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Post by honchmatt on Jun 21, 2009 10:43:05 GMT -5
Hello Douglaslam and laohuaqiao, Trying to sort through all the materials I collected have been a challenge, intended to put up a blog to share with my siblings and distance relatives, but that will take time. Have over 2,300+ photos to sort out! On our way from Zhuhai to Kaiping on the bus, Shi Cheng did mention he just received a call from a forummer, that must be you laohuaqiao! Well prior to getting my blog up and going, I thought I will provide a snippets of my journey, hope you all will find it interesting, and maybe be of help. If anyone needs more information, please do not hesitate to email me. After getting help from Henry, laohuaqiao, tyuti1668, ahgin and Shi Cheng to locate my ancestral village, I bought my airtickets and confirmed my hotels. My plan was to fly to Macau, walk across to Zhuhai/Gongbei, meet up with Shi Cheng and his bus for the trip to Kaiping. After an overnight stay in Macau we walk across the Barrier Gate to Gongbei immigration point to meet up with Shi Cheng and his bus and driver. Although the crossing was crowded, all went smoothly. Even with my 83 years old father and 76 years old mum in tow, we manage to cross over in less than 30 minutes. The journey between Zhuhai and Kaiping took about 2 hours, we had a very safe driver. On the way to Kaiping, we stop by Taishan for lunch, a restaurant recommended by the driver that specialises in eel cook with rice in a claypot. Throughout the trip the food has been just fabulous. I was concerned initially about the level of hygiene, but surprisingly, during every meal, the ritual was to clean all utensil with boiling water or hot tea first. In some restaurant all the plates and cup are even shrink wrap! In Taishan we had an eight course lunch for eight person, great food, for 335yuan. When we reached Kaiping, 5 of our relatives were already at the hotel waiting for us. Although this was the first meeting, we were very impress with the warm and hospitality shown. Spent the rest of the day and dinner time listening to stories, going through the zupu and just trying to keep track of who is who! On the second day, we visited my ancestral village, Zhu Lu cun. One of our relatives came by to accompany us to the village, insisting that we must enter via the main gate, since this is our first trip back. We found out that most of the original village folks have already move out to stay in the city or more modern accommodation. Most of the villages houses are now being rented out to migrant workers, just wanting a roof over their head and not mining the lack of basic facilities e.g. toilet. Another surprise we had was how clean and well kept the village is, although the lanes between the houses are narrow. By the time we arrived near the lane leading to my great grandfather's house, there was a small gathering all eager to greet us. Over and over again we hear people say, never in a hundred years were they expecting descendants of this household to be coming back! Stepping foot into the house of my great grandfather have been a really humbling and moving experience. Our relatives had a small altar with his name inscribe and we paid our respect. The house is made of bricks, had hard wood imported from Nanyang, two bed rooms and a large central hall. Both the rooms have their own entrance and small kitchen area with stove. Due to neglect and white ants, most of the timbers are not the best of condition now. After the house visit, we had a couple more rounds of meals with relatives and village folks. We also took the opportunity to visit Chikan and Zili cun's watchtower. All in all, it had been a great trip, not possible without the help I got from this forum, Shi Cheng and the driver he arranged.
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Post by harc3 on Jun 21, 2009 19:40:51 GMT -5
That is sooooooo cool!!! Thanks for posting!!! Can't wait for my trip to visit my village!!!!
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Post by helen on Jun 22, 2009 4:12:51 GMT -5
wow - what a write up. I'm afraid I will be a while in taking all my experiences in. I visited 8 villages in 5 days - and still haven't come down to earth. I too have thousands of photos; 3 x 90 minute videos to change to DVD; not to mention the 4 x 90 minute tapes - unfortunately lost through numerous x-rays machines I had to go through... people - please remember tape recorders and tapes do not mix with xrays. A great tale honchmatt.. and excellent pictures
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Post by douglaslam on Jun 22, 2009 5:32:37 GMT -5
Hi hochmatt,
Thanks for letting us into your trip to China. What great experience for every one in your party!! Henry must be pleased with himself for his nephew did such a spendid job to ensure your party a trouble free and a most enjoyable time possible. It is well worth the little extra for a trustworthy person to take care of all the mundane things. There are always sharks circling to prey on the unwary.
The yellow eel rice, to give its full name in Chinese is a well known specialty. Come November, I'll be tucking into some myself.
Laohuaqiao must have an equally interesting story to tell us now that he has overcome the jet lag. Please don't keep us waiting for much longer.
Then there is Helen, you have a task ahead of you to edit what you want to post for us to enjoy.
As for me, I never get tired of returning to China. There is so much to see, so much food to sample, and all so affordable!! I always feel at home and belong, even after so many decades Down Under.
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Post by Ah Gin on Jun 22, 2009 16:12:07 GMT -5
Honchmatt,
Thanks for sharing your collection of travel tales. Very cool pictures, maps. Good to have taken your family with you, especially your aging parents. It was wise of you to have a good guide in the shape of Henry's nephew. Your description of "Yellow eel rice" -- always my first choice comfort food, when I return home to Hoiping. Think we Hoiping eel rice pot is better than the Toisan eel rice. ;D Just kidding.
Your ggf's place looks very well maintained. It will be good to be able to preserve that -- but at the back of my mind I worry that progress may take over, since your village is within the city limit, and this land for development will become more desirable. Let's hope not.
Regards, Ah Gin
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Post by helen on Jun 23, 2009 3:59:17 GMT -5
By the way guys, there are no maps of the Xintang area of Zengcheg. I tried every where. I think I should apply for a grant one day to live in the area for a few weeks/months. I'm sure there is a wealth of knowledge floating out there - but as I mentioned before - only the old (45 plus) are left in the villages - with migrants tilling the earth. The memories will be scarce soon. So come on guys - get those notebooks out and make that trip now.
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Post by laohuaqiao on Jun 23, 2009 13:48:26 GMT -5
Honchmatt,
Thank you for the account of your journey. I’m glad everything went so smoothly for you. Too bad I didn’t realize that was you who was with Shi Cheng, I couldn’t connect to this forum anywhere in Guangdong at all, not even with the link Henry provided. Otherwise,I would’ve invited myself to the claypot yellow eel rice lunch. ;D
Those are very nice photos of your village houses, the layouts are very typical of the houses in this region.
I’m also very glad that you included the google map of your car ride from Zhuhai to Kaiping. The map shows clearly the geopgraphy of the area, especially the mountains on the eastern part of Taishan separating Taishan from Xinhui. The route essentially headed west until the middle of the map where it encountered the mountains, then the expressway had to turn southwest until it hit a plain region where it can turn westward around the mountains and pick up another expressway to Taishan City and then Kaiping, thus forming a “U”.
The plain region which form the bottom of the “U” in your route is the 都斛 Douhu region of Taishan. If anyone is ever in the area, Douhu has the best seafood around. You go the the market in the town of Douhu to buy the fresh catch of the day, walk over to any nearby restaurant and they will cook however you want it, charging 5 or 6 RMB per dish.
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Post by jmchan888 on Jun 30, 2009 21:02:11 GMT -5
Hello Fellow Genealogists, I am thrilled to be part of this enthusiastic group researching for our ancestors. I am new to the web site and to the forum. Hopefully, as I get more accustomed to the working of this site, I can unabashedly seek out expertise from you fellow members.
A personal profile about myself: I was born in the village called Chil nguen chychun near Toy Shen city many years ago. I visited my grandfather's village which conprised of three housing structures. This was my first visit with my wife after leaving China as a young boy in 1959. Because I was uneducated in the area of genealogical research, I had no idea of zupus existed in the village if it was not destroyed during the Chinese cultural revolution in the 60's. My grandfather's name is Chan Mon Ding who had immigrated to the US and later to Canada before I was born. I met the man when I immigrated by myself at the age of 10 to Canada in May 1959 and settled in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Since becoming a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which stressed on the importance of family history, I became enthused of finding my family roots and ancestors. I am looking forward in new acquaintances and acquiring new knowledge in the field of genealogical research. If anyone who is from the same area in the village, please please contact me via email. Perhaps, you are the one who is going to open the doors for me to acquire information of my progenitors. Thank you.
John Chan
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Post by helen on Jul 1, 2009 3:07:52 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum John. Maybe you come from Taishan, in Si Yip. If so, many people on this forum will be along soon to help you out. The more you learn, the more you want to know. It's fun Meanwhile, the General Registers of Chinese Immigration covering the period between 1885 and 1949 is finally online. This is a searchable database. It is indexed by the Dept. of History at UBC. tinyurl.com/4gosr6chan ming ding / Chan sing age 30 1912 Could this be him?
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Post by Henry on Jul 1, 2009 7:00:45 GMT -5
Hi John, I would like to add my welcome too! If you would like a copy of your family genealogy book, we will need the Chinese characters for the name of your ancestral village. There are 480 Chan villages in Taishan county. Romanizations of the Chinese characters is not reliable. If your grandfather is buried in Canada, a digital photo of his gravestone would probably have the Chinese characters for his name and the name of his village and then you could post the photo on the Forum - here are directions for how to do that: siyigenealogy.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=comment&action=display&thread=421Once, we can determine the name and location of your ancestral village. I can ask my Taishan nephew to go to your ancestral village, speak to the village chief, and identify village relatives and try to find and copy your family genealogy book from the village. if you need some general information about overseas Chinese from the SiYi region, please see the Vancouver Public Library website: www.vpl.ca/ccg/index.htmlor you can also visit my website: Tom Genealogy: mysite.verizon.net/vzepzaui/index.htmlFor a website dedicated to the Chan/Chen surname - see Al Chinn's website: House of Chinn: houseofchinn.com/As a Chan, you are very fortunate to have found this website because, Philip Tan has been very kind in posting the Chan/Chen lineage from HuangDi, the Yellow Emperor ( 2697 BC - 2597 BC) down to Chen Hui, the original Chan/Chen ancestor to come to Gunagdong province. The vast majority of all Chan/Chen descendants originating from Guangdong province are descended from Chen Hui and his 7 sons. Please see Philip's posted lineage: siyigenealogy.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=clanprogenitor&action=display&thread=845&page=3It looks like Helen Wong may have found your grandfather's name in the historical database. Welcome to our Forum ! Henry
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Post by philiptancl on Jul 2, 2009 15:48:02 GMT -5
Hi John Chan,
Welcome to the Forum. I had not been reading the Forum for quite a few weeks due to my other commitments. Last night Henry alerted me of you joining the Forum and that you are of the same surname as I am.
From what you have written I think you should be able to trace your ancestry to very far back without much of a problem. You may want to employ Henry's nephew Shi Cheng to locate a copy of your zupu or jiapu from your ancestral place. I am saying this because I am in the midst of compiling June Chan's (Alex in this Forum) husband ancestry back to the progenitor of his Chan line, Chen Pan Xiang (陳判鄉). I think she got JPEG copies of pages from her husband ancestral village's jiapu through Shi Cheng. June's husband and his father left Guangdong before World War 2 for Papua New Guinea. They are now in Australia.
Whilst I was away from this Forum, I was able to connect up my Chen/Tan/Chan/Chin (陳) ancestry to three others. One is my 16th cousin thrice removed (in Malaysia), the second one my 50th cousin thrice removed from New York and the other my 50th cousin four times removed from Boston. The ancestral villages of the Chen from New York and Boston are from Taishan in Si Yip.
Philip Tan
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Post by jmchan888 on Jul 5, 2009 18:00:02 GMT -5
Greetings to Helen, Henry, Philip, and Al,
It is indeed a blessing for me to find this forum and Al's web site. I really appreciate your warm welcome and willingness to assist. Without alot of Chinese schooling (3 years of Chinese education before coming to Canada), it is a challenge to read and write Chinese characters. However, I can still struggle through some characters.
I am looking forward in getting to know you folks better and be educated by you. I am super excited of the possibility in tracing my roots back to the Yellow Emperor and beyond!!!
Because I am illiterate in inserting Chinese characters in writing such as this, I am not sure how I can be accurate in translating my ancestor's village in the forum. Fortunately for me, Al had hit the bulleye in naming my village correctly in Chinese in his reply to my email. All I did was sounded my village into English and he was 100% correct in identifying it. Thanks Al.
What is the best method for me to get the Chinese character names of my ancestors and district and village to anyone of you??? Your response will be greatly appreciated.
This is a global family as I see Helen is from New Zealand; Philip is from Malaysia and both Al and I are from Canada. Where are you located, Henry, if you don't mind me inquiring?
Thanks again for all the valuable information and connection already. Looking forward to hear from you all again. Thanks and Have a great week!!!
Regards, John Chan
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Post by jmchan888 on Jul 5, 2009 18:35:06 GMT -5
Henry,
I had the pleasure of going through your web site which was most informative and interesting to read. I was intrigued with the generational poem. Is this generational poem applicable to all surnames???
Do you know of web site(s) that is of the LEE/LI last name that is equally informative as Al's web site of House of Chinn???
Looking forward to hear from you.
Regards, John Chan
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Post by Henry on Jul 5, 2009 18:59:57 GMT -5
Hi John, Well you have had more schooling in Chinese than Philip and myself - neither of us can read or write Chinese, however, we can recognize Chinese names and we both speak our respective Chinese dialects, Hokien and Taishanese. Well, if Al has already provided you the Chinese characters and Pinyin romanization - just cut and paste them into your next post to the Forum. But, before you do that, go to the tool bar at the top of the browser and click on "View", then click on "Character Encoding" and then select Unicode (UTF-8). This allows the computer encoding of the Chinese characters to follow the ISO standard - there are other national encoding standards that are used and will not display properly unless the same encoding standard is turned on - the Unicode is probably the most universal standard. Once, we can see the Chinese characters and romanizations for the name of your ancestral village name - then we can try to locate it for you on a map. Also. if you have the Chinese characters for the names of your grandfather and great grandfather and you want to engage my Taishan nephew to visit your ancestral village - then, let me know at "Tomclan@Gmail.com". My nephew can visit your ancestral village, contact the village chief, and have him identify your village relatives and also to try and find and make a copy of your family/clan genealogy book. This genealogy book is useful to identify and verify the relationships of village relatives and to preserve your family lineage. If you want to post images of Chinese characters - follow the directions I gave you: siyigenealogy.proboards.com/index....play&thread=421Or, if you want to start capturing images of Chinese characters and convert them into actual type Chinese characters that can be search on, see this information I previously posted on the Forum - these tools have saved me a ton of work and as you start to use them, you will also realize that they are truly useful: 1 "MWSnap" - a screen capture program: www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html2 "COCR2" - an OCR program to convert images of Chinese characters into actual Chinese text script: users.belgacom.net/chardic/cocr2.htmlCOCR2 Tutorial: users.belgacom.net/chardic/html/tutorial_cocr2.html3 "Nciku" [http://www.nciku.com/ ] - a program for using your computer mouse to draw Chinese characters and converts it into Chinese text script and provides the Pinyin romanization and serves as a English - Chinese dictionary 4 "Google" - provides super language capabilities: www.google.com/language_tools?hl=enCOCR2 handles well over 90 % of the scans of printed Chinese characters & even some handwritten Chinese characters, however, when it does not recognize the character - I go to Nciku and simulate the Chinese character with my mouse and I usually am able to get it - I used Nciku to get the typed version of this character for you. When you use MWSnap to capture images of Chinese characters on your computer monitor or saving scans of pages with Chinese characters- save it as a .bmp image. COCR only loads .bmp images. Henry
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Post by Henry on Jul 5, 2009 19:07:38 GMT -5
Hi John, I am glad you were able to gain some basic information from my website. Most Chinese clans have generational poems. They are unique to the specific Chinese surname and even within the the same clan - the generational poems will vary. An excellent Lee clan website is: archives.baycastle.com/archives/This website is managed by Ed Lee. Ed is a great guy and if you want to contact him, please let me know and I can put you in contact with him. Ed lives in California. I live about 30 miles north of Washington, DC in a suburban town, Frederick, Maryland. I am a retired US Federal geographer. Henry
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