Looking for long lost relatives in Yong Chun

[miles]

Hi, I'm new to this site. I'm looking for long lost relatives of my late dad - he passed away when we were small so we dont have alot of info, but we recently found an old letter dated 1976 with an address on the envelope which translates to "Ting Pu Tou Xiang, Wulijie zhen,Yong Chun, Fujian. There's no house number. I understand Wulijie zhen is a village in YC but can anyone tell me what "Ting Pu Tou Xiang" represents?

Our family surname is Lim. We are also not too sure which is the best way to trace the family.. We would like to take a trip to YC but are not sure if the family has moved away to bigger cities etc. Can anyone advise if there is any way we can at least check that his family members are still staying in YC before we make the trip? Perhaps there's an association based in YC that we can write to? Would be most grateful for any help I can get. 

[laohuaqiao]

miles,
It's actually a lot easier to search with the Chinese address than a translation. Can you post a photo of the address on the envelope?
Wulijie Zhen 五里街镇 is a town in Yongchun 永春 County。 Tingputou Xiang 乡 is either the village or a district in Wulijie Town.

Chinese generally have very strong connection with their home village. Even if they have moved away from the village, they return regularly, for annual grave sweeping, for example. Chances are very good that you'll be able to find relatives, once we identify the village.

[miles]

Hi laohuaqiao, 

thx for ur prompt reply. I'm quite encouraged by ur view that my chances are good in finding relatives in Yong Chun.

However I don't think I am able to "tame the technology" (as someone so eloquently put it under the "tips" section) in posting a photo or to insert Chinese characters for the address written on the old envelope. Is it possible for me to send the photo to you via email? That I can handle

[tyuti1668]

siyigenealogy.proboards.com/thread/1918/
translate.google.com/#zh-tw/en/ & draw it

[lachinatown]

Miles, click to "add image to post" (upper left corner) and then download the image file from your computer.
Or just e-mail to one of us and we can upload it for you.

With the Chinese characters, we can pin point the village for you hopefully.

[philiptancl]

Hi Miles,

From my experience I think the address you have should be sufficient to locate any of your lost relatives in Yongchun. Recently I received a letter from my cousin in Yongchun (永春) with only this address: 中國福建永春岵山磻溪. As I need to reply to that letter in writing, I phoned my cousin there if the address shown on the envelope as quoted above was sufficient. His confirmed that address should reach him. 岵山 is the town (鄉) while 磻溪 is the village (村) area within the town where my ancestors originated from.

Is your intention just to find your lost relatives or is it also to find your ancestral record (zupu/jiapu) of your surname? If you are and if you are also from Malaysia, give me your phone contact number in a personal message through this Forum. Hopefully I could provide you with the necessary details. I have a reference book for Yongchun listing all the surnames in Yongchun, the various clans for each of the surnames, the various towns and the various villages within each town and the population within it of each surname, the names and editions of zupu/jiapu of each surname clan and the genealogical poems. If you intend to travel to Yongchun to look for your lost relatives, I have a contact or two who could of help to you.

[miles]

Hi,

Thanks to tyuti1668, lachinatown & philiptancl for replies. Was very excited when i came across this forum yesterday and its very heartening to get so much response & help.

tyuti1668, I'm not Chinese educated so its difficult for me to re-write/draw the Chinese characters which were handwritten rather in a scrawl on the old envelope.

Lachinatown, I've clicked on the "add image to post" to forward the pic of the envelope but don't think it worked.... See below Could it be cos I'm using an IPad and not a pc?

Philiptancl, yes i stay in KL and I've sent u an email reply.

.

[miles]

Oh! It did work!!    

upside down..... Will send again, hopefully upright this time... 

[miles]

Btw, I forgot to mention that we did send a letter to the same address on the envelope in June this year but did not get any reply.... Leading us to think they may have moved away..

[lachinatown]

Looks like the photo will turn right side up when downloaded.
It does read Fujian (福建), Yongchun (永春), Wulijie (五里街).
Not sure of the far left line, need to look into it.

[laohuaqiao]

miles,
The return address does seem to be "Fujian, Yongchun, Wulijie Ding Bu Tou Xiang" 福建 永春 五里街 顶 埔 头 乡. The last character I wrote is simplified Chinese while the one on the envelope is traditional. I'm guessing that the character Ding 顶 was written by mistaken (rather than the ink fading), it was meant to be zhen 镇, the word for town. If so, the address would be "Fujian, Yongchun, Wulijie Zhen, Butou Xiang" 福建 永春 五里街镇 埔头乡

In the town of Wulijie in Yongchun county in the city of Quanzhou 泉州 in Fujian province, there is a village called Butou 埔头. Doing a search in Chinese, apparently someone with surname Lin 林 from Malaysia with ancestral roots in this village made an inquiry online back in 2009, so the surname Lin for the village matches,

zhidao.baidu.com/question/91075580.html

A webpage on Wulijie Town, baike.baidu.com/view/1231469.htm

A webpage on Butou village, ww.agri.com.cn/village/350525101205.htm

Telephone number for Butou： 0595-3897431 You can have someone speaking mandarin or the local dialect to inquire on your behalf.

[philiptancl]

Hi Miles,

I tried calling you earlier today at around 5.15 pm (September 22, 2013) on the hand-phone number provided in your email. The lady answering the phone said there was no such person for the name provided in your email. In my reply to your email I had provided my hand phone number contact. Can you please call me instead? If you do call within the next 3 days, the best time would be after 6pm as I will be attending a conference.

The most populous people in Yongchun are with the surname Lim/Lin (林); the next being the Tan/Chen (陳) surname. With the information that is now available, I shall look into my reference book later in the coming week to see what it could throw up.

Philip

[miles]

Hi Laohuaqiao, thanks for the info given in ur reply. Am curious about this other person who made the enquiry in 2009 and to digest the info given in the links. Unfortunately all written in Chinese ... Will get someone to help translate. Btw, thanks also for the phone no. which u gave, is it an association? Will be useful to directly communicate with YC.

Hi Philiptancl, sorry about the typo in last digit of phone no. Have replied ur email and will call soon.

[laohuaqiao]

miles,
The question was posed in baidu.com's Q&A section by a user named uhlim.

In case you are not familiar with baidu.com, it's the Chinese search engine, like Google, and just as Google it has many other features such as photo, video, news, maps, encyclopedia (like wikipedia), Q&A (zhidao.baidu.com), etc. Anyone can browse the webpages, but you have to be a registered user to pose questions and answers. As a registered user you can also send private messages to other registered user, so you may want to do that if you wish to contact uhlim.

What uhlim's said: he is Chinese Malaysian in search of his roots. To him, Fujian, Yongchun, Wulijie Zhen, Butou village is both familiar and unfamiliar, familar because he has heard so much from his elders and unfamiliar because he has never been there. He asked if anyone has any information of the place.

One response listed the links I gave previously. Another response gave a recommendation on getting there from Quanzhou.

The phone number I gave you was listed as the administrative office phone for Butou village. Butou village is an administrative village with a dozen or so villages under its jurisdiction. Bear in mind that your ancestral village could be one of the villages within the jurisdiction rather than Butou village itself, because the letter's return address was Butou Xiang (not cun) and xiang in my region in Guangdong generally refers to a district rather than a village (cun). With your father's and grandparents' names, village officials can confirm which village for you. As others on this forum have experienced, nicknames sometimes could turn out to be more helpful.

[philiptancl]

Hi Miles,

I refer to our telephone conversation over the matter. After consulting the genealogical reference book I have for Yongchun (Eng Chun), I came to realize that Wulijie (五里街) is actually pronounced as “Goer Lee Kooi” in Hockien. I heard it so many times while in Yongchun but in the Hockien dialect, not in pinyin. It did not click when I initially read your postings in the Forum. From what I can see, it is an area within Yongchun City. Yongchun is both the name of the county as well as the name of the city. Li (里) is a Chinese measurement of length equivalent to 500 meters. Jie (街) (or “Kooi” as spoken in Hockien) is what I understand to be a street. Wulijie (五里街) or “Goer Lee Kooi” must be a street measuring some 2.5 kilometers. Along the length, there many areas with specific names. In 2003 census there was 5852 Lim/Lin (林) in Wulijie (五里街). See the first part from the reference book I reproduced below. From it you can see within Wulijie (五里街), there are 12 sub-areas; Butou (埔头) being one such sub-area with 1746 Lim/Lin (林) (the biggest concentration of Lim/Lin (林)in 五里街). Stephen Lim’s ancestral house is also in Wulijie (五里街) given in the next sub-area Yangxian (仰贤) I had marked. That is also the sub-area where my wife’s grandmother originated from, as well as quite a number other Lim (林) related to me through marriage.

The zupu of your ancestors is very likely to be the 埔头遐龄林氏 clan and the zupu is 桃源遐龄林氏族谱 as quoted in the attachment below. The last update was done in 1933. I do not know yet whether there is a recent update. In our telephone conversation I recalled you mentioning 1928 as the year your father came to Malaya. If that is so, your father’s name should be in the zupu.



There is a Butou Lin association (埔头遐龄林氏宗亲会) in Bahau, Negri Sembilan and the current president is 拿督林辉明 (retired teacher and retired politician). I had asked Stephen to find out from him whether there is a recent update of the zupu 桃源遐龄林氏族谱. The president may be going together with Stephen Lim to Guangxi (广西) to meet up the Lim/Lin clan associations there from October 2 to October 8, 2013. I understand 25 Lin clans association will be attending the banquet for them when the delegations is there. Stephen is printing 10 sets of Chart 1 and 2 of Lin lineage to bring there. Do note that Taoyuán (桃源) is the ancient name for Yongchun.

When I was Yongchun last April together with Stephen Lim, we visited his ancestral house in Wulijie (五里街) Yangxian (仰贤) as well as the house where my wife's grandmother originated from. Stephen Xth cousin, the head of police for Hushan (岵山) (the ancestral town where my ancestors were from) drove us there. The next day when we went to Hushan on rented car, we stopped by the police station to pay a courtesy call to Stephen's cousin first. With a police patrol car, he lead us right to my ancestral house (榮德堂) halfway up a hill over a narrow concrete track. My cousin (my 2nd cousin by birth) was already waiting for us at his house down the hill. When he saw the police car went pass by with our rented car, he too proceeded to my ancestral house. After the necessary veneration (guided by my cousin) at the ancestor house, we proceeded to my cousin house for lunch. As I wanted to visit the main ancestor hall, my cousin had arranged beforehand with the ancestral hall committee. We proceeded to the ancestral hall to arrive there at the appointed time of 2.00 pm. The whole committee was there to meet us. What needed to be done there was already prearranged for me. I was guided to do the necessary by my cousin and the committee Chairman. I presented the ancestral hall the set of 4 scrolls of my ancestral line. (In my subsequent visit on Dec 21 last year I saw the 4 charts hung up on the ancestral hall). Pictures of the visit were posted at its website at:

www.nanchens.com/ym/ym09/ym09002.htm

To give you a sense of the levels of ancestry and the related ancestral halls, there are two other ancestral halls between my grandfather ancestral house to the main ancestral hall.

I had provided you a gist of my experience above as a rough guide if you wish to go to Yongchun to do the same in future.