Overseas Chinese Museum (华侨博物院)

The Overseas Chinese Museum stands on Siming South Road in Xiamen, Fujian province, China, opposite the Xiamen University campus and near Nanputuo Temple. It was founded by the philanthropist Tan Kah Kee, himself an emigrant who made a fortune in Singapore and Malaya and later funded schools in Fujian, and it opened in 1959 as the first museum of its kind in the country. The building is a complex of halls in a Chinese-style design with decorative roofs. Its exhibitions cover the history of Chinese emigration from the Ming and Qing periods, through the nineteenth century labour migration to Southeast Asia, and into the twentieth century, when overseas communities raised funds for schools, hospitals and the anti-Japanese war effort. Collections include historic photographs, letters and remittance documents, travel papers, tools and everyday objects of migrant communities, and displays on the shops and clan associations that supported them. The approach is broadly chronological, mixed with thematic rooms on trades, education and homeland ties. Because Fujian and Guangdong supplied many of the emigrants, the museum has particular depth on Minnan and Hokkien communities. Its collection has been expanded through donations from families abroad. The building has been renovated several times and the exhibition reorganised, and the present displays include modern lighting, models and multimedia stations. Admission is free but visitors must show a passport or identity card, and entry is limited on busy days. The museum is closed on Mondays except for public holidays. Staff can usually provide a guide for groups on request. Together with the Tan Kah Kee Memorial Museum in Jimei, it forms one of the best ways to understand Xiamen's history as an emigration port and the origins of overseas Chinese investment in the city. Its collection of letters and remittance receipts is especially valuable for understanding how money flowed back to Fujian villages and how those funds built ancestral halls, schools and roads, transforming many coastal communities in the early twentieth century.