根
ROOTS
Where you come from.
Trace a surname to a clan hall, and a clan hall to a village in Jinjiang, Shishi, Nan’an, Hui’an, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, or somewhere nearby.
Search your surname →咱人 · THE HOKKIEN HERITAGE PROJECT
One language, a thousand ports.
Your family may have left southern Fujian generations ago — for Manila, Penang, Medan, Singapore, Cebu, or ports even farther away. But the words never left. Neither did the shape of home: the swallow-tail roof, the sun-warmed red bricks, the stone-set walls, the flower tiles beside the doorway, and the gods watching over the family hall. Welcome to the worldwide home of Hokkien heritage.
一句閩南話，行遍天下港。
一間紅磚厝，猶記故鄉樣。
The roofline, brickwork and doorway are not decoration alone. For families across the ports, they are the remembered shape of home.
音 · 鄉音未改
You may already know more Hokkien than you think.
If you have ever said lumpia, popiah, bihon, misua, tikoy, hopia, or kway teow, you were already carrying words from the ports of southern Fujian. Many families no longer read the characters. Many were never formally taught the language. Yet the words survived in kitchens, markets, birthdays, weddings, and New Year tables.
lumpia潤餅 · lūn-piáⁿ
popiah薄餅 · po̍h-piáⁿ
bihon米粉 · bí-hún
misua麵線 · mī-sòaⁿ
tikoy甜粿 · tiⁿ-kóe
bak kut teh肉骨茶 · bah-kut-tê
kway teow粿條 · kóe-tiâu
hopia好餅 · hó-piáⁿ
The pronunciation changed from port to port. The memory remained.
聲音隨港口而變，來處一直都在。
四件行李 · 一封家書
Four things they carried. One thing they sent home.
They crossed the sea with almost nothing. They carried their roots, their language, their gods, and the taste of home. When they could, they sent letters back across the water. What remains today is not only memory. It is a living inheritance.
音
TONGUE
What your elders were saying.
Compare Manila Lannang-uè, Penang Hokkien, Singapore Hokkien, Medan Hokkien, and the speech of southern Fujian.
Open the wordbook →信
FAITH
Who watched over the voyage.
Má-chó͘ 媽祖 at the harbour. Koan-kong 關公 in the shop. Chheng-chúi Chó͘-su 清水祖師 from the home county.
Explore the temples →味
TASTE
The flavor of the old country.
Misua for birthdays. Tikoy for New Year. Tea from Anxi. Food preserved memory long after a family forgot the road home.
Read the food stories →批
LETTERS
What crossed the sea home.
Qiaopi carried news, money, duty, worry, and love between a port city and an ancestral village.
See the family letters →厝 · 故里的樣子
The architecture of memory.
Before many of us remember the language, we remember the house: the curve of a swallow-tail roof, the red of sun-warmed brick, the stone set between brickwork, the flower tiles by the doorway, the shaded hall, and the family altar. In the Hokkien world, architecture is not only design. It is memory made visible.
很多人還沒想起一句完整的鄉音，先想起的是房子的樣子。燕尾脊、胭脂磚、出磚入石、花磚、鳥踏、門埕與神龕。真正令人想家的，往往是祖厝裡那些熟悉的小地方。
燕
Swallow-tail rooflines
Even those who do not know the name often recognise the rising roofline immediately — a remembered outline of southern Fujian.
磚
Rouge-red brick
Not a flat bright red, but a warm color shaped by clay, salt air, sunlight, repair, and time.
石
Brick set into stone
出磚入石 weaves red brick and pale stone into one wall — practical coastal masonry with an unmistakable rhythm.
花
Flower tiles
Patterns beside doors, windows, halls, and thresholds gave ordinary homes color, order, and quiet celebration.
厝
Lived-in details
Bird-resting details, eaves, stone thresholds, door courts, carved windows, altars, and traces of daily life made a house feel inhabited.
Some houses were built with bricks.
Some were built one letter at a time.
有些祖厝以磚石建成，有些祖厝，是一封一封僑批寄回來的。
埠 · 天下港
Choose your port.
One mother tongue, many harbors. Across Southeast Asia and beyond, Hokkien communities built new homes without completely leaving the old ones behind. Choose the port closest to your family’s story.
Lannang · Philippines
Kinship, trade, faith, food, and language across Manila, Cebu, and ports throughout the Philippines.
Penang & Malaysia
A Hokkien world of streets, wet markets, kitchens, temples, and neighborhood memory.
Singapore
A multilingual city with Hokkien long woven into its Chinese associations, temples, food, and family life.
Medan & Indonesia
A living Hokkien world shaped by northern Sumatra, trade networks, family, and local languages.
Everywhere else
Second migrations. Third homes. The same search for remembered roots.
批 · 僑批傳家
One letter. Two shores. One family.
A qiaopi was never merely a document. It could hold a line reporting safety, money for parents and children, instructions for the household, and feelings too restrained to say directly. Distance was written into the paper — and so was the refusal to abandon home.
To Mother, across the sea
An open-license photograph of qiaopi addressed to a mother in Bailian village, Chao’an, recording a remittance of HK$900. The paper bears the marks of handling, routing, annotation, and use — not an abstract history, but a family transaction that survived.
Collection photographed at Chaozhou Museum. Photo: 三猎 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized and display-cropped; derivative image remains under CC BY-SA 4.0. Original file and metadata.
From 石叻 to a wife at home
This qiaopi records a HK$50 remittance connected with Singapore — historically written 石叻 — and addressed to a wife in Houguo village, Chao’an. The recipient’s name dominates the worn paper: one person, one household, one waiting address.
Collection photographed at Chaozhou Museum. Photo: 三猎 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized and display-cropped; derivative image remains under CC BY-SA 4.0. Original file and metadata.Archive note: These two openly licensed examples come from Chao’an and represent the wider qiaopi tradition of China’s southeastern coast. minnan.org will distinguish each document’s actual origin and will prioritize clearly sourced Fujian, Quanzhou, Jinjiang, Xiamen, Zhangzhou, and Southeast Asian materials as the archive grows. We will not label a Chaoshan document as Minnan.