RLP 138: Chinese Ancestry with Linda Yip

Nicole (0s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 138: Chinese ancestry with Linda Yip. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go, Hi everyone.

Nicole (43s):
Welcome to Research Like a Pro. How are you, Diana?

Diana (47s):
I am good. How are you doing today, Nicole?

Nicole (50s):
Great. I just wanted to read a listener spotlight today from A V Keir via Apple Podcast. And this spotlight is also a question and they said, “I love listening to your podcast over and over again. I want to share some of your first podcasts about organizing with a friend, and I can’t seem to find any episodes earlier than episode 36, please help.” Well, we’ve been getting this question from quite a few listeners and so I finally decided to do a little research and see what’s going on. So I noticed this listener is using Apple Podcasts and I found in a forum that Apple hides the older podcast episodes for podcasts that have a lot of episodes.

Nicole (1m 37s):
And so the answer to the question is that you have to click on the individual show in your library and scroll down to the list of episodes until you see available episodes. And then you have to click on that and it will give you the whole podcast feed. And then if an episode has a plus by it, you have to click on that. And then you have to add each older episode by clicking the plus one by one. So my suggestion is to get a new podcast app, because that sounds tedious and you don’t have to use the built-in Apple podcast app. You can get a new one like Overcast, which has a free version or Pocket Cast or Castro. And these all work with the iPhone, the podcast app that Diana and I use on our Android phones is called Podcast Addict.

Nicole (2m 19s):
And that one works great too. And it will show all of the episodes. So if that’s a problem that you’re having, then that’s our suggestion. So today we are excited to talk with Linda Yip. Hi Linda.

Linda Yip (2m 32s):
Hi Nicole.

Nicole (2m 33s):
I met Linda at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy in Paul Woodbury’s, Genetic Genealogy course and learned that she is an expert in Chinese ancestry, especially Canadian research. And she is a member of the Ancestry Canada advisory board. And she has a great website and blog called Past Presence. Linda, where are you from in Canada?

Linda Yip (2m 58s):
I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is the Western most province of Canada, right on the Pacific coast and above the state of Washington.

Nicole (3m 10s):
That’s neat because we lived in Seattle, Washington and we would go up and visit Canada there in that area. Yeah,

Diana (3m 16s):
Yeah, we went to Victoria. It was kind of touristy, but it was fun and it was just beautiful up there. I would have loved to have done more exploring Vancouver and that whole area, but then we moved to Utah. So have to go back.

Nicole (3m 28s):
So Linda, tell us more about your background and family history and how you got started in maybe your area of expertise now.

Linda Yip (3m 35s):
I got started with a question about my own family and roots. Like many Chinese, my family didn’t talk about the past and some questions were coming up for me about who am I and where am I from? And so I have been doing my own family research for about 25 years, but more seriously in the last four years since I started the blog, there’s nothing like a blog to up your game where you realize you’re you’re writing for an audience. And so the things that you write had better be correct.

Linda Yip (4m 15s):
When I first began that website, honestly, it was only to have a publicly available collection of resources for my own genealogy. Because until that point I had a spreadsheet and a handwritten list of books, and I kept buying the same books and forgetting my resources. And I started the blog with a question, which was what happened to the Chinese, where did civil rights come in? What was the story behind World War II and how did that fit in for myself? And so I did a three part, 6,000 word essay exploring the history of civil rights for the Chinese in Canada.

Linda Yip (4m 58s):
And that gave me a great framework for Chinese ancestry. And that is my area of expertise. Now I am a specialist in Chinese ancestry in Canada, and now beginning to explore into the United States and over into China.

Nicole (5m 13s):
I’m so curious. I want to read your 6,000 word essay. Now, can you tell us what you found?

Linda Yip (5m 18s):
What I found Nicole was that our family was confused on so many of the points of why things happened the way they did. And the essential question for me is why did people do what they do? What were the sociological aspects of their reasons? And I found by digging into the laws and the regulations and the environment that surrounded my ancestors, that I began to truly see how they got their confusion, because it was confusing for me.

Linda Yip (5m 60s):
And I actually have worked in the legal field as a legal assistant for a decade. And so if it was hard for me to understand the laws, how much more difficult would it be for immigrants who did not have the benefit of a university education the way that I did?

Nicole (6m 18s):
Absolutely. That’s so fascinating. Is that available in your blog?

Linda Yip (6m 23s):
It is, it’s “The Right to be a Canadian, the Fight for Civil Rights” and it’s a three-part series and it is on my blog.

Nicole (6m 31s):
Great, great. We will put that in the show notes. I think that will be really fun for people to read.

Diana (6m 37s):
Well, that was fascinating hearing you talk about the laws. The other thing I thought about was the language barrier. You know, your family was coming from China and of course the language is going to be difficult for the first-generation until everyone begins to learn English. And so of course the laws would be incredibly difficult to understand. I am so fascinated to go read your essay and learn about that. We talk a lot about understanding the law. So I love that you brought that up. Well, let’s jump to DNA and you and Nicole met in the genetic genealogy course. And I’m just curious, are you starting to use DNA to trace your ancestry, or what is your experience using DNA in your search?

Linda Yip (7m 22s):
Now, Diana you’ve really hit the nail on the head there with DNA and Chinese ancestry. I have been watching the growth of DNA and hoping that it would be a tool that I could use in Chinese ancestry. And so far I have found that the reference databases are not yet there for DNA as a useful tool. And they may be in the future. I explored this in a Facebook group on the weekend where I asked a number of other DNA specialists about their experiences with the history and culture, and shall we call it DNA reticence?

Linda Yip (8m 8s):
And I think Chinese generally with their history as a marginalized people are more than unusually suspicious of a scientific test where a Chinese family member would maybe share the gossip with you. But they, they hesitate when they’re asked to go on the record and DNA is like a big permanent record. And so during the course, I had the opportunity to study three different kits, one from a Japanese man, one from a half Chinese woman, and one from a woman with French descendancy from Quebec, Canada, and the differences among the DNA kits was fascinating in their usefulness and especially to do from my perspective, comparing the three.

Diana (8m 59s):
That’s so interesting because when we have the European history, we have so many matches. I have thousands upon thousands of matches. And so I can only imagine that it would be disappointing to look at your match and have very, very few, but I also understand that reticence among the Chinese population with the history of the 20th century. So I will be very curious to check back with you down the road and see if anything has improved or if eventually that will open up more. It’s just really an interesting point of view.

Linda Yip (9m 38s):
I think that while the older generations who grew up in that restrictive environment are suspicious well, they’re right to be, you know, it’s not for me to judge, but as our Asian populations assimilate into the Commonwealth and the United States, I am seeing a resurgence and an interest in family history amongst generations say second, third, I’m a fourth generation myself, but that is only going to grow as time passes. And so just because the DNA reference populations aren’t there now doesn’t mean that I don’t hold out hope for the future.

Linda Yip (10m 20s):
So I hope you’re right.

Nicole (10m 21s):
So talking about the reticence of some to take a DNA test, that reminded me of a comment we got recently on the podcast asking us to talk about that very topic. And I think we should in the future, but it is interesting, you know, when we reach out and ask descendants of a common ancestor to take a test, you know, maybe we’re target testing different descendants to add more evidence to our case. I have found many people are skeptical or nervous and they ultimately are unwilling to take a test. And so I think it is something that lots of people are wary of. And ultimately we just need to respect that. And it’s hard, but I agree with you, Linda, that if somebody doesn’t want to do it, we don’t want to push them or I forgot how you said it exactly.

Nicole (11m 8s):
But of course, we’re going to respect their wishes. Another question that I wanted to ask you is something that came up when we were talking to each other at SLIG, Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, one of the instructors was saying that typically in European genealogy, we think of ancestry being traceable back to about the 1600s or 1500s. And I was thinking about people from other areas. And then I thought of you because I know you trace Chinese genealogy. And so I wanted to ask you more about this and, and how does this compare to Chinese genealogies? Because I’ve heard that you can trace ancestry back much further in time.

Linda Yip (11m 46s):
Yes. My understanding for this comes from the SLIG course that I took January 2020 a year ago last month. I have to give credit to my two teachers, Dr. Melvin Thatcher and Eric Leech, who educated us about a framework for our Chinese Genealogy. And so in the basic level, Chinese have been tracing their genealogies for a thousand years. And you might think that’s kind of an exaggeration, but here, let me give you an example. And I’m going to have to use two words, but I will explain them. The first word is Jiapu.

Linda Yip (12m 26s):
And that means a family history book. And the second word is Zhupu. And that means a clan family history book. They are used interchangeably, but they actually connect together like puzzle pieces. Dr. Thatcher explained that the family history book, if you think of my family and my neighbors, family, and the family down the street, all of us have our separate families. But when we connect our separate family books to the wider community, we connect through the clan family book. And so each family historically had a copy of their family history book.

Linda Yip (13m 12s):
Then the family name association would have a copy of the clan history book. I personally have the huge, good fortune of having a Jiapu that counts me as the 24th generation of my line. If we assume that a generation is approximately 30 years, that takes my line back to 1300, which is astounding. But when I was in China, I had the fortune to go in October, 2019, I met family historians who thought nothing of tracing family generations back 35 generations, which if you’re counting, that’s about 940 AD.

Linda Yip (14m 0s):
Now some people think that their family trees are gone forever because during the cultural revolution, which was approximately the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s, briefly, people were forced to adopt new ways and get rid of old ways. And that included burning these books and their ancestral tablets. And so it’s a brick wall in Chinese Genealogy, but my philosophy is that really it’s just a documentary gap. If you can trace your family history, your own from you going back as many generations as you can, and then you can connect to these 24 generation to 36 generation books.

Linda Yip (14m 46s):
Then it is possible to leap over that gap in the center with a documented trail.

Nicole (14m 52s):
Wow. That is fantastic. I am just amazed at the idea of a book that would trace 35 generations in time. Is that on your mom’s side or dad’s side?

Linda Yip (15m 2s):
Okay. So excellent question. There are a few aspects about a Jiapu that I would like to explain, the first is that they are incredibly detailed. A good Jiapu will have the full names, all three names, the surname, the generation name, and the given name of all male heirs to the family line, plus potentially the full names of their wives. Plus dates of birth dates of death, places, a burial, and the generation poem could be attached to the back of this book and a generation poem idea.

Linda Yip (15m 46s):
So here, I have Eric leech to thank because he explained it to us, is a poem that was written for your family by the clan elder. And it espouses the values that your family should uphold. And each of the words in this poem are granted to each successive male generation in line. And so you see it’s like a naming convention. If you have four generations of the generational names, you can potentially link that back to the clan association book with the generation poem.

Nicole (16m 27s):
Wow. That is just amazing.

Diana (16m 29s):
Okay. So I think it’s so interesting that every research locality has a brick wall era, and you’ve explained that the one for Chinese Genealogy. So I’m just curious, what is the technique to get past that? You know, you mentioned it once you can get past that, then you can tie into the Jiapu and you can really go back far. What are some tips about researching Chinese ancestors in case someone is running up against that brick wall?

Linda Yip (17m 6s):
You have excellent timing. I have exciting news. For a very long time I have wanted a basic genealogy guide for Chinese ancestry that talks about aspects that are very specific to this branch of family history and the stumbling blocks. And so it’s much easier if I explain it by detailing some of the brick walls. For example, what is your actual name in Chinese, your surname, and then what is your generation name and what is your given name? Where do you find those records?

Linda Yip (17m 46s):
What are the names variations? What immigration records are available for your family and what ports do they come through? What is the name, Ah, and how come everyone in the 1880s is named, Ah, and how come all of the records list a woman with the name Shi and how come nobody ever thought to ask? That’s funny, every Chinese woman on all of these records we’ve ever written is named Shi, maybe that isn’t her name, but no, they didn’t think to ask. And so all females are named Shi, these are questions that I have been asking. And so I have written a book it’s called Getting Started in Chinese Genealogy.

Linda Yip (18m 29s):
And it was released to honor the lunar new year where I gather everything I have gleaned up till this point to get me a person who does not speak Chinese to the point of being able to trace their family genealogy. Another tip I have is find a good collection of resources. Now I have one on my blog, Chinese genealogy resources. There are also deep records at FamilySearch, where if you are familiar with the Jiapus and can navigate them, the family search has a large collection of Jiapus, plus a listing of 460 names in Pinion and in Chinese, which actually leads me to what is Pinion and what does the Cantonese equivalent of spelling Chinese and English.

Linda Yip (19m 31s):
And what is this third format called Wade-Giles, which are three things that I had to learn myself in order to do Chinese genealogies. So Pinion is Mandarin words in English Wade-Giles is also Mandarin words in English, but it was derived by two Cambridge professors. And the word for spelling Cantonese words in English is jiaping. And because the massive migration for the a hundred years from approximately 1850 to 1949 came from Guangdong province, which is Canton.

Linda Yip (20m 13s):
those immigrants spoke Cantonese as their common language, but of course their own language within their area.

Diana (20m 19s):
Oh my goodness. You gave us so many interesting things to talk about there, but I’m going to start with your book. Congratulations. I just, I’m looking at it on your website. You’re making me wish I had some Chinese ancestors to research because it looks like so many great tips are going to be in this book. I think we all, we want something to help us. Some are just getting started. And so any of our listeners who have Chinese ancestors or know someone who does don’t really want to take a look and see all the great resources Linda has here, some of the things I wanted to respond to as you were talking was this idea of the mass migration.

Diana (21m 3s):
And I think that is really interesting. We just did an episode about Irish immigration and the potato famine. And so it sounds like there was something similar in China that encouraged this mass immigration. Can you just talk a little bit about that? I’m curious to have my memory refreshed so the history there.

Linda Yip (21m 26s):
Absolutely for this, I have to thank the, the tour that I took in China, which was led by Dr. Henry Yu of the University of British Columbia and Dr. Celia Tan, who is attached to what is now known as Baiyun University in Guangdong, China. The mass migration occurred due to a confluence of events. There was a civil and political unrest combined with lack of rain, leading to famine, leading to a breakdown in the civil order of things. And so at once it must’ve been extremely hard.

Linda Yip (22m 7s):
I feel for them thinking back, because not only hungry, but also beset by banditry with no police system to protect. And of course, trying to have a family, you do what everyone wants to do to live, to survive, because it would have taken nothing lasts than a major shift to get so many people to look elsewhere. Then the home in which they grew up, Chinese are incredibly attached to their family, their nuclear family, their wider community, their associations, and their country on the whole, in a way that is central to the Chinese ancestors heart.

Linda Yip (22m 58s):
So when they were experiencing these phenomena, some early soldiers, a Sojourner to explain is a person who leaves the country to work in another country, but has their heart and their family in the home country. And so they aren’t resident in the other country, they travel back and forth. And so the early nurse who explored what they called Golden Mountain and what we call North America, it talked about the ability to make money, to make so much money that you could send it back to support your family. And then the gold rush happened in about 1860, in BC.

Linda Yip (23m 40s):
And so the gold rush, my understanding is that it moved up from the United States into Canada. And so migrants were following jobs work. It’s a bit of a misnomer. People think that, you know, Chinese followed the gold fields and they did, but rarely did a Chinese person actually, mine. There were a number of roadblocks in the way. Initially they were assessed specific mining licenses, which became progressively more expensive. And then they were often run off a gold strike before they were able to capitalize on that, but Chinese are resourceful.

Linda Yip (24m 23s):
And so they were able to find ways to make money doing anything that was available. And so an initial job for a Chinese person was laundry. And the reason is that it’s very inexpensive to start a laundry. You really only need water and some soap. And after that supplies with their internal collective, which I will explain, there’s a word for this called in Mandarin and in Cantonese, Guan Hai, which as I mentioned to a Chinese person, is very connected to their, their associations.

Linda Yip (25m 6s):
And you can think of it as trading current favors for future indebtedness. It’s I know a guy, it’s, Hey, do you know where I can get this food, do you know where I can get a job? do you know where I can find a place to live? Do you know how I can get started? It’s [?} And the family associations, that’s how they got started.

Diana (25m 31s):
So we’re talking this mass migration, 1800s, you know, starting with the gold strike in probably California in 1849. And then, like you said, moving up into Canada. And there was also the railroad building where a lots of Chinese came to work on the railroad 1850s, 1860s. So before that, did we have much Chinese immigration?

Linda Yip (25m 55s):
Yes there was Chinese migration and I’m doing work in historical Chinese migration to central BC. And I’m finding Chinese families in all of the now forgotten towns. But then these towns were large important centers, which catered to business. At that time the center of BC was predominantly the land of the indigenous. And there were no real, there were not winter roads, for example. And so to get into the interior of BC, you had to wait for the thaw, and then you would use waterways and wagons.

Linda Yip (26m 37s):
And then later, as you mentioned, Diana, the railroad. Andrew Anderdog was the supervisor for Chinese workers in British Columbia that were imported by the tens of thousands to work specifically on the hardest part, the final piece of the Canadian Pacific Railway CPR. And it was through the Rocky Mountains. And so for the years, 1881 through 1885, that work was done. And that’s the period of time that most Canadians think of Chinese migration, but I’m finding that migrants were definitely coming before the rail.

Linda Yip (27m 17s):
And then after the CPR, the railway connected Canada’s east with Canada’s west and tied the country together as was envisioned by the first prime minister MacDonald, it was also a way for European ancestors to easily migrate to British Columbia and thereby compete with Chinese who were already in the area.

Diana (27m 42s):
Well, that makes sense. That’s so similar to the history of the United States with the railroads connecting, and then you’re seeing people moving west so much easier. The thing that I just keep coming back to is that we cannot do genealogy without learning the history, because we’ve got to put our people in the context of their time and what was happening and trying to understand their motivations and how everything came together for them. So, you know, whether we have Chinese ancestors or European or African, you know, whatever we have, we have to figure out the history and really place our ancestors in it. If we’re going to make any sense at all of the records and the stories that come down to us.

Nicole (28m 28s):
So true. And it sounds like Linda, that’s kind of why you even got into genealogy is having those questions about why and the history surrounding your family and wanting to understand that.

Linda Yip (28m 42s):
Definitely it was like peeling, the proverbial onion, Nicole. Each question I found an answer and the answer didn’t make any sense. It was three more questions. And then 10 more questions until recently I had to look at the dominion elections act, which is the name of voting in Canada and its various iterations for not just Chinese, but Asians and black people. And pretty much every community that was disenfranchised. It was fascinating to see the difference between how the federal government treated voting and how the provinces treated voting.

Linda Yip (29m 25s):
And in order to trace the history of voting in Canada for Chinese and other Asian people, I had to keep popping back and forth and reading first, the federal and then the provincial fact of the federal. And so if it was hard for me to trace little bits of law as they were written, then I can’t imagine what it would have been like for my grandfather to understand what was going on for him, because the Chinese, were not granted the right to vote until 1948.

Nicole (29m 59s):
Wow and that does not seem like very long ago. No. So Linda, you mentioned earlier that you learned a lot from your Chinese ancestry course at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. And I think they’re offering that again this fall. So I wondered if you could share with our listeners any of your big takeaways or if you recommend the course, what you thought of it.

Linda Yip (30m 28s):
Yes. Yes. I learned about the Chinese ancestry course when my friend Marissa Louie Lee was researching for instructing at the course. And initially I thought when I sat down on day one that I had a little bit of a head start in Chinese genealogy and that feeling disappeared by the end of day two. I am still using those lessons today. Every aspect of the work that I do is informed by those courses, how well they were laid out, the explanations with discussed with regards to Jiapu the history of genealogy, the generation poem.

Linda Yip (31m 12s):
These are not things that I knew before that course. And so not only do I highly recommend any person interested in Chinese genealogy to take this course, even if they have never explored to Chinese genealogy before, because it is geared to, you’re starting at square one straight through to someone like me who has been doing it 25 years, but I would also consider taking it again just as a refresher, because as a student, it don’t, you find that your first run-through when you learn a thing, you pick up your knowledge at the very edge of your knowledge.

Linda Yip (31m 54s):
It’s like rolling out pie dough, right? So your knowledge tacks onto the very edges of the outer ring of the pie dough. And then as your dough gets wider and wider and covers more ground, if you hear more information, it adds to that extreme edge of your learning. You hear different things. In the same way that when I read, I pick up different things with a really well-written book.

Nicole (32m 20s):
That was a great analogy. I love the pie dough. I think that’s so true that we can’t really absorb everything all at once. And it does make sense that we pick up those things that are right at the edge of what we know and so refreshing and taking the course again, always is helpful. Thanks for that recommendation. And I’m sure there’s some listeners who will appreciate that. Well, that reminds me of

Diana (32m 41s):
The statement that you don’t know what you don’t know. I’m sure going into the course where you felt pretty confident. And then as you said, after day two, it was all new things that you’d never thought of before related to Chinese genealogies just kept popping up. And I know I felt that way with so many different courses and books as I’ve been learning. And I think that’s why we love doing genealogy. There’s always something new to learn and it keeps us sharp and keeps us excited and interested. Now we are familiar with all of our favorite repositories for the kind of genealogy we do. What are your favorite repositories? What is there available for Chinese Genealogy in Canada?

Diana (33m 22s):
Or you said you are even branching into the U S.

Linda Yip (33m 27s):
To explain the repositories I need to tell you a little bit about law because that’s the framework that you need to know in order to approach it. So in roughly the same time period, approximately 1882 in the United States, 1885 in Canada are two massive pieces of legislation were enacted in the United States. This piece of legislation was called the Chinese exclusion act. And in Canada, the more confusing Chinese immigration act. My understanding from working with the records pertaining to the Chinese immigration act is that they effectively meant that all Chinese, regardless of place of birth in Canada were immigrants.

Linda Yip (34m 14s):
They were not residents. They had no rights. Therefore, if you treat the history of the Chinese and Canada, up until the repeal of the dominion elections act and the Chinese immigration act as really the history of immigrants in the country, that helps you inform the repositories. So the National Archives in Canada are called Library and Archives Canada. And it’s sister organization. Heritage Canadiana is like the digitized repository, Library and Archives Canada is where you’ll find the finding aids and now single search box, which searches more of their databases at once, which people didn’t really understand that it used to not be like that, that would you use the search engine it was only searching certain repositories.

Linda Yip (35m 8s):
I have found records at Heritage Canadian pertaining to the Prime Minister. His notes informed me hugely on what was going on within the Asian commissions, the Chinese commissions, usually into immigration and trying to stop immigration. At Library and Archives Canada is a deep repository of digitized records of what are called Chinese immigration number nine certificates, which are only one of a whole series, Chinese immigration certificates that Chinese people had to apply for.

Linda Yip (35m 51s):
But CI9s are a reentry permit. Any Chinese person in Canada could leave the country. The trick is coming back. And so if you wanted to come back, you first had to apply for CI9. And then when you returned to the country, the CI9 perhaps had a notation on your re-entry. The depth of information on these certificates is astounding. Everything from a birth where you came from your village of origin and potentially your name in Chinese, a photograph where you left the port of entry, the name of the ship, when you came back, the names of the officers. And so anyone who would like to know more about Chinese immigration certificates, there is excellent breakdown on the Vancouver Public Library website, which has been doing a phenomenal job of collecting and making sense of what the records are.

Linda Yip (36m 49s):
At this point I now need to speak about the Seattle NARA office, where Chinese Exclusion Act records are kept because these two acts worked in tandem. And so any Chinese person leaving Canada and even so much as visiting Seattle on the weekend would have gone through an immigration process. It wasn’t like a casual border crossing. It was like a full-on process they needed in that case, a Canadian leaving for the United States apply for a CI-10 certificate, which is a specific one for the U S I was able to acquire my great-grandfather’s CI-10 plus his Chinese exclusion act case file, which an interesting thing about case files is that they are chain linked.

Linda Yip (37m 40s):
It isn’t just the record of the person who went. It is also attached to everyone that they went with. And in my great-grandfather’s case, he took members of the family. And so I have CI-10 files for 10 family and extended family members, which have photos and questions, and they asked how much money he made and what his net annual income was. And anytime you can get a hold of a Chinese immigration file, whether Chinese immigration act case file in Canada or Chinese exclusion act case file in the United States, which are in Seattle, they’re at San Bruno, I understand they’re also at Kansas City, Missouri, each of these NARA and Library and Archives, Canada repositories, potentially hold case files, well-worth finding.

Diana (38m 33s):
I think it’s so interesting that whatever area you’re researching, there’s a great record, you know, that you’re just excited to get ahold of. And so that’s fascinating to learn about what that could be for our Chinese ancestors and that border crossing record. Oh my goodness. Photos as well. How neat.

Nicole (38m 55s):
Absolutely. So neat. So Linda, our last question is, can you share about a favorite research project that you’ve been working on

Linda Yip (39m 6s):
Now that I finally finished the book for the writing? Let me tell you a brief story about a father-son, which just resonates with me. Alexander Won Cumyow is widely known in Canada as being the first Chinese born in the country. He was born in Port Douglas, British Columbia, which is about 150 miles east of Vancouver. He was unusually gifted with language and clearly a hard worker because I traced him as acquiring legal education. So we are talking about 1880 here, which is roughly the same period as the CPR, with the importation of Chinese.

Linda Yip (39m 51s):
And then the completion of the CPR. However, Alexander was, I should tell you his full name, Alexander Won Cumyow he was about to take the bar as a lawyer as you do, but in July, 1885, the Chinese immigration act was enacted. And this prevented Alexander from being able to be a lawyer. However, he took his legal training and used it to work as a court interpreter among other jobs. My understanding of what a court interpreter does was hugely expended by working on his family line, because it’s not only translating word for word, what is asked, but it’s also explaining to your client what is going on in the legal system.

Linda Yip (40m 39s):
And this is where Alexander would have been an unparalleled interpreter. So when Alexander had his family, his son Gordon Won Cumyow. Gordon also aspired to practice the law like his father. So he hurdled the barrier to get into UBC, the University of British Columbia. And in his second year in 1918, he was on track to be a lawyer. And at this point, the student branch of the British Columbia law society had a secret clandestine meeting where they decided and rewrote their rules and regulations for accepting it person of Asian descent to the bar.

Linda Yip (41m 26s):
So Gordon protested, he filed another legal brief. He pointed out the flaws in their argument and they used those flaws and that legal brief to close the loopholes that he pointed out. But Gordon didn’t give up. In 1950 when he was 52 years old, Gordon won his lawsuit versus the British Columbia Law Society to be admitted as a notary public to practice in the province of British Columbia. He was the first Chinese thus called. And when I think about the wider implications of his father and what Gordon brought, they literally made it possible for Chinese and other Asians to practice law in British Columbia.

Nicole (42m 19s):
Wow. That is an amazing story. What a great example. Thank you. That sounds like so much fun to research too.

Linda Yip (42m 26s):
Oh yeah, it was. And I get goosebumps actually, when I tell it and because it just resonates so strongly with me and knowing the history of the laws in Canada and to see this breakthrough happen for a historic family like this.

Nicole (42m 43s):
Thank you so much for sharing that with us. It has been so fun talking with you and I’ve learned so much in the last 45 minutes. Really appreciate you sharing so much with us. And I’m excited about your new book and I’m going to put a link to that in our show notes so that anybody who wants to check it out can go to your website and see it. Yes. Thank you.

Diana (43m 4s):
Thank you so much, Linda. I love learning about new research areas and just thinking about how there is something for everyone in their genealogy research, right. You know, we have all these different lines that we can follow and there’s always an adventure out there. So anyone with a little bit of Chinese ancestry or a lot of Chinese ancestry can embark upon this adventure because you have now given everyone sort of a roadmap. So thank you.

Linda Yip (43m 35s):
Thank you, Diana.

Nicole (43m 35s):
All right. Our listeners have a great week and we’ll talk to you next week. Bye Linda bye-bye

Linda Yip (43m 42s):
Bye-bye.

Nicole (43m 40s):
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