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Chinese Genealogy

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

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Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay, the Pacific gateway where hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including many from Wuyi, were processed and detained between 1910 and 1940
Chinese Genealogy How-To Guides Primary Sources

Chinese Immigration Records in the United States: How to Find Your Wuyi Ancestor

Between 1848 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 Pacific to the United States. Whole villages emptied their young…
August 27, 20260Comments

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Chinese Genealogy How-To Guides Primary Sources

How to Find Your Family’s Qiaopi Letters: A Hands-On Guide to Wuyi Remittance Archives

How to Find Your Family's Qiaopi Letters: A Hands-On Guide to Wuyi Remittance Archives Between roughly 1850 and 1950, millions of men from the Siyi (四邑) and Wuyi (五邑) counties of Guangdong left for the gold fields, railroads, laundries, and kitchens of North America, Australia, and Southeast Asia — and many of them wrote home.…
August 26, 20260Comments

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A Kaiping diaolou watchtower rising above village rooftops, a UNESCO World Heritage structure built with overseas remittance money bearing surname signatures
Chinese Genealogy Roots Travel Surname History Wuyi Diaspora

Your Surname is Your Compass: How to Trace Your Wuyi Roots Starting With Just a Family Name

The Surname You Already Hold Your surname is not merely a name inherited from your ancestors. It is a compass — a pointer to a specific village, a specific migration history, a specific set of documentary holdings, and a specific overseas settlement pattern. If you know your surname, and perhaps just one fragment — “Taishan”…
June 11, 20260Comments

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