Each of these epigrams is from an exemplary work of primary research. While not entirely exclusive—potential for overlap appears in the ideas of “mutual development” and “transfer” of culture—they each exemplify different research agendas that result in competing narratives of Chinese migration. Sucheng Chan's work is part of a larger project of contemporary Asian American studies to incorporate Chinese as important actors in American history. It emphasizes the adaptations of Chinese social organization in the United States, and explains them as necessary and unprecedented responses to unfamiliar challenges. Although Chan pays more attention than many Asian American historians to Chinese nationalism, transnational families, and continued links to China, she does not follow the implications of these descriptions so far as to reformulate her narrative of migration as a monodirectional relocation followed by locally conditioned transformation (see also S. Chan 1991, 63–66,96–97; 1990). In their most extremely America-centered versions, Asian American histories have treated these extra-American phenomena as little more than byproducts of exclusion and racism, and denounced the idea of the temporary Chinese sojourner as an orientalist construction (A. Chan 1981).

The literature on nationalism ascribes a pivotal role to schools in creating what Benedict Anderson calls an “imagined community,” through the formation and dissemination of a common national identity and a shared national consciousness where none existed before (e.g., Anderson 1983; Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1990; Smith 1991). It is not unusual to find Japan cited as a prime example of this process, not only among theorists of nationalism, but among Japan specialists, as well (e.g., Beauchamp 1988, 226–29; Cummings 1980, 17–25; Hunter 1989, 192–97; Ienaga 1978; Pyle 1996, 125–30; Rohlen 1983, 46–57; Schoppa 1991, 29–31; Thomas 1996, 254–62). In general, they portray the first two decades of the Meiji period, between 1868 and 1890, as the era when a modern national consciousness merged with a revivified nativist identity to form an “emperor-centered nationalism” that was institutionalized and propagated by the state, chiefly through a newly established compulsory, centralized school system. Frequently, this assertion is supported by citing the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890), which begins, “Our Imperial Ancestors have founded Our Empire on a basis broad and everlasting and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue; Our subjects, ever united in loyalty and filial piety, have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof.” This distinctive brand of Japanese nationalism is also regarded as a factor contributing to the subsequent development of Japanese imperialism and the country's pursuit of a colonial empire abroad, which began with its victory in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), and concluded fifty years later with its defeat in the Pacific War.

While the men worked in the fields in the wine-like [winter] air, the women sat in the afternoon sun spinning and embroidering while they sang together, before starting to cook for their men. They embroidered phulkaris….” (Tandon 1968, 65). These stereotypes of feminine and masculine work in Prakash Tandon's memory book Punjabi Century illustrate dominant literary representations of economic production in Punjab, a province of the British Raj from the mid-nineteenth century until it was partitioned between independent India and Pakistan in 1947 (see fig. 1). Many Punjabi women used phulkari (literally, “flower-work”) embroidery to decorate their daily garments and handmade gifts in the nineteenth century. Illustrations only partially convey the vibrant visual impact of phulkaris, and even color photographs fail to capture fully the sheen of the silk thread. The embroidery ranges from striking geometric medallions in reds, shocking pinks, and maroons, through almost monochromatic golden tapestry-like, fabric-covering designs, to narrative embroideries depicting people and objects of rural Punjab. Women stitched phulkaris generally on handwoven cotton cloth (khadi), and phulkaris shared linked construction techniques, a dominant embroidery stitch (the darning stitch), and several distinctive motifs (Frater 1993, 71–74; Yacopino 1977, 42–45; Askari and Crill 1997, 95–101).

In China, the period from 1979 to 1989 was one of thawing and awakening. Moving away from the rigors of the “political winters” in Mao's time, Chinese society revived its diversity and vigor that had been harshly depressed for a long time by a revolutionary-totalitarian regime (Tsou 1986). One of the tremendous changes occurred in the cultural realm. In the mid and late 1980s thousands of Chinese cultural intellectuals, from well-known professors to junior university students, were caught up in a nonofficially initiated cultural movement, which has been widely called the “culture fever” (wenhua re). They engaged with great eagerness in searching for an alternative intellectual framework, derived from modern Western theories in social sciences and humanities, to replace the official ideology. They undertook a passionate reexamination of the virtues, weaknesses, and possibilities of Chinese traditional culture. They warmly debated what should make up the cultural prerequisites for China's modernization and whether or how Chinese traditional culture could be relevant to China's present and future. With the alteration of the structure of ideological alternatives, the legitimacy of the Party's orthodox ideology—Marxism-Leninism and the Thought of Mao Zedong—became marginalized. As many China scholars have pointed out, the legitimacy crisis was one of the most important historically contextual factors to play a key role in the events leading to the 1989 Tiananmen movement (see, for example, Tsou 1991, 277–80; and Ding 1994, 145–48).

In his 1955 book, The Political Role of Women, Maurice Duverger brought our attention to the lack of representation of women in politics. Since that time, the dismal underrepresentation of women in politics has not much improved. Few women rise to leadership positions in politics; as Jean Blondel found in a more recent cross-cultural comparison of political leaders, less than 0.005 percent of all leaders were women (1987, 116–17). Regarding women's political participation, political scientists used to assert that women tended to “limit attention to the superficial and irrelevant aspects of politics” (Lane 1959, 213). Many argued that women had a different political view than did men: they were apolitical, they personalized politics, and they adopted their husbands' political orientations. Accordingly, they became political leaders only by default, as substitutes for deceased husbands or fathers.