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Post by christine on Jan 10, 2012 3:38:24 GMT -5
Here is the shot of 5 Ngan Wu village locations Attachments:
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Post by christine on Jan 10, 2012 3:40:03 GMT -5
And here is the location with green pin markers of various 永堅鄉 Wing Kin Heung villages with Ngan Wu village "A" nearby, northeast, and the old "D" village just south of the river. Attachments:
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Post by nurselainie on Jan 10, 2012 19:56:01 GMT -5
Deepest Thanks for all those that are helping myself & AlynSOO. as we just found out we are distant cousins in the USA. She is a decendant of Soo Hoo Doo & I am a decendant of Soo Hoo Chouk. Reading all this is a bit confusing to me with coordinates & Chinese speak, but luckily Christine has been helping me directly. I truly wish to express my heartfelt gratitude for everyone's knowledge & kindness to help a fellow Chinese decendant. I wished I could help others in this way as you all do. I will provide more info that I can to Christine & all whom wish to search villages. I do so hope to make a pilgrimage someday once I confirm my home village. anyone is free to email me direct if they so choose. Nurselainie@hotmail.com or continue to post, and I will check frequently. The photo posted if it works , is my great-gf & Alyn Soo's Great Uncle. Regards to all Lainie. Attachments:
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Post by christine on Jan 19, 2012 3:15:44 GMT -5
Any SooHoo's in or from CHICAGO on this board? Further investigation in this story has turned up brothers in this SooHoo family putting down roots in Chicago, and we are trying to put together the naming pattern and learn more. Also Arizona is an area of SooHoo interest as well.
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Post by april on Jan 24, 2012 3:49:45 GMT -5
Hi, Im from the Philippines and our family name is Yu, my grandfather died before i was born and I only know some information about him and our other ancestors. My grandfather's Chinese name is Yu Chi Yu, I'm not so sure about the spelling. According to my father and his siblings he was from Amoy China, and came here in the Philippines around year 1963 he was born on January 10,1910 and married my Filipina grandmother and had 9 children. Hope you can help me with this. Thank you and more power!
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Post by april on Jan 24, 2012 3:50:38 GMT -5
Hi, Im from the Philippines and our family name is Yu, my grandfather died before i was born and I only know some information about him and our other ancestors. My grandfather's Chinese name is Yu Chi Yu, I'm not so sure about the spelling. According to my father and his siblings he was from Amoy China, and came here in the Philippines around year 1963 he was born on January 10,1910 and married my Filipina grandmother and had 9 children. Hope you can help me with this. Thank you and more power! Read more: siyigenealogy.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=names&thread=167&page=2#ixzz1kQWsKdAI
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Post by philiptancl on Jan 24, 2012 5:15:54 GMT -5
Hi April, For reading the Chinese characters please select "View", "Encoding", "More" and "Unicode (UTF-8)". If you go through the postings in this Forum, you will realize that it would be next to impossible to locate your ancestry with just the kind of information you had provided even if there are in Chinese characters. You need at least to provide the ancestral village that your grandfather came from in Fujian and his name in Chinese characters. These could be probably be ascertained from one of the following sources: 1. his gravestone, 2. his ancestral tablet (if his descendants continued the traditional of ancestral veneration), 3. his obituary in Chinese newspaper when he died, or 4. his old letters he had with relatives from his ancestral village. I suppose the Chinese character for his surname Yu is 余; the same as that for my wife. The top halve of the book below is the Yu (余) caln families’ records from her ancestral village in Yongchun County (永春县), Fujian Province/\. Yongchun is some 2 hours drive inland from Amoy (i.e Xiamen). (I understand most Chinese from Philippines come from Fujian). The bottom part is the national genealogical book for Yu (余).clan. With those two sources, I had managed to trace her ancestry to Huang Di, from who the Han Chinese claimed they are descended from. photos.geni.com/p13/66/7d/9b/1c/53444838ddc04e1f/yu_zupu_and_zongpu_original.jpg [/img] Philip
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Post by FayChee on Mar 22, 2012 23:50:56 GMT -5
This is my dad and his tombstone. Can anyone tell me where Yen Ping is located and the modern spelling. The Fook Lee Social Club paid for his burial and he is in a special Chinese area that is owned by the current Chinese Association in Chinatown, NYC. Attachments:
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Post by laohuaqiao on Mar 23, 2012 8:13:13 GMT -5
lmurak/Linda, According to the tombstone, your father came from Yan Ping (Cantonese) or Enping (Mandarin) 恩平, formerly a county and is now a city. He was from village in Enping named Chiu Yeung (Cantonese) or Chaoyang (Mandarin) 朝陽 (traditional Chinese) 朝阳 (simplified Chinese). The Mandarin transliterations are the modern official, English spellings and the simplified Chinese are the official Chinese characters. The writings on the tombstone were in traditional characters, so I included that as well.
The village name Chaoyang means "toward the sun" or "facing the sun" is a fairly common village name. Unfortunately, there are probably many villages in Yan Ping/Enping with that name. Villages in China, especially in this southern part of China, usually are single surname villages, meaning all the male members of the village, having descending from the same male ancestor, have the same surname. Matching surname Seto with a village named Chaoyang would narrow the village where your father came from. The village-surname database that we have does not include Yan Ping/Enping. So, we can't pin point the village this way.
My suggestion as to where to start is to look for your New York aunt and her relatives. Do you know her name? You do have enough information to find her, I think. From her families, you might be able to contact your California half siblings and their families.
Years ago, there were a certain stigma about children out of wedlock. Official wife's family worried about conflicts with money, inheritance, property, etc. There might have been anger, jealousy, sense of betrayal and a host of other emotions involved. These might have been some of the reasons you have never met your aunt and other relatives. But, your father passed away nearly 50 years ago. I think you should try to find them and approach them. I think they will be overjoyed.
One place where to start in New York is the Yan Ping Association in New York. This is an organization of people from Yan Ping/Enping region. Their address is 113 Division Street, 2A, New York, NY 10002. Telephone: (212) 608-8936. Go to the association, bring the information you have of your father. Ask if anyone still remembers him. Ask about the aunt and the restaurant she owned and if anyone knows of her or her descendants. Finally, ask if they know where the village named Chiu Yeung/Chaoyang with the surname Seto is located.
Another suggestion is a long shot, but may worth a try. When you visited your father's grave, have you noticed other visitors had been there? If so, it worth leaving a note with a brief explanation and your email contact info. Traditional Chinese "grave sweeping" period for spring has began a week or two ago, though the peak may be this coming and next weekend. You do have to hurry if you want to do this this year.
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Post by Doug 周 on Mar 24, 2012 9:23:43 GMT -5
Linda,
When you go to the association, be prepared for some cold shoulders and aloofness. Chinese people, as you might already know, are clannish and suspicious. Indeed, the purpose of an association is to have a 'clan' of comfort and protection (like a gang). It is not a priority for associations to help people with their family-heritage-research.
Language plays a part and an excuse in not wanting to share information. For me, even with a translator, I had a hard time breaking through the blockade (ie, knowing the proper 'gang sign'). You will have to make multiple contacts and show persistence until you finally get a lead to someone who cares and knows.
It is almost like cold-contacting a large corporation or business with a specific issue; it is easier for most people (employees) to say 'no' or 'I don't know', until you eventually find the right person or department.
With my local-area regional Chinese association, I finally found someone willing to give me an introduction. However, I am still waiting to get into the front door.
IMHO
Doug
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Post by FayChee on Mar 24, 2012 11:35:13 GMT -5
We only have two things that belonged to my father, this letter, which we were told was from his father to him and refers to the war between Japan and China (we have tried to have it intrepreted but it is in the old dialect), and dad's little black address book, most of which is written in chinese character. Attachments:
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Post by FayChee on Mar 24, 2012 11:37:52 GMT -5
This is the envelope to the letter. Attachments:
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Post by laohuaqiao on Mar 25, 2012 8:22:51 GMT -5
Linda, Be patient when you go to the association. I think we in the West have been trained by the corporate world that the modern world is all about information, to seek and obtain information in the most efficient way. That has affected how we speak to people, ask a direct question, expect a direct answer, say 'thank you' and 'good-bye'.
Much of human history and much of the people in the world today are not like this. We are social beings and we speak to each other to try to establish social bonding or to strengthen the bonding when it already exists. When I was young, adults in the family used to gather after dinner every night and retell family stories and share the emotions behind the stories. I must have heard each story hundreds of time, but even then I never grew tired of listening to them.
A few years ago, I was with some friends in China, in Taishan which is where we all came from and is next to Yan Ping. One day, one friend unexpectedly decided to try to locate her husband's ancestral village, he didn't take the trip with us. The only information she had was the region he was from, her husband's surname and her late father-in-law's name, but not the name of the village. We asked directions along the way, arrived at the locality and found out that there were at least a dozen villages for that surname. We stopped at a roadside teahouse, where a group of old men were sipping tea and playing cards. We explained to the men what we were looking for and asked them if they heard of the FIL's name and which village he was from. Nope, never heard of him. We told them the FIL might have come back to the village in the 80s and invited many village folks to a dinner banquet. Nope, never heard of it. The conversation turned to who we were, where we were from, etc. That went on for 10 or 15 minutes, during which time we repeated several variations of the banquet story. Then, one of the men said he seemed to recall the name and moments later he remembered the banquet event too. He gave us the name of the village we were looking for and directions how to get there. Sure enough, that was the village and my friend found her husband's cousins living there.
Anyway, call to find out if anyone in the association speaks English and what time is the association office open before you go there. Prepare to tell stories about your father and anything you know of your aunt.
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Post by laohuaqiao on Mar 27, 2012 7:02:13 GMT -5
Linda, You have copies of 2 envelopes, one was from Gong Mun/Jiangmen in Guangdong province in China and the other from Kelantan in Malysia. I think the letter came from Gong Mun since the Chinese writing on the envelope was written with a brush, just as the letter was written, while the letter from Kelantan was written with a pen. Both envelopes postmarked in 1940.
As much as I can make out, the letter is from a father, You Tak, to his son Wing Cheung (is this another name for your father?).
Briefly: Received yesterday December 16 your letter and Hong Kong check for $300 and previously received money for $400 dollars.
Government ordered road and bridges destroyed, traffic jammed, prices of goods risen several folds. Enemy planes have been flying overhead daily, no bombing yet, but everyone is nervous.
Yan Hong went to Singapore to study goldsmith for 2 years, may be back next May/June. He’ll be 20 next year. When he returns, hope to convince him to marry. Eldest daughter-in-law (Yan Hong’s mother?) thinks as an apprentice, he does not earn much to have savings, so (you) overseas would have to prepare some funds for his marriage when the time comes.
Yan Pui is going to be 17 next year. Our village school has stopped running and in this emergency times the government is not managing education for the youths.
Recently due to weather and diseases there have been many deaths. Guangdong has fallen to the enemy, much of the herbal medicine hs been destroyed. What’s available is 7,8 times higher in price than before, many of the sick can not afford the medicine.
Second daughter-in-law, seeing her own mother being old and frail, adopted a boy as her grandson. His name is Bak Shing, went to school for a year or two, and is working as a shepard. He is 16 years old. She wants Bak Shing to marry in order to have someone to take care of her mother, but her mother doesn’t have any money and wants to ask you to help out. Whatever you can give will be the core money and the rest she will ask village relatives. What do you think?
We have not heard from grandson-in-law, Tom Ming Shing, since his leter last July. Last month we sent a letter but no reply. We and Wai Guen (granddaughter?) are anxious. Hope you can write to him and urge him to write home as soon as possible.
(The rest of the letter listed costs and expensives for a marriage.)
Letter dated February 11.
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Post by laohuaqiao on Mar 27, 2012 7:35:57 GMT -5
As to the address book, most of the addresses in China and Hong Kong were businesses. The ones in the US/Canada were restaurants. There's no indication if any of them were relatives or friends. Only one, in Guangzhou, with surname Seto.
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