赤道上的赤子之心：韓萌與王嘯平

This article reconsiders the historical and literary significance of “returned overseas Chinese” (guiqiao), or diaspora subjects who resettled in mainland China during the upheavals of the twentieth century. Whereas scholarship has largely centered on southbound migration to Southeast Asia or cross-strait movements, this article foregrounds a smaller yet consequential group who chose China as their lifelong home. As the writer Li Junzhe notes, guiqiao literature both extends the tradition of overseas Chinese writing and functions as a key cultural conduit between the mainland and the world, underscoring the writers’ liminal positioning between nations and identities. Through close readings of two representative authors, Han Meng and Wang Xiaoping, this article examines diasporic narratives with pronounced autobiographical inflections, structured around recurring motifs of departure from the Nanyang and return to the Chinese homeland. It argues that guiqiao experiences and textual production complicate monodirectional models of diaspora that privilege departures from China. Instead, they chart a multidirectional, dynamic geography of Mahua (Malaysian Chinese) literature and mobility, prompting a rethinking of the dialectical relationship among Mahua literature, Chinese literary history, and Sinophone studies. In doing so, the article repositions guiqiao at a central place in broader debates on diaspora, locality, and the transregional circulation of Chinese-language writing.