I am Samuel Tsen, the leading administrator of this website. This website was set up on the 16th of March 2009 and is currently maintained by the overseas descendants of YuanKeng Village from Sabah. If you would like to contact me, please feel free to drop me an e-mail me at chentsenfamily@yahoo.com or my personal e-mail, tzeeleong@yahoo.com .
I am one of the members among the overseas descendants from YuanKeng Village, currently residing at KotaKinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. I am the son of Alfred Tsen, grandson of Tsen Ket Nam, and great grandson of Tsen En Qing(恩钦). I am the third generation who were born in Sabah.
This website is inspired by Rev. Dr. Chen Lip Siong, whom is my uncle as well as son of Ket Yue(国岳), and grandson of the late En Hua(恩华). The main purpose of this website is to compile our overseas descendants’ information from Yuan Keng Village, ChangBu town, WuHua district, MeiZhou City, GuangDong Province, China.
Ever since the migration in the 1900s, our overseas descendants had almost lost contact with each other, and consequently do not know the root of their own family’s ancestry. For instance, I had no idea that my great-grandfather En Qing was actually the second group of overseas Chinese, who were recruited to volunteer in land reclamation by British Colonial government at North Borneo.
This information is crucial to our next generation, and therefore should be preserved in written records. An example of a written record is the pedigree chart that is used by our family in naming the next generation, which to my knowledge there are many Tzee (子) among our relatives, but I have no idea on its usage or the history of it. Our ancestors often used the following naming procedures when choosing a child’s name.
My sister, Tzee Mui who teaches at a university met a student whose name is Tzee (Nee - not actual name) but is not sure if we are actually relatives based on the key element “Tzee” from our pedigree chart or it may be just coincidence.
The records of our family’s genealogy are now online, and we wish to use this channel to keep in contact with each other. These records may also serve as references, or for tracing our ancestors and naming our next generation. The intention is to keep our genealogies of families from around the world updated as soon as we receive any information. We will use this website to announce any new additions, and also to inform of any deaths among our family members.
Most of the information published in this website was provided by my grand uncle, Ket Fu (国桴), son of the late En Wei (恩蔚), and grandson of the late Qi Guang (其光). He has taken almost 10 years to compile all information, mainly from speaking with relatives, the cultural practices by telling stories and passing down cultural information to the next generation. This was the way most of our ancestors received the stories of their elders before written language.
He published the 1st ever copy of the family’s tree booklet in handwriting on November 1988. Hence, there may be some errors occurred. The information was later typed into soft copy by my aunt Grace Tsen in 2009, she is the youngest sister of Rev.Dr.Chen Lip Siong. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions on genealogy or historical information of our family, please do not hesitate to contact and share with us.
Thank you.
from,
Samuel.
27 March,2009.
