Journal of Chinese Australia, Issue 2, October 2006

Taishan Genealogy: An Australian internet resource for Sze Yap family history

Jon Kehrer

Nothing ever starts by itself and Taishan Genealogy (www.apex.net.au/~jgk/taishan/menu), an eclectic website for Sze Yap family history, is no exception. For me, the prompt to create the website was the death of my maternal grandfather, Harry Edward Hoyling, in Brisbane on 5 September 1970. It was then that I realised I hardly knew him and now that he had died, finding out about him meant research, and for a long time that was research in Australia only.

However in August 2001, I established the website, Taishan Genealogy, and progressively assembled any English-language resource that might be remotely useful in researching family history in Taishan County, Harry Hoyling's ancestral home. Not only did this educate me as to the peculiarities of research in China, in general, and Taishan County, in particular, but it also acted as a 'honey pot' attracting genealogical 'flies', some of whom eventually proved to be very helpful.

Taishan County

Taishan County itself, or more correctly these days, Taishan City, is located 140 kilometres west of Hong Kong and 100 kilometres south-west of Guangzhou. In Cantonese, it is known as Toishan, sometimes spelt in English as Toisan or Toisaan. It lies along the coastline of Guangdong province in the southwest corner of the Pearl River Delta, and was originally founded in 1499 as Xinning District, a name which has been variously romanised as Sunning, Sinning, Hsinning and Hsînnîng.

Website structure

The material assembled on Taishan County includes material which can be grouped into the following sections.

Research guides includes:

• Administration
• Books, articles and other secondary sources
• Family history centres
• Government records
• Maps
• Peoples and clans

There is a general lack of historical material publicly available for family history research in China due to a long history of wars, revolutions, riots, banditry, floods and famine, as well as the contempt of familiarity, self-assurance of cultural superiority and the ideological suspicions of a people traumatized by the excesses of communism and the horrors of national vivisection by foreign colonial powers. However, some material is available.

The website section on books, articles and other secondary sources is particularly useful, as many of these sources have been personally inspected and their usefulness assessed and particularised. In recent years, the scope of this sub-section has broadened to include more analogous material.

Peoples and clans is also particularly useful, primarily as it points to the website, Index of Clan Names by Villages for Toishan District. This database was created by the Chinese Cultural Center of San Francisco from material compiled in 1963 by the American Consulate General of Hong Kong. The beauty of this database is that villages can be accessed by clan name, which is the reverse of the original material. This is a great help in determining a possible ancestral village, as well as assessing settlement patterns for particular clans. However, the maps attached to the original material are less than helpful, as references are unspecific and the detail is indistinct.

Background includes:

• Abstracts of theses concerning Taishan County
• Chinese American contributions to the educational development of Toisan 1910-1940 by Renqiu Yu
• Climate of Taicheng in Taishan County
• Diaolous or Gold Mountain houses in the Wuyi region
• Extracts from the Hong Kong Government Gazette
• Chinese emigration the Sunning Railway and the development of Toisan by Lucie Cheng and Liu Yuzun with Zheng Dehua
• Churches of the Wuyi Region
• Geographical and historical notes on the Wuyi Region by Him Mark Lai
• Glossary of useful terms
• Languages
• Punti-Hakka clan wars
• Timeline

This material is particularly useful in reconstructing the times and places that moulded the character and actions of individuals and families, particularly in Taishan and Australia. This can help provide a more accurate and contemporaneous understanding of these individuals and families by family historians, and reduce the corroding influence of parochial bias and arrogance present in much modern thought.

Which sections or articles are the most helpful depends on the individuals and families being researched, though all can suggest new directions for research that may be profitable. A number have been cobbled out of inquiries over several years. Everything else is fully attributed.

Individual stories includes:

• Ah Haih - one woman's life in a Taishan village by Kate Bagnall
• Taishanese expatriates in Australia

The breadth and depth of the lives of those Taishanese with Australian connections are celebrated here so they may not fade from the collective consciousness of family historians. Hopefully these collected lives of real people will provide a balance to the dry detached mechanics of research. However, they are not exhaustive biographies and should be treated as indicative only. Sources have been fully attributed.

To date these biographies include the lives of Louis Ah Mouy (1826-1918), Cheong Cheok Hong (1851-1928), Chin Kaw (1865-1922), Mei Quong Tart (1850-1903), Sydney Fong (1878-1955), Fong Keep (pre1940+), Ham Hoy Ling (1843-1936), Lam Pan (pre1870-1910) and Lee Hang Gong (1836-1892).

Tan clan includes:

• Founding settlers of the Tan clan of Taishan County
• Honourable ancestors - my search for the Chinese connection
• Origins of the Tan clan name

These have been included from personal interest, and as an example of what can be done.

The Tan people entered north-eastern Taishan County in 1393, more than 100 years before it was excised out of Xinhui County, with tribes of the native Yue people still very much in possession. Most of the information about these and later times comes from the zupu, combined clan histories and jiapu, family registers; most of which are in private hands. Unfortunately very little is in English, and what has been found for the Tan people in this area can be seen here. That they exist at all should be encouraging for those researching other clan names, and an impetus to learn Chinese.

A published article on my research leading to my ancestral Chinese village and my Tan half-cousins has been included and updated. This has proved to be useful to others also trying to make that elusive link, though the Bureau of Overseas Chinese Affairs for Taishan County had never heard of anyone else being successful.

The more traditional route for tracing Chinese family origins is through literary references. Those for the Tan people has been included. That there are alternatives origins for almost every clan name makes this methodology rather dubious however.

Help includes:

• Correspondence and help
• Genealogical contacts
• Travel and tourism

There is very little available and what is here has been cobbled together from personal experience, as others who have this experience seem to be generally unwilling to share it. This is very common and seems to result from both cultural and historical considerations.

External links is a miscellany of links to various internet resources of varying usefulness, accuracy and dependability. Use them at your own risk, but they can be most useful.

Future plans

In hand is a translation of a Tan family history published by the Taishan City Government, an academic article on prostitutes in Guangdong Province which refers to Taishan County, a miscellany cobbled together about foreigners and their associations in the general area of Taishan County, university courseware on traditional Chinese family structures and administrative units, another cobbled together about the imperial Chinese civil service examinations and any examination results which still survive, and yet another on the imperial Chinese Customs Service run by the British.

However, if any readers have something that might also be properly included here, please contact me care of this journal. I will be most interested.

About the author

Jon Kehrer is an independent family historian, who has been researching the history of the various branches of his typically Australian family for 35 years. Early last year he discovered his Chinese roots stretching back 1100 years to the early days of the Five Dynasties.

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