History

Ancestral Home

Kwangtung Province in the 1860s

Chock Chin was born on 19 November 1865.  He was born in Koon Tong (now called Guan Tang) village which is in the subdistrict of Kung Sheong Doo in the district (county) of Heong Shan (name changed to Chungshan in 1925) in Kwangtung (now called Guangdong) province.

Today that province is called the Guangdong province.

“Guǎng” (simplified Chinese: 广; traditional Chinese: 廣) means “expanse” or “vast”, and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226.[9] “Guangdong” and neighbouring Guangxiliterally mean “expanse east” and “expanse west”. Together, Guangdong and Guangxi are called Loeng gwong (Liangkwang; traditional Chinese: 兩廣; simplified Chinese: 两广; pinyin: liǎng guǎng; Cantonese Yale: léuhng gwóng; literally: “Two Expanses”). During the Song dynasty, the Two Guangs were formally separated as Guǎngnán Dōnglù (traditional Chinese: 廣南東路; simplified Chinese: 广南东路; literally: “vast south east region”) and Guǎngnán Xīlù (traditional Chinese: 廣南西路; simplified Chinese: 广南西路; literally: “vast south west region”), which became abbreviated as Guǎngdōng Lù (traditional Chinese: 廣東路; simplified Chinese: 广东路) and Guǎngxī Lù (traditional Chinese: 廣西路; simplified Chinese: 广西路).

“Canton”, though etymologically derived from Cantão (the Portuguese transliteration of “Guangdong”), refers only to the provincial capital instead of the whole province, as documented by authoritative English dictionaries. The local people of the city of Guangzhou (Canton) and their language are called Cantonese in English.

Learn more about it at Wikipedia.

Within the Guangdong province (similar to a state), the family lived in the district (or county) of Heong Shan (sometimes spelled Xiangshan or Heung-San).   According to Wikipedia:

Until 1925, Zhongshan was generally known as Xiangshan or Heung-san (Chinese: 香山; literally: “Fragrant Mountain”), in reference to the many flowers that grew in the mountains nearby.[1] The city was renamed in honor of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who had adopted the name Zhongshan. Sun is considered by both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China to be the “Father of Modern China“, and was from Cuiheng village – now part of Nanlang Town in Zhongshan.

 

Resources to Explore

Dig deeper into the history, culture, and genealogical resources that can help you expand your knowledge about Chock Chin and the family.

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Our Surname

In order to do genealogical research on a Chinese line, and locate your ancestral village, it is essential to know the Chinese character for your surname.  It is not sufficient to know how your family pronounces your surname, because the Chinese character is pronounced differently depending on where the family came from.  So looking for the Chinese character itself is the authoritative way to look for information about your family by surname.
When I set out to find out what the Chinese character for the Chock surname might be, I looked at the front page of our Jia Pu, to see how our translator rendered it (he included the Chinese characters for all the family names, along with the romanizations).   Here’s how it looks.  The romanization “Chuo” was added by my brother, Galen, after he consulted a Cantonese native speaker and asked how he would spell that Chinese character.
 I studied the character and came up with a little description of it to help me remember it —
a big T on the bottom, with a box on top that is open on the top left and has a dash in the middle, and a little sideways T on the top like a little hatchet.
I Googled for “how do you pronounce the chinese surname chuo” and found this Wikipedia page.   To my great delight, I realized that the Chinese character matches the one on the front of our Jia Pu.
Here are the notes about the name.
As you see, our family from Canton (Guangdong) would have pronounced it as “Cheuk” — which explains why it was spelled Chock when Grandpa arrived in America.
To locate the modern name for our ancestral village, I went to the VillageDB  —  a resource I learned about at some Chinese research sessions I attended at Roots Tech 2018 in Salt Lake City.  It took a bit of doing, but I found my way to what I believe is our village as follows.
  1. I went to VillageDB. This allows you to search for villages if you know a province and district name.
  2. I searched for villages whose names end with “Tong” in romanized spelling. (Koon Tong is how Dorothy spelled it).
  3. From the results, I found the District of Chungshan (spelled Chung Shan in Dorothy’s history).
  4. The subdistrict name seems to have changed (now Ha Chak). But it contains a village of Kwun Tong (similar to Koon Dong)
  5. The first family surname listed in that village is “Cheuk” — with the Chinese ideogram listed above — matching our Jia Pu cover.

See the listing here:  http://villagedb.friendsofroots.org/display.cgi?level=Village&id=6948

Update: Found the Village

Thanks to our fantastic Chinese genealogist Louise Skyles, we now know the name and location of our village.   The village name is still the same Guan Tang Village官塘村, located in Zhu Hai City珠海市。 Here’s the Google Map to it.

She said there are still hundreds of Chock/Zhuo relatives in the village, and a family member who is a retired teacher (named Zhuo Bing Quan 卓炳權 ) has recently compiled a comprehensive jia pu.  She hopes this will be a great aid to her research.

First Stop: Ka'u on Big Island of Hawaii

The family has no recorded details about why Chock Chin first chose to land at Ka’u on the Big Island, but that is where he first established himself.

Ka’u was known primarily for its sugar cane plantations and mills, and many contract workers were imported from different countries to work in that industry.

1884: Composition of the labor population in Ka`u includes 568 Chinese, 933 Portuguese, 116 other Caucasian, and 1,543 Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians.

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That was brutal physical labor, according to several published accounts, and plantation workers were frequently injured and killed, and often suffered greatly during their time in the fields.

Luckily, Chock Chin had the means to outfit himself to join the ranks of the other major workforce on Ka’u:  he became a Paniolo — a Hawaiian cowboy.

Cattle came to the Big Island and Maui via a gift from a British sea captain to King Kamehmeha I.

British Captain George Vancouver brought the first long-horned cattle to Hawai‘i in 1793 as a gift to King Kamehameha I. The grateful king placed a kapu (Hawaiian code of conduct)—carrying a death penalty—on their slaughter so they could multiply on Hawai‘i Island. Soon, there were enormous herds terrorizing everything in their path.

To contain the wild-eyed beasts, Hawaiian royalty summoned the seasoned cowboys of Old Mexico to the islands in 1832. The dashing vaqueros quickly taught Hawaiians how to tame the unruly bullocks. It’s thought the Hawaiian word paniolo originates from the Spanish word, español. These early island cattlemen are credited with supplying beef to the hordes of prospectors during California’s Gold Rush.

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Mounted paniolo accompanied swimming cattle, which were tethered to long boats, out to a waiting freighter in Kawaihae Harbor. A crane hoisted the animals up on the ship.