Cantonese in Americas

Introduction

Since the 17th century, hundreds of thousands of Cantonese migrants from Guangdong's coastal region have crossed the South China Sea and the Pacific for commerce, contract labor, education, and family reunion. They moved back and forth across Southeast Asia and North America. Over time, these movements helped shape the social structures and cultural image of Chinese communities overseas.

This project seeks to shift the focus from "a group of Guangdong people" to a broader question of how Guangdong culture has been carried abroad, transformed, and transmitted across generations. Through multi-regional, multilingual archival research, this project aims to present the history of Cantonese migration and cultural transformation that has often been simplified.