ABSTRACT
Tan, introduced in the prologue is one of the three main characters who will accompany the reader in the following chapters. Together with Ah Teong and Saw Guan Hock (hereafter Guan Hock) their lives and work constitute the narrative centripetality of this ethnography. In addition to these three men there are another forty mechanics interviewed who help to illustrate the topic of this book. In this chapter I outline the ethnographic setting according to some of the historically constitutive themes of the overseas (Nanyang) Chinese and diaspora Chinese in Penang. A presentation and discussion of the fieldwork in Penang follows. This discussion will be followed up by a theoretically inspired discussion of the relationship between anthropologist and informant.
