Yvette Arts

The days are indeed winding down to Monday when we head to China. We will be visiting Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Guilin, Yangshuo and Hong Kong. We have been researching to find out the best contacts in these areas. I’ve learned much about the Chinese way of doing genealogy since we started on this quest to find the family history movers and shakers who have connected with their past.

Did you know traditionally women were not listed in Confucious’ genealogy? Confucius was recorded in the Analects as saying: “Women and people of low birth are very hard to deal with. If you are friendly with them, they get out of hand, and if you keep your distance, they resent it.” Professor Liu Shifan, vice president of the International Association of Confucianism, states that the “new” way of compiling Chinese genealogy is to include women in the family tree. Kong Lingren, a 76th generation descendant of the Confucian family and former vice chairwoman of the All-China Women’s Federation, said she was delighted to hear of the inclusion of female descendants in the family tree. (This information was taken from a July 7, 2006 report in the Shanghai Daily.)

According to a news report from Tan Xian in the Shanghai Daily, (thanks to our WorldVitalRecords.com member D. Fish who alerted me to much of this information) the Shanghai Library should finish putting together the world’s largest Chinese family tree index by the end of this year. The work is the collaborative effort of many Chinese-language libraries in different countries and the Genealogical Society of Utah.

The Shanghai Library has a room dedicated to genealogical researchers. The library’s collection covers several hundred of the 5000 Chinese surnames. The library is first compiling the index into a series of books which will include millions of names and more than 50,00 family trees. The library will later convert the index into an online service so that anyone (not just the library patrons) can access the information from their home or local library. We will visit this library next week. We’re so excited!

When I was in high school, I heard a talk about China. A fact was mentioned during the talk that seemed to indicate that 1/4 of the world’s population spoke Mandarin. I immediately thought that I should learn the language and have something to do with the people of China sometime in my life. I dreamed that I would one day influence the Chinese people in a positive way through use of media.

That dream began over 25 years ago. I did take a class in Mandarin in college but it was difficult for me to learn the language. I took a history course on China. I worked in Los Angeles for a couple of prominent Chinese business people.

I now work for a fast-growing Internet genealogy company. We have two web sites. The first web site is an online database of genealogical and historical resources found at WorldVitalRecords.com. The second site is a free social networking site for genealogists and family historians called FamilyLink.com. Our goal is to help every genealogist in the world be more successful. This means that the Chinese people are included in that goal. There has got to be some interest in genealogy in China!

For the next couple of weeks I will be researching to find out any connections with genealogy and China. I want to know who does genealogy in China, to what extent has online genealogy has permeated the market, how a social networking site for genealogists should be adapted to fit the culture, and any other information that would be helpful.

And why am I doing this? I will be going to China in two weeks from today! Although I will be going there mainly for a vacation, I want to maximize my time while I’m in the country. This dream of positively influencing the Chinese people just won’t go away. And I think that connecting people through family history and genealogy can have such an amazing effect on people’s lives.

So…if you have any ideas, suggestions, information that relates to genealogy and family history in China, please contact me at yvette.arts@gmail.com.