Fujian’s Qiaopi Heritage: Love Letters Across Oceans and Generations
A quiet cultural phenomenon is unfolding across China. The Chaoshan-dialect film “Love Letter to Grandma” (《给阿嬷的情书》) has surpassed 1 billion yuan (US$138 million) at the box office since its April 30 release, drawing over 29 million viewers and earning a rare 9.1 rating on Douban. But beyond the box office numbers lies a deeper story — one that connects the film’s themes of sacrifice and devotion to a centuries-old tradition known as qiaopi (侨批), the overseas Chinese correspondence that combined letters with remittances. A recent feature by Xinhua News explores how Fujian province is preserving and revitalizing this heritage in ways that bridge generations and continents.
What Is Qiaopi?
In the Chaoshan and Southern Min dialects, “批” (pī) means “letter.” Qiaopi — also called “silver letters” (银信) — were letters sent by overseas Chinese to their families back home, often containing remittances. This unique “letter-plus-money” system operated through “water passengers” (水客), private letter agencies (批局), and delivery men (批脚). At its peak, the system supported an estimated 40 to 45 percent of the Chaoshan region’s population, who relied on these remittances for survival.
Between 1864 and 1911, approximately 2.94 million people from the Chaoshan region emigrated overseas, while Quanzhou in Fujian saw 2.3 million people leave their homeland. The qiaopi archives were inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2013, with Professor Rao Zongyi famously describing them as the “Dunhuang of overseas Chinese history.”
Personal Stories of Devotion
The Xinhua feature weaves together multiple personal narratives that give human faces to this historical phenomenon.
Liu Denghan (刘登翰), 86, is a retired scholar whose family operated a qiaopi agency between the Philippines and Quanzhou. His grandfather registered the agency in 1921. Liu recalls the darkest years of the Pacific War, when remittances nearly stopped and his mother took in laundry to survive. His most vivid memory: the deep night when someone would tap on the window and whisper, “The qiaopi has arrived!” — his father’s remittance and news of his safety, forwarded through perilous routes. After the war, his father returned briefly with a frying pan and a mosquito net — surplus from U.S. military auctions — before leaving for the Philippines, where he died in 1963. “Every family they left behind,” Liu says, “could become a novel.”
Jiang Mingdian (姜明典), 77, is known as Quanzhou’s “last letter-writing gentleman.” For 59 years since 1967, he has written over 100,000 letters from a small stall in Shishi, Quanzhou, under a sign reading “Letter Writing Services.” At its peak, he wrote up to 100 letters a day. “Whether it’s windy or rainy, I still set up my stall,” he says. His clients were mostly “番客婶” (overseas wives) — women whose husbands had gone to Southeast Asia. He recalls the strict code: if the curtain wasn’t drawn back, he wrote the letter outside, never entering the home. After watching Love Letter to Grandma, Jiang says he immediately thought of over a dozen real-life versions of the film’s characters. “They don’t speak much, they don’t voice their suffering. But I understand their inner feelings,” he says. “When I write for them and see them smile, I’m satisfied.”
Huang Qinghai (黄清海) is a qiaopi collector and chief editor of The Complete Collection of Southern Fujian Qiaopi (30 volumes). Unlike many collectors who guard their treasures, Huang actively shares his collection. “Many collectors are unwilling to show their treasures, afraid of losing the mystique,” he says, “but I want more people to know about qiaopi.” He now promotes qiaopi exhibitions across Quanzhou, inviting visitors to explore the city’s numerous qiaopi museums.
Lin Nanzhong (林南中) founded the Nanfeng Qiaopi Guan in Zhangzhou, a private museum housing over 2,000 qiaopi letters. His collection includes what may be the earliest qiaopi found in Fujian, dating to approximately 1861. “Through collecting and research, we can continuously fill the gaps in qiaopi history,” he says. His recent book, Qiaopi Like the Tide, systematically traces the development and cultural significance of Southern Fujian qiaopi.
Bridging Generations Through Innovation
The Fujian Provincial Archives, which holds over 50,000 qiaopi documents, has taken an innovative approach to heritage engagement. In June 2024, they launched the “Qiaopi Guan” (侨批馆) IP — an immersive cultural brand featuring escape-room style puzzle games and interactive spaces.
“Young people today are unfamiliar with handwritten letters,” says Zhu Xiaoxiao, the project lead at the Fujian Archives. “To help them understand the homesickness and stories hidden in qiaopi from decades or centuries ago, the key is to build a bridge of emotional resonance.”
Game designer Dai Ying notes that some puzzles draw from real historical events — including the story of Guo Youpin, founder of the Tianyi General Bureau, who after a shipwreck that lost all the silver and letters in his care, sold his own family land to repay every client from a list he had kept in his pocket.
Meanwhile, the large-scale immersive performance Return to Minnan (《再回闽南》) recently premiered in Zhangzhou, using qiaopi as its narrative thread to tell the story of Southern Fujian emigration. Director Zhang Dong spent six months researching in Zhangzhou. “Many locals told me after watching, ‘This is the story of our ancestors,’” he says. “That made me very happy.”
A Bridge Across the Maritime Silk Road
Fujian has also taken qiaopi exhibitions abroad. Since 2013, the Fujian Provincial Archives has mounted exhibitions in the United States, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia. In 2023, a major exhibition was held in Malaysia to mark the 10th anniversary of qiaopi’s UNESCO inscription. In 2025, a special exhibition in Singapore celebrated 35 years of China-Singapore diplomatic relations.
“We want to continue using qiaopi to build a ‘bridge of hearts,’” says Zheng Zongwei of the Fujian Provincial Archives, “telling stories of self-reliance, good faith, and good neighborliness, and enhancing mutual understanding between China and the world.”
The Enduring Power of a Letter
As the Xinhua feature makes clear, qiaopi is far more than a historical curiosity. It is a living tradition that continues to evolve — through film, immersive experiences, international exhibitions, and the quiet dedication of people like Jiang Mingdian, who still sets up his stall each morning in Shishi. The letters may have stopped flowing decades ago, but the bonds they carried — between generations, across oceans, and through the deepest hardships — remain as powerful as ever.
As director Lan Hongchun said of the qiaopi he studied while making his film: “Behind the qiaopi, we saw the strong spiritual power of our ancestors, their stable spiritual core, and their moving integrity and bonds of friendship.” In Fujian, those bonds are being written anew.