There has been so much misunderstanding about the so-called illegal Fuzhou migrants, seeing them as merely victims of snakeheads (smugglers). In this excellent anthropological study, Julie Chu portrays a very different picture. In fact to leave is to be emplaced, and it was immobility that was experienced as “the definite form of displacement” (p. 11). The book is divided into three parts with an introduction and a conclusion. As explained in the introduction, this book deals with desire—the desire for mobility in post-Mao China—and transnational mobility, as well as how this mobility is linked to modernity. It is an ethnography of boundary making and subject making, and the relationship of mobility to modernity “is variously enacted and reworked through the daily encounters and transactions of heterogeneous social actors” (p. 13). A year of research in Longyan in Fuzhou in 2001 provides a fascinating ethnography of such encounters.

Part One on “Edgy Dispositions” describes the geography of desire, of the peasants’ wish to migrate to become overseas Chinese. In fact 49 percent of Longyan's population is overseas, and 70 percent of the people's income is derived from overseas remittances. Prosperity and modernity in the village are measured and shaped by overseas connections. Even the local temple is linked to the geography of desire and overseas connection. Its revitalization is linked to the success of the villagers overseas, while the gods give people blessing and advice on migrating successfully.

Part 2 on “Exits and Entrances” describes the strategies of “illegal” migration involving snakeheads. There is a need to find creditors who are willing to lend money and so there is the need to cultivate credibility, which is “one's standing in personal relationships of owing and being owed” (p. 125). An important strategy is the proper preparation of paperwork, which is described in detail. The barriers and experience of entering the U.S. and staying there are described in Chapter 4. Success is attributed to both gods and personal agency.

Part Three on “Debts and Diversions” deals with money as key to understanding the modern transformation in Longyan, and this leads to a further analysis of “money's capacity to incite indebtedness as a modality of exchange and sociability” (p. 169). The desire for and experience of mobility is incorporated into the use of spirit money in U.S. currency for the spirit world; such spirit money transactions “did not just reflect the existing fortunes of the living but rather enacted essential value transformation” (p. 205). Credibility does not just involve repaying one's debts; it also involves repaying gods for successful migration and attainment of prosperity. In Chapter 6, the final chapter before the conclusion, gender, kinship and the mediation of renqing (human feelings/bonds) are described. The money sent back from overseas is mostly used for repayment, and the reputations of the left-behind wives’ in cultivating relations of credit are important. Of course there are wives who squander the money. The better status of the wives and children who receive money from overseas is reflected in their food consumption and other ways of life. The value of containing excess in consumption is recognized in the community, however.

Despite the dangers and hardship of human smuggling, young men aspire to migrate. In fact emigration is seen as “a necessary rite of passage into adulthood and particularly into manhood” (p. 244). While the left-behind women have to agonize over waiting for their husbands to return or to bring them over, their fate is better than the “living widows” in Fujian and Guangdong in the nineteenth century. The women in Longyan have access to cheap international calling cards, and they can spend time playing mahjong “to hone skills in the company of supportive others for coping with the unrelenting speed of circulation and the burdens of stagnation and waiting” (p. 267).

This is a fine example of how a modern ethnography can be written in a way that informs about people's lives without attempting to describe everything in a research site. It is also an example of how to write a transnational ethnography that transcends geographical boundaries. Unlike most anthropological works on China or on Chinese overseas which treat each as rather separate, this work links the study of China with the study of Chinese overseas very well. The book is illustrated with a few well-chosen photographs. In addition to those about spirit money, the one on p. 164 showing the tombstone that incorporates an image of the U.S. green card is very illustrative. There is only a minor mistake on p. 98, which equates the character qiao in huaqiao with “bridges.” In fact the characters are different, and the character qiao in huaqiao (Chinese sojourners or overseas Chinese) means, “living abroad.”