the Chinese presence in Africa is not solely the result of Chinese government policies. A surprising number of his subjects reveal that they left China because they found life in Africa more attractive and do not intend to return home. Although many of them rely on networks of fellow Chinese immigrants for capital and know-how, they often complain to the author about their countrymen, particularly those who hail from different parts of China. Still, French concedes that this substantial wave of emigration cannot be completely disassociated from China’s strategic and commercial ambitions in the region. Although French declines to render a simplistic positive or negative verdict on the effect of the Chinese presence on the region, he does argue that it expresses China’s quasi-imperial approach to promoting its global influence and power

www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/china-s-second-continent-how-million-migrants-are-building-new-empire-africa


An exciting, hugely revealing account of China’s burgeoning presence in Africa—a developing empire already shaping, and reshaping, the future of millions of people.

A prizewinning foreign correspondent and former New York Times bureau chief in Shanghai and in West and Central Africa, Howard French is uniquely positioned to tell the story of China in Africa. Through meticulous on-the-ground reporting—conducted in Mandarin, French, and Portuguese, among other languages—French crafts a layered investigation of astonishing depth and breadth as he engages not only with policy-shaping moguls and diplomats, but also with the ordinary men and women navigating the street-level realities of cooperation, prejudice, corruption, and opportunity forged by this seismic geopolitical development. With incisiveness and empathy, French reveals the human face of China’s economic, political, and human presence across the African continent—and in doing so reveals what is at stake for everyone involved.

We meet a broad spectrum of China’s dogged emigrant population, from those singlehandedly reshaping African infrastructure, commerce, and even environment (a self-made tycoon who harnessed Zambia’s now-booming copper trade; a timber entrepreneur determined to harvest the entirety of Liberia’s old-growth redwoods), to those just barely scraping by (a sibling pair running small businesses despite total illiteracy; a karaoke bar owner–cum–brothel madam), still convinced that Africa affords them better opportunities than their homeland. And we encounter an equally panoramic array of African responses: a citizens’ backlash in Senegal against a “Trojan horse” Chinese construction project (a tower complex to be built over a beloved soccer field, which locals thought would lead to overbearing Chinese pressure on their economy); a Zambian political candidate who, having protested China’s intrusiveness during the previous election and lost, now turns accommodating; the ascendant middle class of an industrial boomtown; African mine workers bitterly condemning their foreign employers, citing inadequate safety precautions and wages a fraction of their immigrant counterparts’.

French’s nuanced portraits reveal the paradigms forming around this new world order, from the all-too-familiar echoes of colonial ambition—exploitation of resources and labor; cut-rate infrastructure projects; dubious treaties—to new frontiers of cultural and economic exchange, where dichotomies of suspicion and trust, assimilation and isolation, idealism and disillusionment are in dynamic flux.

Part intrepid travelogue, part cultural census, part industrial and political exposé, French’s keenly observed account ultimately offers a fresh perspective on the most pressing unknowns of modern Sino-African relations: why China is making the incursions it is, just how extensive its cultural and economic inroads are, what Africa’s role in the equation is, and just what the ramifications for both parties—and the watching world—will be in the foreseeable future.
books.google.co.nz/books/about/China_s_Second_Continent.html?id=AzgtAgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y