Minnan Culture

I visited Jinjiang, Quanzhou, a while back. Passing through a village, I saw a massive stone tablet at the entrance, covered with hundreds of names carved into it. I asked a local friend what it was. He said: “This is our clan’s honor roll — everyone from our village who passed the imperial exam since the Ming dynasty.” I froze. One village. Hundreds of scholars. Spanning centuries. He added: “Half the village is named Cai. Walk deeper in — there’s a bigger one.” ...

A friend of mine works in digital heritage preservation. A while back, he told me something that stopped me cold. He said: “Crack open a Ming dynasty local gazetteer. You’ll see more of Quanzhou in one afternoon than in three days of walking the old city.” I called bullshit. He said: go read the Wanli Quanzhou Prefecture Gazetteer. So I did. Not one volume. Thirty-three. From the Ming-era Wanli Gazetteer, through the Qing-era Qianlong Gazetteer, all the way to the modern Quanzhou City Chronicles series — administration, customs, religion, overseas Chinese, dialect, agriculture, education, water conservancy. One by one. ...