Looking for the exact coordinates of these villages

[jeremychin]

Hello All,

So I have the pretty immediate areas of three of my grandparents villages. Two I have exact locations of. The three that I don't have exact locations of are:

My maternal grandmother's village shows the location in a field near three different villages. Which one is it?
联安, 台山，江门，广东中国

22.279527, 112.741857

My maternal grandfather's village looks like it is getting swallowed up by an aluminum/paper factory. Is it the one to the right or left of the pin?
莲江, 台山，江门，广东中国


22.240730, 112.811113

Lastly my paternal grandfather's village. We cannot tell which one it is among the huge cluster in that small area.
西井, 台山，江门，广东,中国


22.069945, 112.942915

Thanks in advance for the help!!!!

[chansomvia]

Hi Jeremy
I am not able to tell you the exact coordinates of your villages but I found that Google and Baidu maps are not detailed on the villages. I could not buy a detailed map of the villages. What I did find was that villagers were happy to give directions when you can get near to the general location.

I did find that the Chinese GPS used by taxi drivers was very detailed, I tried to get the APP but it was in Chinese and I could not use it. There are lots of "Yellow" and "pirate" vehicles using the Chinese equivalent of Uber called Didi and they use the App which can pinpoint the small places. It is very powerful and should be able to navigate using coordinates. See attached picture of taxis using two smartphones, one as a GPS and the other to keep in contact with their office and for personal calls.

The other noticeable thing was that most people use wechat. Once you have one contact on wechat the tentacles spreads very fast and can link the missing people and places.

Hope this is of assistance.

Joe

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[jeremychin]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for your reply! Sorry for the delayed response. I agree, both google maps and Baidu are not very detailed/precise in their location of certain villages. However, I have found that if you switch the order of the location string to have Jiangmen at the beginning, it gives you a more precise pin.
 

I will look out for those taxis when I get the chance to visit. That is going to be the only real way to know for sure is to visit in person. Thanks again for your help!

- Jeremy 

[jschikan]

I have a basic question: What does Jiangmen refer to? It it part of an address for a house in Chikan?

AND: Where did you get those coordinates?

[lachinatown]

Jiangmen is refer to the administrative chain of command. Yes, Kaiping City 开平市 is a division under Jiangmen 江门市.
Not knowing your country, but in the United States, we go by Country, State, County, City, etc. and with Postal Zip code.
For China, they use a postal code. Therefore if you have the Chinese character of a village and a postal code, it would help you greatly to identify your village. Unfortunately, small villages are not shown on most maps. Some maps are better than others.
Jiangmen - Wikipedia

[jeremychin]

jschikan,

Lachinatown is exactly right. To start from the beginning down to the village it would go China, Guangdong (Province), Jiangmen (Prefecture), Kaiping (City), Chikan (Town), "X" (Village).

It seems as though Jiangmen is more recently used when people refer to locations, as my grandfather never heard of the name when I asked him about it.

In regards to the coordinates, once I had all of the village information from the village db, I created the address string and posted it in google/baidu maps (has to be in simplified characters, village db is in traditional). Google will give you the longitude/latitude of the location it finds. Although as most of us have mentioned, smaller villages are hard to find on the maps. They might point you to a location near a village or in between two, so you have to play a guessing game as to which one it is. Also, some villages change names and merge with others, which also makes things a bit challenging.       

I'm assuming by your username that your family is from Chikan? Have you located your village?

[jschikan]

lachinatown:
Jeremy Chin:

1. Thank you for your responses.
2. I recently returned from a visit to Kaiping (wonderful city), Chikan as both sides of my family has history in villages in Chikan.
3. I have long been compelled to make the trek to rural China. I wanted to accomplish 3 things; a) see where family members grew up b) gather any genealogy or oral histories, and c) to make arrangements with a developer interested in my grandfather's business building in historic Chikan. (I'd like to hear from others experiences with buildings in historic Chikan.)
4. It was both a very emotional and educational experience for me. We were fortunate enough to have never-met-before-family living in Chikan to guide us to our Tang & Soo Hoo/Situ/Seto villages.
5. Now because I was driven around, I couldn't retrace the roads we were on OR the exact location of the village houses. As I sit at a computer, I was hoping to use mapping software to "look around" the area. Unfortunately, I am unable to do that without knowing what mapping software or what to even look for. Any hints or help would be appreciated.

[lachinatown]

If you know the Chinese characters of the villages, we can help you locate them jschikan.
Or any romanization of the villages.

[jschikan]

As I don't know how to write in the Chinese language I uploaded some photos. They are from a gate to a village I am attempting to locate. Of any help?

Thank you.

js

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[jschikan]

Also:

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[lachinatown]

Please clarify which villages you are looking for.
What is on your avatar is:
大楼 (Simplified Chinese),Dalou, Kaiping, Jiangmen, Guangdong, China
22.257083, 112.515919

[jschikan]

lachinatown:

Thank you.

The avatar gate is a Tang village.

The 3 photos are on a gate to a Soo Hoo village.

1. So I understand correctly: If I enter the coordinates you offer, it will pin point an approximate location of that (or a specific) village?

2. Do you have the coordinates of the Situ Library? Would you know the name of the road the Situ Library sits on?

3. Situ Library is on a road parallel to a small river....do you know the name of the river?

Thank you.

[lachinatown]

Yes. Will get back when I have some time.

[jschikan]

How do I find this on a map:

529367赤坎镇上埠长堤 ?

赤坎欧陆风情街 ? (same?)

Thank you.

[jeremychin]

The coordinates that lachinatown posted refer to the village in your avatar Dalou.

These are the coordinates for the library I believe you speak of: 22.322058,112.593406.

The adjacent river looks like the Tanjiang river.

529367 is a zip code. Just put that into Google and voila, you get a map pin which looks like it's right in the heart of Chikan.