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Post by barbearl on Jan 29, 2020 19:55:30 GMT -5
Hi, I am trying to do some genealogy for my daughters. No experience in Chinese genealogy so help is appreciated. I have information on their great grandparents from the village of Thlam San (aka San Shan) outside of Chikan, Taishan, Guangdong Province. His name is Soo Hoo Kong (or Kwong) born 5/1/1877 or Kwong Sui 3rd year, 5th month, 18th day. Wife is Mock Shee born 4/16/1877 or Kwong Sui 3rd year, 3rd month, 3rd day. some of the children; Soo Hoo Tai, also known as Soo Hoo See Kue. Born 1/8/1894 or Kwong Sui 19th year, 12th month, 2nd day Soo Hoo Chau, also known as Soo Hoo Wan and Charles Seto. Born on Kwong Sui 21st year, 5th month, 27th day or 6/19/1895. He traveled to California and died there. Soo Hoo Fung, also known as Soo Hoo See Kai. born 11/18/1896 or Kwong Sui 22 year, 10th month, 14th day. He also ended up in California. Soo Hoo Lung, also known as Soo Hoo See Git, born 2/25/1898 or kwong sui 24th year, 2nd month, 5th day Soo Hoo Sen, born 1/15/1924, chinese republic 12th year, 12th month, 10th day. I know that Chau and Fung are males, not sure of others. Chau brought his wife and a nephew and niece to California in 1936. He raised the children as his own. They were his sisters children. The nephew is my daughters grandfather. I am trying to build a family tree for my daughters. I would like to know more about the family and who the niece and nephews real parents are. Any help would be appreciated and pointing me in the correct direction would be helpful Thanks Barbara here is his Kong's signature. It is on the 4th line
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Post by barbearl on Feb 1, 2020 19:48:20 GMT -5
here are other examples of signatures. The one on line 2 is Lung Soo Hoo and line 3 is Chau Soo Hoo.
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Post by barbearl on Feb 3, 2020 18:51:29 GMT -5
On passenger lists the village is listed as Yut Shan Hoiping Kwantung China. My brother in law says it is Tham Fau or San Shan meaning three mountains. Right outside of Chikan
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Post by lachinatown on Feb 3, 2020 21:09:03 GMT -5
According to the village database, there is a 月山村 / Yuet Shan (a 司徒 / Seto village), meaning moon mountain. There is no Sam Shan listed.
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Post by FayChee on Feb 3, 2020 22:08:11 GMT -5
Yue Shan Village
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Post by FayChee on Feb 3, 2020 22:40:23 GMT -5
Kong's signature just says Soo Hoo (I believe). I don't see a first name in Chinese characters. If Yut Shan is the same as YueShan, then there are 23 pages of family trees in Volume 6 of the New Seto Zupu....but all in Chinese characters (I don't read/write/speak Chinese). If the names were in Chinese Characters, I could compare them with what is in the Zupu's 23 pages. Also, the top of the pages are translated to "Xiaohai yueshan Village" (I don't know what it means.)
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Post by merantau on Feb 4, 2020 3:57:29 GMT -5
The phrase "小海月山村" looks like a place name perhaps with Xiaohai as a qualifier. I couldn't find useful information 小海 on Google Maps or Baidu Maps - locations did not seem consistent with your priors. However, there was one link that was placed in Kaiping: Xiaohai. The location given has no annotation in Google Maps but is placed very near to a Yueshan which is the rest of the village name. Google maps link. You need to vary zoom to get Yueshan to show up. It's on the X557. It seems around the right location from the rest of your information but I'm no China expert. It's also close to Chikan. Other thing is that the emigres have used single character first names when registering in the US whereas the Soo Hoo Chau's father is listed with a two character first name. The zupu example given for that village also uses two character first names inclusive of a generational character. From the original post it appears See was the generational character and that was dropped at US registration (in which case, all those with See are likely to be males). You will be looking in the zupu for generational characters consistent with the father's generational character (You? Jung?) followed by See in the two generations later (or one? this depends on info in first post which appears to be internally inconsistent) in the zupu. One assumes that the English transliteration will have been done to match the sound in the Hoiping dialect? In the example zupu page, the generational character is listed on right of each line. In Jyutping (Cantonese), they read from 11th generation down: "tai2 ging1 loeng6 soei6 hoi1 dyun1 syu6". The wife's name listed as "Mock Shee" is presumably 莫氏, meaning (woman of) Mok clan? In that example zupu, the wife's clan is listed to left of protagonist. Mok is an uncommon surname and may perhaps help to locate ancestor in the zupu? A major obstacle is that zupu traditionally didn't list women. Given that they are his sister's children, their mother may unfortunately not be listed and you limited to identifying the generation in which their uncle was born. However, in that example page, there were offspring who did not use the generational character while their fellow siblings did - were they daughters? Also, has family on left at gen 15 and that at gen 17 have not used the generational character - were they daughters or just a change of generational name protocol? You'll need to seek someone more knowledgeable on the practice.
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Post by jasonwu on Feb 4, 2020 12:44:25 GMT -5
Hi all,
Here are the Google Maps locations for 小海 Xiaohai (administrative village) and 月山 Yueshan/Yuet Shan: click here.
Jason
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Post by lachinatown on Feb 4, 2020 22:23:19 GMT -5
Thank you jasonwu.
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Post by FayChee on Feb 4, 2020 23:01:40 GMT -5
Thanks for the link to the map Jason! Hope this is the correct Village....
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Post by barbearl on Feb 5, 2020 19:08:21 GMT -5
Hi everyone, I really appreciate the responses. I am going to send some of this to my brother in law who doesn't use the computer much and see what input he has on this.
So for my help lets go over Chinese genealogy 101 (it is very different from other genealogy I have done)
First you need any information you can get on the village
You need names of relatives in Chinese
You need to find the village
Then you need the zupu
You need to hopefully match up one of the relatives in the zupu.
Can the zupu be translated to be somewhat like a family tree?
let me know if I am on the right track and what I am missing. I will look over this information and get back to this forum soon.
thanks again Barbara
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Post by FayChee on Feb 5, 2020 22:35:19 GMT -5
Hi Barbara, Yes, you do need the Chinese Characters of family names and hopefully figure out the Generation Poem from them. If you can take a picture of family tombstones, there may be Chinese writing on them that is usually their real Chinese name, and Village. The Zupu contains Family Trees that have Generational Numbers and Generational Poems.....from this, you may be able to locate one that matches your family poem and tree. Ex. My father's name is Kai Yip Seto/Szeto, my grandfather's name is You De (aka Yau Tak) Szeto, my Chinese half brother is Yin Pui (aka Yan Pui) Szeto.....so my Generational Poem contains a 'You', 'Kai', 'Yan' sequence..........My dad's tombstone had Chinese character's written on it below his 'Paper-son name' in English.....we interpreted the character's and found out his real name was Kai Yip Szeto and his Village was Enping. We later found his Ancestral Village was Chaoyangli in Chishui Town, Kaiping....then we found living relatives in the USA who gave us names, pictures, and more family stories that we never would have heard...
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Post by barbearl on Feb 6, 2020 19:38:40 GMT -5
FayChee, thank you for that information. That is helpful. So Enping is the village he was born in, but his ancestors came from Chaoyangli, correct? How did you figure out his ancestral village was different from the village listed on his grave marker?
My brother in law traveled with my father in law to his village in 1981. That is where I got the information about the village being called Thlam Fau or San Shan meaning 3 mountains. On old passenger list records I came up with Yuet Shan. I emailed my brother in law to check with him again on the village and sent him the information you provided.
I will continue looking for more information.
Thank you again. Barbara
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Post by FayChee on Feb 6, 2020 23:47:28 GMT -5
Hi Barbara, The whole story of how this forum helped me find my Chinese Family, Ancestral Village and Ancestral Home (as well as other Seto/Szeto/Situ and Soo Hoo's) is in a thread on the second page of this board 'Chinese Genealogy'......when you have a chance, you should take a look of how the other Szeto people came to this forum (like you) and were able to find their Ancestral Village, family members and established their family tree going back to the year 1127.....there were other Soo Hoo's who traced their tree through the help of this forum.....maybe related to you, but I don't remember them being from your particular Village (Yuet Shan). At a certain point in the Szeto Tree, we all have a common Ancestor. Once you find a few generations of your family (perhaps Dad, Granddad, male siblings), you should be able to establish your Szeto/SooHoo tree going back to the year 1127 as well. Enping/Yanping County is the old name for an area established in ad 220. It was one of the Four Counties responsible for much of the early Chinese diaspora from Guangdong in the 19th century. Enping comprises 10 towns, 3 sub-district offices, 4 farms and stations, and 174 village neighborhood committees. It is located in southwest Guangdong, at the western edge of the Pearl River Delta and beside the South China Sea. Enping borders Kaiping to the northeast and Yangjing to the southwest. (Wikipedia). The story of how my Ancestral Village was found, is in the below thread.....(I don't know how to send you the actual link, but go to the next page (2) and look for thread called "SooHoo/Seto/Szeto/Situ from Hoiping".......
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Post by Doug 周 on Feb 7, 2020 8:41:46 GMT -5
Barbara, Your initial post is very much like FayChee's original post. Here is the link: siyigenealogy.proboards.com/post/9908/thread . She has learned and evolved to become a very important moderator especially for the Szeto clan. She started in 2012 and reading her posts is compelling. IMHO
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