The West is a test for overseas Chinese

Canadian author Suzanne Ma reveals in her new book the struggle of Chinese immigrants in the West.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Moving overseas doesn't necessarily deliver Nirvana to Chinese who seek a better lot. Xing Yi reports.

When, as a girl, Ye Pei's thoughts turned to her mother, vivid images of Venice, with its canals and gondolas, floated through her mind.

Her mother had emigrated from China to the Italian city in 2006, and Ye fantasized about a woman who had made a shining success of her life in this new world rushing to embrace her daughter when they reunited.

But when that day eventually arrived in 2011, her mother's much-less romantic life was revealed to her. She did not live in Venice, but worked on a farm far from the city. Ye started working in a bar in Solesino, a small town southwest of Venice, where a mean-spirited aunt was her only connection.

That might well have been the end of the story, with a dispirited Ye returning to China. But rather than doing that, she decided to toil away in Italy so she could get enough money together to give her family a better future.

Ye's tale of determination is recounted in Meet Me in Venice: A Chinese Immigrant's Journey from the Far East to the Faraway West, by Canadian journalist Suzanne Ma. It is an engrossing read for anyone looking for insight into the Chinese diaspora around the world.

Ma, now 31, was born to immigrant parents in Toronto. Her father is from Taiwan and her mother is from Hong Kong.

She became interested in the issue of immigration in 2007 while studying Chinese at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where she met many overseas-born Chinese classmates, including her future husband, Marc Kuo.