Jiangmen's global role celebrated with key event

Highlighting the culture and history of the ancestral home of many overseas Chinese — Jiangmen in Guangdong province, An Ecstatic Encounter With Jiangmen in Beijing, opened as a monthly theme at the Overseas Chinese History Museum of China on Oct 17.

Consisting of two exhibitions and the film Lingering Dream of the Homeland, the event will run until next month. As home to more than 5.3 million Chinese migrants now living in 145 countries and regions, Jiangmen is known as one of the biggest cradle of Chinese migration.

"Over the course of the month, we will try to tell the stories behind the close ties overseas Chinese have to the motherland, and the important role they played in the country's economy and development through multiple platforms and mediums," Chen Ji, head of Jiangmen's publicity department, said at the launching ceremony.

"We are telling the story of Jiangmen's most representative figure Liang Qichao (1873-1929), as well as the history behind the Qiaopi letters and the film, to visitors," Chen added.

Qiaopi are documents including letters, reports, account books and remittance receipts that grew out of the communication between Chinese emigrants and their families back home. In 2013, a corpus of 160,000 such letters, some 50,000 of which were from Jiangmen, was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

"Using these firsthand records of the lives and activities of overseas Chinese, we will try to explore the relationship between the letters and the development of the country and of the Communist Party of China," Chen says, adding that the exhibition has widened the discussion of the story of Chinese emigrants and their role in the country's modern economic and political prosperity.

In a letter written in 1948, Situ Meitang (1868-1955) said he believed that tomorrow would be better than today.

Situ's granddaughter, Situ Yuegui knows about her grandfather's strong emotional attachments to his homeland. "Grandpa thought about the motherland all his life, and he often said, 'Without a country, there is no home,'" Situ Yuegui says.

At the exhibition, visitors can scan QR codes next to the letters to find out more about the people and stories behind them.

As this year marks the 150th anniversary of Liang Qichao's birth, the second exhibition pays homage to his legacy. Born in Jiangmen, Liang was a renowned intellectual, politician, historian and educator, who is seen as one of the flag carriers for modernization.

Displaying more than 100 items, including manuscripts, personal belongings and books, as well as photos, the exhibition tells the story of the patriotic historical figure and his family, says Ning Yi, vice-president of the Overseas Chinese History Museum of China.

The exhibition focuses on Liang's life overseas after the failure of the political movement of 1898 that called for a constitutional monarchy. During the 14 years in Japan, he visited several other countries, including Canada and the United States.

A book commemorating the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Kobe Chinese School caught the attention of Liang Hong, Liang Qichao's granddaughter. In May 1899, Liang Qichao gave a speech at the Institute of Chinese Assembly Hall in Kobe, emphasizing the importance of establishing overseas Chinese schools. The next year, the Kobe Chinese School was founded. "I have visited the school and am glad to see that it still follows its mission to pass on Chinese culture," Liang Hong says.

Divided into four sections — Liang Qichao's days abroad, the newspapers he started, schools for overseas Chinese, and his family — Ning hopes the exhibition will allow visitors to understand his ideas and vision for modernization, which continue to inspire scholars today.

The monthlong event will also include interactive activities, such as a visitor passport stamping program, according to Ning.