Wong from Shuangshuizhen - lived in Medan

[swwong]

I am a complete novice in genealogy generally, let alone Chinese genealogy!

I am hoping to find some information about my paternal grandfather, whose surname was ‰© (Wong or Wang or Huang). I believe his full name was ‰©àVŒõ. He and his brothers were originally from Shuangshuizhen in Xinhui. I am guessing that he moved to Medan in Indonesia in the 1920s or shortly prior. My father was born in Medan in 1929.

Very little is known about my grandfather. This is what I can tell you: he and his brothers had a market stall in Medan from which they sold beef which they slaughtered and butchered themselves. They also tanned leather for sale themselves. There was very possibly a No. 1 wife left in Shuangshui with children who never joined him in Indonesia. My own grandmother was a No. 2 wife.

I believe I might have distant relatives now living in Jakarta who took up Indonesian names. My father was an only child who became fatherless at 7 (or so) and my grandmother was resolute in having no contact with my grandfather's first family. My grandfather died in Hong Kong, while en route to Shuangshui.

Really I am interested in finding out what sort of people I came from.

Thank you for reading.

[tyuti1668]

Can u find the village ? www.c-c-c.org/villagedb/search.cgi

[Henry]

Hi swwong

Welcome to Forum !

With the Chinese name of your grandfather and name of the ancestral village - your next step is to have a local person travel to your ancestral village to interview people there and try to acquire a copy of the village genealogy book that would have your paternal grandfather's name. This genealogy book documents your family lineage and it also provides a guide to who would be your relatives. My nephew who lives in the adjacent county does this kind of genealogy research for overseas Chinese for a fee. If you want to have this done, please contact me directly at [e-mail]

Henry

[christine]

In what dialect is that surname pronounced as Wong? I think the characters are mixed around. 龚/ÅÇ is Gong/Kung, a surname.
Xinhui has two villages that were known to be villages of that surname, do you have a village name to compare to these? :
«°ªF¶m / Sing Tung Heung -- ¦è¥Ò / Sai Kap (ÅÇ,±ç,¶À / Kung, Leung, Wong)
·½²M¶m / Yuen Ching Heung -- ÆFÂí / Ling Chun (³¯,±ç,ÀN,ÅÇ / Chan, Leung, Fok, Kung)

[tyuti1668]

Dec 18, 2011 23:20:01 GMT -5 christine said:

In what dialect is that surname pronounced as Wong? I think the characters are mixed around.

swwong's posted in Japanese encoding -- Shift_JIS

[christine]

Ohhhh yes this is in Japanese encoding, geez how confusing. I was using Chinese encoding. So it's 黄¿A¥ú then I take it.

In that case there are two Wong villages near the old Shuangshui market according to the village database.
Area 7, ò]¤ô¶m / Lung Sui Heung:
1. ¾ôªù§ø / Kiu Moon Village (§õ,±i,¶À,¾G / Lee, Cheung, Wong, Cheng)
2. ¤T¤½¼q / Sam Kung Miu (¶À / Wong)

As far as what kind of people you come from, that is a big question that you will have to explore personally, whether you travel to the village, interview relatives, or learn the emigration story and the reasons behind it. It's hard to lump anyone in to one sort of people. Depends on the individuals. It is important to understand the conditions in both Shuangshi and in Medan during the time of immigration to have a clearer picture, so try reading up on local history of the time if you have not done so already. For me, I understand my grandmother's immigration story in the context of war and the family's loss of resources, necessitating her formerly wealthy and suddenly poor family to send her away where she had the opportunity to work for sustenance, and eventually would be set up to marry away in the hope that Gold Mountain was going to be a big break for her and the family.

If you have elders that are still living, please interview them. There is a lot of information that older folks don't bother talking about just because no one ever asked, and it can be surprising how much detail they remember. My husband has a 91 year old granduncle, born in 1920, and I still ask him things all the time, and he doesn't cease to amaze me with gems of information about the family's history. Even those with dementia setting in seem to be able to remember the distant past even though the here and now is a blur. My husband's grandmother is 100% bilingual but seems to be more responsive with better cognition if I speak to her in Chinese, and she doesn't know what year it is now but she knows all the village names of her parents and grandparents, this is just one example of the effects of dementia, so for some things it still may not be too late.

Good luck!

[swwong]

Thank you all so much for your response! I am touched. I only found this forum/site yesterday and am grateful for the support and interest shown. Big thanks to Christine in particular for your detailed response.

BTW, I am currently based in the UK.

Firstly, apologies for the confusion in posting my grandfather's Chinese name üSÉ¹â. I have now set my browser's encoding to Chinese Simplified GB2312 - sorry had no idea about this issue until now! I have attached a PDF document with the name on it.

Trouble is, I know so very little about my father's side of the family, for reasons which I shall explain further on.

I did try to look for the village's name (literally means "Twin Water") on the website mentioned but could not find it. I only know this village/town name because of my grandparents' grave stone in HK, which is a simple one with little information probably because my father, their only child, knows very little himself. I was told that my grandparents spoke Sze Yup.

Strange as it sounds, I have no contact at all with any relatives back in Xinhui. I believe a xupu exists which is kept in Jakarta by relatives who are distantly related, and who my father does not wish to have contact with. Also, alledgedly some people from my grandfather's first family did trace my father to HK. Unfortunately, their motives were suspect. And so that drew another line of enquiry to a close. I am not sure what I want to do now, but some general research about the Shuangshui area would be interesting.

From what I can understand, and my father only started talking about his background as recently as 5 years ago - he is now 82, my grandfather and his brothers followed other people from Shuangshui to Medan. They were of farming stock. Resources were stretched and there was not enough land to farm, share or support the expanding population. Hence the brothers left China for a better life in Medan. I mentioned that my grandfather died in HK while en route to Shuangshui. Although my father never discussed what exactly happened at the time, I have a feeling that my canny though illiterate grandmother had no wish to become wife no. 1's subjugate, worse still to have had my father taken away from her to be raised as no. 1's. Hence she did not continue the journey from HK and stayed there throughout WWII and the Japanese occupation. Of course, China closed to the outside world not long after the end of WWII.

Attachments:

[Doug 周]

swwong,

Try to use Unicode for your Chinese characters. Most people here will automatically set their browsers: <View>, <Encoding>, and <Unicode> option from the browser <Menu>

I understand that you have to respect your father's wishes not to contact the relatives with the xupu in Indonesia, but the xupu is what I call the Holy Grail of Chinese genealogy. See the Wiki: How to Start your Chinese Heritage Research^click. Go down to Study Written Material and click on the hyperlink jiapu^click. My mothers says time heals everything, and you may not have the animosity your father has towards his kin. Maybe your father's recent desire to talk about his past is his beginning of a reconciliation.

However, as Christine says, interview your father and find out as much as possible. Especially learn about your distant relatives in Jakarta. Then when the time is right, it will be easier for you to make contact with the Jakarta clan and share genealogy information.

Remembering that the Chinese elders had multiple names, gather as many of the Chinese names in characters as possible. See: House of Chinn Chinese Names

Finally, I re-posted your attachment as an image for others to see.

Attachments:

[laohuaqiao]

There are both Shuangshui town 双水镇 and Shuangshui village 双水村 nearby or within the town in Xinhui. Xinhui is now a district in Jiangmen city. Journey from Hong Kong to Shuangshui probably takes about 3 hours.

To find in Google maps, enter either English or simplified Chinese
"Xinhui, Shuangshui Zhen, Jiangmen, Guangdong, China"
广东省江门市新会区双水镇
or
"Xinhui, Shuangshui Cun, Jiangmen, Guangdong, China"
广东省江门市新会区双水村

[swwong]

Thanks for the replies and support. Sorry I have been quiet for the last few days - Christmas and all.

I asked my father over the phone last week to clarify whether my grandfather came from the town or village. Unfortunately, my father couldn't quite say. So I presume it was the town, as it then was in 1920, a backwater. The village doesn't look that far from the town on Google maps.

I found this municipal website for the town: www.shuangshui.com/

Current thinking:

1. consider speaking to father about contacting distant relatives in Jakarta and asking for a copy of the xupu. Failing that, contact Henry's nephew to see if he could obtain a copy for me in Shuangshui; and

2. consider travelling to Shuangshui to have a look anonymously.

More likely do (1) first.

[philiptancl]

Sswong,

For reading the Chinese characters please select "View", "Encoding", "More" and "Unicode (UTF-8)".

I think the best option is for you to contact your distant relatives in Jakarta for a copy of the zupu. However, I would suggest that this be done tactfully as sometime clan members tend to become suspicious when one is asking to look at jiapu. A few years ago, a Wong/Huang/Ng (黃) friend (KS Wong) of mine here in Kuala Lumpur went in search for his jiapu in his ancestral village in Guangdong; armed only with an old photograph of a relative that his late mother had left behind. When he finally located one branch of Wong/Huang clan in that village, they were initially very suspicious of him thinking he was spying from another branch. Only with much explanation and persuasion was he able get assess to the required jiapu.

I agree the next option is to obtain the service of Henry's nephew to seek a copy for your zupu/jiapu in Shuangshui. Alternatively there could be a Wong/Huang zupu for Xinhui compiled; just like the Wong/Huang zupu for Taishan (台 山) (see the top book shown below), that was purchase for me through Henry’s nephew.



An internet friend George Chin (陳) from Cupertino, CA, USA (married to a Lin/Lim (林) from Sabah, Malaysia) and his wife were in Kuala Lumpur last year. We met up as he wanted the first three of my 4 scrolls. The scrolls were applicable to him and his Chin (陳) clan in US. (I understand they meet annually and he wanted to use the scrolls for the next gathering). His wife was also interested in Huang/Wong genealogy from Taishan with particular interest on one village branch there. When I showed her the Taishan zupu to go through, she managed not only to locate the Wong/Huang branch of her uncle but also her uncle’s name as well.

As you are a Wong/Huang, you may be interested to join “The Huang Clan/Marga Huang/黄氏家族” Facebook Group started by Erik Ng Poh Sing. Erik, KS Wong and I met up in November last year when Erik stopped over in Kuala Lumpur for 3 days. He was on his way from Brunei to China with his father for their Huang genealogy adventure. Part of his trip is to visit the various ancestors’ places/graves at different locations over Fujian. Erik search of his ancestry is truly remarkable as his ancestral village Huang/Ng clan in Fujian had lost all their jiapu records during the Cultural Revolution. He painstakingly did extensively research to reconstruct back his Huang ancestry that could also be used for his ancestral village. They were much delighted when he passed the ancestry records back to them. KS Wong, Ben Lee siyigenealogy.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=clanprogenitor&action=display&thread=861 (also a Huang from California) and I are in the group. There are a few Huang/Wong from Indonesia in the group as well. If you are interested, do send me a personal message with your email through this Forum so that I can invite you into the group.

Philip

[swwong]

To Philip:

Thank you so very much indeed for your post and detailed comments! I am remiss at not having acknowledged and thanked you sooner. I would like to join the FB group and will PM you shortly with my email address.

Incidentally I was on holiday in Malaysia a month ago and that was the time when I got thinking about researching into my roots. I had a feeling that Malacca might look a bit like Medan, having seen several Chinese clan halls built in the old Chinese style. I do wonder what my father saw as a child when he lived in Medan.

Louise

[philiptancl]

Louise,

Received your personal message and had responded to you via email.

I have also posted a Huang/Wong genealogical chart I have just created for my friend KS Wong (黄觀星) stretching from Huang Qiao Shan (黄峭山) down to KS Wong descendants in Malaysia. This may of interest to you. See:

Re: Huang/Hwang/Wong (黄) Clan
« Reply #19 Jan 16, 2012 at 1:07am »

Philip