This graphic novel traces the development of the modern Chinese state while the author chronicles the trials and tribulations of the Chinese everyman as he embraces the new order in childhood, serves in the military and with agricultural labor, and becomes a member of the Communist Party.

Originally published: New York: Garland Pub., 2000.

When young Chu Pin begins to learn about China--its vast land, its history, its people, its religions, its festivals, its written language and literature, its way of life--he is filled with pride. For the Chinese geographically isolated for centuries from other great civilizations, have developed a unique, and until recently completely independent culture unlike any other in the world.

Dr. Li Khai and Dr. Kong Heong, the author s parents, were just twenty-one years old when they set out from Canton to practice Western medicine among their people in a strange new land. Hawaii at the turn of the century had in store for them plague, fire, starvation, drug problems, mutual mistrust by different nationalities thrown together, jealousy, and slander. Against all this, Li s became a part of the new Hawaii, keeping their faith in the American promise of eventual fairness for all. They worked for the health of the people s hearts and minds as well as their bodies, encouraging others in difficult times while they introduced modern health measures. They established not only a hospital for all Hawaiians, but a school to teach Chinese children for philosophy of the sages, and a newspaper and political party to encourage Overseas Chinese to work for constitutional reforms in Manchu-ruled China.

Shows that the history of the ethnic Chinese in the Philippines is a history in its own right as well as part of Philippine history. Dwells on the demographic, social, and international forces that have shaped that history.

Chinese in America endured abuse and discrimination in the late nineteenth century, but they had a leader and a fighter in Wong Chin Foo (1847–1898), whose story is a forgotten chapter in the struggle for equal rights in America. The first to use the term “Chinese American,” Wong defended his compatriots against malicious scapegoating and urged them to become Americanized to win their rights. A trailblazer and a born showman who proclaimed himself China’s first Confucian missionary to the United States, he founded America’s first association of Chinese voters and testified before Congress to get laws that denied them citizenship repealed. Wong challenged Americans to live up to the principles they freely espoused but failed to apply to the Chinese in their midst. This evocative biography is the first book-length account of the life and times of one of America’s most famous Chinese—and one of its earliest campaigners for racial equality.