Chinese museum gives light to migrant letters

A Chinese museum is dedicated to preserving letters written across the centuries by migrants to loved ones back home. The 1800s and 1900s saw a wave of migration from China, with millions of people, many from the Teochew ethnic group, seeking to escape poverty in their homeland for a better life abroad. The remittance letters they sent home evolved into a tradition known as qiaopi (emigrant letters), with professional writers composing missives for illiterate workers.

The UNESCO-recognized letters displayed at the Qiaopi Museum in the coastal city of Shantou range “from happy to heartbreaking,” the South China Morning Post wrote: In one, a Chinese immigrant in Thailand asks his wife to pay 50,000 yuan to retrieve a daughter she had sold due to poverty.