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 Chung Yeung Festival: Autumn Grave-Sweeping and Ancestor Veneration in the Wuyi Diaspora
On the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, China marks Chung Yeung — the Double Ninth Festival (重阳节, Chóngyáng Jié) — the autumn grave-sweeping festival. In 2026, the day falls on Sunday, October 18. It is the last of the traditional…
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…
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 Pan (潘) Surname: From the State of Pan to the Wuyi Diaspora
The Pan surname traces to two royal lineages of ancient China. The first descends from the ruling house of the State of Pan (潘国, Pānguó), a small vassal polity of the Zhou period whose princes shared the blood of the Zhou kings;…
The Hu (胡) Surname: From the State of Hu to the Wuyi Diaspora
The State That Became a Name
The Hu surname (胡, Hú) was born in the year a state died. In 495 BC the armies of Chu marched on the small Gui-clan (归姓, Guī xìng) state of Hu (胡子国, Húzǐ Guó), near what…
Getting Around Wuyi: Trains, Buses, and Hiring a Driver for Your Roots Trip
The Railway the Villagers Built, the Railroad That Brought Them Home
For 150 years, the story of Wuyi (五邑, Wǔyì) — the five counties of Kaiping, Taishan, Enping, Xinhui, and Heshan that form Guangdong's great qiaoxiang (侨乡, qiáoxiāng), the "overseas Chinese homeland"…
The Yu (余) Surname: From Shaoguan Statesmen to the Wuyi Diaspora
A Statesman's Name
The Yu (余, Yú) surname — Yu in Mandarin, Yee in Cantonese, Eu or U in Hokkien and Teochew — traces its Wuyi roots to a Northern Song minister whose descendants built the grandest clan hall in the diaspora. That minister…
Wuyi Roots Trip Itinerary: A 10-Day Plan for Descendants \nThe Wuyi region of Guangdong sent over two million people overseas between 1840 and 1940 \— and every year, thousands of their descendants come back looking for the villages their families left. \nThat number inverts almost everything you expect from a place. The Five Counties \—…
Budgeting Your Wuyi Roots Trip: What It Actually Costs \\nFor over 150 years, money has flowed from overseas Chinese communities back to the Wuyi (\\五\\邑) region of Guangdong province \\— first as remittances that built railroads, schools, and nearly two thousand fortified towers across the countryside, and now as roots-trip spending by diaspora descendants returning…