ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Taoke, a selection of ten stories and the coolie question, in order to see how the authors reflect on their own communities. In the early 1950s and 1960s and more recently since the 1970s the coolie traffic has received some attention in China as well as in Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong. The rise of nationalism on both sides is exacerbated in the thirties when the Japanese start their policy of expansion. The chapter shows the resistance of the miners to the Japanese advance into the area, but there is almost complete silence over the period of occupation and equally on the fight for independence. The last image shows young Indonesian miners replacing the old generation of coolies. Upon arrival in Guangdong, the old coolies were welcomed by representatives of the Office of Returned Overseas Chinese, and could not help but express their surprise at the changes their motherland had undergone in the space of fifty years.
