The Peng (彭) Surname: A Top-31 Name, Scattered Thin at the Edge of the Wuyi Diaspora
The Peng surname (彭, Péng) ranks about thirty-first among China's surnames, with roughly 6.9 million bearers — about 0.49 percent of the Han population — according to the cited surname study, Wu Jianhua's Peng Surname History (Peng Xing Shihua),…
The Fall of the Song Dynasty: Yamen, Mongol Conquest, and Wuyi's Origins
The Battle at the Doorstep
The battle that ended the Song dynasty was fought within sight of the villages that would one day send their people across the world. For more than three centuries the Song (宋朝, Sòng cháo) had ruled the most…
The Gong (龚) Surname: From Ancient Water Gods to the Taishan Diaspora
Few surnames in China's top hundred carry a longer remembered past — or a stranger one — than the Gong surname (龚, gōng): roughly 2.5 to 3 million bearers, ranked near 89th in the 2018 household-registry count; a name spelled Gong in pinyin,…
The Fang (方) Surname: From the Fall of the Song Court to the Towers of Kaiping
Fang (方, fāng; Fong in Cantonese-speaking communities) is one of the most portable surnames in the Chinese world — a single character that turns up in the phone books of Vancouver, San Francisco, Havana, and Singapore. In China alone…
The Situ (司徒) Surname: From a Zhou Court Office to the Wuyi Diaspora
A Name That Was Once an Office
The Situ (司徒, Sītú) surname is one of the few office-derived compound surnames (官职姓, guānzhíxìng) to survive from Chinese antiquity — it began as the Zhou-dynasty office of Minister of Lands and Education (地官大司徒, dìguān…
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.…
Chinese Immigration Records in Canada: How to Find Your Wuyi Ancestor
The Records Exist — And Your Ancestor Is Probably in Them
In 1885, Canada began writing down every Chinese person who arrived on its shores. Not a list of suspects — an administrative record, kept by federal officials at the ports, of who came,…
The Tang (唐) Surname: From the Sage Emperor Yao to the Wuyi Diaspora
The Sage Emperor and the Multi-Origin Name
The Tang (唐, Táng) surname traces its origins to the sage emperor Yao and the ancient State of Tang — a name carried from the legendary dawn of Chinese history through the archaeology of the…
The Song (宋) Surname: From Weizi's State of Song to the Wuyi Diaspora
A Name That Outlived Every Dynasty
The Song (宋, Sòng) surname descends from 微子启 (Wēizǐ Qǐ, Weizi), a prince of the Shang royal house whose fief — the State of Song (宋国, Sòng guó), founded at Shangqiu (商丘, Shāngqiū) after the Zhou…
The Lei (雷) Surname: From Ancient Fangshan to the Wuyi Diaspora
Roughly 3.7 million people in the world today answer to the surname Lei (雷) — a name that means "thunder" and, in the oldest stories, carries the weight of it. It is not among China's largest surnames; by population it sits somewhere around the…