They simply rolled it up and carried it with them.
Across centuries and oceans, the Chaoshan people of coastal Guangdong have carried their world with them rather than leaving it behind — sustaining kinship networks, ancestral rituals, and a dialect that binds Bangkok to Paris to Shenzhen. Now, a Chaoshan author writing science fiction asks whether this ancient architecture of belonging might be humanity's most viable template for interstellar migration. In a moment when artificial intelligence promises to govern everything from sleep to sustenance, she argues that what no algorithm can replicate is the irreducible human act of carrying another person in one's thoughts — and that this incalculable weight is precisely what culture is made of.
- A writer who once fled her hometown's incense smoke and ancestral ceremonies finds herself, decades later, tracing Chaoshan roots in the faces of French and Thai colleagues — and realizing escape was never quite possible.
- Her science fiction trilogy stages the collision directly: descendants of Chaoshan migrants float on alien tides under algorithmic governance, yet their bodies still ignite when the Yingge drums begin.
- The tension at the heart of Chaoshan identity — a fierce insularity pulling inward against a seafaring drive pushing outward — is not a flaw to be resolved but the very engine that has kept the culture alive across globalization's currents.
- She argues that bureaucratic structures are too heavy for interstellar travel, but a clan network — ancestral hall, ledger of favors, Bo Gong temple — is light enough to fit in a ship's hold and resilient enough to self-organize on a distant planet.
- The frontier now is not a strange planet but the limit of computation itself: the qiaopi letter, compressed with longing and obligation across an ocean, contains a human complexity no large language model has yet learned to hold.
A young woman sits in a Shantou temple, irritated by incense smoke and her grandmother's Chao opera, counting the days until she can leave. She does leave — for Beijing at eighteen, then to a career at Google — and feels genuine relief as the train pulls away from the Chaoshan plain. But something shifts after thirty. In meetings with French, Thai, and American colleagues, she keeps hearing the same ancestral origin. Walking through Shenzhen, she hears her dialect everywhere. She begins to understand that Chaoshan people have been practicing decentralization for generations — not as ideology, but as survival.
For centuries, millions from this coastal Guangdong region have settled across Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Americas, remaining recognizably themselves through kinship ties, ancestral halls, and qiaopi — the remittance letters that allowed a migrant in Malaysia and a family in Shantou to be simultaneously present in each other's lives. The system required no bureaucracy and no enforcement. It was lightweight enough to fit into the hold of a red-head junk, yet resilient enough to operate simultaneously across rice paddies, rubber plantations, and Parisian arrondissements. Chaoshan people did not leave home so much as roll it up, sling it over their shoulders, and carry it with them.
This history became the foundation of her science fiction. Her 'Raging Yingge' trilogy imagines Chaoshan descendants on a distant planet, their lives governed by artificial intelligence — yet still moved by the drums of the Yingge dance, still brewing kung fu tea, still seeking answers at a Bo Gong temple. The premise is a genuine question: if humanity ever migrates to the stars, which social systems will survive the journey? Her answer is that a clan network — with its ancestral halls as community centers, its ledgers of favors as mutual-support systems, its portable deities as spiritual anchors — is better suited to that crossing than any constitution.
She calls this 'Chaoshan futurism': throwing a hyper-local culture into an algorithmic far-future and watching what happens at the collision. The structural contradiction she lives inside — a conservative pull toward preservation and a restless drive outward — is not resolved in her work or in her life. Every Spring Festival, gravity draws her back to Shantou; once home, the rituals make her uneasy. But she has come to see this endless tug-of-war as the source of both momentum and meaning. Looking inward keeps the cultural core alive; reaching outward keeps it from becoming a fossil.
What no algorithm can replicate, she argues, is the act her people call 'carrying someone in your thoughts' — the compression of longing, worry, and affection into a few lines sent across an ocean. The computation contained in that moment exceeds anything humanity has encoded into a machine, not because it is optimal, but because it is irreducibly human. As long as people continue to exist and human ties remain, the smallest units of cultural survival — a dance, a cup of tea, a prayer — will not require institutional approval to endure.
A young woman sits in a temple in Shantou, watching incense smoke curl past the altar of Bo Gong, the local earth deity. She is irritated. Her grandmother wants to watch Chao opera; she wants cartoons. The temple smells of ash and fish market. She cannot wait to leave.
That woman is now a writer living far from home, and she has spent years thinking about what it means to belong to a place you cannot quite escape. Her name is not given in this telling, but she is the author of the "Raging Yingge" trilogy, a science fiction series that imagines a future thousands of light-years away, where descendants of Chaoshan people—migrants from a coastal region in Guangdong province—live in a city that floats on alien tides. An artificial intelligence system controls their sleep, their food, their movement. Yet when they hear the drums of the Yingge dance, their bodies respond with the same fire their ancestors felt. The premise is not fantasy. It is a question: What if the people most likely to leave Earth for the stars are also the people most likely to carry their entire world with them?
Chaoshan has been the origin point of one of the world's largest Chinese diasporas. For centuries, millions of people with roots in this region have settled across Southeast Asia, Europe, North America—everywhere from Bangkok's Chinatown to Paris's 13th arrondissement. They speak the Chaoshan dialect. They eat beef meatballs and noodles. They worship the same deities and honor the same ancestors. The author grew up in Shantou, near a historical district called Xiaogongyuan, where a Bo Gong temple stood by the entrance to an alley. Almost every neighborhood has one. People drop in to pay respects or cast divination blocks to ask their fortune, the way others now pull out their phones to consult artificial intelligence. The temple was a node—a single point where the beliefs and destinies of thousands of households converged.
At eighteen, the author left for university in Beijing and felt relief wash over her as the train pulled away from the Chaoshan plain. She wanted escape from the rules, the rituals, the endless rounds of ancestral ceremonies. But something shifted after she turned thirty. While working at Google, she found herself in meetings with French, Thai, and American colleagues. When she asked about their ancestry, they traced it back to Chaoshan. Later, walking through Shenzhen, she heard the dialect everywhere and saw beef hotpot restaurants on every corner. It was then she understood: Chaoshan people had been practicing a form of decentralization for generations. From the red-head junks that sailed to Southeast Asia during the Qing dynasty to the networks of merchants scattered across the world today, they remained recognizably themselves wherever they settled.
What holds this web together is not scripture or political power but human relationships. The nodes are ancestral halls. The connections are kinship ties. The protocol is an unwritten ledger of favors and obligations passed down by word of mouth. This system was lightweight enough to fit into the hold of a ship bound for a new world, yet resilient enough to operate simultaneously in the rice paddies of Thailand, the rubber plantations of Malaysia, and the streets of Paris. The polytheistic nature of Chaoshan faith meant that each Bo Gong temple could serve as a self-contained spiritual anchor wherever it was moved and rebuilt. In modern terms, this was a distributed cultural-survival framework. Qiaopi—remittance letters exchanged between migrants overseas and families left behind—served as the trust protocol of this network. A single letter sent and received meant two people on opposite sides of the ocean could be simultaneously present in each other's reality. Chaoshan people call this "carrying someone in your thoughts." They do not fear poverty, distance, or death. What they fear is the severing of these ties.
This is why the author believes Chaoshan people are suited for interstellar migration. The hardest part of settling a new planet has never been rocket thrust. It is whether a social system can be transplanted. A bureaucratic apparatus is too heavy to bring along, and there will be no one to enforce a constitution. But bring a clan network instead, and the ancestral hall becomes a community center, the ledger of favors becomes a mutual-support system, and the Bo Gong temple becomes a spiritual anchor. It does not rely on external infrastructure because it is composed of the countless ties of gratitude, grievance, and longing that bind people together. This points to a fundamental difference between the Chaoshan approach to migration and the frontier narrative of Western exploration. In classic Anglo-American science fiction, a person stands on a strange planet, looks back at their spaceship, and heads into the wilderness—saying goodbye to the old world. But Chaoshan people do not go out this way. When the red-head junks left Zhanglin Port, no one truly looked back. Not because they were not reluctant to leave, but because everything was already on board: ancestral tablets, soil from their hometown, agreements recording who had contributed money and labor. They were not leaving Chaoshan at all. They simply rolled it up, slung it over their shoulders, and carried it with them.
Yet Chaoshan contains a structural contradiction. On one hand, there is a deeply conservative insularity: family, ancestral halls, dialect, offerings—all that must be protected and passed down unchanged. On the other hand, there is an intense drive outward, borne by geography itself—going out to sea, doing business, leaving for foreign countries, expanding to every corner of the world with a port. The two forces operate simultaneously within the same people. The author herself refused to go into business as many assumed she would. Instead, she wrote science fiction. Instead of having men perform the Yingge dance in line with tradition, she made a young girl the lead dancer in her novel. Every Spring Festival, a gravitational pull draws her back to Shantou. But once home, the rituals and conventions make her uneasy. It is not reconciliation. It is an endless tug-of-war. And yet this very tension creates both momentum and meaning. Looking inward preserves the cultural core. Reaching outward prevents it from becoming a fossil. Twisted together, these two forces have allowed Chaoshan people to endure the currents of globalization longer than most communities.
The author has coined a term for this: "Chaoshan futurism." You throw a highly local culture into a far-distant future shaped by algorithms and interstellar distances and watch what happens when the two collide. In a city where artificial intelligence controls everything, who will people perform the Yingge dance for? Who will the kung fu tea be brewed for? Will there still be deities to answer prayers in a Bo Gong temple? These concrete, everyday acts are why Chaoshan people have not disintegrated despite being scattered around the world for several hundred years. They are the smallest units of cultural survival. They do not require approval or institutional support. As long as people continue to exist and human ties remain, they will survive. It is now 2026. Artificial intelligence writes poems, creates art, makes decisions. But there is one problem algorithms cannot solve: They do not know what it means to carry someone in your thoughts. No large language model can calculate how a migrant bound for Southeast Asia might compress all the complexity of longing, worry, and affection into a few brief lines for family members across the sea. The computation contained in that moment exceeds anything humanity has ever encoded into an algorithm, because it is not the optimal solution. It is the most human one.
Citações Notáveis
Chaoshan people call this 'carrying someone in your thoughts.' They do not fear poverty, distance, or death. What they fear is the severing of these ties.— The author, reflecting on how Chaoshan migrants maintain connection across vast distances
No large language model can calculate how a migrant bound for Southeast Asia might compress all the complexity of longing, worry, and affection into a few brief lines for family members across the sea. The computation contained in that moment exceeds anything humanity has ever encoded into an algorithm, because it is not the optimal solution. It is the most human one.— The author, on what algorithms cannot replicate about human connection
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
You're imagining Chaoshan people on distant planets. But why them specifically? Why not anyone?
Because they've already done it. They've been migrating for centuries while staying themselves. Most diasporas eventually dissolve into the place they land. Chaoshan people don't. They bring their temples, their dialect, their obligations with them.
How do they do that? What's the mechanism?
It's not bureaucracy or law. It's relationships. An ancestral hall, a temple, a network of who owes whom what. It's so lightweight it fits on a boat. It's so resilient it works in Bangkok and Paris simultaneously.
But you also describe a contradiction in Chaoshan culture—this pull between staying rooted and always leaving. How does that not tear people apart?
It does tear at them. It tears at me. But the tearing is what keeps the culture alive. If you only preserve, you fossilize. If you only explore, you dissolve. The tension between them is what creates momentum.
You mention algorithms can't understand what it means to "carry someone in your thoughts." Isn't that just sentiment? Why does that matter for survival?
Because survival isn't about optimization. It's about meaning. An algorithm can calculate the most efficient way to organize a colony. But it can't replicate the reason someone sends a letter across the ocean, or why that letter matters more than logic. That's what holds people together when everything else fails.
So you're saying culture survives not through institutions but through the smallest, most personal acts?
Yes. A dance performed in a temple. Tea brewed for someone you love. A prayer to a local deity. These acts don't need permission. They don't need infrastructure. They just need people who remember why they matter.