Chinese Diaspora

The front facade of a Yu-family ancestral hall in Dihai, Kaiping, dressed with red banners, lanterns and a red carpet for a homecoming of overseas clan kin

Cantonese Opera in the Qiaoxiang: The Stage Villages Built

The Wuyi counties reached their opera by water. Not as a touring amusement that stopped at a market town, but as a piece of the ritual calendar's machinery — something a lineage and a temple were expected to raise, as they were expected to build a hall or repair a bridge. Cantonese opera (粤剧, Yuèjù),…

2 hours ago0Comments

BySteven

1920s postcard view of the Chinese burial ground at West Point, Hong Kong, its graves set on a hillside above the harbour

Chinese Diaspora Jiangmen Taishan

Bringing Bones Home: How the Chinese Dead Returned to Wuyi

The duty: why a grave in America was a failure The Wuyi emigration story is usually told as an outward story, with the money running back the other way: men left for 金山 (Jīnshān, "Gold Mountain" — North America), and what they sent home built the houses. There was a third flow, and it moved…

3 days ago0Comments

BySteven

Present-day aerial view of Wufeng village, the returned-overseas-Chinese settlement inside the Haiyan overseas-Chinese farm in Taishan, Guangdong

Chinese Diaspora Jiangmen Taishan

Wuyi Returnees: The Overseas Chinese Who Came Home

The Wuyi (五邑, Wǔyì) qiaoxiang (侨乡, qiáoxiāng) — the emigrant homeland of the five counties of western Guangdong — is famous for the people it sent out. It should be equally famous for the people it took back in. The same counties that produced the sojourners, the remittance letters and the women who waited at…

4 days ago0Comments

BySteven

Roasted coffee beans scattered on a surface

Chinese Diaspora Jiangmen Taishan

Coffee and the Returning Taste: How Jiangmen Became China’s Coffee Capital

Jiangmen — the prefecture in the western Pearl River delta that brands itself 中国侨都 (Zhōngguó Qiáodū, China's "overseas-Chinese capital") — did not grow a single coffee bean when its coffee industry began. What it had instead was a diaspora. For more than a century the people of the five Wuyi counties — Taishan, Kaiping, Xinhui,…

October 13, 20260Comments

BySteven

Aerial view of the Taishan coastline in Guangdong: tidal flats and sandbars meeting open sea, with headlands and low hills behind.

Chinese Diaspora Jiangmen Taishan

Taishan Energy Economy: What Replaced the Sugarcane

For about a century, the coast of Taishan (台山, Táishān) in Guangdong's Wuyi (五邑, Wǔyì) counties was a shore people left. Emigrants sailed from its river ports to the Nanyang and North America, and the region earned the name it still carries: a qiaoxiang (侨乡, qiáoxiāng), an emigrant homeland. That shore now produces and ships.…

September 25, 20260Comments

BySteven

Chinese Diaspora Jiangmen qiaoxiang

Jiangmen Overseas Chinese Platform, Updated: What the Greater Bay Area Offers Returning Families

Most places that lose their people to emigration never build institutions to bring them back. Jiangmen did — and what it built is not a slogan but a paper chain with dates. A clause in Chapter 8 of the 2019 Greater Bay Area development plan supports building an overseas-Chinese cultural-exchange-and-cooperation important platform (华侨华人文化交流合作重要平台, Huáqiáo Huárén…

September 24, 20260Comments

BySteven

The Huangmaohai Bridge's slender-waist concrete tower rising over the sea, its fan of stay cables supporting the road deck.

Chinese Diaspora Jiangmen Taishan

The Dual Corridor Era: What Two Bridges Changed for Wuyi

For more than a century, the west bank of the Pearl River estuary was the shore people left. From Taishan (台山, Táishān) and Kaiping (开平, Kāipíng), emigrants sailed out of small river ports bound for North America, Australia and the Nanyang, and the money they sent home came back as the fortified diaolou towers that…

September 18, 20260Comments

BySteven

Cutaway rendering of the JUNO neutrino detector buried 700 metres underground, showing the spherical liquid-scintillator vessel inside its cavern with tiny human figures indicating scale.

Chinese Diaspora Jiangmen Kaiping

JUNO: The World’s Largest Neutrino Detector, 700 Metres Under Kaiping

For more than a century, Kaiping (开平) was a place people left. Its sons and daughters boarded junks at the Haikoubu departure port, laid the transcontinental railroads, and worked the hand laundries of North America. Their remittances came home as fortified towers — the diaolou that now make the county a UNESCO World Heritage landscape.…

September 17, 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

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

Bringing Bones Home: How the...

Wuyi Returnees: The Overseas...

Coffee and the Returning Tast...

Jiangmen Overseas Chinese Pla...

Taishan Energy Economy: What...

Chinese Diaspora

Bringing Bones Home: How the...

Wuyi Returnees: The Overseas...

Coffee and the Returning Tast...

Jiangmen Overseas Chinese Pla...

Taishan Energy Economy: What...

Chinese Diaspora

Cantonese Opera in the Qiaoxiang: The Stage Villages Built

Bringing Bones Home: How the Chinese Dead Returned to Wuyi

Wuyi Returnees: The Overseas Chinese Who Came Home

Coffee and the Returning Taste: How Jiangmen Became China’s Coffee Capital

Taishan Energy Economy: What Replaced the Sugarcane

Jiangmen Overseas Chinese Platform, Updated: What the Greater Bay Area Offers Returning Families

The Dual Corridor Era: What Two Bridges Changed for Wuyi

JUNO: The World’s Largest Neutrino Detector, 700 Metres Under Kaiping

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

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

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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