Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Who Do You Think You Are?: Julie Chen

Quite honestly, I didn't know who Julie Chen was but it didn't matter to me. I was so excited for the start of a new season of Who Do You Think You Are? that it could have been about an inanimate object, I would have tuned in to see it. Not surprisingly, though, Julie Chen and her ancestry is a whole hell of a lot more interesting than say a rock.

Chen is an American television personality and has been the host of the reality show Big Brother since it debuted in July of 2000. Obviously, it is not a show I watch. She is also a host on The Talk and an anchor on The Early Show. Again, I obviously don't watch morning television.

A few aspects of her upbringing struck me as intriguing right away. One, she was born and raised in Bayside, Queens. I had friends that grew up there and are around her age. maybe they knew each other...

And she is of Chinese descent and I have distant cousins who are also of Chinese ancestry and I know next to nothing about Chinese genealogical research. So I was captivated by this episode.

Not knowing a language other than English has impeded my genealogy research in European and even Canadian records. Reading Chinese seems even more challenging to me than trying to read French or German or even Czech. And Chinese naming patterns are entirely foreign to me. Julie, even though she is able to speak Chinese and knew some written Chinese, had various translators with her throughout her journey through China.

Julie first visited the National Library of Singapore where she met with Jason Lim, a historian from the University of Wollongong. Julie had seen her grandfather's English language obituary but there was more detail revealed in the Chinese language newspaper. There it described her grandfather as  having an "improper" childhood without an explanation as to what about it was "improper." This description perplexed and stayed with Julie through most of the episode. I could relate to that feeling of having to unpuzzle that description.

It was later revealed that her great-grandfather was appointed by the Emperor to oversee the Imperial Examination of young scholars. That position ended when the Dynasty abolished the exam, forcing Julie's grandfather to enter the workforce at just  13 years old in order to help support the family.

She learn the grandfather she never knew but had thought had always been so privileged actually made his own way in this world. I liked that this episode that further research into the lives of our ancestor can correct our sometimes improper and inform our always incomplete vision of the lives our ancestors led.

It was worth the watch and you can check it out online at TLC.com: http://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/who-do-you-think-you-are/



Monday, March 9, 2015

Quoted

Did you catch Who Do You Think You Are? last night?

I plan to write a review of the episode sometime before the next episode airs on Sunday, March 15 on TLC; time permitting of course.

But I wanted to document last week's event on my blog...
 
A week ago today I received an email from a gentleman inquiring if I was indeed the April Earle quoted in this issue of Family Tree Magazine. Shock to me, I am the April Earle quoted in the publication. The issue talks about how to organize your family tree research and the author quotes this blog. I created a database to hemp me manage my genealogy documents a long time ago for a database design class I took. It's a simple Access database consisting of just three tables but what it has allowed me to do in terms of reducing my load of paper documentation is amazing. Sometimes technology really does help solve problems and make life easier....sometimes.

http://www.familytreemagazine.com/cmsassets/pdfs/family_tree_tips_23_secrets_organize_your_genealogy.pdf

That is me in paragraph 2 on page 7!