Request for Huipi's 回批 or Qiaopi's 侨批

[Doug 周]

Through my network, I came across this request from Professor Gregor Benton of Cardiff University.

"Liu Hong ^{click to email} and I, both at Nanyang Technological University, are doing a study of so-called qiaopi 侨批,emigrants' letters sent back to China accompanying remittances, between c. 1840 and 1980. We already many thousands of qiaopi, although we would be interested to know where there might be more in libraries or archives (perhaps of Chinese native-place associations) outside China. However, our main interest is in the so-called huipi 回批, the replies sent from China by the remittances' recipients, as proof of receipt. For obvious reasons, many of these will have been from women – emigrants' wives, mothers, sisters, etc., those left behind, and they will be mainly or exclusively found outside China, just as the qiaopi addressed to them are to be found mainly within China. If anyone knows where we might find such letters, huipi or qiaopi, we would be grateful if you could let us know. My email address is [e-mail].​"

Hopefully individuals can help or can forward this request to their own Chinese Family Heritage networks.

[laohuaqiao]

Fay Chee has a letter from her grandfather in China to her father in NY

[FayChee]

Hi Doug, I have posted my dad's Huipi here on this forum if anyone want's to download it. I can also email it to Prof. Benton.

Fay Chee

[Doug 周]

I can't find the attachment. I probably would email it to Professor Benton.

[douglaslam]

DJ, I qualified because I did receive replies from a recipient, my mother, well before the cut-off year of 1980. I used to remit money through a Chinese trading house, the one which Lolly and i stopped by in Sydney's Chinatown. Some weeks later a letter would come back from my mother. In later years, when China opened up, it was through a bank. But mother told me to send money to a third party in Macau, who would then take it to her in HK currency,which was in high demand. Sending money through a bank in RMB was highly disadvantageous. Foreign currencies yielded greater amount in the black market.

When I was in Vancouver in 1973 to take my grandfather home, I left behind a lot of priceless family keepsakes among which were the replies from my grandmother, some of which must have been dated to the early years of the 20th. century. It must have been the work of a letter-writer because grandmother was illiterate. The letters were always in little envelopes with red stripes. It is very formal as grandfather was addressed as 相公, a very old from of address for one's husband.

DL

[Doug 周]

DL,
Thanks for the descriptions. I had asked Professor Benton if there was a website and he said that it was not ready yet. I never suspected the letters were so formal. I would love to see images. I am curious about the scope of the project and hope the team would provide updates.
DJ

[laohuaqiao]

Here is a website with some sample letters:
janetsnotebook.com/2013/08/26/letters-from-china-part-1/

Qiaopi 侨批 and yinxin 银信, correspondence and remittance letters from overseas Chinese were accepted by UNESCO as documentary heritage in the Memory of the World Registry in 2013.

“Letters, reports, account books and remittance receipts resulting from communications between Chinese emigrants overseas and their families in China. They record first-hand the contemporary livelihood and activities of Overseas Chinese in Asia, North America and the Oceania, as well as the historical and cultural development of their residing countries in the 19th and 20th century. They constitute evidence of the Chinese international migration history and the cross-cultural contact and interaction between the East and the West.”

China has about 170,000 such letters, of which 160,000 are in Guangdong and 10,000 are in Fujian.

[douglaslam]

Laohuaqiao, in the past money sent from overseas was often called 茶資 cha gee "tea money" by the Chungshan people at least. Quite often, the letter would give instruction as to who should get how much, with the bulk being for the left-behind head of household, in my case, my grandmother. I still use the term tea money in the village when speaking to the older ones.I keep sending money to my cousin's wife for the New Year and Moon Festival, my gratitude for their care of my mother in my absence. I give cash on each of my visits. I do not forget simply because my mother had passed away.

As for my own personal experience, when I arrived in Sydney as a penniless young boy all those years ago, my first task was to send money home to my grandmother in Hong Kong. It was largely a symbolic gesture because I was instructed to do so before I set sail. And the adults here also concurred to this tradition. It was very important to announce my safe arrival with an amount of money. It says so much about the hopes placed on the young men going away to the gold mountain.

I must have been one of the last links to the old world traditions of young men getting dispatched overseas to seek their fortune. And my travel arrangement was done through a 金山庄, a trading house which engaged in import / export, shipping agency, visa application aid, lodging place for returnees,and much more. It was the forerunner of the travel agency except it was more comprehensive and colourful.