Fleeing One Homeland and Adopting Another

This book focuses on the Han Chinese (mainly former Kuomintang troops and their family members as well as descendants) and cross-border ethic tribes (mainly Lahu people) of Yunnan origin now living in Meilianghe Village (Ban Huay Nam Khun) in northern Thailand. It is an ethnographic study of how this special group of people left Yunnan Province in Southwest China, migrated to northern Thailand via Myanmar, and underwent various survival predicaments before submitting to Thailand as its citizens. By analyzing multiple factors such as political events, state institutions, economic systems, and cultural influences related to these people’s escaping from one country and submitting to another country, this book explores the political and cultural dimensions required for the construction of state identity.

Professor Zhang Jinpeng (Ph.D.) teaches at the School of Ethnology and Sociology at Yunnan University, and serves as a doctoral dissertation adviser. Zhang’s research interests include the economic lives of ethnic minorities, cross-border ethnic minorities, and the economic history of China. She has published six monographs and more than sixty peer-reviewed articles. She has received research funding from the National Social Science Fund of China. She has been recognized for her academic and professional achievements with accolades such as the first and third prizes in social science studies in Yunnan province, and the Outstanding Teacher Award of Yunnan University, sponsored by Wu Daguan Education Fund, which she won twice. Zhang was also named in 2019 a Yunling Scholar of the Yunnan Provincial Ten-Thousand-researcher Program.