Post by NZBC on May 24, 2008 22:58:50 GMT 12
www.cascambodia.org/chinese_cam.htm
Introduction
"My mother sold me. The boat was huge, the waves too, I was sick to my stomach for three days and three nights¡. I knew nobody. Suddenly, here I was in this country, speaking no Khmer." Like Chong Chim, now in her 80s, most of Cambodia's ethnic Chinese have their roots in rural China. Bought into servitude by wealthy emigr¨¦ families, contracted as coolie labour by colonial agents, kidnapped in clan wars, or simply on the run from Japanese and Chinese armies, flood or famine, they reversed their fortunes in Cambodia. They followed a track beaten by thousands of Chinese sailors, traders, and political refugees who had found comfort and acceptance in Cambodia since the dawn of Khmer civilisation. Not until the US-Vietnam war spilled into Cambodia did the tide turn, unleashing the ghosts of their past. Their communities fractured by the mass bombing of Cambodia from 1970-73, their numbers decimated by Pol Pot's failed revolution, and their last hopes trampled by anti-Chinese policies during the Vietnamese occupation, many of Cambodia's Chinese re-enacted the nightmares of their childhood and the fate of their ancestors, becoming refugees again. This study is concerned with those Chinese that stayed, and those that have returned.
Introduction
"My mother sold me. The boat was huge, the waves too, I was sick to my stomach for three days and three nights¡. I knew nobody. Suddenly, here I was in this country, speaking no Khmer." Like Chong Chim, now in her 80s, most of Cambodia's ethnic Chinese have their roots in rural China. Bought into servitude by wealthy emigr¨¦ families, contracted as coolie labour by colonial agents, kidnapped in clan wars, or simply on the run from Japanese and Chinese armies, flood or famine, they reversed their fortunes in Cambodia. They followed a track beaten by thousands of Chinese sailors, traders, and political refugees who had found comfort and acceptance in Cambodia since the dawn of Khmer civilisation. Not until the US-Vietnam war spilled into Cambodia did the tide turn, unleashing the ghosts of their past. Their communities fractured by the mass bombing of Cambodia from 1970-73, their numbers decimated by Pol Pot's failed revolution, and their last hopes trampled by anti-Chinese policies during the Vietnamese occupation, many of Cambodia's Chinese re-enacted the nightmares of their childhood and the fate of their ancestors, becoming refugees again. This study is concerned with those Chinese that stayed, and those that have returned.