爱国者陈嘉庚

    Nanqiao Memoirs

    By Chen Jinghua

    在《南侨回忆录》中，陈嘉庚用真诚质朴的笔调，记叙了自己办实业办教育、支援祖国抗战等经历，表达出爱家乡爱祖国爱人民的赤子情怀。

    “Since my age of 19, I became very involved in matters concerning the clan, the village community, village schools and public welfare -- I did these absolutely out of my natural instinct and was not by any way forced. As to what I had achieved I considered nothing was worth recording and so I had not written anything about my personal life before.

     These memoirs were originally meant to commemorate Overseas Chinese’s participation in the War of Resistance against Japan. China suffered unprecedented disasters and millions of Overseas Chinese made to the motherland great contributions, which are not well known and understood in China or overseas today and even less will remember their efforts  in the future.

     The contributions of the Overseas Chinese were mentioned in histories of the war after the Japanese surrendered, but they were only briefly referred to saying that the Overseas Chinese had raised a considerable amount of relief funds. Naturally there will be no way for future generations to learn about the hard work the Overseas Chinese put into fund-raising, and about their fight against the enemy. There is neither record of the sacrifices they made, nor of their day-to-day hard work, nor of the importance of the financial support given by the Overseas Chinese  to the motherland that was in bad need of foreign currency during the war.

    As a result, later generations will inevitably be led to believe that, at a time when our country’s existence hung in the balance, millions of Overseas Chinese gave no thought to returning to the motherland to offer their service, but, rather, still remained abroad, living leisurely lives.”