★ Breaking Monolithic Narratives, Listening to a Multifaceted ChinaThis book dismantles the persistent stereotype of a singular “Chinese sound.” Through 17 case studies spanning Asia, Europe, and the Americas, it paints a rich sonic tapestry—from Cantonese opera in San Francisco to reggae in Jamaica, from Mao‑era radio broadcasts to revolutionary anthems of the Cold War.
★ A Global Migration History of Chinese SoundIt traces the transoceanic journey of Chinese music from the 19th century to the present, revealing how sound—driven by migration, media, and diplomacy—has been heard, adapted, and reshaped across diverse cultural landscapes, forming an auditory archive of empire, diaspora, and modernity.
★ An Epic of Fluid IdentityIt documents the cross‑border creative expressions of Chinese musicians, probing deeply how sound serves as a vessel for memory and identity, continuously evolving and merging amid globalization to forge cultural bonds that link past and future.

Tracing the global journeys of Chinese sounds from the nineteenth century to the present, this volume charts a vast sonic territory: from Cantonese opera arias in San Francisco to the “Far East sound” that shaped Jamaican reggae, and from the melodies of pigeon whistles over Germany to the revolutionary anthems of Cold War Italy… How have these sounds—traveling via migration, media, and diplomacy—been heard, adapted, or even rejected in disparate cultural landscapes? What sonic cartographies of empire, diaspora, and modernity do these travels reveal?

Through seventeen case studies spanning Asia, the Americas, and Europe, the book uncovers the myriad ways sounds interpreted as “Chinese” are transformed, contested, and imbued with new meanings as they reverberate across geopolitical and cultural borders. This collection provides a novel auditory history of China’s global entanglements, offering a comparative lens to understand the dynamic role of sound in transnational exchange and the negotiation of cultural identity.

Andreas Steen
Professor of modern Chinese history and culture at Aarhus University, combines research interests that focus on China’s recording industry, popular music, Shanghai history, and Sino-foreign interaction. Trained in Berlin and Shanghai, he has published extensively in German, English, and Chinese. His works on China’s early music industry include Between Entertainment and Revolution and “The Shellac Period in China.” His current projects explore the agency of sound in modern Chinese history.

Andrew F. Jones
Andrew F. Jones teaches modern Chinese literature and media culture at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of three landmark studies on modern Chinese music—Like a Knife, Yellow Music, and Circuit Listening—as well as Developmental Fairy Tales. His publications trace the development of Chinese musical and cultural modernity across different historical moments.

Frederick Lau
An ethnomusicologist, flutist, and conductor whose work centers on Chinese, Western, and Asian music and cultures. He is the author of Music in China and co-editor of Making Waves, and served as editor of the “Music and Performing Arts of Asia and the Pacific” series. Lau previously held major academic positions at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and California Polytechnic State University, examining music’s roles in cultural identity and social process.

This collaborative project reveals how sound became a vessel of memory, identity, and renewal. Charting Chinese sonic collaborations and creative adaptations across continents, it offers an insightful meditation on how sound carries history, imagination, and the enduring human impulse without borders.

—Xiaomei Chen
Distinguished Professor Emerita of Chinese Literature, University of California, Davis
This rich volume invites readers to listen to Chinese sound worlds as they travel within East Asia, across the Pacific, and around the world. Most of the stories here, all of them compelling micro-histories that nonetheless hang together as a whole, are being told for the first time in English.

—Thomas Irvine
Professor and Head of Music, University of Southampton
This book is a highly welcome contribution to Chinese music studies and related fields. Ranging from the 1870s to the present, the seventeen case studies listen critically to popular and art music, to theater and film, to Maoist radio and pigeon whistles, to new Indigenous music fusions, and to the soundscapes of Chinese participants in the St. Louis World Fair. A much-needed and intellectually rich collection.

—Jonathan P. J. Stock
Professor of Music, University College Cork
This book puts a stop to any notion of a monolithic Chinese sound identity. All seventeen chapters present a variety of case studies in many ways representative and certainly suggestive of persistent patterns as Chinese sounds have travelled across borders.

—Bonnie C. Wade
Distinguished Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of California, Berkeley