Qiao pi, the remittance letter
A letter home and the money sent with it, sealed together and carried by hand; in the local speech pi is a letter, and the whole thing is also called a silver letter.
Pronunciation qiáo pī｜Dialect and emigration｜One entry in the Chaoshan glossary
What it means
Pi means letter in the Chaoshan speech. One of these carried both a letter and money: the letter written down the page in vertical lines with the news from home at the other end, the money paid over household by household with the sum written on the outside. The two were sealed together and given to someone travelling back.
Also called a silver letter. The household read the letter through, took the money, and wrote a reply which went back along the same line.
When you see it
From the end of the Qing to the 1970s, a span of more than a century. In 2013 the qiaopi archives, the silver letters of the overseas Chinese, were entered on the UNESCO Memory of the World register.
Words easily confused
The letter is the sheet plus the money, the pi ju is the firm that handled them, the fan ke is the man who sent it.
Read next: The remittance letter: paper and money in one envelope.
Same group: the remittance firm, fan ke, the returned emigrant, going across the sea.
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Last revised: 3 November 2026