Sheng Fei (Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou)

As goldminers, plantation laborers, market gardeners and merchants, the Cantonese migrants contributed to the great acceleration of social-ecological change in nineteenth century Australasia. As a consequence, the Pearl River Delta was dragged into a new Pacific Eco-system created by the British empire. However, it also led to a spread and transplantation of native knowledge and technologies rooted in South China’s nature and culture to Australia. This is not a story about how China was influenced by outsiders, but how Chinese, especially those from the Pearl River Delta, seized and utilized the new global eco-culture network to change the world.