Chinese Merchant Families: Flexible and Border-Crossing Practices as Adaptive Strategies in Spanish Philippines

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Changing names, transferring resources, adopting sons, intermarrying with local women--these are just some of the "flexible" and "border-crossing" practices that Chinese merchants and their families have adopted over centuries as a way to adapt to or circumvent colonial and national policies to control their bodies, resources, mobility, and identities.

Richard T. Chu is Five-College Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has published various articles focusing on the history of the Chinese and Chinese mestizos in the Philippines and centering on issues of ethnicity, gender, and nationalism.

He is also the author of Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, and Culture 1860s–1930s (E.J. Brill, 2010; Anvil 2012) and Chinese Merchants of Binondo during the Late Nineteenth Century (University of Santo Tomas Press, 2010).


He is currently working on his next book project that analyses the different newspaper articles and other textual materials dealing with the “Chinaman” question in the Philippines during the American colonial period.

Professor Chu holds an MA degree from Stanford University and a PhD degree from the University of Southern California. He teaches courses on Pacific empires, Philippine colonial history, Asian American history, the Chinese diaspora, and world history.


Chinese Merchant Families: Flexible and Border-Crossing Practices as Adaptive Strategies in Spanish Philippines