More than thirty million people of Chinese descent live in over one hundred different countries and territories as migrants, settlers and sojourners. Most would qualify to be part of the diaspora and, insofar as people identify themselves as Chinese or have that identity ascribed to them, it can be said that they are bearers of Chinese diaspora cultures. The assumption that they all have something in common stems from their origins, whether distant or recent, in China. But some of them left China only recently while others have ancestors who have lived outside China for generations, often in different countries and even on different continents. Thus it would be misleading to think of them as having much in common. Also, Chinese people settled in lands as far apart as Indonesia and Canada, Tahiti and the Netherlands. To suggest that the Chinese who have lived among such different host peoples share the same culture would be unwarranted. However hard some Chinese might have tried to stay the same wherever they went, evidence can be found that some of them have distinct cultures. Some are complex and interconnected cultures that have grown over centuries in different communities while others are peculiar to small clusters of families that still claim to be Chinese.