A heritage pavilion at Arrowtown, a South Island town with a restored Chinese goldfields settlement

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

Crowds and red paper lanterns fill a street during a lunar new year celebration in Lima's Barrio Chino

Chinese Diaspora Coolie Trade Wuyi Diaspora

Peruvian Chinese: The Coolie Ships, Chifa, and Latin America’s Largest Chinese Community

Peruvian Chinese: The Coolie Ships, Chifa, and Latin America's Largest Chinese Community Between 1849 and 1874, somewhere between ninety thousand and one hundred and twenty thousand Chinese laborers — nearly all of them young men — were carried across the Pacific to Peru under eight-year contracts they signed in a language they could not read.…

September 1, 20260Comments

BySteven

Chinese Genealogy How-To Guides

How to Read a Chinese Zupu: The 10 Parts, Explained Simply

How to Read a Chinese Zupu: A Diaspora Descendant's Guide The Book That Was Written for You Every few years, someone inherits a book they cannot read. Thread-bound, paper soft with age, characters printed vertically in a classical Chinese no one in the family studied. It is a zupu (族谱 zúpǔ) — a clan genealogy,…

August 12, 20260Comments

BySteven

Labor Migration Migration History

Coolie Trade Ships and the Americas: Cuba, Peru, Jamaica

Coolie Trade Ships and the Americas: Cuba, Peru, Jamaica The Crossing Between 1847 and 1874, roughly a quarter of a million men from the Wuyi (五邑, Wǔyì) counties of Guangdong were carried across the Pacific under contracts that made them neither fully free nor fully enslaved. They went to the sugar plantations of Cuba, the…

August 4, 20260Comments

BySteven

qiaoxiang-stories village-deep-dives

Enping: Meaning, Origin, and the Forgotten Corner of the Wuyi Diaspora

Between 1840 and 1940, over two million people left the five counties of the Wuyi (\五\邑) region in southern Guangdong \— one of the largest sustained regional migrations in modern history. Taishan (\台\山) sent its sons to build the transcontinental railroad and fill San Francisco's Chinatown. Kaiping (\开\平) raised diaolou towers with Canadian gold and…

July 30, 20260Comments

BySteven

Chinese Surnames Surname Archive

The Feng (冯) Surname: From Northern Yan Dynasty to the Wuyi Diaspora

Three thousand years ago, a Zhou Dynasty prince received a fiefdom in the northern plains of what is now Hebei Province. The territory was called Fengcheng (冯城) — Feng City — and when Bi Gong Gao (毕公高), the fifteenth son of King Wen of Zhou (周文王), took up residence there, his descendants adopted the place…

July 24, 20260Comments

BySteven

Yunhuan Lou and Qiuanjulu Mansion in Zili Diaolou Village, Tangkou Township, Kaiping, Guangdong — UNESCO World Heritage site. These fortified watchtowers blending Chinese and Western architecture are the most visible legacy of Wuyi overseas Chinese wealth. Photographed with Canon EOS 60D.

Chinese Surnames Surname Archive

The Xu (许) Surname: 3,100 Years from the State of Xu to the Wuyi Diaspora

The Name That Carried 3,100 Years In the eleventh century before the Common Era, a man named Wen Shu (文叔) knelt before King Wu of Zhou and received a fiefdom in the fertile plains of what is now Henan province. The new territory was called Xu (许). Wen Shu traced his lineage to the legendary…

July 21, 20260Comments

BySteven

Chinese Surnames Surname Archive

The Wang Surname: 3,100 Years from Zhou Dynasty Royalty to the Wuyi Diaspora

The Name That Means "King" The Wang surname — 王 (Wáng), simply the Chinese character for "king" — is the second most common surname in the world. One hundred and one million people in China carry it, and an estimated six to eight million more overseas trace their ancestry through it. It is not an…

July 21, 20260Comments

BySteven

Ancestral hall interior in a Taishan village, where generations of the Lei clan have honored their ancestors since Fu Gong's arrival in 1273

Chinese Surnames Surname Archive

The He（何） Surname: 3,000 Years from Ancient Han State to the Wuyi Diaspora

In 230 BCE, the armies of Qin entered the capital of the state of Han (韩国). Han, smallest and most vulnerable of the seven Warring States, was the first to fall in the Qin unification campaign. Most royal houses that resisted Qin were exterminated. But members of the Han royal family escaped. Fleeing south from…

July 17, 20260Comments

BySteven

Chinese Surnames Surname Archive

The Ma （马） Surname: From Fubo General to the Wuyi Diaspora

The Ma surname (马, "horse") is one of the rare Chinese surnames derived not from a place or a clan but from an official military title — and the martial character encoded in that single character has shaped one of China's most resilient lineages for over two thousand years. During the Warring States period (475–221…

July 17, 20260Comments

BySteven

The Fall of the Song Dynasty:...

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Tag: Chinese Diaspora

The Fall of the Song Dynasty:...

Chinese in Canada Before the...

Yamen 1279: The Battle That E...

Haiyan Overseas Chinese Farm:...

What Is Qiaopi? A Beginner&#8...

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

Peruvian Chinese: The Coolie Ships, Chifa, and Latin America’s Largest Chinese Community

How to Read a Chinese Zupu: The 10 Parts, Explained Simply

Coolie Trade Ships and the Americas: Cuba, Peru, Jamaica

Enping: Meaning, Origin, and the Forgotten Corner of the Wuyi Diaspora

The Feng (冯) Surname: From Northern Yan Dynasty to the Wuyi Diaspora

The Xu (许) Surname: 3,100 Years from the State of Xu to the Wuyi Diaspora

The Wang Surname: 3,100 Years from Zhou Dynasty Royalty to the Wuyi Diaspora

The He（何） Surname: 3,000 Years from Ancient Han State to the Wuyi Diaspora

The Ma （马） Surname: From Fubo General to the Wuyi Diaspora

The Fall of the Song Dynasty:...

Chinese in Canada Before the...

Yamen 1279: The Battle That E...

Haiyan Overseas Chinese Farm:...

What Is Qiaopi? A Beginner&#8...

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