Chinese Grandfather's Village Name in 1922 Hoiping/Kaiping

[Kristin]

Hello,
I'm trying to determine my grandfather Chow Bing's village in the Hoiping District. In his immigration interrogations in 1912 and 1922 he lists variations of the village as 1. Ting San (per the 1912 consulate form) 2. Ting Sau 3. Hon (Ting) Sun and 4. Hin Sing. All in Hoiping.

I've searched the online village database and the closest match of Chow villages I was able to pin down were 1. Sai Hing 2. Ho Ching 3. Sai Sing 4. Ting Sar (not a Chow village but is in Hoiping)

I was told that the village name may have changed or may not exist any longer, but any information will be greatly appreciated!

[Henry]

KChow78,

Does your grandfather's grave stone have Chinese characters - if so, please post a photo.

Henry

[Kristin]

Henry, unfortunately, there are no Chinese characters on his grave stone. All we have is his signature from his arrival in the U.S. in 1912. I don't know if that is helpful, but I've attached the signature.

[Kristin]

Additional versions of his signature:

[Doug 周]

Kristin,
If you can digitize and email grandfather's name in text for me, I can search the genealogy document I have for the 周 from Hoiping. Please look at my site familyjiapu.com/ and page 1/2 way down under the last group picture. I have a blurb about the 周's from your area.
~doug

[Kristin]

Hi Doug,
Thank you for sharing that beautiful webpage about your family! Ironically, my grandfather was a grocer in Hollandale and then Greenville, Mississippi for many years from 1916 through at least 1956. Our family is mentioned in Dr. Jung's book, Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton. I plan to delve deeper into your website, since the deep South is where my grandfather spent most of his life. Regarding his signature, I'm not sure what you mean by a digitized version of his signature, but I will send an image of what I believe you mean. 

[LJ]

Hi Kristin,

By "digitize," Doug means converting handwritten words into a digital form, that is a character encoding standard for processing, storage, and interchange in software and information technology protocols.  Two example standards are ASCII and Unicode.

Looking at the handwritten samples of your grandfather's name, I think the radical of the second character of his name looks more like 火 (huǒ, huō in Mandarin pinyin and fo2 in Yale Cantonese). Based on this, I think the digitization of your grandfather's name is 周炳 (Zhao Bing in pinyin and Jau2 Bing1 in Yale).

Since your grandfather's gravestone does not have Chinese characters, then I recommend finding out if you have any other Zhao relatives in his generation or earlier who died and were buried in your area, as their gravestones might have Chinese characters.

Hi Doug,

I just visited your site, and I must agree with Kristin that it is beautiful.  

Cheers!
LJeung

[Kristin]

LJeung, thank you so much for your help!! Unfortunately, I don't have access to my grandfather's or any other of his relatives' gravestones. I posted what I believed to be his digitized signature, and it matches what you posted. So, thank you so much for the confirmation, as well as the additional information. It is very helpful. 

[Doug 周]

Jul 27, 2022 0:43:11 GMT -5 LJ said:

.....Looking at the handwritten samples of your grandfather's name, I think the radical of the second character of his name looks more like 火 (huǒ, huō in Mandarin pinyin and fo2 in Yale Cantonese). Based on this, I think the digitization of your grandfather's name is 周炳 (Zhao Bing in pinyin and Jau2 Bing1 in Yale)......

Thanks LJeung. Being Chinese illiterate, that really helps.

Kristin, private message me with your contact. I have asked Ed Joe for permission to share the jiapu he has from the Zhou village in Hoiping. Based on LJeung's character 炳 there are several hits. However, you will need to do much more sleuthing in your family archives to find more Chinese characters, dates, names of grand Uncles in Chinese, etc, to narrow down a possible lineage. Chinese males have many many names. Look for artifacts, back of pictures for more clues. Of course, interview your family members.
~doug

[cdnheadtaxdata]

The Head Tax Data of Canada indicates that there are two villages which might correspond to:
either: 
1. 春山:周姓;蜆崗;
2. 平山:周姓;蜆崗;or
2. 松山:周姓;上洞,茅崗,百合;

The record of Chow Bing suggests:
1. Ting San (per the 1912 consulate form)                 春山:周姓;蜆崗 or 平山:周姓;蜆崗
2. Ting Sau   [hand writing of "Sau" can read as San] 春山:周姓;蜆崗 or 平山:周姓;蜆崗
3. Hon (Ting) Sun, and                                             春山:周姓;蜆崗 or 平山:周姓;蜆崗
4. Hin Sing                                                              春山:周姓;蜆崗 or 平山:周姓;蜆崗

Could Hoi PIng dialect speakers please confirm the pronunciations?

Regards

[Henry]

Dear Colleagues,

I do not speak the Hoiping dialect - I speak Hoi-san wah. I also came up in the Village Database with:

1. 春山:周姓;蜆崗
2. 平山:周姓;蜆崗

Thank you cdnheadtaxdata - both villages are in the 蚬冈镇 Xiangangzhen which is less than 2 miles as the crow flies to Ed Joe's Ancestral Village
石江里 Shek Kong Lay. Shi JiangLi is a small hamlet within the larger village cluster now known as 横石村 Heng shicun - I located Ed's hamlet & larger village when he went on the China Trip I organized during 2018.

Heng shicun

With the close proxity, less than 2 miles, of Xianganzhen to Heng shicun - Ed Joe's Zhou genealogy book may indeed contain the Kristin's family lineage. But, since Chow Bing was single when he left China for Mississippi, his name might only appear by his milk name Chow Bing Suey, however, it might contain the name of his uncle Jue Shim or that of Jue Shim's father Jue Yick Woo. Kristin is now waiting for the NARA case file for Jue Shim.

Ray Seid might also have a photo of Jue Shim's gravestone - hopefully with Chinese characters.

If Ed Joe has scanned his Zhou zupu into JPG images or as a PDF he can send to me - I will be happy to due some OCR processing on it and convert it into a searchable PDF to try and navigate through the zupu. I just sent Ed an email about his Zhou zupu.

Doug - With Ed's permission and if you already have the JPG images or a PDF, please email to me & I will run it through two OCR software packages ( ABBYY FineReader 14 & Adobe Acrobat Pro ) I use.

Henry

[cdnheadtaxdata]

Thank you Henry!
Please keep up the good work!

[Doug 周]

Jul 28, 2022 17:29:00 GMT -5 Henry said:

....Doug - With Ed's permission and if you already have the JPG images or a PDF, please email to me & I will run it through two OCR software packages ( ABBYY FineReader 14 & Adobe Acrobat Pro ) I use.....

Thank you again for your good work, Henry. Fortunately, the jiapu/zupu compiler was efficient and modern and had reformatted the genealogy document into a Microsoft Word document. This makes searching the document for us Chinese illiterates extremely easily. Who is Ray Seid?

Below is a photo from Ed Joe of his interaction with the genealogy jiapu/zupu compilers when he was on one of his trips to China.

Serious Genealogy by Ed Joe ^{click here}

[jasonwu]

Hi all,

My parents are not from Hoiping, but a number of cousins on both sides of the family are. There's a tendency in their dialect for what we Cantonese/Toishanese speakers would normally pronounce as "p-" as a leading consonant to become a "h-". Additionally, in some words ending with a "-ng" sound, they will shorten it to a "-n" sound. For example, some Hoipingese will call their county "Hoihin" in their native tongue as opposed to "Hoiping" in Cantonese pronunciation.

For these reasons and considering what other members have proposed already, it seems probable that the village is 平山, Ping Shan (in Cantonese) or Hin San (in Hoipingese).

Are there any Chinese-speaking relatives in the family who could confirm this?

-Jason

[Henry]

Hi Doug,

Ray Seid grew up in Greenville, MS and took photos of the gravestones in the Greenville Chinese Cemetery.

Henry