素 / Su

素 is the North America-based humanities PhD guest in 168. 银与信：一部日本劳工移民的跨洋汇款史. The episode presents her as a researcher trained across modern Chinese history, Japanese-language sources, U.S. history, global history, and financial history, using multilingual archives to study Japanese Labor Migration Remittances / 日本劳工移民汇款.

Her research path in the episode matters because the topic grows from method rather than only theme. She moves from Qing diplomatic-travel research and U.S. newspaper materials into Japanese-language Hawaiian and Californian newspapers, then into Japanese foreign-ministry and [[YokohamaSpecieBank|Yokohama Specie Bank]] records. That path makes her a source node for Archive Preservation Bias / 档案保存偏差 and for the episode’s comparison between Japanese state-bank records and Chinese Qiaopi Remittance Networks.

Key Claims

• Good historical research often needs new sources, a new angle, or a new method.
• Migration history should not reduce Asian migrants to identity or exclusion; wage work, family obligation, and remittance infrastructure also shaped their lives.
• State archives are valuable but partial, because government preservation choices make some people and transactions easier to see than others.

Connections

• [[QizhulouYanBinke|起朱楼宴宾客]] and [[DavidWeng|大卫翁]] — podcast context.
• Japan, Hawaii / 夏威夷, and United States — main geographic settings of her research as discussed in the episode.
• Japanese Labor Migration Remittances / 日本劳工移民汇款, State-Mediated Remittance System / 国家中介汇款体系, Migrant Family Remittance Obligation / 移民家庭汇款义务, and Archive Preservation Bias / 档案保存偏差 — concepts tied to her research.
• [[YokohamaSpecieBank|Yokohama Specie Bank]] and [[DillinghamCommission|Dillingham Commission]] — institutional records and U.S. investigation context in the discussion.
• Qiaopi Remittance Networks — Chinese comparison case.