Immigration Question

[davidr8]

I managed to find the record for my father's immigration into Canada in 1949.

My father is the last entry of those three.

This shows he was 17 years old in 1949 so he was born in 1932.

That conflicts with the dates on his headstone which say he way born in 1935.

I'm thinking that he lied about his age for immigration so that he could get in.

The reason I think that is because the two other names above are the same age. Seems highly coincidental.

Would this have been a common thing in the late 40's?

[helen]

It could have been that he was able to get a child fare. Did he come with some adults?

At the other end of life, it sounds as though he added 3 years. I think that was typical

The old way of calculating ages in China (traditional age 虛歲)is by assuming that everyone age a year together upon Chinese New Year (spring festival)

Say I'm born in December in chinese traditional calendar. That means one month later I would have been two years ago.

The concept of traditional age is the number of years you've ever lived through. Say I'm born in the last day of 2013 and it is 2015 now, that means in the span of my life I have lived through 2013 2014 and 2015, making my traditional age 3 years old. However please note that this example is for illustration purpose only, traditional age only considers Chinese lunar calendar, that means you have to count the number of years you have lived through in the lunar calendar instead of the western solar calendar. www.quora.com/How-do-you-calculate-your-Chinese-age

Chinese starts counting age from the time of pregnancy, unlike the western system where age is calculated from the time of birth. Since the period of pregnancy can vary, the age of the child is considered to be one year at the time of birth. In traditional chinese age counting system, your age increases by one year on chinese New Year and not on the day of your birthday.

The number of days per year is less in a Chinese calendar. Therefore, when compared to English Calendar, you'll be older according to Chinese year calendar. www.prokerala.com/general/calendar/chinese-age.php

[davidr8]

Wow, that's super helpful and super interesting Helen! Thank you SO much for explaining this to me. I had no idea about this. I'm learning so much!
Thank you again!