A jiapu, also called a zupu, is a traditional book that records family lineages. It preserves the family's bloodline heritage, often tracing back hundreds of years of history, usually focusing on male descendants, and serves as an important basis for studying family history.
Understanding Your Jiapu
Jiapu Guide
Your jiapu holds generations of your family's story. The Jiapu Guide helps you read and understand each part—even if you don't know Chinese.
A jiapu is not just a family tree—it records one clan's generational heritage, starting from the founding ancestor and continuing generation by generation.
Top-down arrangement: Starting from the founding ancestor, recording male descendants generation by generation.
Different recording methods for women: Wives are usually recorded only by surname, and daughters are rarely included.
Clan-centered: Focuses on presenting the history of a single family, different from Western family trees that often record the marital relationships of multiple families.
A jiapu is more than just a record of names. Its purpose is to preserve the identity and unity of the clan across generations. Many include not only charts of descendants but also biographies, migration histories, ancestral portraits, cemetery maps, family rules and teachings, generation poems that determined naming conventions, and detailed accounts of significant family events that shaped the clan's identity over centuries.
What's Inside a Jiapu?
Every jiapu is different, but most combine history, traditions, and detailed records. The following lists common contents, divided into three main categories:
Introductions and Origins
Preface
Surname Origins
Migration History
Examples
Table of Contents
Ancestral and Family Details
Ancestral Portraits
Cemetery Maps
Ancestral Hall
Family Rules
Family Teachings
Records and Charts
Pedigree Chart
Biographical Table
Biographies
Generation Poem
Postscript
How Do I Find My Jiapu?
A jiapu is not just a family tree—it records one clan's generational heritage, starting from the founding ancestor and continuing generation by generation.
Ask relatives – Talk to parents, grandparents, and elderly relatives. They may have a jiapu themselves or know someone else who has one.
Visit your ancestral village – Local elders, ancestral halls, or clan associations are often the most reliable sources for finding a jiapu.
You can use the Jiapu Guide to identify names, villages, and generations and other key information. After confirming your ancestors' identities, add them to the FamilySearch Family Tree to preserve this information and continue building your family tree.
Even if someone says your family's jiapu has been lost, there may still be hope. Many copies are often preserved through distant relatives, or through clan members who emigrated overseas before the 1960s. Some or even complete jiapu can still be found in places like Malaysia, Singapore, or the United States today. Keep searching—you may be surprised to discover that your family records still exist.
The place of birth is generally assumed from context. For most people in the jiapu the place of birth will be the same as the place recorded in the title of the jiapu. In this example—as in most jiapu—the title of the jiapu can be found on the edge of the page, with the place preceding the surname. In this example, the place name is written horizontally. Since classical Chinese characters are read from right to left, it should be "連山" not "山連". Additionally, if the characters are unclear, like the example, you may want to flip to the front of the book and check the cover or title page for clearer information.
The place of birth is generally assumed from context. For most people in the jiapu the place of birth will be the same as the place recorded in the title of the jiapu. In this example—as in most jiapu—the title of the jiapu can be found on the edge of the page, with the place name preceding the surname. In this example, the place name is written horizontally. Since classical Chinese characters are read from right to left, it should be "連山" not "山連". Additionally, if the characters are unclear, like the example, you may want to flip to the front of the book and check the cover or the title page for clearer information
If your jiapu has a short title like "Chen Family Jiapu", the title on the edge of the page won't be much help. In that case, you will have to flip to the front of the book and look at the cover or the title page, which will generally have the short title (Chen Family Jiapu) in big letters, followed or preceded by the place in smaller letters.
Most jiapu contain records for all family members in a single location, hence the assumption that everyone in the book was born and died in the same place. But a jiapu frequently begins with the first ancestor who moved to that location. As a result, it is common for the first ancestor (or first few ancestors) to have been born somewhere else before moving to the main location of the jiapu. You will have to check the biographical entry for the first ancestor or read the preface carefully to find this information. This will be challenging if you don't read Chinese, so you may have to ask someone to help you read or translate the first ancestor's biographical entry or the preface.
For a large, multi-volume jiapu, members of the family may have settled in many different places. In this case, the jiapu is generally divided into branches, with each branch representing a place where members of the clan settled. The place of birth would be the place mentioned in the branch name, which may be found on the edge of the page or on the page where that branch begins.
If you are entering the Place of Birth into Family Tree, the system will require that you select a "standardized location", which generally only goes down to the city or county level. In this example, you would have to select "Lianshan Zhuang and Yao Autonomous County, Qingyuan, Guangdong, China".
Place of Birth
Lianshan Zhuang and Yao Autonomous County, Qingyuan, Guangdong
How do you figure out where the place is if you don't read Chinese?
This can be a bit challenging, but here are some tips.
Look for the characters for province, city, county, village, etc.
Jiapu frequently omit the Chinese characters for province, city, county, etc., but when you do find these characters your job just got a whole lot easier. If your jiapu does have these characters, they are probably not going to be located in the title that you see on the edge of the page, but rather on the cover page or title page. Take a moment to look there and see if you can find any of the characters below:
English Translation
Traditional
Simplified
Mandarin (Pinyin)
Cantonese (Jyutping)
Province
省
省
Shěng
Saang2
City
市
市
Shì
Si5
District
區
区
Qū
Au1
County
縣
县
Xiàn
Jyun2
Town
鎮
镇
Zhèn
Zan3
Village
Village
村
村
Cūn
Township
Township
鄉
乡
Xiāng
Neighborhood
里
里
Lǐ
Lei5
Hamlet
鄰
邻
Lín
Leon4
Start with the largest place name.
It is easier to find the place you are looking for if you start searching for the bigger place (province, city, or county) and then search for the smaller place (town, village, township). Most place names consist of two characters (excluding characters for city, county, etc.). In this jiapu, the place name is 連山, and there are no other place names listed. If your Jiapu contains additional place names, start by searching for the larger or more prominent ones, as these are generally listed before smaller places.
Google Maps is your friend.
Begin your search in Google Maps. Google Maps is helpful because it gives you a lot of information in English and because it helps you find modern equivalents if the place name has changed a bit over time. It also gives you a map so you can see the place you are looking for. In this example, 連山 pulls up a map of a mountain, since 連山 can mean "Lian mountain." Of course, your ancestor can born in the mountains, however, there might be other place names that seem more reliable. In such cases, you should read the next tip.
Guess "city" or "county" if your jiapu doesn't provide that information.
There is a good chance that the largest place name is a city or county, assuming that it is not a province. You may want to check the list of first, just to make sure the place you are looking for isn't a province. In this example, searching by either 連山市 or 連山縣 in Google Maps gives you the same result—Lianshan Zhuang and Yao Autonomous County, Qingyuan, Guangdong.
Wikipedia is also your friend.
Once you find Lianshan Zhuang and Yao Autonomous County on Google Maps you will see a link to the Wikipedia article about the place that provides a history of the area and other useful information. And—lucky for you—it's in English.
Small places are hard to find.
This tip may not seem helpful at first, but with some experience you will find that it is true and that it helps relieve a lot of stress and saves you a lot of time searching for something that will not matter much in the end.
