Abstract
Why would a foreign-born overseas Chinese endeavor to reconnect with or return to China? While scholars have generally attributed such acts to the emigrant’s primordial affinity to the ancestral homeland, or his nationalistic concerns for China, historian Philip Kuhn’s recent conception of “corridors” allows us to instead focus on the personal and socio-economic reasons behind the emigrant’s engagement with China. This article examines a well-known effort by a third-generation overseas Chinese from Singapore, Lim Boon Keng (1869–1957), who re-established a corridor to China and eventually returned to work in Xiamen. Lim was secure with his racial hybridity and with the fact that he was an overseas Chinese; and it was in response to the changing socio-economic conditions in Singapore that he acknowledged Chinese culture and China, and hoped to use them to ensure the welfare and continual prosperity of his Straits Chinese community in their place of residence.
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