| Summary: | Peru's ethnic composition is dominated by Amerindians (45-47%) and mestizos (32-37%), followed by people of European descent (12-15%), with blacks and mulattos representing 2%, and Asians (Chinese and Japanese) only 1% of the population (approximately 250,000 of a total of 22 million inhabitants, according to Isabelle Lausent-Herrera [“L'Emergence” 151]). And yet, Peru has one of the largest Chinese communities in Latin America. The study of Sino-Peruvian literature and the image of the Chinese in Peruvian letters is still somewhat limited. Sino-Peruvian Siu Kam Wen (his given name was Xiao Jin-Rong [1951- ]) is one of the authors whose works deserve to be studied in more depth. Referring to his collection of short stories El tramo final (1985), Béatrice Cáceres states: “When he writes the nine short stories about life in Lima's Chinatown, he wants it to be almost a testimonial.”1 His last novel, La vida no es una tómbola (2007), shares these testimonial traits as it denounces an economic system of intensive self-exploitation of family labor in chifas, bodegas, and other types of shops, of which Siu Kam Wen and many other Sino-Peruvian children were involuntary victims
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