Qiaopi and European Migrants’ Letters Compared
Qiaopi and European Migrants’ Letters Compared
This chapter compares qiaopi letters and institutions with their European equivalent. It first discusses the migrant settings and the emergence of a postal culture. European and Chinese migrants shared many characteristics, but their sending places and the communities they formed abroad differed greatly. These differences were reflected in their letters. The chapter compares the letters of European migrants and qiaopi in regard both to the institutions that kept the correspondence going and letter contents and conventions. It concludes that qiaopi letters shared some features with European migrants’ letters as a result of the convergence of cultures, the spread of markets, the commonalities of the migrant condition, and the universality of epistolary conventions, but that their remittance role gave a special shape to their style and content.
Keywords: European migrants’ letters, postal culture, epistolary scholarship
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