A fortified Taishan watchtower with a Chinese pavilion roof rising above rice paddies — a diaolou of the kind the diaspora's money built

Taishanese Phrases: 30 Things to Say to Your Wuyi Relatives

Taishanese Phrases: 30 Things to Say to Your Wuyi Relatives Why These Taishanese Phrases Aren't Pinyin For roughly a century, Taishanese (台山话, Táishān huà — the diaspora spells it Hoisan or Toisan) was the working language of North American Chinatown: not Mandarin, and not the Cantonese of the phrasebooks. It was the speech of laundries…

September 16, 20260Comments

BySteven

Map of the Pearl River Delta river network, the estuary that the two 2024 crossings now span, and the Wuyi region at its western edge.

Guangdong History History and Culture

The Fall of the Song Dynasty: Yamen, Mongol Conquest, and Wuyi’s Origins

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…

September 8, 20260Comments

BySteven

A Wuyi diaspora community gathering, people seated together at a long banquet table.

diaspora festivals

Chinese National Day: How the Diaspora Marks October 1

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,…

September 7, 20260Comments

BySteven

diaspora festivals

The Chung Yeung Festival: Autumn Grave-Sweeping and Ancestor Veneration in the Wuyi Diaspora

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…

September 3, 20260Comments

BySteven

A heritage pavilion at Arrowtown, a South Island town with a restored Chinese goldfields settlement

Chinese Diaspora Labor Migration Wuyi Diaspora

The New Zealand Chinese Poll Tax: £100 to Enter, and the First National Apology

Between 1881 and 1944, Chinese arrivals in New Zealand were made to pay a poll tax (人头税, réntóu shuì) — a fee no other migrant faced — a levy that began at £10 and was raised to £100, the equivalent of several years' wages for the labourers it targeted. The tax did not stand alone.…

September 2, 20260Comments

BySteven

Crowds and red paper lanterns fill a street during a lunar new year celebration in Lima's Barrio Chino

Chinese Diaspora Coolie Trade Wuyi Diaspora

Peruvian Chinese: The Coolie Ships, Chifa, and Latin America’s Largest Chinese Community

Peruvian Chinese: The Coolie Ships, Chifa, and Latin America's Largest Chinese Community Between 1849 and 1874, somewhere between ninety thousand and one hundred and twenty thousand Chinese laborers — nearly all of them young men — were carried across the Pacific to Peru under eight-year contracts they signed in a language they could not read.…

September 1, 20260Comments

BySteven

Chinese Genealogy How-To Guides Primary Sources

How to Find Your Family’s Qiaopi Letters: A Hands-On Guide to Wuyi Remittance Archives

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.…

August 26, 20260Comments

BySteven

Head tax certificate of Don Lee, issued 1918, with his portrait photograph, the five-hundred-dollar receipt, and the Controller's signature

Chinese Diaspora Genealogy

Chinese Immigration Records in Canada: How to Find Your Wuyi Ancestor

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,…

August 23, 20260Comments

BySteven

Vancouver Chinatown on East Pender Street in 1928, with the shopfronts and balconies of the Gold Mountain gateway

Chinese Diaspora migration-history

The Chinese Head Tax: How Canada Charged Wuyi Migrants

The Chinese Head Tax: How Canada Charged Wuyi Migrants The Price of Entry Canada's first restriction on Chinese immigration was not a ban. It was a price — the Chinese head tax (人头税, réntóushuì), a fee collected at the gate from every Chinese person seeking entry, from 1885 to 1923. The ladder climbed in three…

August 19, 20260Comments

BySteven

Two Kaiping diaolou, the taller one crowned with an arcaded top-floor loggia, standing amid green fields — the fortified towers that emigrants' remittances built.

Chinese Surnames Surname Archive

The Lei (雷) Surname: From Ancient Fangshan to the Wuyi Diaspora

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…

August 18, 20260Comments

BySteven

Taishan Energy Economy: What...

The Dual Corridor Era: What T...

JUNO: The World’s Large...

Taishanese Phrases: 30 Things...

Duanfen, Taishan: The Emigran...

Tag: Wuyi

Taishan Energy Economy: What...

The Dual Corridor Era: What T...

JUNO: The World’s Large...

Taishanese Phrases: 30 Things...

Duanfen, Taishan: The Emigran...

Taishanese Phrases: 30 Things to Say to Your Wuyi Relatives

The Fall of the Song Dynasty: Yamen, Mongol Conquest, and Wuyi’s Origins

Chinese National Day: How the Diaspora Marks October 1

The Chung Yeung Festival: Autumn Grave-Sweeping and Ancestor Veneration in the Wuyi Diaspora

The New Zealand Chinese Poll Tax: £100 to Enter, and the First National Apology

Peruvian Chinese: The Coolie Ships, Chifa, and Latin America’s Largest Chinese Community

How to Find Your Family’s Qiaopi Letters: A Hands-On Guide to Wuyi Remittance Archives

Chinese Immigration Records in Canada: How to Find Your Wuyi Ancestor

The Chinese Head Tax: How Canada Charged Wuyi Migrants

The Lei (雷) Surname: From Ancient Fangshan to the Wuyi Diaspora

Taishan Energy Economy: What...

The Dual Corridor Era: What T...

JUNO: The World’s Large...

Taishanese Phrases: 30 Things...

Duanfen, Taishan: The Emigran...

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