Pi ju, the remittance firm
The merchant house that collected and delivered remittance letters, with a partner office at each end of the route.
Pronunciation pī jú｜Dialect and emigration｜One entry in the Chaoshan glossary
What it means
A firm that did nothing but take in and deliver these letters. One office in the south seas collected the letter and the money, one office here delivered to the address, and the two were linked houses resting on the same network of obligation and credit.
The men who carried them were called pi kha, the letter feet. They walked the villages and lanes and knew both the roads and the people. Money was handed over, the letter read aloud to whoever could not read it, and both were done on the same call. The firm’s credit rested on two ends at once: money collected there, delivery made here. Break one and the whole line was worthless.
When you see it
From the end of the Qing into the 1970s. The firms were later merged into the remittance trade and the business absorbed by the banks and the post; the paper itself sits in the qiaopi museum.
Words easily confused
The pi ju is the firm, the qiao pi is the letter, the museum is where they are shown today. Three different things.
Read next: The remittance letter: paper and money in one envelope.
Same group: the remittance letter, fan ke, the returned emigrant, Zhanglin port.
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Last revised: 3 November 2026