Annotation

The Hing Mee Monthly (hengmei yuebao) was a ‘hometown magazine’ from the village of Hing Mee (Hengmei, Zhongshan), published for more than a decade. Sponsored by residents of the village and people from the village living elsewhere, it was distributed for free through agents in Shiqi, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, New Zealand, Vancouver, San Francisco and Cuba, among other places. Its content included Cantonese ballads, Southern tunes, plays, fiction, anecdotes, satire and opinion. Many pieces included news from across Guangdong, with its coverage ranging from small scuffles between laundry-washing women by a river and disputes between the village’s sub-division to big events such as ‘The Canton Merchants’ Corps Incident’ (a conflict between the revolutionist (KMT) government and the armed forces of local merchants headed by Lim-Pak Chan of the General Chamber of Commerce of Kwangtung). Most of its reports were written directly from sources, without comments or being edited. The magazine also listed births, deaths, marriages, divorces, migrations and returns of both villagers and overseas sojourners. At its peak, The Hing Mee Monthly had more than 160 pages. It is significant window into understanding both the area in and around Hing Mee and the lives of overseas Chinese during the 1920s and 1930s.