Hi everyone,
One of the reasons I started chinaSMACK three years ago was to practice my English. If I could improve my English, there would be more people I could interact with and more things I could learn. China is a big country and there are many people here, but the world is much bigger and there are many more people. Another reason I started chinaSMACK was because I could share more about Chinese people than what I think many foreigners normally read or see about Chinese people. As a Chinese netizen, I could help show more sides of ordinary Chinese people through what topics are popular on the Chinese language internet. By translating what is silly, strange, or even serious, I could show that Chinese netizens are very similar to foreign netizens, and Chinese people are not very different from people elsewhere.
chinaSMACK is a place to hear the many voices of Chinese people, through what they talk about online, and through Chinese-to-English translation.
Diaspora @ chinaSMACK is also about Chinese people, but it is about Chinese people who have gone abroad, who live abroad, or who were born abroad. Maybe their parents, grandparents, or ancestors are Chinese immigrants, or maybe their parents are not Chinese at all, but there is “Chinese” in their blood. It is about people who may be very different from the Chinese who live in their historical homeland, but who may also be very similar. Chinese people have spread all around the world to live their lives, and today “overseas Chinese” are an important part of modern Chinese society. We are influenced by overseas Chinese. Are they influenced by us?
Diaspora is a place to hear the many voices of overseas ethnic Chinese, sharing about their identity, their experiences, and their perspectives.
Like chinaSMACK, Diaspora will be regularly updated. We want to feature a wide variety of voices, from overseas Chinese in all countries, both men and women, young and old. We want to share interesting stories, pictures, and videos about and made by foreign-born Chinese, Chinese immigrants, and mixed-race Chinese people. We want to share interesting people, including the famous, influential, and especially the ordinary and normal. If you have something to share, share it with us.
We want new background images!
We would like to feature beautiful and interesting photographs of overseas Chinese people on the background of the Diaspora website. We want to see your faces and your life, especially in the country you live in or have adopted. Let us see what overseas Chinese people look like, and what you do. Send them to us and if your photo is selected to be a random background image on the Diaspora section, we will send you a free chinaSMACK t-shirt as a small thank you as well as publish any information you wish to share about you as the photographer or the image you are submitting.
- Email your submissions to submissions[at]chinasmack.com.
- Use “Diaspora Background Submissions” as your subject line.
- Please include your name, shipping address, and contact number.
- Please indicate what size t-shirt you wish (XS, S, M, L, XL).
- If you wish, include some information about yourself and your submission. We will publish this information on our About section next to your original submission. If there is an interesting story behind your photograph, we may publish it as an article by itself under your name.
- If selected, your photograph may be edited to become a suitable background that will be randomly displayed on this website along with other selected submissions.
Background submissions received before midnight 18 July 2011 China Standard Time will be eligible for a free t-shirt (while supplies last). Submissions received afterward will still be eligible to be published and rotated in as background images in the future. We like to change the images regularly.
Once again…
Welcome to Diaspora @ chinaSMACK. Over the next few days, we will be publishing selected submissions collected over the past few weeks from chinaSMACK readers. I hope you will enjoy reading their stories and thoughts as much as I have, and I hope you will enjoy this new section, and even contribute to it.
– Fauna
