The Wuyi counties reached their opera by water. Not as a touring amusement that stopped at a market town, but as a piece of the ritual calendar's machinery — something a lineage and a temple were expected to raise, as they were expected to build a hall or repair a bridge. Cantonese opera (粤剧, Yuèjù),…
For more than a century, Kaiping (开平) was a place people left. Its sons and daughters boarded junks at the Haikoubu departure port, laid the transcontinental railroads, and worked the hand laundries of North America. Their remittances came home as fortified towers — the diaolou that now make the county a UNESCO World Heritage landscape.…
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),…
Chinese National Day: How the Diaspora Marks October 1
On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong stood on the Tiananmen rostrum in Beijing and proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China. Seventy-seven years later, that date — 国庆节 (Guóqìngjié, "National Celebration Festival") — is marked not only in Tiananmen Square but in the Chinatowns,…
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…