Xijiang

Expanding the Cantonese Diaspora: Sojourners and Settlers in the West River Basin
Steven B. Miles

Journal of Chinese Overseas, Volume 2, Number 2, November 2006, pp. 220-246 (Article) Published by NUS Press Pte Ltd DOI: 10.1353/jco.2006.0017

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jco/summary/v002/2.2miles.html Access provided by University of Melbourne (19 Jun 2013 08:53 GMT)

S T E V E N B . M I L E S | E X PA N D I N G T H E C A N TO N E S E D I A S P O R A

Expanding the Cantonese Diaspora: Sojourners and Settlers in the West River Basin 1
STEVEN B. MILES

This article describes Cantonese migrants along the West River basin linking the two southern Chinese provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong during Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) times. Based primarily on genealogies of Pearl River delta lineages, the article examines a range of interconnected activities — including land settlement, commerce, and temporary sojourning in order to win civil service examination degrees — that Cantonese sojourners and settlers pursued outside the delta. These delta genealogies also prove to be valuable sources for the study of Cantonese overseas migration. In fact, many of the families discussed in this article sent sojourners both upriver along the West River basin and abroad to Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Thus, the author argues that the West River trajectory was an important component of the larger Cantonese diaspora.
I N THE OPENING YEARS OF THE 20 TH CENTURY , Ruan Yijun ,=a successful overseas Chinese businessman based in Kuala Lumpur, visited his ancestral home in Dongan (Yunfu) county along the West River (Xijiang ) basin in western Guangdong province. Perhaps to celebrate his commercial success, Ruan compiled a small genealogy of his direct ancestors in Dongan. He began with his tenthgeneration ancestor, who in the 17th century had moved from Nanhai county in the heart of Guangdong’s Pearl River delta

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