I was at a party last night. All three of us are 1.5 generation Chinese Americans from Southern China. Hearing from two different friends about their recent trips to their Chinese ancestral homes, gave me the impetus to finally finish this musing.

Step One — Read the Tombstones

Both of my parents and my grandmother are buried in Stockton Chinese Cemetary, which is actually in French Camp, across the road from San Joaquin General Hospital, where my brother had his tonsils taken out.

My parents share a tombstone. My grandmother’s grave is the next plot over. With the exception of the English versions of their names, everything else on both tombstones are written in traditional Chinese characters.

That was my first challenge: How do I read them? For decades I had been coming here. I could read their names and the dates of their birth and death, but I could not read the place from which they came.

Step Two — Learn Chinese

About eight months ago, I took up the task of learning Chinese (again). I had taken two semesters of Mandarin in college, decades ago. Another decade before that my parents had enrolled me in Chinese School at the same Chinese Benevolent Association that ran the cemetery. But I mostly played hookie.

This time, though, with low expectations, with a hope to learn some and to enjoy it, I have been slowly learning to read and write mostly simplified but also traditional characters.

It was a major breakthrough when I was able to use my finger to write out characters on my smartphone and get the dictionary listing and the stroke orders for those characters. Pleco has been a huge tool for learning Chinese.

Step Three — Look Up the Characters

I had been using Pleco to look up dictionary definitions and to learn the proper stroke order for writing Chinese characters, when I realized that I could now look up the characters on my parents/grandma’s tombstones.

Even though I didn’t know what I was reading, I could accurately enter the strokes into my app and find the characters.

廣東

Guangdong, a province in Southern China

台山

Taishan, a county-level city in Jiangmen, Guangdong

倉下

The Pleco dictionary did not recognize these two characters together as a proper name for a heung (鄉).

儀鳳

Likewise, Pleco could only give me the definition for each of the characters but did not recognize the two characters together was a proper name for a “sub heung”.

Steps We Skipped

I’ve been describing this journey in steps, but the actual journey was far from linear. A couple of “steps” that we skipped: (a) the characters on the tombstone were “traditional”, but the characters on most Chinese resources including maps were “simplified”; (b) The official romanization for Mandarin Chinese is in Pinyin, but my overseas resources were for Cantonese/Toisan.

Toisan (Cantonese romanization) vs. Taishan (Pinyin)

儀鳳 (Yu Fung, traditional) vs. 仪凤 (Yifeng, simplified)

There was a lot more going back and forth trying to translate Cantonese romanization/traditional characters to Pinyin/simplified characters.

Step Four — A Database of Chinese Villages

Who knew, that a group in Southern California has a database of Chinese villages?!

This was the second major technological breakthough. Not to mention, a huge labor of love for those who entered all these villages into the database. A lot of these places are only historical now. As overseas Chinese had left, villages became unoccupied and many were redeveloped.

When I found Shek Fa Heung, 石化鄉 I was almost certain that I had finally found my family’s village.

Shek Fa Heung had two subheungs: Chong Ha Heung (倉下鄉), the one on my parents’ tombstone, and Nam Hong Heung (南坑鄉). Chong Ha had 21 Fong/Kwong villages, and Nam Hong had 74 Wong villages. My mom, a Wong, had married my dad, a Fong. I was really close!

Step Five — The Last Mile

The last step to my ancestral village: 儀鳳里 (Yu Fong, Cantonese) (Ngei Fung, Toisan) (Yifeng, Mandarin)

Friends of Roots has my village listed with both of the names that I had learned orally from my mother, 鳳儀 and 蟹鉗 (Fung Yu, Hai Kim). Hai Kim (Hai Kam, Toisan) means “crab claw”. This is the place!

But the closest I can get on a map is to the Chong Ha Heung, which Open Street Maps lists as a “cun”, Cangxiacun. The Friends of Roots database gives these two links to Chong Ha: Open Street Map and Google Maps

My friends said, once they got close, they could hire a local driver to take you to the village.

Let’s go!