Introduction

Abstract

The land of Myanmar, a southern neighbor of China, has seen Chinese activities and visitors, sometimes long-term settlers, for at least two millenniums through extensive overland routes from southwest China and overseas routes connecting the southeast Chinese coast. The exchange reached its peak in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Burma was under colonial rule as part of the British India Empire. In this chapter, Li offers a summary of Chinese migration in colonial Burma between 1826 and 1942, its demographic and geographic distributions, and the popular impressions it left in contemporary literature and communal memories. She argues that colonial Burma’s peculiar position in the British imperial world and Southeast Asian Chinese network creates a unique collective experience that shapes its Chinese community.