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Post by tyuti1668 on Nov 20, 2012 10:58:38 GMT -5
... including a Hung, a eighty years plus old man. At first they didn't know who I was talking about when I mentioned your father's name. It was because of the intonation of his given name: I used the Cantonese pronunciation of Siu, not Chiu as it should have been in our dialect. When that was corrected, laughter broke out immediately... xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/ccr/That site can search many dialect ;D
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Post by mugenpower168 on Nov 20, 2012 11:30:11 GMT -5
Douglas, thank you very very much for visiting my ancestral village. I am aware that there is Tung Ah just across the river from Sai Ah. I believe that Tung Ah is presently administered by Nam Long Town (it was part of See Dai Doo in the old days). I did not know that my village dialect is that similar to Lung Doo dialect. I onced asked a friend's mother (who is from neighbouring Kong Mei Tau 江尾é village) if "Duck Doo" dialect is similar to Lung Doo and she answered not really..... I am aware that Duck Doo, Lung Doo and Gook Doo (Sam Heung 三鄉) dialects are all classifed as being part of the Min é–© dialect family so I always suspected that my village dialect would resemble Lung Doo dialect more that Cantonese. I really would love to go and visit my ancestral village soon. I don't think my father ever got the chance to visit our ancestral home since coming to Australia in the 70s. Yes, I believe my father's youngest sister currently resides in Oakland. My father must have inherited my grandfather's gambling habit. I have heard that my father liked to play Mahjong, I still have his Pai Kow and Mahjong sets. Hmmmm, do you know where my great-grandfather was from originally? Was he originally a Hung...? If I get the chance, I will definitely return to visit my ancestral village the next time I go to Hong Kong (which should be next year). Once again, thank you very much Douglas, I really appreciate it.
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Post by FayChee on Nov 21, 2012 0:16:28 GMT -5
Thanks Douglas. I'll tell my brother we'll fly directly to Guangzhou if we go in April, but we'll do Ching Ming before leaving.
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Post by tyuti1668 on Nov 21, 2012 2:01:22 GMT -5
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Post by helen on Nov 21, 2012 2:14:56 GMT -5
Douglas - how on earth do you remember all that information - enough to write it up. I'm guessing you have had to translate from Chinese, back to English, before even attempting to type it out. Amazing work. All I had was a really slow computer at the hotel - took me ages to sign into gmail - let alone anything else.
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Post by mugenpower168 on Nov 21, 2012 5:19:55 GMT -5
Thanks tyuti. How do you say 食飯 in Lung Doo? I think in CGB it is "sek boon"... Also, in this site xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/ccr/ , you can choose 隆都 (ç 江三角) or 隆都 (廣æ±æ•æ–¹è¨€). What's the difference? I thought the two branches of Lung Doo dialect are ä¸Šç‰‡æ‘ (以溪角爲代表) and 下片æ‘以(水溪爲代表). Douglas: I was wondering, did you speak to the Sai Ah villagers in Lung Doo dialect?
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Post by douglaslam on Nov 21, 2012 8:28:32 GMT -5
Today, we tried something different. We went for a buffet breakfast at what once was the top hotel in town, the Fuhua in Shekki ʯáª. It was a show place in the early years when the region was set aside as a special economic zone. This was supposed to be a western style breakfast which I wanted my companions to try. It was a mish-mash of Chinese food, with coffee, red tea, milk, bacon, fried eggs and a few forgettable offerings available. There were no croissants, for example, but dim sums. The cost: 126 The Fuhua does not rate now because practically next door is the very tall Sheraton. A little further there is the very, very tall Hilton. I promised an acquaintance in Sydney to look for his zupu and ancestral village within Shekki, Shiqi ʯ᪠town. I had the name of the village, name of a temple, and street name. It was doomed to failure from the outset. Ming pointed out to me large areas of farmland and ponds, now tall buildings and busy roads took over. A stream was completely filled in as a road in the 1980s. We asked many people, local people, they had no idea or had only vaguely heard of the names. We walked for a long time, asked many people. And for the first time, we hailed a taxi to speed up our search, but to no avail. The village hall, temple and original street completely wiped off the map. Zero. The fare:12. I found it tiring.
We retired to lunch at a restaurant near the hospital where Ming was treated for his very serious leg injury last year. The hospital site is now vacant, having moved to a much larger and modern premises. As a result, the nearby eateries, fast food outlets, fruit barrows all suffered from poor patronage. We went to the restaurant where I had lunch with Ming's wife on at least two occasions after visitation. Business was certainly slow.
The afternoon belonged to Doug Joe. We went to his village LTW ( we created the acronym.) We caught a bus that dropped us off the new part of the village. We just could not find the Joe / Chow clan hall. Instead there was a Liu / Lau clan hall. LTW supports four clans. Finally, the Joe's hall was in sight. We had not even set foot inside the hall, when a young man appeared. He took us direct to the custodian of the genealogy book.
I gave the reason for our visit, he immediately got up from his card game and took us to his home. He called his ninety-year old father to join us. They, father and two sons lived next door to each other on two 2-storey building homes. There, he took out his pride and joy, a two volume clan genealogy record with cotton thread binding. He does not normally show them to other people. There is a more recent version.
We talked for well over an hour in our dialect. I mentioned two persons casually I knew in Sydney, our hosts also knew them well. Even my two companions found a lot in common to talk about. We reluctantly said our good bye and went home.
Doug : yes, your family is directly related to Joe Shoong, and so is our hosts. But you have to take the eleventh generation as progenitor since the time the clan moved from Nanxiong, you and our hosts have the same bloodline. I think you are now on the 27th generation. I took many photos of the relevant pages of the record. I'll send them to you from Sydney, you'll have to sort the pages out with help.
Wait, there is more. It was Joe Shoong's mother who was killed by Japanese bombing while trying to escape to HK on a boat. I think this is more plausible because Joe Shoong only ever married once to a maiden from Sze Yup, a Szeto, quite possibly related to Fay Chee or from her village.
Wait, there is even more. The Joe Shoong School bears no resemblance to the original built by Shoong, which was bigger. The was some remedial work needed, and the headman ( of all people, a fellow Joe) during the mad Mao years ordered its demolition. He wanted to rename the school LTW School. The villagers wouldn't have a bar of it. It was Joe Shoong who bought the land and built a school for the clan, the name must stay.
Doug, I'll pass on the father and son names to you. If ever you want to go to LTW for a visit, you'll be warmly received by them.
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Kin, we spoke in Shekki or Cantonese. Sometimes, I deliberately spoke Lungdo, they didn't seem to have any trouble understanding. The main thing is, we were not straying from the one topic, which narrowed down the possibility of misunderstanding. When the villagers talked amongst themselves, I could understand every word.
Your gggrandfather was given by one brother to another who failed to produce a son. You are not an outsider, I made clear of that point.
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Helen, the computer I am using is also painstakingly slow. The Chinese characters posted by tyuti1668 and mugenpower168 are just nonsense. Nothing I can do. Have to wait until my return to Sydney. I can make out what they are trying to say.
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Post by Doug 周 on Nov 21, 2012 11:52:25 GMT -5
...But you have to take the eleventh generation as progenitor since the time the clan moved from Nanxiong, you and our hosts have the same bloodline. I think you are now on the 27th generation. I took many photos of the relevant pages of the record. I'll send them to you from Sydney, you'll have to sort the pages out with help.... Looking forward to sorting out the pages. Chinese genealogy has another common nuance with some European genealogy; generation numbers. I was told Joe Shoong was the 17th generation, the same as my grandfather. However, 17th generation number is what I calculate from the settling of LTW. Woodson, the forum system operator, has a nice write up about Nanxiongclick . I have traced my clan to the end of the Yuan (or Mongol) dynasty. I now better understand why my booklet starts at that generation. According to Woodson: At the end of the Song Dynasty (宋朝)(beginning of the Yuan Dynasty), Zhuji Lane (Nanxiong)residents migrated southward to the Pearl (Zhujiang) River delta ( 珠江三角洲) to avoid the invading Mongolian army. It was an exodus because a total of 134 surnames and thousands of people were involved. They helped to spread the more advanced Central Plain culture and production techniques to the then still relatively uninhabited southern frontier. As I have said before, I use my study of my genealogy to better understand Chinese history. It now makes sense why my generation number from LTW is off by 9-11 from the progenitor from Nanxiong. Thank you, Douglas, so much for your help, and am anxiously awaiting your emails when you get back to Sidney.
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Post by tyuti1668 on Nov 21, 2012 17:20:32 GMT -5
...At the end of the Song Dynasty (宋朝) [/i]( beginning of the Yuan Dynasty), Zhuji Lane ( Nanxiong) residents migrated southward to the Pearl (Zhujiang) River delta...[/quote] I don't believe that NX "legend" in a 100% Min speaking area. One of the LD fellow's viewpoint:
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Post by FayChee on Nov 21, 2012 18:54:01 GMT -5
Wow! It shocked me to read that Joe Shoong's wife may be related to me, so I did some research and found the website where his daughter, Doris Shoong Lee, gave the family oral history. She said that her mother was Rose Elizabeth Soo Hoo and was born in San Francisco. She had an older sister, Betty, and a younger brother, Milton. My dad also used the surname of Soo Hoo, in addition to his several other alias's. He ran a Chinese and Japanese dry goods store in Chico California around 1914, and was a partner in a Chinese grocery store on Frome St, in Chico CA. Then in 1918 he moved to Buffalo New York and bought stock in the NanKing Restaurant using the name Soo Hoo Ki Yut (he showed the stock certificate to the INS agent). Here is the link to Doris Shoong's oral history: digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/lee_doris.pdfFay Chee 'During the interim his mother had come over and spent almost a year in this country and had lived with us. Then after six or eight months she got lonely and wanted to go back to China. So she did. During the Second World War, she was on a boat going between Hong Kong and Macao, and the boat was bombed, and she was killed in that accident."
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Post by Doug 周 on Nov 21, 2012 19:28:58 GMT -5
....Rose Elizabeth Soo Hoo and was born in San Francisco.... Her USA birth certificate is probably in the ashes of the record office of the 1906 SF earthquake.
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Post by tyuti1668 on Nov 21, 2012 20:28:37 GMT -5
How do you say 食飯 in Lung Doo? I think in CGB it is "sek boon"... Also, in this site xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/ccr/ , you can choose 隆都 (ç 江三角) or 隆都 (廣æ±æ•æ–¹è¨€). What's the difference? ... LD: www.tudou.com/programs/view/qwdBvPw9BPU/ ~01:19 Don't have the idea BUT i'm sure one of them is from Read that once in library's reference book section BUT i'm IPA semi-illiterate.
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Post by FayChee on Nov 22, 2012 3:01:15 GMT -5
Doug, after reading Doris Shoongs oral history, she said her dad took the family back to China (1936-1937), but he, Rose and Milton returned after 6 months when he got sick....the girls stayed to finish school at Lingnan University in Canton, but then Japan attacked China in WWII, and the girls got the last ship out of Hong Kong in Aug 1937. They could see the Japanese ships firing on Shanghai from their boat. I did a 'Search' on Ancestry.com and found copies of the Ships Passenger Lists for 1937. I thought it was interesting in that it has their Chinese names in parentheses above their American names (all except Doris). Fay Chee Attachments:
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Post by tyuti1668 on Nov 22, 2012 4:14:59 GMT -5
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Post by douglaslam on Nov 22, 2012 5:56:38 GMT -5
I am spending today to do a walking tour of my own village and neighbouring ones of interest to me. I want to know more about the village which I left fifty-six years ago to escape the clutches of Mao. I am lucky because I have never known hunger in my life nor experienced the terror of life under Mao except for my early childhood years. Once again my two trusty companions are with me. Ming is literate and more sophisticated. My other companion nicknamed Ma Gor is your country bumpkin. I am not saying this to belittle him or in a demeaning way. It is just the way he is, a rough diamond. Ma is Cantonese for twins, in his case his father had an extra digit. Ma stayed with his father and him. Like most poorly educated peasants, he speaks loudly in public. But he has many fine qualities ; he is always ready to help if called upon, he is not a back-stabber. Together with Ming, they give me the best guided tour. -------------------------------- The overwhelming impression I had of the village is the extent of the pollution, and loss of good fertile agricultural land. What I have seen is best accompanied by photos. The biggest project in the village is the re-building of the Clan Hall. At a cost of 4.5mil RMB, the Hall is stripped to its shell only, and estimated to complete in twelve months from now. I want to be here for the re-dedication. We decided to have lunch at one of the local restaurants. The food was really good. the cost :136. We went back to Dip Shek, my Australian cousin's village. A passer-by villager told us one of the old man who helped me to find my cousin's home has passed away. Ming led us to the house, it was locked but with the high doors opened. we could see inside. a neighbour told us the old woman, the last living link with cousin's grandfather's generation, has also passed away. I can no longer ask the questions I wanted to ask. siyigenealogy.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=shared&action=display&thread=1181&page=26 You can see the old lady on this page. If you go back a few more pages, there is more. Genealogy can be frustrating and disappointing. In the space of about twelve months, the whole saga takes on a new turn. It gives urgency to genealogy search a new meaning. Tomorrow, I intend to go back to Carlos' village to take a few photos of his grandfather's home. I called his relative, he confirmed the house is still there and is let out to migrant workers. ------------------------------- Doug, I still can't get my hosts at LTW to give me a definitive generation poem. I guess you can arrive at one by noting each suceeding generation. ---------------------- Kin, there is no need to cross the river to get from Tung Ah to Sai Ah.
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