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…
Gao (高) Surname: From the State of Gao to the Wuyi Diaspora
A Thousand Years on One Page
One surname. One village. One book that claims a thousand years.
The register in question — the genealogy of the Gao (高, Gāo) family of Nafu Village (那伏村, Nàfú Cūn) in Shadui Township, Xinhui District (沙堆镇, 新会区),…
Three Diaspora Routes: Wuyi, Fujian, and Chaozhou Compared
Ask most people how the overseas Chinese left China, and you will get a single answer: they crossed the Pacific to work the goldfields and build the railroads. That is true — but it is only one of the answers, and it is the newest one. Long…
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…
A Fief That Became a Name
The Ye surname begins with a place that outlived its state. Twenty-five hundred years ago, on the floodplain of what is now Ye County, Henan (叶县, Yè Xiàn), lay the fief of Ye (叶邑, Yè Yì) — first recorded in the annals in 576 BCE. The small state it…
Zhongyuan Festival: How the Wuyi Diaspora Honors the Dead
The Month of the Dead — and the People Who Never Stopped Feeding Them
In the Chinese calendar, the seventh lunar month belongs to the dead. This year the gates of the underworld open on August 13 and close on September 10 — twenty-nine days in…
Wuyi Roots Trip Itinerary: A 10-Day Plan for Descendants
The Wuyi region of Guangdong sent over two million people overseas between 1840 and 1940 \u2014 and every year, thousands of their descendants come back looking for the villages their families left.
That number inverts almost everything you expect from a place. The Five Counties \u2014 Wuyi (\u4e94\u9091,…
"Fujian and Chaozhou: The Other Chinese Diaspora
The Chinese diaspora did not come from one region. If you have followed the story of the Wuyi (五邑, wǔyì) — the five counties of Guangdong whose sons and daughters filled the steamships to Gold Mountain (金山, jīnshān), the Americas — you have been reading one chapter of…
Budgeting Your Wuyi Roots Trip: What It Actually Costs
For over 150 years, money has flowed from overseas Chinese communities back to the Wuyi (\u4e94\u9091) region of Guangdong province \u2014 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 to…