The Long Road Back to Home

After visiting the overseas Chinese communities in over 30 countries and areas, we have finally extended our focus to overseas Chinese people's original homelands, which have been closed tight for many years, and have only recently opened up.

"If money is to be had in the barbarian land/How come so many people have never returned? We were driven out by the bad prospects here/Leaving our home to resolve this quandary."

These four stanzas originated from a folk song of the Fujianese hometown of many overseas Chinese. It reflects the resignation that the overseas Chinese people held in mind back then as they resolved to abandon their ancestral home.

The five counties in Guangdong-Xinhui, Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Heshan--have always been the most famous embarkation points for emigrating Chinese over the past century. The Chinese people originating from these areas (including Hong Kong and Macau) exceed three million. They are distributed throughout 95 countries and areas of the world.

Early on in the Ming Dynasty, the Guanghai Bay to the south of Taishan was one of the busiest harbors of international trade. The residents living along the coast could not bear the constant harassment of Japanese pirates, so they fled to the areas of Thailand and Burma. Added to this, it was hard to make a living in Taishan, so a lot of residents went overseas to find what labor they could. Thus, Taishan became the first homeland in China of overseas Chinese.

The Chinese workers of the Ching dynasty labored in agony in foreign shipping vessels. Far away from home they were not only called, "the yellow peril," but suffered from hard labor and rampant sickness. Many senselessly perished. Among those were the traces of the blood and tears of the Taishan people.

Turning over another page of history, we can also see the hardship and grief of the overseas Chinese under the wave of anti-Chinese sentiment.

Southeast Asia, geographically close to China, felt especially threatened by the ever-growing power of overseas Chinese. As a result, they treated them with unfriendly attitudes and policies, which made many overseas Chinese return home in disillusion. Around 1962, more than 100,000 Indonesian Chinese registered to return to the mainland, but only about 40,000 made it in the end. After 30 years, to our surprise we found that in an inaccessible concentration camp along the coast of Sumatra, more than 800,000 ethnic Chinese were discovered one after anothen. Those refugee overseas Chinese had never before been formally exposed to the world. If we transfer our focus to somewhere else, maybe we can see if those ethnic Chinese who heeded the call of a "new China" and returned to the mainland after 1949 are okay. Is there anything that they ultimately regret?

In the series "Homeward Bound: the Return of the Overseas Chinese" which begins in this issue, we will explore Taishan and tell you the story of the refugee overseas Chinese. In the cover story of this edition, we introduce the many different aspects in the life of the returned Chinese and the vicissitudes of life in their houses.

Some people say that nowadays the Taiwan area has become the seat of the biggest overseas Chinese community. Do you agree? Along with the ever-increasing trend of emigration and Taiwanese expatriate businessmen's spreading throughout the whole world for business investment, evidence of our countrymen can be seen virtually everywhere. The number of so-called "new overseas Chinese," and "overseas Taiwanese" is on the rise. However, for Chinese parents who have always put an emphasis on their children's education, whether it he emigration or temporarily living abroad, looking for a Chinese school for their kids or teaching them Chinese by themselves has become the most important thing.

The writer Lung Ying-tai says that the reason she teaches Chinese to her sons who live in Germany is not to get them to identify with Chinese culture but rather to open a cultural window for them. Whether other Chinese parents' intentions are different or not, the fact that they teach Chinese to their kids is all the same.

Our magazine has reported on numerous Chinese-language schools abroad many times. This time we focus our overseas report on Indonesia. "Steve Fang, chairman of the Indonesia Taiwan Business Club and director of the Jakarta Taipei School, recalls the fact that fourteen years ago, when he just arrived in Indonesia to invest, he could not see any signboard with Chinese writing on it. And setting up a Chinese school was unthinkable!" Today, his dream has come true.

In 1991 the investment capital of Taiwanese businessmen in Indonesia topped US$1 billion, more than all other foreign investments. In May the Indonesian Ministry of Education allowed the establishment of a Chinese school, in order to accommodate the children of Taiwan investors. The process of establishing such a school was quite arduous. Behind the school was the sponsorship and efforts of many overseas Chinese, Taiwanese businessmen, and their dependents. But due to the Indonesian government's policies, the Jakarta Taipei School is limited to students holding an ROC passport. Students of Chinese descent of Singaporean, Hong Kong or Indonesian nationality all get rejected by the school. Throughout the interviewing process, our editors saw mothers who refused no hardships to make sure their children got to school, who deliver their children every day. We also witnessed how the teachers suffered under pressure from the imperious attention of students' mothers. Because the dormitory is so fully occupied, two little brothers who live very far away stay at the school principal's home.

In Indonesia where the Chinese language is strictly prohibited, such a school whose teaching material and system all follow that of Taiwan is quite special. The School's text books are all delivered by special personnel. In the future the books have to be carried back to Taiwan. As for the parents who keep an anxious eye on the kids, they can only resort to different means to prepare extracurricular readings for their children.

For overseas Chinese who have lived abroad many years, the Chinese-language education of their children has always been a source of emotional pain. Neither sticking to it or giving up is entirely satisfactory. For Taiwanese businessmen who live overseas temporarily or government officials who are stationed abroad, the problem of their children's education is comparatively less serious but can not be neglected, either.

Despite that, the Jakarta Taipei School has some little problems in regard to its operations (such as expensive tuition, an unclear status). Such a model fits more in with students' parents' expectations among the current overseas Chinese schools.

In the exclusive interview in this issue, you will have a deeper understanding of the Taipei School's process of establishment and the challenges that it is facing.