Honoring and remembering our ancestors is a vital part of the Chinese culture. Ancestral temples like this are places for descendants to pay respects to the ancestors.

Find your ancestral village > 

Qingming Festival–aka Ching Ming Festival and Tomb Sweeping Day–is a one-day holiday honoring the ancestors. People clean their graves and offer gifts and food to them. 

Learn more about Qingming > 

Here is Honolulu Harbor in 1900. Our ancestors sailed from the ports of southeast China on ships like these to jobs and opportunities awaiting them in the islands.

Learn about the migration to Hawaii > 

 Clan genealogies have been recorded for thousands of years. Anciently they were written on bamboo slips like these, and carefully preserved in ancestral temples and palaces. Many of these are now digitized and available to descendants searching for their family history.

Find out more about Chinese records >