For a long time, silk, tea, sinocentrism, and eurocentrism made up a big patch of East Asian history. Simultaneously deviating from and complicating these tags, this edited volume reconstructs narratives from the periphery and considers marginal voices located beyond official archives as the centre of East Asian history. The lives of the Japanese Buddhist monks, Eastern Han local governors, Confucian scholars, Chinese coolies, Shanghainese tailors, Macau joss-stick makers, Hong Long locals, and Cantonese working-class musicians featured in this collection provide us with a glimpse of how East Asia’s inhabitants braved, with versatility, the ripples of political centralization, cross-border movement, foreign imperialism, nationalism, and globalism that sprouted locally and universally. Demonstrating the rich texture of sources discovered through non-official pathways, the ten essays in this volume ultimately reveal the timeless interconnectedness of East Asia and the complex, non-uniform worldviews of its inhabitants.

Catherine S. Chan is Research Assistant Professor of History at Lingnan University. She has published extensively on trans-imperial networks and the Macanese diaspora across East Asia. Chan also works on urban history, particularly on heritage issues and animal welfare in East and Southeast Asia.

Tsang Wing Ma is Assistant Professor of Chinese History at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests are centered on early China, with a focus on Qin-Han institutional and social history, as well as excavated manuscripts.

Table of Contents Rewriting East Asia: No Victors, No Vanquished, Catherine S. Chan and Tsang Wing Ma Part I. Challenges to Central Narratives in Ancient China; 1. The Failure of Abdication as a Regular Method of Monarchic Power Succession: A Study of the Tang Yu zhi dao Manuscript, Hin Ming Frankie Chik; 2. The Monumentalization of Communal Memories in Eastern Han China, 25–220 CE, Chun Fung Tong; 3. Commemorating the Dead for the Living: Two Eastern Han (25-220 CE) Stelae from Southwest China, Hajni Elias Part II. Informal Sino-Japanese Interaction in Medieval East Asia; 4. Chinese Treasures Buried in Private Japanese Libraries: Popular Confucian Works Known as Accounts of Filial Children, Keith N. Knapp; 5. Sino-Japanese Exchanges during a Tribute Hiatus: Sources from the Buddhist Archives, Yiwen Li Part III. East Asia between East-West Encounters; 6. “Boys,” “Mandarins,” and “Coolies”: Searching for Hong Kong’s Chinese Community in the Colonial Archive, Thomas M. Larkin; 7. Uncommon Sources on an Uncommon Life: Cantonese Opera Music Master Wong Toa (1914-2015), Wing Chung Ng Part IV. Global Patterns in Contemporary Southern China; 8. Revisiting Cold War Hong Kong: Chinese Tailors, American Servicemen, and Suit-Making Experiences, 1950-1980, Katon Lee; 9. The Orient is Hong Kong? Cultural Representation of Hong Kong in Tourism Material and the Missing Voices of the Tourists, Lok Yin Law; 10. What Joss-Stick Community? Issues in the Inventory and Interpretation of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Macau, Catherine S. Chan