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Migration History

Migration History

07

Chinese Railroad Workers: The Wuyi Villages That Built the Transcontinental

Chinese Railroad Workers: The Wuyi Villages That Built the Transcontinental Between 1865 and 1869, approximately 12,000 Chinese workers laid the track that connected America from coast to coast. More than eighty percent came from a cluster of four counties in Guangdong province — an area smaller than Connecticut. Their wages built diaolou towers, their letters…

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Inside the Taishan Overseas Chinese Museum: What 150 Years of Qiaopi Letters Reveal About Love and Distance

Between 1840 and 1949, the Wuyi region sent over two million people overseas — and for a century, the only thread connecting them to home was paper. The qiaopi (侨批, qiáopī) — remittance letter — doubled as financial transaction and intimate family document: a few silver dollars folded inside a few sentences. Money and love…

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