A Personal Odyssey

In spite of the saying that you can’t go home again, you can. The question is, what or where is home? To a Chinese-American, or any “overseas Chinese,” emotional ambiguities are built into any answer. The Chinese experience outside of China has created what has been called “sojourner mentality”: No matter what economic success emigrant Chinese achieve, the pull of the homeland remains powerful. All too often, a combination of racial prejudice and deeply rooted cultural family ties - including ancestor reverence - have caused or forced these emigrants into the thousands of “Chinatowns” that exist today throughout the world. There they dream of returning one day to the homeland.