Student Spotlight features videos produced by graduate students based on their archival research on intimate and sexual labour in the transpacific world. While the rest of the website is centred on Japanese language sources, student-produced videos examine primary sources produced in various Asian languages. Students introduce and discuss these sources in English.
“Mui Tsai (妹仔) and Transpacific Child Labour Trafficking” by Aydin Quach 郭汶進
This video by doctoral student Aydin Quach offers an overview of the mui tsai system and how young girls from southern China were moved as part of indentured labour across the transpacific with usage of sources found in The Chinese Times, a Vancouver-based publication that ran from 1914-1992. The illustration of mui tsai in Vancouver and Canada then is used as an examination of age and generation as a category of analysis to understand the condition of early Chinese women in North America, the development of child protection laws, and the socio-cultural significance of age and generation.