Finding a genealogy and the people in it

1Choose a genealogy on the home page

Genealogies here go by village and surname: one village, one surname, one genealogy. Genealogies on the home page lists them, each card giving the surname, the village and how many people it holds; open one to reach its front page. From any other page, Genealogies at the top brings you back here.

2Find your village by name

Press Villages at the top for a directory of Taishan's towns, administrative villages and natural villages. Type a name into Find a village by name and press Search:

• towns, administrative villages and natural villages are all there, and so are the villages of the 1963 Index of Clan Names by Villages for Toishan District;
• type the characters, simplified or traditional, or pinyin such as tianchou - or the index's own English spelling, such as Tin Chau.

The places of today come first, each with its town and administrative village and the surnames recorded for it. Below them are the villages of the 1963 index, with the area and heung they were in then, the surnames the index gives them and, where it could be matched, the village it is today. Press Map to see them on a map, and List to go back.

3Find the villages of a surname

Know the surname but not the village? Type it into Find villages by surname and press Search: you get the villages that surname is recorded for, and below them the other villages the 1963 index gives it. The surname can be in characters, in pinyin or in the old English spellings - zhao and chiu both find 赵. Where one sound belongs to several surnames, such as wu, each is listed on its own.

Every surname is shown in simplified and traditional characters, in pinyin, in its old English spellings and in Jyutping, which helps when comparing it with old letters and papers at home. A surname beside any village's name is a link to the villages of that surname too.

4A village's own page

Press a village's name for its page. At the top is the town and administrative village it belongs to, with links that open it in Baidu Maps, Google Maps or OpenStreetMap. Surnames lists the families of the village; where the 1963 index records it, its name, spelling and surnames of that time are given below. A town's page lists its administrative villages with the natural villages under each; an administrative village's page lists its natural villages and their surnames.

If a surname of the village is missing, open the natural village's page and use Add a surname. No account is needed. A surname on the national list of Chinese surnames is shown as soon as it is added; any other is reviewed by a site administrator before it is shown to anyone.

The directory records villages and surnames only. Once you know the village, go back to Genealogies on the home page to see whether it has a genealogy here.

5Find a person in a genealogy

On the genealogy's front page, type a name, courtesy name or art name into Search this genealogy and press Search. A person's page, the chart, the statistics and other pages also have Find a name at the top: it opens a box over the page, lists people as you type, and takes you to the one you choose without losing your place.

Simplified and traditional characters both work, and so does pinyin - xiaoming or xiao ming. If you only remember how a name starts, the first letters alone will do: xm.

Names repeat a great deal, so each result gives the person's generation, father and grandfather, and the page of the book's PDF they were read from. Press a result to open that person's page.

6Search several genealogies at once

Not sure which genealogy? Use Combined search lower down the home page (Search at the top opens it too): tick the genealogies, up to 25 at a time, type a name, courtesy name or art name, and press Search. Each person found is marked with the genealogy they are in.