Chinese migration has not been all of a piece; on the contrary, it has been immensely varied. At one extreme were emigrations who left home out of despair; at the other were those driven by calculated ambition both exile and opportunity. To do justice to the variety, writers have used terms like chain migration, forced migration, seasonal migration, illegal migration, return migration, secondary migration, (or re- migration) and so on. Nor are the categories mutually exclusive; to complicate matters, an individual can undergo several kinds of migration within a lifetime. Indeed the movements of Chinese across the world bear witness to a general observation in the way we conceive of migration by any people: that it is a multi-directional and continuing movement incorporating both relocation and repatriation.