Skip to content Skip to footer

Primary Sources

HomeAll PostsPrimary Sources

Primary Sources

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

Read more

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

Read more

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

Read more

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

Read more