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Tracing back 115 Generations


Ming Sun Reading Room Society

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personal thoughts …

80th Anniversary banquet for the Ming Sun Reading Room Society (April 30, 2005)

Many things happened in 1925. Revolutionary leader and revered father of Modern China, Dr Sun Yat-sen had just passed away (March 12, 1925 at age 60), the Imperial Japanese Army was stepping up it's campaign of bullying it's neighbours, the Great Depression was choking along, and good ol' Canada was seeing it's second year of Anti-Chinese and exclusion.

It was interesting times indeed.

The MSRR Society celebrated it's 80th anniversary on April 30, 2005. There aren't too many "old country" members left, and most descendants of this organization have moved on and are not interested in it. The venerable old institution had served it's purpose – that of providing room, board and friendship for people and friends who's family name was Wong and had originated from Hoyping (Kaiping) county.

Fire …

I was very disheartened to learn that the facility had a major fire in 1999 and had suffered extensive smoke and water damage.

Almost every single historic photo, misc. documentation, family records, etc. were destroyed and thus discarded shortly after the fire. What remained was a small collection of old books all written in Chinese, and about a dozen old photos.

With permission, I have all the photos in my possession now and have tried my best to clean off the soot, dirt and mice turd (!) ...but the most fascinating collection are the old books. I asked one of the elderly gents on what these were, and he mentioned that they're a compilation of newspaper clippings from the US and Canada that documented Chinese and North American issues and relations... dating back to the early 1920's.

< Dr. Sun Yat-Sen . : : . Wong Hsing >

Among the few items that were thoughtfully rescued by the society were hand drawn portraits of Dr. Sun Yat-sen (father of Modern China) and a military person whose name I understand to be "Wong Hsing" in Cantonese, or "Huang Xing" in Mandarin (according to the folks playing mahjong while I was scrounging around). So I asked a few colleagues and friends in town who Wong Hsing was, and respected sinologist, Dr. Graham Johnson shrieked at me,

"YOU don't know WHO Huang Xing is?!! ". ...with tail between my legs, I googled the name and discovered the following:
Wong Hsing was a person who aided Dr. Sun in the revolution - a.k.a. his "right hand man"...

I did a bit more digging about and learned that he is in fact from Hubei (not a Kaiping son as thought by the elders). I mentioned this fact, but the elders gloated back and said, "Yes, but he's still a Wong!"

Well, okay... I'm now off to work on our family's genealogy. So far, we've been able to trace it back 11 generations. I am working on page 3 of generasian roots on all of this. Interesting stuff. Apparently, family genealogies occupy the top three categories of internet usage, after porn and sports. Over the past year, I've received emails from people all over the world exchanging ancestral stats to see if we're related.

I'm interested in hearing from others out there who are doing the same. Write to me (ideas @ generasian. ca)

Wong Family Genealogy ... going back 1,000 + years
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