ABSTRACT
This chapter puts forward two main claims. First, it argues that dispersing the patrilineal Chinese family is, paradoxically, often a rational family decision to preserve the family, a resourceful and resilient way of strengthening it: families split in order to be together translocally. The astronaut families of Hong Kong are a model of such dispersion for our time. Second, this chapter argues that these spatially dispersed families constitute strategic nodes and linkages of an ever-expanding transnational field within which a new type of Chinese identity is emerging – that of the Chinese cosmopolitan.
