In the Tang Mountains we have a big house

The one hundred years between the mid nineteen-century Californian and Australian gold rushes and the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 saw the establishment and maintenance of extensive trans-Pacific links. These links developed between the native places or qiaoxiang 僑鄉 of tens of thousands of people originating in the Pearl River Delta of south China who travelled to various destinations including the Pacific ports of Sydney, San Francisco and Honolulu. Support for, and the intention to return to, their places of origin, their qiaoxiang, was the basic motivation factor for people creating and maintaining these links in the years after 1849. The history of qiaoxiang link is, therefore, not only a history of movement outside the qiaoxiang, but also a history of efforts to survive, return to, retire in and improve the qiaoxiang. Most people aimed to use the wealth and resources they could obtain in the Pacific ports and other destinations to improve the lot not only of themselves and their families but also their clans and villages in the qiaoxiang. This was an aim that not all fulfilled, but this does not mean it did not exist. As one person, a Mrs Leong, who spent most of her life in the United States, put it, she and her family planned to return to Zhongshan 中山 county in Guangdong 廣東 province “because in the Tang Mountains we have a big house.” For many people of the Pearl River Delta living overseas, the “big house”, in reality or dream, was located in their qiaoxiang.