Searching for Lee/Li (李) family

[kate]

Hello! I am both brand new to this forum and new to researching my Chinese ancestry. I was wondering if anyone might be able to provide some advice on where I could look next as I seemed to have gathered all of the information I can from my living relatives. I unfortunately can't speak or write in Chinese so apologies for any errors.

I know that my grandmother (李美媛) previously lived in Taicheng Subdistrict, Taishan, Guangdong Province, China. They are originally from Li Yan Alley in their ancestral village of Sun Tun Village (莘村里仁巷) near Duhu, Taishan (台山都斛). From what I know, this may be the location of the village: goo.gl/maps/VmVeAJmBSSQgUCGE7.

Here is the lineage I've been able to put together:

• Lee Hung Kai (李洪啟) - 17th descendent of the Lee family (my great-great-great-grandfather)
  
• Lee Kee Wai (李基偉) - 18th descendent of the Lee family (my great-great-grandfather) - married Tam (given name unknown)
• Lee Kwon Ying (李權應) - 19th descendent of the Lee family (my great-grandfather) - married Shum Chiu Tai (岑照娣)
• Lee May Yue (李美媛) - 20th descendent of the Lee family (my grandmother)

My grandmother was the youngest of nine siblings (three sisters, six brothers). My great grandfather (Lee Kwon Ying) was the single and only male descendant for his family and supposedly there had been single male descendants for multiple previous generations of the Lee family.

On another note, I am also researching the Chin/Chan (陳) side of my family, from Tung Chow/Dong Zhou village near Taishan. Still in the process of collecting information from my relatives, however, so hoping to post about that side soon.

Thank you!

[wang]

goo.gl/maps/kAD9cJ5hRUv7wiiG6
That's the location of Liren Lane in Xincun.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_name
This is an explanation of the Chinese generation name.
If you can provide more family names, For example, the name of your grandmother's brother. There is a good chance of finding the branch and tradition of your family.

I am currently helping the Hunan Changde Li family with their genealogy website, not sure if it is related to your family or not.
www.hyxli.com

[jeremychin]

Hello Kate!

Welcome to the forum. Glad to hear you are interested in researching your family history. It looks like you have a lot of great information already. My paternal Grandfather's side is all from Du Fook. He is a Cheung and his village is about 15-20 min south walking from yours. He was sold/adopted into a Chin clan a bit further south in Du Fook at age 7, which is why my last name is Chin.

His sister married into a Mak clan in 下莘 village on the south end of your village cluster. Your village is highlighted in the screenshot below very close to your pin.

My great grandmother is a Lee from 古邏 village just 3/4 miles directly north across that main road. We most likely intersect at some point in our tree via this branch. I unfortunately don't know the names of my ancestors on that side. The word is, the family left for the U.K at some point and there might not be any immediate family left. Have you ever taken a 23andme DNA test?

There is a Lee clan book that recently came out last year. It is great because it has an index by village and all the corresponding family trees. I just need to find a way to get my hands on a copy. If someone has a copy, you could ask them to do a look up in it. I'll ask a contact I know. What city do you live in? I'm in NY.




I also have some Lee generation poems that I have been referencing over the years. Not sure if your generation names quite match any of them? As Wang mentioned through his link, every male gets a generation name after he gets married, which is the name most commonly found in the village family tree book. It is usually the first character after the surname.

www.miniforum.net/showpost.fcgi?tempid=2&MGID=1335574&page=32

In regards to your Chin side, my grandfather's adoptive village is Tung Chow 東洲!! What a coincidence! It is a little over 3 miles south from your Lee village. 

www.google.com/maps/place/22%C2%B002'17.9%22N+112%C2%B057'25.5%22E/@22.0392912,112.9561507,4503m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x3401c04c5af5c44f:0x8072216de6701be0!7e2!8m2!3d22.0383001!4d112.957086

I've been to China twice, once 15 years ago and once more in 2018. I unfortunately didn't have enough time to go back to Dong Zhou village itself, but met up and reconnected with some cousins there I met on my first trip.

Hope this helps!

[kate]

Hi Wang and Jeremy,

Thank you—this is all fantastic information, especially about the generation poems! I very much appreciate all your help.

To respond to some of your questions…

I looked through the family records I was given and was able to identify the name of one of my grandmother’s 2nd eldest brother as Lee Sui Wing (李紹榮). I can likely get the names of one or two other brothers but will have to reach out to some relatives first to ask.

Unfortunately, I haven’t ever taken a 23andme test but have considered it! Also, I live in Toronto. I was also planning to visit NYC this summer to visit a close friend but, due to the current pandemic situation, I’ve had to defer my trip until all travel restrictions are lifted.

Here's what I've been able to piece together on the Chin side of my family.

Chin family descendants (you’ll also notice three marriages to Lees from neighbouring villages!):
Two brothers:

• Chin Quon (陳典揚) - married Lee Young Ho (李用好) from a village just off of Duhu (大纲村) (was given a map showing it located here: goo.gl/maps/fbjCyzMmtwRF7HHr9)
  
• Chin Yuen (陳典元) - older brother

Chin Yuen’s sons (all likely lived in either Tung Chow or Tung Hang (Dong Keng), a neighbouring village, roughly around 1880s-mid 1900s):

• Chin Ging Lew (陳象震) - 1st brother - married Lee Yuet Ngor (李之基) likely also from Tung Chow
• 2nd brother’s name unknown
• 陳象深 - 3rd brother
• 陳象教 - 4th brother
• 陳象隱 - 5th brother
• 陳象堅 - 6th brother

Chin Ging Lew’s son (my grandfather; lived in Tung Chow roughly from 1930s-1950s)

• Chin Yee Tong (陳裕倉, also went by 陳易滄) - married Lee May Yue (my grandmother; see above in first post)
  

I’ve been able to locate the Chinese Exclusion files of Lee Young Ho, Chin Yuen, and Chin Ging Lew at the New York national archives. Unfortunately, they’re temporarily closed but once they open up the archivists will be sending me their information. I may be able to find out the names of their parents.

In addition, we visited Tung Chow village in China back in 2006 and have many pictures from that trip. Some of the photos are of Chin ancestral shrines and/or gravestones in the village. I would be happy to email you some of the photos, Jeremy, if you would be interested or could find it helpful for your own search. Like I mentioned, I don’t read Chinese so there may be some information contained in these photos that I am unable to translate myself.

This may also be a bit of a long shot but if you know the Chinese name of your grandfather (the one adopted into the Chin family) and he lived in Tung Chow the same time as my grandfather (Chin Yee Tong), I may be able to ask him if he remembers him. However, because of the social distancing restrictions, it may be several months before I see them again to ask.

[jeremychin]

Hi Kate,

This is great stuff! I'm assuming that you are looking to trace back as far back as you can in your lineages? You have most of the info you would need. All of these names going many generations back are golden nuggets. We just need the zupu/jiapu to look them all up. Then you can trace all the way back.

It is very much more likely that my great uncle knew your grandfather, as he was in the village during the 30's-50's My grandfather left in 1935. I will my grandfather to see if he recognizes the name and if not, he can ask his brother. Yes, please send me pictures. I may recognize some things, as I was there the year prior! [e-mail]

In regards to the Chin generation poem, this is what my grandfather wrote in his book:

"Generation level was denoted normally by one word in a person’s marriage name. When a man got married, he took on a marriage name with one word from the clan’s couplet denoting his generation level. I remembered the generation levels sequence was “GAY墓, DONG登, WING永, DING定, DUNE尊, SHOONG崇, DAI大, DEN典, DENG象, YEEN賢, TUN燦, SUI緒.” for our clan. It represented twelve different generations. Baba’s marriage name was “SHOONG HO崇灝” because he belonged to the “SHOONG” generation level. Grandfather’s marriage name was “JOOK DUNE祝尊” because he belonged to the “DUNE” generation which was one above father. I am in the “DAI大” generation and my sons are in the “DEN典” generation. My grandsons would be in the “DENG象” generation. These days starting with me, we do not follow this ‘marriage name’ tradition anymore."


- Jeremy

[kate]

Hi Jeremy,

Yes, tracing back the lineages as far as possible on both the Chin and Lee sides is definitely the goal! Thank you for sending that excerpt about the generation poem, it is extremely interesting and useful.

If the next step is to find the zupu/jiapu, do you (or anyone else) have any advice on how I might go about doing this? As I mentioned, I'm based in Canada quite far away and am quite new to researching my Chinese ancestry so a bit uncertain about what this might look like.

Thanks so much!

Kate

[jeremychin]

Kate,

The two most important things are research and building contacts. As you do more research on the China side of things, you will get to know more about the history and the migration patterns of our ancestors in China. Also, you will come to learn of the many things you should be looking for when looking at family tree books, tombstones and other important documents that are in Chinese. I too am not Chinese literate, although I have taken 1 year of Chinese in college. As you look at more Chinese documents, you will start to get more familiar with the language and common characters you may see often, which can help you identify potential critical information. You will also learn the differences in the way characters are romanized as you could be dealing with both Hoisan (our native language), Toisan (Cantonese) and Taishan (Mandarin) romanizations. For instance, for a long time, I did not know about the history of Hoisan. Prior to 1914 It was not called 台山 (Hoisan/Toisan/Taishan), but then known as 新寧 (Thleenin/Sunning/Xinning), and even way before that in the 1400s, it was part of what we know now as the neighboring county, Sunwui before it broke off at the end of the millennia. So for my Cheung zupu, I was trying to look for a Hoisan book, when I actually needed to look in the Sunwui book instead. Google translate is your best friend, and the OCR (optical character recognition) feature (on the mobile version) is a great way to help you understand documents that you cannot translate. Another good translation app is Pleco.

However, if you can find people that can help you translate things, it is a huge time saver. I, fortunately, have made some connections here and on Facebook, that have helped me to translate paper documents, understand the nuances of online articles, and work through roadblocks in my research. That helps to speed up your research and learn in the process and there are many incredibly helpful experts on here that have been doing this a long time. I've learned so much from them.

In regards to finding these books: There are two types. Zupus are the clan books that usually cover a surname in a particular county or area. For instance, there is that Lee zupu that covers the lineages of all Lees in Hoisan. It is multi-volume and thousands of pages. The jiapu is the village book relating to a specific village. The zupu is a collection of all of the various village jiapus. If you are looking to learn as much as possible, You would want to find both the zupu and the jiapu. The zupu can connect you all the way back to the yellow Emperor, but the jiapu can give you a rich history of your specific village and bios of some the important people in your family.

Familysearch.org, is the best resource right now to search for online digital copies of various zupus and jiapus. Although, it takes a lot of digging to find the right one that could possibly hold your ancestors in it.

Check out your local clan associations. Most clan surnames have an organization where people with their surnames or people from a certain area can connect and bond in their communities. Toronto should have a Chin association and Lee association. You should see if your Lee Ass. has a copy of the new zupu. Unfortunately, for our Lee sides, the trees only go up to the progenitors who migrated into Guangdong. There is a lot of debate about the accuracy of generations prior to that, but at least we can go back 35 or so generations! 

Ex: Lee Association of Toronto
175A Dundas St W. 2nd Fl
Toronto ON M5G 1C7
Tel: [phone]

Last resort, but one that is well worth it imo. Not sure if you were ever planning to go back, but you can visit the village and get all of the information you need straight from the source. When I first went in 2015 I was only a teen, so I didn't have as much interest in all of this to appreciate what I do now. Now that I have taken this up as a hobby, I have been fortunate to travel back with the incredible Friends of Roots organization, to help me do a proper introductory exploration of my roots in China. This will require another trip though, as the research never seems to end haha.

I hope I didn't ramble on too much!

[kate]

Hi Jeremy,

Definitely not too much, this is incredibly helpful advice!! Thank you for taking the time to explain this all to me—definitely gives me a few options on next steps. I'll start by looking into FamilySearch.org and contacting my local family clan associations. Also reconsidering taking a 23andme DNA test as I've read elsewhere on this forum how useful they can be. Hopefully, I can find some information that will be useful for not just my own family history but others as well and post it here.

Thanks for all your help!

[wang]

Because you provided too little information, you did not find much information about you.
However, I found Chen's genealogy name, according to which you can easily find the genealogy.
先德开基，永奠尊崇大典；象贤缵瑞，用光启佑鸿猷

[jeremychin]

Hi Wang,

I am familiar with the generation poem. Do you know if the zupu for this branch of the Chin clan has been scanned and can be accessed online?

- Jeremy

[wang]

There are a lot of information available, and there are scanned versions of genealogy.

www.chens.org.cn/
www.chens.org.cn/list.aspx?cid=15

The following is the Chen Family in Yongchun, Fujian
www.nanchens.com/


If necessary, I can help contact and ask.

It's just that you need to provide more family information

[kate]

Hi wang,

Unfortunately, I'm still in the process of collecting Chin family information from various relatives so I don't have more family information at this time. Once I'm able to collect more, I'll definitely let you know. Thank you for your help so far!

Kate

[jeremychin]

Hi Wang,

We are looking for the Chin clan zupu for the area of Du Fook, more specifically Tung Hang 都斛东坑陈氏. What other information would you need?

This is what we are seeking which explains a little bit of the lineage:

都斛东坑陈氏《江门市地名志》："宋末元初(1265一l280年)陈英从南雄珠玑巷携眷南逃赤溪冲金。第五代孙陈永吉迁至本村山边搭棚而居。入赘本村马氏。"后陈氏子孙众多。

I took a look at the Chen page so shared, but did not see what we are looking for at first glace. I am not very Chinese literate so I may have missed something.


- Jeremy  

[wang]

You can only know from the information you provide that you are a descendant of 陈英 Chen Ying (陈辉 Chen Hui's third son, and Chen Hui's seven sons in total), and to look up a specific genealogy, you need to provide the names of your ancestors and where they came from.

The Chen family is very large, with many clans.

This person below is also your clan member and lives in the United States, so you can contact him to try.

陈天璇（Hanson Chan)，美籍华裔作家，原籍中国广东省台山县槎洲村人，少年移民美洲，美国马里兰州立大学历史系学士、新泽西州西东大学硕士，曾任职新闻界、影艺界。代表作品：《历史可以这样读》、《邓小平访美那九天》及电影剧本《黄飞鸿2：男儿当自强》等。

Email: [e-mail]

[jeremychin]

But wouldn't there be a Chen jiapu for 都斛 or 东坑? We have names, we just need to find the correct book that would have them in it.