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Zhongshan County Guide: The Diaspora’s Overlooked Home County

Zhongshan County Guide: The Diaspora's Overlooked Home County Between Guangzhou and Macau, on the western shore of the Pearl River estuary, lies a county that has spent the last 170 years sending its people to sea. Wave after wave of its sons left for Hawaii's sugar fields, Sydney's produce markets, the clan halls of Vancouver…

August 18, 20260Comments BySteven

Three Diaspora Routes: Wuyi, Fujian, and Chaozhou Compared

Three Diaspora Routes: Wuyi, Fujian, and Chaozhou Compared Ask most people how the overseas Chinese left China, and you will get a single answer: they crossed the Pacific to work the goldfields and build the railroads. That is true — but it is only one of the answers, and it is the newest one. Long…

August 17, 20260Comments BySteven

Historical Landmarks History and Culture

Yamen 1279: The Battle That Ended the Song Dynasty

Yamen 1279: The Battle That Ended the Song Dynasty The End of a Dynasty For three hundred years the Song dynasty (宋朝, Sòng cháo) had been the most advanced state of its age — the world's largest cities, the invention of movable type and gunpowder, a civil service that prized learning over birth. And when…

August 14, 20260Comments BySteven

diaspora festivals

Mid-Autumn Festival 2026: Mooncakes, Reunion, and How the Wuyi Diaspora Keeps the Date

Mid-Autumn Festival 2026: The Reunion Festival of the Separated Of all the festivals on the Chinese calendar, the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, Zhōngqiū Jié) is the one built around a single shape. The full moon (满月, mǎnyuè) is round. The mooncake (月饼, yuèbǐng) is round. The table a family gathers around is round — and in…

August 13, 20260Comments BySteven

Chinese Genealogy How-To Guides

How to Read a Chinese Zupu: The 10 Parts, Explained Simply

How to Read a Chinese Zupu: A Diaspora Descendant's Guide The Book That Was Written for You Every few years, someone inherits a book they cannot read. Thread-bound, paper soft with age, characters printed vertically in a classical Chinese no one in the family studied. It is a zupu (族谱 zúpǔ) — a clan genealogy,…

August 12, 20260Comments BySteven

diaspora festivals

Ghost Month 2026: A Guide to Zhongyuan for Diaspora Families

Ghost Month 2026: A Guide to Zhongyuan for Diaspora Families The Gates Open: A Month When the Living Remember In Chinese cosmology, the seventh month of the lunar calendar belongs to the dead. The gates of the underworld open on the first day, and for the next month the ancestors return to the homes they…

August 11, 20260Comments BySteven

The Huangmaohai Cross-Sea Corridor at dusk, the 31-kilometre bridge opened in 2024 that cut the Zhuhai-to-Taishan drive to about 30 minutes.

Practical Guide Roots Travel

Getting Around Wuyi: Trains, Buses, and Hiring a Driver for Your Roots Trip

Getting Around Wuyi: Trains, Buses, and Hiring a Driver for Your Roots Trip The Railway the Villagers Built, the Railroad That Brought Them Home For 150 years, the story of Wuyi (五邑, Wǔyì) — the five counties of Kaiping, Taishan, Enping, Xinhui, and Heshan that form Guangdong's great qiaoxiang (侨乡, qiáoxiāng), the "overseas Chinese homeland"…

August 10, 20260Comments BySteven

A man lighting incense at a Ning Yang clan ancestral altar — the offering rite that frames festival observance in the Wuyi qiaoxiang villages.

diaspora festivals

Qixi Festival: How the Wuyi Diaspora Kept Love Alive Across the Ocean

Qixi Festival: How the Wuyi Diaspora Kept Love Alive Across the Ocean The Seventh Night: When the Separated Are Allowed to Meet The seventh night of the seventh lunar month is the one night a year when, in the oldest love myth of the Chinese calendar, two lovers separated by the Milky Way are allowed…

August 7, 20260Comments BySteven

A getai stage performance in Singapore during the Hungry Ghost Festival, sound and light honoring the dead as guests.

diaspora festivals

Zhongyuan Festival: How the Wuyi Diaspora Honors the Dead

Zhongyuan Festival: How the Wuyi Diaspora Honors the Dead The Month of the Dead — and the People Who Never Stopped Feeding Them In the Chinese calendar, the seventh lunar month belongs to the dead. This year the gates of the underworld open on August 13 and close on September 10 — twenty-nine days in…

August 6, 20260Comments BySteven

Practical Guide Roots Travel

Wuyi Roots Trip Itinerary: A 10-Day Plan for Descendants

Wuyi Roots Trip Itinerary: A 10-Day Plan for Descendants \nThe Wuyi region of Guangdong sent over two million people overseas between 1840 and 1940 \— and every year, thousands of their descendants come back looking for the villages their families left. \nThat number inverts almost everything you expect from a place. The Five Counties \—…

August 5, 20260Comments BySteven

Jiangmen’s 15th Five-Ye...

Cantonese Opera in the Qiaoxi...

Bringing Bones Home: How the...

Wuyi Returnees: The Overseas...

Coffee and the Returning Tast...

Blog Classic with sidebar

Jiangmen’s 15th Five-Ye...

Cantonese Opera in the Qiaoxi...

Bringing Bones Home: How the...

Wuyi Returnees: The Overseas...

Coffee and the Returning Tast...

Zhongshan County Guide: The Diaspora’s Overlooked Home County

Three Diaspora Routes: Wuyi, Fujian, and Chaozhou Compared

Yamen 1279: The Battle That Ended the Song Dynasty

Mid-Autumn Festival 2026: Mooncakes, Reunion, and How the Wuyi Diaspora Keeps the Date

How to Read a Chinese Zupu: The 10 Parts, Explained Simply

Ghost Month 2026: A Guide to Zhongyuan for Diaspora Families

Getting Around Wuyi: Trains, Buses, and Hiring a Driver for Your Roots Trip

Qixi Festival: How the Wuyi Diaspora Kept Love Alive Across the Ocean

Zhongyuan Festival: How the Wuyi Diaspora Honors the Dead

Wuyi Roots Trip Itinerary: A 10-Day Plan for Descendants

Jiangmen’s 15th Five-Ye...

Cantonese Opera in the Qiaoxi...

Bringing Bones Home: How the...

Wuyi Returnees: The Overseas...

Coffee and the Returning Tast...

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