Shek Huey/Quey Lee, near Jiangmen

[kate]

Dear all,

I'm trying to locate the village of Shek Huey Lee (also written as Shek Quey Lee), which was said in 1908 to be 20 miles from Quong Moon (Jiangmen).

It is the village of a man known in Australian records as James Minahan or Ying Coon. His father's name was Teung Ming, and I suspect that the family name was in fact 曾 (Mandarin: Zeng). I understand that this name in Sze Yap is pronounced something like Deung or Dang -- and other men from the same village had names written as Derng and Dern.

I'm a historian working on a book about the travels of Anglo-Chinese Australians to China and Hong Kong. I read some Chinese and understand a little Taishanhua, and have done some unsuccessful searching online to locate the village.

I'm stuck however as to what might be the character for the middle word in the village name.

Any thoughts about the characters for the village name and its location would be much appreciated!

Kate Bagnall
Canberra, ACT
Australia

[raymond]

Kate,

Hmmmm.......it would be helpful if you posted the Chinese characters for the village, but you probably do not know it........by doing so, some of the posters here may be able to pinpoint the village on a map for you. Nonetheless, here are my thoughts for what they're worth........long shots.........

Jiangmen has now developed into Jiangmen City and is the major metropolitan for an area that encompasses the Wuyi counties of Xinhui, Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Heshan, plus smaller towns and multiple villages in between. One can extend a radius of 20 miles from Jiangmen City and search for where Shek Huey Lee village might be on a map. I have a map of Jiangmen but much of it is written in Chinese and I cannot read Chinese.

Based on my rudimentary "Taishan hwa" and a stretch for an educated guess, Shek Huey Lee may literally mean Rock Lake Area. It is not likely the name of the village itself but the name of an area comprising a cluster of small villages and is perhaps is the name of the market area instead.......because I believe Lee means an area where there is a cluster of several small villages with a shared market area within.

As for the surname ‘\ and the Taishan pronunciation of the village, I suggest that you peruse the village database website www.c-c-c.org/villagedb/search.cgi and search for anything that comes even close to what you are looking for. However, you should note that the website contains only villages located in Taishan and Kaiping counties.

Anyway, I hope this train of thought can at least lead you in a direction closer to what you are looking for.

Good luck!

Raymond

[Henry]

Hi Kate,

Does any of your historical documents for this man have any references to his ancestral village in Chinese or any of the collateral documents/information of people from the same village? Do any of the gravestones for these people have Chinese characters? If so, posting a digital photo would be most helpful. Transliterations of Chinese can get quite confusing and it is usually clarified by the Chinese characters that are being romanized.

The declared distance of the village being 20 miles from Jiangmen is rather interesting because this 20 mile radius includes the major cities of: Zhongshan, Shunde, Heshan, Gaoming, Kaiping, Taicheng (Taishan City), Xinhui, and Doumen. Hence, James Minahan (Ying Coon) could be from any of these places.

Another possibility is that the unit of distance was a "li" (.5 KM) instead of a mile - which was probably the more commonly used Chinese unit of distance around 1908 - accordingly, 20 li =10 KM = 6 miles. This could put the village in the range of Xinhui and Zhongshan.

The reference to the ancestral village being 20 miles from Jiangmen instead of to a place near to the village - was probably because Jiangmen was the major port of embarkation to Australia in 1908 - just 6 years after this port was forced open to Western trade.

I have two suggestions: review your material again for any references to locations in the SiYi and SanYi areas and see if you can find out the area in Guangdong province where members of the Zeng clan are located. This would provide us a starting point to locate this village. Once we locate the village - you could contact the village chief for specific information regarding James Minahan (Ying Coon).

Henry

[twoupman]

As mentioned by Henry, I too believe there was an error in the translation for the distance. Instead of 20 English miles it should have been “Chinese miles” which refers to the Chinese li (里). The logic behind this is the unlikelihood for someone to reference a village so far away from Jiangmen (江門) when there are other closer towns nearby.

Based on this premise, there is a village which may probably be your Shek Huey/Quey Lee located about 6km (as the crow flies) SW of Jiangmen city centre in Xinhui county (新會). This place is called Shizui (石咀) in Mandarin or Sehk Jeui in Cantonese (it means "stone mouth") which corresponds closely to your Shek Quey. The Lee (里) just means a village, notice it is also the same character for distance. The closest market town to Shizui is Luokeng (羅坑) to the east.

Sorry cannot help with the names and surname due to lack of background information.


houseofchinn.com

[kate]

Thanks for your prompt and very helpful responses.

Sometimes the most obvious of things are easily overlooked -- of course, the 'miles' referred to would be 'li'.

twoupman's suggestion for Shizui/Sehk Jeui village seems to fit very well, so I will be following up on that.

Frustratingly, I do not have Chinese characters for the name Ying Coon, or any of the other men involved in the story. The records I'm working from are taken from an Australian High Court case, and other federal government files about his prosecution as a 'prohibited immigrant'.

The files include quite a deal of detail about the time (about 25 years) Minahan spent in the village after returning there from Australia with his father as a small boy. His mother was a white Irish Australian woman, and the court testimony includes comments about the treatment he received from fellow villagers as a 'foreign devil boy'.

Cheers,
Kate

[Henry]

FYI - a map of Xinhui county and the village in question: Shizui (石咀) just west of the market town of: Luokeng (羅坑).


mysite.verizon.net/vzepzaui/Xinhui County.jpg[/img]

Henry

[kate]

I thought you might like an update on how my search for Shek Quey Lee is going.

I visited the area around Luokeng last week, and I think I may have located the village! There is more to confirm once I return to Australia, but I certainly have some leads to follow up.

After the excellent suggestions I received from the forum, I set out in search of Shizui near Luokeng. It's in a somewhat hilly part of the world, with timber being a main local industry. We drove up from Taicheng (via another village I wanted to look at in Taishan) and it was quite difficult driving once we got nearer to Luokeng. The road was being repaired and was very rough and windy and slow! We stopped at several villages to ask directions as we got closer to where we thought we wanted to be. In one conversation we mentioned 'Shek Quey Lee' rather than Shizui, and were told that there was indeed a place nearby called something similar -- Shiquli (石渠里) -- pronounced something like 'Shek Coy Lay'.

We were told that there was a big stone at the entrance to the village with the name in big red characters. We drove on for what seemed like a long time, stopping here and there to ask where the village was. Finally we realised that we must have gone too far, and so headed back again, this time spotting the big stone with red characters on it -- it could only really be seen from the road in one direction!

The village was quite different from others I had visited. It looked very run down and a bit depressing, and was quite small. There were people collecting and sorting rubbish in the main street of the village too. We asked a couple of people if they knew whether the village had any people who had gone to Australia. The first man we asked straightaway replied 'Mouh!' 'No!'. It didn't look good. We had a little walk about anyway, and there was one large house that had certainly been built by huaqiao. As we were getting ready to leave again, we stopped at the little store at the entrance to the village, and asked the old lady there the same question again. She said she thought not. As we were getting into the car though, she started talking to a group of old men playing mahjong outside and then... Bingo! We were finally in luck.

The gentleman we spoke to told us that indeed the village had a strong connection to Australia (more than 100 men had gone overseas) and that several years ago Australian relatives had paid for a new small outdoor shrine to be built. He showed it to us and there indeed were the names of all the people who had donated money. The village is a Chen (陳) village.

Unfortunately the difficult trip to the village, our struggles to locate it, then the disappointment of being initially told that it had no connection to Australia, meant that by the time I knew the real situation I was so tired and a bit fed up that I probably didn't ask all the questions I wanted to or should have. Lesson for next time -- prepare your questions in advance and leave yourself plenty of time!

The village address is, I think, 天湖乡石渠里. I can't locate it on any of the maps I have, including the one I got in Xinhui.

The visit perhaps created more questions than it answered, but they are exciting new leads to follow up on. Thanks so much to the forum for your help in getting me this far.

Kate

[tyuti1668]

May 8, 2009 4:30:44 GMT -5 kate said:

...
The village address is, I think, 天湖乡石渠里. I can't locate it on any of the maps I have, including the one I got in Xinhui.
...

The "official" address in China post db
广东省江门市新会区 罗坑镇和平村委会石渠村/ postal code:529157

[Henry]

Hi Kate,

Congratulations ! - nothing like "ground truth". Did you have your handheld GPS unit to record the geographic coordinates of "Shi Qu li" ( 石渠里 )? Then you can also locate it on satellite imagery.

Here is the map location of this village below:

Henry

mysite.verizon.net/vzepzaui/Shi Qu li.jpg[/img]

[laohuaqiao]

Kate:
Did the driver take a "shortcut" over the mountains separating Taishan and Xinhui to Luokeng ? Otherwise, it seems to be a fairly easy drive from Taicheng to Xinhui Cheng and then to Luokeng, bypassing the mountains even though it's a circuitous route.

From Henry's map, Shuqu Li should be around the center of this wikimapia map,
wikimapia.org/#lat=22.4519661&lon=112.9312134&z=14&l=0&m=a&v=2

Were you able to locate Hengshui Longtang village 橫水龍塘村? I'm from that area, so curious to hear your thoughts, impressions, etc.

[Henry]

Kate,

Here is a map of the locations that laohuaqiao is talking about.

Henry

[kate]

I've just had two great days at a Overseas Chinese conference at Jinan University in Guangzhou, and today am off to Kaiping to have a whirlwind tour of the diaolou. I'll be travelling for the rest of the week, but will be back in Australia on Friday. I'll then put photos of my visit to Shiquli and also to Hengshui (Taishan) and Jincun (Kaiping) up on Flickr, and get back to you with more details about my trip.

[harc3]

Great news Kate!!! Can't wait to see the pics and hear more of your trip. I am planning to go over as well to my family village Cheung Dai (Zhangda) in Zhengcheng to see my living relatives I have managed to track down. I am thinking of trying to post a blog during my trip with photos.
Very exciting stuff

[chansomvia]

Hi Kate,

Thanks in advance for promising to put details of your China trip on flickr and do a blog, these two elements on the Taisan region are not in great abundance. I am sure this will interest a lot of young Chinese and will encourage those youngsters who went to China to add their photos and comments in the blog.

There are a few video clips on youtube about Taishan and the hoisaan language but they are lacking in detail.

Have a good trip.

Joe Christchurch New Zealand

[kate]

I thought you might be interested to know that a short article I've written on James Minahan was published in the National Archives of Australia's Memento magazine. I've included it on my blog, which you can read here: chineseaustralia.org/?p=569. The PDF version of the issue of Memento, which includes some photos, is here: www.naa.gov.au/naaresources/publications/memento/pdf/Memento38.pdf

So, after two trips to Xinhui last year, I'm now certain that I've found the right village. Henry's nephew Tan Shicheng was very helpful in making village contacts for my second trip last December, and in facilitating my discussions with the local clan historian. Back in Australia, I've made more breakthroughs too, including positively identifying another Shek Quey Lee native whose descendants are still in Melbourne.

As with all research projects, though, I still have lots more to do!

If anyone would particularly like to see my photographs of the village and other parts of Taishan, Xinhui, Kaiping and Zhongshan, send me an email to kate DOT bagnall AT gmail DOT com and I'll give you access to the photos on my Flickr site.