1980年代，當中國作家以「尋根文學」回應文革後與經濟改革開放的非常時期，中國境內的「歸僑作家」亦通過書寫小說回溯海外華僑歷史，以看似不合時宜的方式「尋根」。本文將以出生印尼棉蘭的歸僑作家黑嬰（1915-1992）的中篇小說《飄流異國的女性》為研究對象，探討歸僑作家如何在中國八十年代改革開放的社會語境中，通過書寫小說重構青春、旅途與海外華僑革命的歷史記憶。本文通過成長小說的角度，主張《飄》不僅是一部有關海外華人如何經過青春的歷練進而培養其「中國人」的身分認同的成長小說，同時也可以被視為歸僑作家嘗試為其族群「中國人」身分正名的小說。但吊詭的是，《飄》表面上雖符合民族主義的大敘事，卻同時折射出這個話語所仰賴的「血緣神話」（myth of consanguinity）的核心問題：民族身分的本質化與因時制宜。最後，本文通過重新審視黑嬰的「新感覺派」、「歸僑」等作家身分，嘗試處理一直被學者忽略的關鍵問題，即黑嬰從早期的現代主義轉向現實主義的寫作風格，並提議華語語系研究與中國「尋根文學」對話的可能性

While writers in China were responding to the dynamics of post-Cultural Revolution and economic reforms of the 1980s through root-seeking literature, we see an interesting parallel with ＂returned overseas Chinese＂ (guiqiao) writers in China who were tracing their roots, albeit anachronistically, through bildungsroman narratives set against the historical backdrop of overseas Chinese revolutionary history of the twentieth century. Specifically, this paper centers on Indonesia-born Chinese writer Hei Ying's Women Adrift in Foreign Lands as a case study of guiqiao writing in China during the 1980s. It argues that Women is not only a novel that traces the emotional journeys of overseas Chinese youths coming to terms with their Chinese identity and their physical journeys of returning to China to serve their motherland, but also a novel that attempts to reassert the Chinese identity for a community that has been historically sidelined in China due to their overseas connections. Nonetheless, while Women appears to complement the Chinese nationalist discourse by reflecting these routes of diasporic homecomings to China, Hei Ying's anachronistic assertion of an overseas Chinese socialist history in a period of post-Mao economic reforms ironically exposes the myth of consanguinity that the nationalist discourse is premised upon. Additionally, this paper examines how scholarship have dealt with Hei Ying's turn from Shanghai modernism to socialist realism to critically reflect on the limitations of modern Chinese literary and Sinophone discourses in dealing with such complex transnational literary trajectories of writers, and concludes by suggesting a dialogical relationship between China's root-seeking literature and Sinophone studies