Author page: Steven

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Steven

Roots of China was born from my passion for sharing the beauty and stories of Chinese culture with the world. When I settled in Kaiping, Guangdong—a place alive with ancestral legacies and the iconic Diaolou towers—I found myself immersed in stories of migration, resilience, and heritage. Roots of China grew from my own quest to reconnect with heritage into a mission to celebrate Chinese culture. From artisans’ stories and migration histories to timeless crafts, each piece we share brings our heritage to life. Join me at Roots of China, where every story told, every craft preserved, and every legacy uncovered draws us closer to our roots. Let’s celebrate the heritage that connects us all.

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A Wuyi diaspora community gathering, people seated together at a long banquet table.

diaspora festivals

Chinese National Day: How the Diaspora Marks October 1

Chinese National Day: How the Diaspora Marks October 1 On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong stood on the Tiananmen rostrum in Beijing and proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China. Seventy-seven years later, that date — 国庆节 (Guóqìngjié, "National Celebration Festival") — is marked not only in Tiananmen Square but in the Chinatowns,…

September 7, 20260Comments

BySteven

Chinese Surnames Surname Archive

The Gong (龚) Surname: From Ancient Water Gods to the Taishan Diaspora

The Gong (龚) Surname: From Ancient Water Gods to the Taishan Diaspora Few surnames in China's top hundred carry a longer remembered past — or a stranger one — than the Gong surname (龚, gōng): roughly 2.5 to 3 million bearers, ranked near 89th in the 2018 household-registry count; a name spelled Gong in pinyin,…

September 7, 20260Comments

BySteven

A street in Honolulu's Chinatown, Hawaii, with shops and signs under tropical sun.

Diaspora History Labor Migration

Chinese in Hawaii: The Sugar Plantations That Built the Pacific’s First Chinatown

Chinese in Hawaii: The Sugar Plantations That Built One of America's Oldest Chinatowns Before the gold rushes, before the transcontinental railroads, before the coolie ships that carried laborers to Cuba and Peru, one of the oldest Chinese communities in the United States was forming on a chain of volcanic islands in the middle of the…

September 6, 20260Comments

BySteven

The Gate of Harmonious Interest in Victoria's Chinatown, Canada's oldest Chinatown, founded in the 1858 gold rush

Canada Chinese Diaspora gold rush migration-history Taishan Wuyi

Chinese in Canada Before the Head Tax: BC Gold Rush, Victoria, and the Road to 1885

Chinese in Canada Before the Head Tax: BC Gold Rush, Victoria, and the Road to 1885 For roughly a quarter-century — from the spring of 1858 until the summer of 1885 — a Chinese migrant could walk off a ship in British Columbia and simply enter. No tax at the door, no certificate to carry,…

September 4, 20260Comments

BySteven

Watchtowers of Zili village rising from the rice paddies of the Qiangya village cluster in Tangkou, Kaiping.

Chinese Surnames Surname Archive

The Fang (方) Surname: From the Fall of the Song Court to the Towers of Kaiping

The Fang (方) Surname: From the Fall of the Song Court to the Towers of Kaiping Fang (方, fāng; Fong in Cantonese-speaking communities) is one of the most portable surnames in the Chinese world — a single character that turns up in the phone books of Vancouver, San Francisco, Havana, and Singapore. In China alone…

September 3, 20260Comments

BySteven

diaspora festivals

The Chung Yeung Festival: Autumn Grave-Sweeping and Ancestor Veneration in the Wuyi Diaspora

The Chung Yeung Festival: Autumn Grave-Sweeping and Ancestor Veneration in the Wuyi Diaspora On the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, China marks Chung Yeung — the Double Ninth Festival (重阳节, Chóngyáng Jié) — the autumn grave-sweeping festival. In 2026, the day falls on Sunday, October 18. It is the last of the traditional…

September 3, 20260Comments

BySteven

A heritage pavilion at Arrowtown, a South Island town with a restored Chinese goldfields settlement

Chinese Diaspora Labor Migration Wuyi Diaspora

The New Zealand Chinese Poll Tax: £100 to Enter, and the First National Apology

Between 1881 and 1944, Chinese arrivals in New Zealand were made to pay a poll tax (人头税, réntóu shuì) — a fee no other migrant faced — a levy that began at £10 and was raised to £100, the equivalent of several years' wages for the labourers it targeted. The tax did not stand alone.…

September 2, 20260Comments

BySteven

Crowds and red paper lanterns fill a street during a lunar new year celebration in Lima's Barrio Chino

Chinese Diaspora Coolie Trade Wuyi Diaspora

Peruvian Chinese: The Coolie Ships, Chifa, and Latin America’s Largest Chinese Community

Peruvian Chinese: The Coolie Ships, Chifa, and Latin America's Largest Chinese Community Between 1849 and 1874, somewhere between ninety thousand and one hundred and twenty thousand Chinese laborers — nearly all of them young men — were carried across the Pacific to Peru under eight-year contracts they signed in a language they could not read.…

September 1, 20260Comments

BySteven

Cantonese miners panning for gold during the Australian gold rush, a group of Chinese men working a creek bed with mining tools

Chinese Genealogy How-To Guides Primary Sources

Chinese Immigration Records in Australia: How to Find Your Wuyi Ancestor

Between 1851 and the early twentieth century, the Wuyi (五邑, Wǔyì, the "five counties") region of Guangdong — Taishan (台山, Táishān), Kaiping (开平, Kāipíng), Enping (恩平, Ēnpíng), Xinhui (新会, Xīnhuì), and Heshan (鹤山, Hèshān) — sent an outsized share of the Chinese who crossed the ocean to Australia. They came first for gold, following the…

August 31, 20260Comments

BySteven

The entrance doorway of the Situ Clan Library (司徒氏图书馆) in Chikan, Kaiping — the door of the library the overseas clan raised 40,000 silver dollars to build.

Chinese Surnames Surname Archive

The Situ (司徒) Surname: From a Zhou Court Office to the Wuyi Diaspora

The Situ (司徒) Surname: From a Zhou Court Office to the Wuyi Diaspora A Name That Was Once an Office The Situ (司徒, Sītú) surname is one of the few office-derived compound surnames (官职姓, guānzhíxìng) to survive from Chinese antiquity — it began as the Zhou-dynasty office of Minister of Lands and Education (地官大司徒, dìguān…

August 31, 20260Comments

BySteven

Bringing Bones Home: How the...

Wuyi Returnees: The Overseas...

Coffee and the Returning Tast...

Jiangmen Overseas Chinese Pla...

Taishan Energy Economy: What...

Author page: Steven

Bringing Bones Home: How the...

Wuyi Returnees: The Overseas...

Coffee and the Returning Tast...

Jiangmen Overseas Chinese Pla...

Taishan Energy Economy: What...

Steven

Chinese National Day: How the Diaspora Marks October 1

The Gong (龚) Surname: From Ancient Water Gods to the Taishan Diaspora

Chinese in Hawaii: The Sugar Plantations That Built the Pacific’s First Chinatown

Chinese in Canada Before the Head Tax: BC Gold Rush, Victoria, and the Road to 1885

The Fang (方) Surname: From the Fall of the Song Court to the Towers of Kaiping

The Chung Yeung Festival: Autumn Grave-Sweeping and Ancestor Veneration in the Wuyi Diaspora

The New Zealand Chinese Poll Tax: £100 to Enter, and the First National Apology

Peruvian Chinese: The Coolie Ships, Chifa, and Latin America’s Largest Chinese Community

Chinese Immigration Records in Australia: How to Find Your Wuyi Ancestor

The Situ (司徒) Surname: From a Zhou Court Office to the Wuyi Diaspora

Bringing Bones Home: How the...

Wuyi Returnees: The Overseas...

Coffee and the Returning Tast...

Jiangmen Overseas Chinese Pla...

Taishan Energy Economy: What...

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