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A historic Taishanese mansion reflecting in a pond at sunset in Zili Village, Kaiping — part of the Kaiping Diaolou and Villages UNESCO World Heritage Site, built with funds sent through the qiaopi remittance system.
diaspora History and Culture Primary Sources

What Is Qiaopi? A Beginner’s Guide to Chinese Remittance Letters

Between 1850 and 1950, millions of Chinese emigrants sent home letters unlike any correspondence in human history. Each one was simultaneously a love letter, a bank transfer, a household budget, and a legal document — all folded into a single piece of paper. These were qiaopi (侨批, qiáopī), the "overseas Chinese correspondence-remittances" that sustained an…
July 22, 20260Comments

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diaspora Labor Migration Southeast Asia Women's History

The Women Who Refused Marriage: Amahs, Sworn Spinsters, and the Wuyi Domestic Workers Who Built Lives Across the South China Sea

The Woman at the Pier In 1934, a fourteen-year-old girl stepped off a coastal steamer at Singapore's Clifford Pier. The humidity wrapped around her like a wet cloth. The harbor smelled of salt, diesel, and copra — nothing like the mulberry groves and fish ponds of home. She wore the simple cotton clothes of…
June 15, 20260Comments

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