title: Engendering social suffering: a Chinese diasporic community in northern Thailand.
abstract: This paper examines how reproducing Chineseness has become a source of social suffering through the case study of a group of Yunnan Chinese who escaped Chinese communist rules in the Mainland in 1949 or shortly after and settled in northern Thailand in the 1960s. As self-proclaimed carriers of traditional Chinese culture, they worked arduously to replicate whatever they considered 'authentic' Chinese through a narrow interpretation of the Confucian moral tenets in daily life. The (re)establishment of a patriarchal social order in Thailand - a society with a relatively high level of gender-equality, has inflicted tremendous pain and suffering among women and youth in this reified society. Ethnographic fieldwork, upon which this paper was based, was conducted in Maehong Village, Chiang Mai Province, between 2002 and 2007.
authors.affiliation: a Institute of Ethnology , Academia Sinica , 128 Academy Road, Sec. II., Taipei , 11529 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Shu-Min
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Huang
mesh_terms: D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D002681:China / Q000208:ethnology; D032903:Confucianism; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D012036:Refugees; D012940:Social Problems; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013785:Thailand / Q000208:ethnology
keywords: Confucianism; Gender inequality; Yunnan Chinese diasporas; patriarchal family; the Golden Triangle