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This introductory chapter provides a detailed account of the origins of qiaopi and their significance for Chinese international migration and modern Chinese history. Emigrants’ letters and remittances home were an important link between China and Chinese overseas, who were tied—emotionally, socially, and economically—with a China in transition to a modern society and state. During the period of the qiaopi trade, from the late Qing and the Republic through to the People’s Republic, modern mechanisms and institutions of finance and communication such as banks and post offices became a cornerstone of the modern Chinese state, and the qiaopi trade in South China played a part in that process. This chapter also introduces key concepts, terminologies, and usages concerning qiaopi and qiaopi trade.

Qiaopi and yinxin are Chinese names given to letters written home by Chinese emigrants, in the 150 years starting from the 1820s. Estimates of the number of qiaopi collected in China range from 160,000 to more than 300,000, sent back to China from main regions of settlement of overseas Chinese, in Southeast Asia and in the Americas and the Pacific (the focus of this chapter). Recent scholarship on qiaopi has focused on remittance networks associated with these letters or the analysis of their content. This chapter examines a hitherto overlooked dimension in qiaopi studies and diasporic Chinese studies, its function as charity, and the operational mechanisms, impact, and theoretical implications of qiaopi charity. We argue that qiaopi and the associated qiaohui networks served as important arenas of diasporic Chinese charity, which in turn connected overseas Chinese and China and thus contributed to the formation of transnational China. This chapter concludes that qiaopi exemplified a key characteristic of diasporic Chinese charity, its systemic combination of individual and family giving and donations to institutions. In China, charity truly “began at home” in two senses: family and friends came first, and the charitable idea was in large part indigenous in shape and conception.

This concluding chapter argues that the qiaopi trade was the basis for one of China’s earliest excursions into the modern world economy. The trade quickly progressed from the one-man operations of the early years to the piju formed by qiaopi entrepreneurs to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the swift growth of Chinese emigration and remittance. It eventually matured into a stable industry with its own perfected mechanisms, patched onto China’s other modern institutions like banks and the post office and linked to modern forms of communication and transport. The trade gave an impetus to other forms of transnational and domestic industry and to urban growth in coastal cities adjacent to the qiaoxiang. Initially based on networks of blood, place, and tongue, it later joined or created national, transnational, and international networks based on trade, finance, and general migration, mainly in territories around the South China Sea but also in the gold-rush Pacific—the Americas, Australia, and the South Pacific. These networks, maritime and terrestrial, were not just economic but also had deep cultural and social dimensions. Along them ran not just cash, capital, and goods but also people, ideas, and information. The flow of capital, ideas, and population between Chinese in diaspora and their families and communities in China was a key driver in the remaking of China along modern and transnational lines.