Superior Servants

OUP Australia and New Zealand, 1991-07-01. paperback. Very Good. 9x0x11. 1991 Oxford University Press (Singapore, Malaysia), 7 3/8 x 9 3/4 inches tall paperbound, copiously illustrated with black-and-white photographs and maps, xviii, 177 pp. Slight soiling, rubbing and edgewear to covers, with minor creasing to tips. Otherwise, a very good copy - clean, bright and unmarked. Uncommon in dust jacket. ~SP26~ [1.5P] This book focuses on a unique group of women who became an integral part of thousands of Chinese and expatriate homes in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong from the 1930s to the 1970s - the amahs who hailed from the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong Province in China. Single, illiterate, and of peasant background, the amah served as nanny, cook, parlormaid, housemaid, and laundress, providing a standard of service and displaying a degree of loyalty unparalleled either before or since. Gaw discusses the traditional role and inferior status of women in China, the unique customs and work practices of the Pearl River Delta which allowed the women there to obtain a degree of independence unknown in other parts of China, and the reasons for the mass migration of Cantonese women in the 1930s.