Download or read book Strangers on the Western Front written by Guoqi Xu and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-18 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These laborers, mostly illiterate peasants from north China, came voluntarily and worked in Europe longer than any other group. Xu explores China's reasons for sending its citizens to help the British and French (and, later, the Americans), the backgrounds of the workers, their difficult transit to Europe---across the Pacific, through Canada, and over the Atlantic---and their experiences with the Allied armies. It was the first encounter with Westerners for most of these Chinese peasants, and Xu also considers the story from their perspective: how they understood this distant war, the racism and suspicion they faced, and their attempts to hold on to their culture so far from home. --