Chapter 3

For Overseas Chinese, lineage is a portable kinship system of clan associations and genealogies that provides mutual support, funds ancestral villages, and preserves ethnic identity across borders, though it often excludes women from inheritance; binding scattered descendants to their homelands through shared memory and obligation.

Chapter 3:

Overseas Chinese and Lineage

One visible thread, one forgotten thread

The Overt and Underlying Trajectories of Overseas Chinese Life

Overseas Chinese Men

Left-behind Chinese women

Shouldering the responsibility of the family

Farming and working

Maintaining family networks across countries

Raising and nurturing children

Supporting overseas Chinese hometown communities

Excluded

Trade / Commerce

Building ancestral halls

Lamp lighting ritual

Returning home

Building schools

Recorded in

the family genealogy and remembered.

Young men driven by dreams

and a sense of responsibility.

As men migrated abroad for livelihood, women remained in the homeland, bearing quiet responsibility in safeguarding the family and its ancestral land.

Engaged in field labor and farming work, they relied on their own hands to secure a modest livelihood.

Receiving remittances from men overseas and maintaining contact through letters.

Caring for their parents-in-law and managing household affairs, they served as the backbone of the family.

They nurtured and educated their children through teaching, hoping they would rise above others and achieve success.

Engaging in village governance, mutual aid, and supporting the community

Excluded from genealogy, ritual commemoration, and historical record.

Working hard in a foreign land, they engaged in trade and business, sent remittances home, and gradually accumulated wealth.

Having achieved success and recognition, they earned the respect and warm welcome of their hometown community.

Funding the rebuilding of ancestral halls, they fostered a sense of clan identity and cohesion.

By funding education and founding schools, they cultivated talent and brought benefits to their hometowns.

Lighting lamps to seek blessings and glorify the family lineage.

Their names were recorded in the family genealogy, carved onto stone tablets, written into biographical records, and commemorated by the family for generations.

Setting sail for Nanyang, they crossed the seas to seek a livelihood and forge a new future.

Away to the South Sea