Echoes Across the Ocean

Most histories focus only on the arrival of immigrants in the West. But the Chinese diaspora was a continuous circle of cultural exchange. Our ancestors deeply influenced the communities they adopted, while simultaneously transforming their ancestral homelands in Southern China.

Join CHSA for a profound exploration with Dr. Selia Tan, world renowned expert on overseas Chinese history, cultural conservation and root-searching, based in Guangdong, China. This presentation addresses the transnational history of Chinese emigration from the Taishan and Kaiping districts and her experiences in assisting overseas Chinese with genealogical research.

This program includes a Q&A session with Dr. Tan. Admission includes a complimentary lunch buffet.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Selia Jinhua Tan, born in China in 1969, got her master and PhD degrees at the University of Hong Kong, and was a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia and Stanford University. Tan is a historian and a trained and practiced architectural heritage conservationist. She was one of the key preparers for the Kaiping Diaolou and Villages World Cultural Heritage Application Dossier and the Kaiping Diaolou and Villages Management Plan submitted to UNESCO, she was a consultant of World Cultural Heritage listing applications of Kaiping diaolou (succeeded in 2007) and Fujian Tulou (succeeded in 2008). Tan is a professor at Wuyi University and a leading expert on the hometown studies of many early generations of Chinese Americans, she is also the founder of the Cangdong Heritage Education Project, which won the UNESCO Asia Pacific Cultural Heritage Conservation Award of Merit in 2015 and Highly Commended Global World Heritage Education Innovation Cases in 2021 by WHITRAP (The World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO). She is the author of seven books, such as A Research on the Ornamentation of Kaiping Dioalou and Its Associated Villages(2015), The Transnational Lives of Chinese Railroad Workers: Material Culture Research from a Guangdong Provice Qiaoxiang and Railroad Worker Camp Sites in North America (2019), Fallen Leaves Return to Their Roots — Selected Records of Overseas Chinese Bone-repatriation from Tung Wah Group of Hospitals (2020), Investigation and Research on Kaiping Rammed Earth Diaolou Buildings(2025), Foreign Lands and Hometowns: A Study of Architectural Culture Across the Pacific Ocean (2025).