What do I do with this stuff?

[ladyesquire]

My aunt's cousin went back to the ancestral village and copied some of our family information out of that village book and I have a copy of it and want to put together a more western genealogical record for my own use (I'm an LDS convert and need the information in a more western form for church purposes). Problem is - I can't read the information on there because I don't read Chinese. On top of that - my father (who lives in a different city) looked at it and said that it has given names and scholar names and it doesn't contain a lot of our branch of the family. I know it's a start, but what exactly do I do first? I'm new to this genealogy bit.

[raymond]

ladyesquire,

I have a couple of comments. First, your family genealogy book (called a "zupu" in Mandarin or "jook po" in Cantonese) is most likely written in old Chinese characters, and many of the recent generation Chinese who can read modern Chinese writings cannot even read old Chinese characters. So, you need to procure the services of a translator who can actually read old Chinese writings. Secondly, your "zupu" is likely out-of-date especially if your branch of the family has migrated to the West several generations ago. Simply put, the keeper of the "zupu" in the village cannot update the information on your family branch if no one in your family bothered to relay family information back to the village. So, most likely one of those "given names" in the "zupu" is the missing connection to your family branch, which your father cannot even recognize probably because his father or grandfather never passed on this genealogical information. In order for you to possibly make a connection, you will need to find out new pertinent information - - information which might be from elder relatives in the West and in China, from official documents, from old letters from China, from nearby family clan associations, from gravestone markings, etc. Talk to your aunt's cousin who obviously knew enough about the family branch to obtain a copy of your "zupu" from your ancestral village.

Good luck in your search.

Raymond