The Cheung Family History
By Maxwell Cheung
Near the end of last millennium when China was progressively opened to the outside world under the communist regime, I was able to travel extensively within China. Inspired by my visit to my ancestral village in 1988, I decided to document the Cheung Family Tree and History, as far back as I can reach and as detail as I can get from my grandfather downward. In the old days, villagers were confined to live and work within a close proximity because of lack of mass transportation system. So the bulk of the family members lived in same location for generations, even as the size and number of families keep on growing. Although they had no problem knowing everything about anyone living in the village at any one point in time, they kept detail historical record as a tradition. Information such as names and number of children born at certain dates, their lifetime achievement, time of death and burial locations were recorded. As China being more opened, things are going at much faster paces while people are scattered all around the globe. The traditional recording practice became unattainable and impractical. On the contrary, accurate recording at this time is all the more important and meaningful, if younger generations want to know who and how they are related to one another. I hope this document gives some relief to such readers.
To keep track of a complete encompassing Family Tree is a monumental and nearly impossible task, due to the shear number of people involved. This document is focused only on the descendents of George Ying Kit Cheung (number 39th generation). However, in order to understand the origin and movement of the Cheung ancestors, it is attempted to include some additional references available in the open public domain.
Legend has it that more than 4,000 years ago, the Emperor's (黃帝) grandson, “Fay” (揮) was given the blessing to have the last name “Cheung” (張). Fay was a hunter and was good in making long bows. It is not a coincidence that the character “Cheung” is made up of “Bow” (弓) and “Long” (長). Unfortunately, Chinese characters were not invented at that time in the form as it is known today. They were still carving symbols on bones as a form of communication. Therefore, we can only treat this story as a myth or simply a fairy tale. Legend also said that they originally lived in “Ching Hor” (清河), in northern part of China. From then onto the 95th generation in Tong (唐) Dynasty, “Gou Ling” (九齡) lived in around “Log Yang” (洛陽). Five more generations after “Gou Ling” was named “Chet” (徹). “Chet” will be the starting generation in the next paragraph.
Starting from “Chet” (generation number 1), it was in Tong Dynasty. He lived in “Fang Yang”
(范陽). In the 4th generation, Cheung family started to move to Southern China
near "Kook Gong" (曲江). The 7th generation settled in “Sar Gong”
(沙岡). There were major wars during the 7th generation. Actual 
names in generations from 8th to 15th are uncertain.
In the Family Tree Chart, the calendar years are listed on the left most column. Various Dynasties are represented in different colors. The relative positions of the Calendar years, Dynasty transition as well as the actual person positions are only approximate.
George Ying Kit Cheung's Family Tree lists all boys and girls in the family. Individual information are linked by the name. You may click on the name you selected and the information about such person will appear to the next screen. Please bear in mind that these individual information are being collected and the webpage being constructed at this time. Most of the individual information are unavailable at this time. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please send in your personal information ASAP so we can complete this section. Your cooperation is deeply appreciated. Please send to maxcheung@cox.net.
There exist other Cheung Families who publish websites. One of the examples is listed above. It is interesting and rewarding to see the parallel effort and confirmation from this source. Please notice that our Generation #1 (Chet) is their Generation #7. We share in common several more generations from Chet before our path and their path diverge. Nevertheless, one can trace the commonality of the names among the rank of generations.