"Fujian and Chaozhou: The Other Chinese Diaspora
The Chinese diaspora did not come from one region. If you have followed the story of the Wuyi (五邑, wǔyì) — the five counties of Guangdong whose sons and daughters filled the steamships to Gold Mountain (金山, jīnshān), the Americas — you have been reading one chapter of…
The Tan (谭) Surname: From an Ancient State of Shandong to the Wuyi Diaspora
In the winter of 684 BCE, an army of the State of Qi marched against its small neighbor and erased it from the map. The State of Tan (谭国, Tán Guó) — a minor polity in today's Zhangqiu, Shandong, whose old…
nIn 1046 BCE, King Wu of Zhou overthrew the Shang dynasty and began distributing territory to his brothers and allies. His fifth brother, Ji Du (姬), received a fief in what is now Shangcai County (上县), Henan Province. The state was called Cai (蔡). For the next 600 years, through 25 rulers, the State of…
Budgeting Your Wuyi Roots Trip: What It Actually Costs \\nFor over 150 years, money has flowed from overseas Chinese communities back to the Wuyi (\\五\\邑) region of Guangdong province \\— first as remittances that built railroads, schools, and nearly two thousand fortified towers across the countryside, and now as roots-trip spending by diaspora descendants returning…
The He (贺) Surname: From Wu State Nobility to the Wuyi Diaspora
Not every Chinese surname begins with a murder. This one does.
If your surname is He — written 贺, not 何 — you carry a name born from one of the most dramatic assassinations in Chinese history. In 514 BCE, in the state…
Between 1840 and 1940, over two million people left the five counties of the Wuyi (\五\邑) region in southern Guangdong \— one of the largest sustained regional migrations in modern history. Taishan (\台\山) sent its sons to build the transcontinental railroad and fill San Francisco's Chinatown. Kaiping (\开\平) raised diaolou towers with Canadian gold and…
What to Eat in Wuyi: A Food Guide for Returning Diaspora
Taishanese cuisine was the first regional Chinese food to globalize. Before Sichuan, Hunan, or Shanghai cooking reached international audiences, immigrants from the Siyi (四邑) region of Guangdong had already defined what "Chinese food" meant for most of the Western world — a diaspora that…
Between 1840 and 1940, over two million people departed from a handful of stone jetties along the Tan River. They were leaving Wuyi (五邑, wǔyì — the five counties of Taishan, Kaiping, Xinhui, Enping, and Heshan), a stretch of rocky, typhoon-prone coastline on Guangdong’s southwestern edge, bound for gold fields in California, tin mines in…
The Guo (郭) Surname: From Zhou Dynasty Nobility to the Wuyi Diaspora
The Guo (郭) surname carries one of the longest continuously documented lineages in Chinese history — three thousand years from the Zhou dynasty’s founding brothers to the diaspora communities of the Wuyi (四邑) region (trace your own surname origins with our Surname Compass).…
The Thread of a Name
Of the hundred family surnames that structure Chinese identity, few trace their lineage to a fire god. The Luo (罗) clan does.
The Chinese surname system is among the world’s oldest continuous genealogical traditions, with many surnames reaching back 2,500 years or more to the Zhou dynasty. But the Luo…