In 1853, ten surname groups — Mei (梅), Li (黎), Wu (吴), Guan (关), Ruan (阮), Huang (黄), Jiang (江), Chen (陈), and He (何) — gathered at the confluence of two rivers in what is now Taishan's Duanfen Township (端芬镇, Duānfēn Zhèn) and built a market. They called it the Ten-Household Market (十户墟, Shíhù…
The Woman at the Remittance Shop — One Jinshanpo's Story, 1923
In 1923, a woman named Chen A-Mei walked the dirt road to the remittance shop in Taishan city for the 247th time — once a month, every month, for nineteen years. The dust kicked up around her cloth shoes. A woven basket hung from…
The Women Who Built Gold Mountain: Jinshanpo Wives and the Hidden Architecture of Qiaoxiang
By RootsWeb Newsroom | June 10, 2026
1. A Face in the Dust
The year is sometime in the late 1940s, and the village lies in Taishan (台山, Táishān), in the rocky southwestern corner of Guangdong's Pearl River Delta. A woman…
The Letters That Never Came: Gold Mountain Wives Who Waited in Vain
She stood at the village gate every afternoon for forty-seven years.
When her husband left for Gold Mountain in 1892, she was twenty-five. He promised to return in ten years with enough silver to build a proper house. The first letters came regularly—brief…