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Congratulations on the publication of your illuminating new book, The Flip Side! What inspired you to begin this project?

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I was interested in exploring the little-studied afterlives of influential China-born or China-bred Americans who were for a time entitled to speak about China, addressing other Americans in the popular culture of the US, even though they were not themselves biologically Chinese. I found this at the very least curious, and perhaps even impossible by any present standard of national belonging to China. That one’s birthright or belonging, in the case of these remarkable persons, did not confer Chinese citizenship was likewise fascinating to me, even as physical displacement from China only seemed to strengthen the old China hands’ shared commitment to projecting a period “Chinese” idea globally.

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The Flip Side profiles four influential mid-century figures in America – Pearl S. Buck, Henry R. Luce, Owen Lattimore and John Hersey – known as the “old China hands”. Can you briefly describe where this term originated and what it means?

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The term originated in the nineteenth-century and was typically associated with the biographies of British, American, or other European individuals (usually but not exclusively men) who had plied trades—in commerce, manufacturing, shipping and transport—in or on approach to China. Secular and worldly in scope, the term could also be extended to include diplomatic and other kinds of service to the Chinese people, including the foreign missions of the organised (Christian) religions, as well as the not insignificant numbers of posted bureaucrats serving the foreign trading concessions in Chinese port cities and in other colonised Chinese exclaves, such as British Hong Kong and Portuguese Macao.

A basic, if nonetheless essential, definition of the term “old China hand” is conferred through its use and application to any non-Chinese individual who has spent an amount of time living in China deemed sufficient to accord him or her the authority to speak about China to those lacking comparable experience.

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As an American living long-term in Hong Kong, do you feel a particular affinity with the subjects of this book? Do their experiences and perspectives resonate with you at all?

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Weighing their faults alongside their virtues, I greatly admire the subjects of the book. But I do not, or do not largely, feel any affinity with them – apart from the one common feature being that they, as I have, centred China as another home in, and as another site of belonging to, the world distinct from nationality. The old China hands made the journey back to the US. At least in part, The Flip Side tells the story of what befell them there and documents the unique kind of popular authority they enjoyed, which no longer exists in the contemporary global culture. Still, that they were pioneers is indisputable, and that they held the line, for their time, in advance of China asserting its own sovereign messages and prerogatives, remains historically significant. ��

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“How dare an outsider . . . speak with such authority about Chinese proprietary traditions?” (p 66) As noted in the book, some contemporary critics considered the “old China hands” anachronistic, opportunistic or entitled. What do you make of these assessments?

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Again, within their scope, the criticisms made of the old China hands were to some meaningful extent valid. Taken as a group, the old China hands embodied a deterritorialised, collective sensibility about a foreign culture that average citizens – whether American or Chinese made little difference – simply could not relate to. The Flip Side accordingly makes an effort to demystify the opportunities, alongside the costs, associated with the old China hands’ displacement, as well as the price they paid for it in human terms. Then, as now, bringing China closer to prevailing and popular American viewpoints entailed specific risks which they nevertheless believed were worth taking.

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If you were to write a follow-up book examining the decades since the 1935–1985 period covered in The Flip Side, what American or Chinese figures might you consider profiling? Are there any prominent figures that might be considered the “new China hands”?

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What a charming question! I don’t know who these “new China hands” might possibly be, apart from the pundits and politicians of our contemporary moment, and I’m afraid that the present situation is far too fluid to venture any guessing. I’m fond of the subjects I chose for this book and will remain loyal to them. I’d like to give them the final word. I only wish we’d done a better job of listening to them in their own time.

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For readers interested in learning more about the “old China hands” or about the complex relationship between China and America, what resources might you recommend?

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The current political cycle, joining China to the West, will be turbulent and gripping. We will need to fasten our seatbelts, methinks. To get some needed perspective on today’s geopolitics, I always enjoy reading digitised microfilm of the “China story” newspaper press coverage from the major dailies in the US, Australia and England from the 1940s and 1950s. What you can’t access from home on a computer, you may be able to find at your nearest public or university library. Across the long arc of Sino-Western relations, there is little new under the sun. This remains the case, even as the stakes could hardly be any higher. They always have been. After a day at the library, take a nice long walk around Chinatown and enjoy a nice meal there. Even better still, save up and buy a plane ticket and start your own career as an old China hand. Who knows? Things might just work out that way.

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The Flip Side: Old China Hands and the American Popular Imagination, 1935–1985��is available now. Order your copy��here.

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Made in Chinatown was published in March this year. The book delves into a little-known aspect of Australia’s past: its hundreds of Chinese furniture factories. These businesses thrived in the post-goldrush era, becoming an important economic activity for Chinese immigrants and their descendants and a vital part of Australia’s furniture industry. Guided by Chinese manufacturers’ and workers’ own reflections and records, this book examines how these factories operated under the exclusionary vision of White Australia. We caught up with��Peter to ask him a few questions about his motivations for writing the book, its significance and his writing process.

What gave you the inspiration to write this book?

I was inspired by the activities and lives of the people in the book, which I thought deserved greater publicity and recognition than I could offer through a PhD thesis, on which the book is based. I chose to look at this topic largely by accident, having found a large collection of old insolvency and bankruptcy files.

What were your influences?

Other than the book’s subjects, I was influenced by accomplished and diligent scholars, especially my main dissertation supervisor Julia Martínez at the University of Wollongong and my friend Huang Zhong at Wuhan University. In addition, a number of people within the Chinese communities of Wollongong and լ�е���, and more recently Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, have been positive influences regarding the writing process.

Do you have personal links or ties to the history described in the book?

I collected and scrutinised all of the primary sources and used them to write the thesis over five years and spent another two years rewriting the thesis into a book, so I do indeed feel very close to the history. The research was also partly an exercise in diplomacy. Since my Chinese is poor, I needed some help with Chinese-language materials, so I reached out to native speakers, and together we have forged lasting friendships.

What did you find surprising during your research, is there something that stands out?

I was surprised to find such a vast amount of historical source material on this subject, enough for a book, yet I had heard so very little about it previously in Australian history.��

What was the most interesting?

I found the courtroom testimonies and financial records of ordinary Chinese factory workers, which make up a large part of the book, the most interesting. I think that’s because workers in general tend to leave behind little evidence of their lives, and so are commonly left out of historical writing.

How would you describe your writing process?

It was gruelling, with round after round of feedback and changes, but ultimately rewarding.

What did you edit out of this book?

The book is based on a doctoral thesis, which I revised heavily with much assistance from լ�е���. It is shorter and lighter with a different structure, reflecting the different intended audiences, that is, thesis examiners versus general readers.

Why is this book important, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

The book is important, I think, in terms of increasing the diversity of Australian history, which has for a long time sidelined Chinese migrants and their descendants. I hope readers find some interest in the activities of these furniture manufacturers and workers, as I have, and recognise that they were there and that they mattered.

Is there anything that you would have done differently?

I would have taken high-quality photos of materials like work contracts and factory invoices, which I think would have made nice additions to the book. Sadly, I only took rough photos for my own reference, not expecting to need them for publication.

Made in Chinatown is part of the China and the West in the Modern World series published by լ�е���. The focus of this series is how ideas, beliefs and cultural practices in China and Western nations are understood – or sometimes misunderstood by both parties. Other books in this series are South Flows the Pearl and the Poison of Polygamy.

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As the Lunar New Year starts, we welcome our newest book in the China and the West in the Modern World series.��

South Flows the Pearl: Chinese Australian Voices tells the stories of families who lived between China and Australia in the 20th century. Mavis Gock Yen was born��in 1916 in Perth. Her father was born in China, and her mother in Victoria.

In the 1980s she began interviewing elderly Chinese Australians, getting them to tell their stories of their lives and experiences.����

Below is a summary, put together by ABC Chinese, as part of an about Mavis and the book.����