Here is a collection of resources that I have used in my family history research. With any luck, they will be as helpful to you as they have been to me!
Family History Databases
These sites are where you can store, organize, and visualize your family tree and all of the information you collect about your family.
RootsMagic
This is a downloadable program that allows you to create a personal family history database. I wanted a place where I could permanently store all of the data, create backups, and not have it all be accessible for others to edit. This holds the master copy of all of my research. Current price is US$39.95.
FamilySearch
This is the world’s largest free genealogy website. Sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which I am a member, it contains millions of digitized historical records, a collaborative family tree, and free consultations with family history specialists. It is completely free.
My China Roots
This incredible resource is one of the very few I have found specifically designed for those of Chinese ancestry trying to do family history research. It contains thousands of digitized Chinese genealogical records, including my first big break: the one that is the source of all of my current family tree.
They offer free trial access to their databases, which are available by subscription afterwards. They also provide individualized research, travel, and translation services quoted on an individual basis.
Chinese Translation
These are the sites and services I have used extensively to help me translate and understand the family records I have found.
Google Translate
https://translate.google.com/?sl=zh-TW&tl=en&op=translate
You may laugh, but without Google Translate, I would not have been able to complete the work I’ve done so far. The quality of their translation has gotten much better over the years. The tool does not typically understand fully genealogy-specific phrasing, but being able to look up the meaning of individual characters has helped me be able to piece together what is actually meant and then conduct better-targeted searches to learn more.
Qhanzi
This website allows you to draw a Chinese character into the box, which it will then match to the closest characters in its database. This tool has been invaluable for helping index records and sleuth out the most likely characters for those that have been damaged or partially covered.
Rachelle’s Lab
Rachelle is one of the very few people I have found who can translate Classical Chinese. Most translation services deal with only modern Chinese, and the family records I have been working were written in the early 1800s or earlier. She quotes specific projects and bills at an hourly (currently €40) or daily (currently €200) rate.
Calendar Conversion
Dates in pre-Modern China are given based on the lunar calendar in conjunction with dynastic years of reign. These resources help with converting these to the western Gregorian calendar for data input.
Chinese Wikipedia
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hant/%E5%98%89%E5%BA%86
In my family records, the year of an event is usually given as either the specific year of reign by an emperor or by the Ganzhi 干支, the two-character combination from the sexagenary (60-year) cycle.
The article Chinese Wikipedia article linked above is the entry for the seventh Qing Dynasty Emperor Jiaqing 嘉慶. In it, you will find a table for his years of reign that correlate them with both the Ganzhi 干支 characters and with the Gregorian calendar year. These tables are not available in the English language articles about the emperors.
To find your emperor’s Chinese wiki article, usually a four-character search of the Emperor name and the two Ganzhi 干支 characters will pull it up.
Chinese-Western Calendar Conversion Table
https://ytliu0.github.io/ChineseCalendar/table.html
Once you know what year the event took place, you can use the tables found on this site to convert the lunar month and day to a Gregorian date. In the future, I hope to create a video explaining the process, but for now, simply find the correct lunar month in the table and then use the date listed as day one when counting out the days.
As a note, if you see the character 閏 before a lunar month, it means an intercalary or ‘leap’ month, similar to the Gregorian calendar’s Leap Day of February 29th. Leap month’s can be found in the next-to-last column of the data tables on the site.
FamilySearch
Also listed under Family History Databases, FamilySearch will automatically convert Chinese character dates to a Gregorian date. Simply paste the characters into the date field for an individual, and the calculated date will appear and allow you to select it.
Please note that you cannot include any characters not pertaining to the date or it will not work. So characters meaning ‘birth’ 生 or ‘death’ 卒 or any names cannot be included. Also, in my experience it is not reliable for events prior to the Qing Dynasty, so I calculate all of my dates myself and then use this tool to check my work.