Village in Liántáng Zhèn, Gaoyao district, GuangDong

[graham]

Hi

Newbie here.  I've probably left it rather late but I'm going to be travelling through Guangdong province in October and was hoping to find the ancestral village ( or the skyscraper built on top of it!) and the generational poem.

None of my living relatives know the location which makes it a bit tricky.

My grandfather's biography is teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4c18/chiu-kwok-chun which is where I got the township.  But that town has over 50,000 people now.
Apparently the village should all share my surname which is 趙

The generational names I know about are grandfather 
国, father 
民 , and mine is 世
Father said we were descended from the Song emperors but I never paid much attention to that

Thanks!

Graham

[lachinatown]

Are you saying Liantang in Gaoyao is not your village?

[graham]

Reading that Wikipedia link I thought liantang is an administrative area, and there might be villages inside that. Or is liantang a village??

[graham]

I found a picture of my uncle's headstone. It also says he was born in Liantang so I guess we'll just head there and see what we can find.
We didn't know this level of detail when we inscribed my father's headstone.

Interesting to me is that my uncle and my father's names put together means reconstruction, and my two brother's names and mine run together mean glorious China. So, he made our father's generation, and our generation's name to say - reconstructing glorious China.

I'm not clear though as to why my uncle's sons don't use 世 Maybe he did this in order to create the patriotic message he wanted to share?

PS: Just found this link www.cfguide.com/town/Liantang_373732121.htm

so we can go to the 莲塘镇社区居委会 and ask them.

[Henry]

Graham,

LianTang refers to both a town & a village:











I suggest going to the village to speak with the village chief and ask if they have a village genealogy book. If they do and you have the Chinese characters for grandfather's name then you may be able to trace out your Zhao family lineage. Also, there is usually a generational poem in the genealogy book specific to the village and you can then see what the subsequent generational characters are.

Good Luck.

Henry

[graham]

Thanks Henry. I know this is difficult to say but how much time should I allocate to this? I haven't bought the air tickets yet and I was thinking of allocating three days in Guangzhou to do this. I have a cousin in Guangzhou who can direct me to my mother's (her) village.

[Henry]

Hi Graham,

If your Guangzhou cousin is willing to do some preliminary research for you - the 3 days would be fine. Your cousin needs to contact the 莲塘镇社区居委会 [Liantang Town Community Neighborhood Committee] to get the phone number of the village chief, contact the village chief and see if they have the village genealogy book and if so, buy or make a copy for you. Would be nice if the family lineage & generational poem can be extracted and put into a computer file. So then your visit should go smoothly, red envelopes to the village chief and perhaps to some village relatives - still living in your grandfather's hous and a big red envelope to your cousin. Same scenario for your mother's village.

Henry

[graham]

Sounds like a great plan. Thanks.

[Henry]

graham,

Since you will be visiting Gaoyao, a suburb of Zhaoqing, you may want stop to pick up some Duanzhou inkstones in Zhaoqing, formerly known as Duanzhou. This a much sought after inkstone for Chinese calligraphy & painting and is one of the Four Treasures of the Study:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Treasures_of_the_Study

They probably sell them as a Four Treasures of the Study set. If you find a nice place to shop & buy these sets. Please send me an email [[e-mail]] with the address, as I will be in the Guangzhou area during November and may have a chance to stop by the shop to buy one.

Thanks.

Henry

Henry

[graham]

Henry, I might be visiting Zhaoquing ( which we knew as ShiuHing ). My uncle has a house there but who knows is living there now. And my father, his mother and my cousin lived in the house before they emigrated to NZ. I presume it was seized in the civil war.

I went to visit my aunt's grave today and her headstone also says she was from Liantang.

[Henry]

graham,



Is this aunt the sister of your father - if so, then she would come from your father's village.

But, as the wife of an uncle from Liantang - they may have listed your uncle's village as her village because after she was married, she lived in the village.

For the gravestone of a lady, both the surname of her husband and her own surname can be listed. Did you take a photo of your aunt's gravestone?

Henry

[graham]

My Aunt was my father's oldest sister.

[graham]

And this is my grandfather's headstone.

[Henry]

graham,

Your auntie was married to Mr. Wu and her gravestone shows her surname Zhao and shows Gaoyao county and LianTang village.

Your grandfather's gravestone only shows Gaoyao county, but, his biography indicates that his ancestral village was LianTang village in GaoYao county.

Henry

[graham]

Henry, I made more progress. I found a woman from a neighbouring village. She remembers at age 8 walking from her village through our village to get to the school. So I just need to find her village, and speak to the travel agent who took her there. The trip was a few decades ago though. And the school has since shifted.