Tyuti first brought this up in this forum. He also gave a brief instruction above. I'll try to give more specific steps, but there are still missing steps in the procedure that someone with knowledge of the area could complete the search much quicker. Anyway.
Postcode is youbian 邮编 which is short for 邮政编码, China's 6-digit equivalent to the states' zipcode. There are many sites in which one, with known address, can search for the postcode or youbian. The link Tyuti provided in the above is one site,
www.youbian.com is another. Right now, the one that I prefer to use is
www.tenwang.com . For our ancestral village search purposes, these sites are invaluable because they (I presume) provide a complete list of villages in China.
It's important to know the current standard Chinese rural address format, starting with the largest political/geographical region to the smallest:
Province, Provincial-level city, County-level city or district, Township, Administrative village, Village, House no. or Lane no. followed by house no., postcode
For example:
广东省 江门市 台山市 水步镇 长塘村委会 新安村
Guangdong Province, Jiangmen City, Taishan City, Shuibu Town, Changtang Administrative Village, Xin'an Village
1. To start a village search in Siyi, gather as much information together as possible, at the very minimum the surname and village name and the county name. In this example we are searching for location of the village Xin'an 新安 in Taishan, with surname Lok (Locke) /Luo 骆.
In c-c-c.org/villageDB/search.cgi, search by surname Lok 骆 , a Sun On/Xin'an 新安 village shows up in Ming Tong Heung 明塘乡. Print out the list of villages in this heung or keep the list on hand for later reference.
Comment: Heung or sub-heung is useful information in genealogy research because the villages in the heung/sub-heung are usually of the same surname clan, meaning all the males descended from the same ancestor. Sometimes, one's village name doesn't show up in the villageDB, but knowing one's heung/sub-heung one can locate the village by inquiring in other villages, which are nearby. Unfortunately, modern addresses don't use heung/sub-heung anymore. Sometimes they show up as adminstrative village names but not always. The surname clan information may be lost in the future.
2. Next go to
www.tenwang.com . On top of the homepage is a menu list of provinces, national-level cities and autonomous regions. Select Guangdong广东省.
On Guangdong page, scroll down a little, on the right there is a vertical menu of county-level cities/districts, sorted by their provincial-level city. Keep scrolling down until Jiangmen City 江门市 with its 3 county-level districts and 4 county-level cities appear. Click on Taishan 台山市.
On Taishan page, scroll down the page, below the embedded Google map, there is a menu list of 20 towns in Taishan. At this point there is a gap of information between the village DB, which is mainly pre-1949 info, and the present day info. Knowing Min Tong Heung given in village DB is in region 2 of their map and what town/towns in region 2 would help. The worst case scenario is to search through all 20 towns. Hopefully in the future this gap can be filled in.
Comment: In the other postcode search sites you can search partial addresses and the sites will display possible choices.
Well, in this case we were told Gary Locke's ancestors came from the area. I'm from Shuibu Town 水步镇 and I know the Lockes came from Shuibu Town 水步镇. So click on 水步镇.
The Shuibu Town 水步镇 page displays its postcode 邮编 which is 529262. On the right is a long list (usually several hundred) of all street names and administrative villages and villages under its jurisdiction. Do a text search of the page for 新安 or 新安村. Two results from this search 长塘村委会新安村 and 井岗村委会新安村, two villages with the same name but under different administrative village. To identify which of the 2 is the one we are looking for. Do a text search for both 长塘村委会 and 井岗村委会. Changtang Administrative Village 长塘村委会 search turns up with 41 results and several villages found matches the villages in Ming Tong Heung found in village DB. Therefore conclusion is the village we are looking for is 长塘村委会 新安村.
