An introduction to a typical Chinese family tree. [Photo/Xinhua]

Fong was accompanied by Hai Miao, a 30-year-old from My China Roots in Beijing, a company that provides genealogical material for ethnic Chinese during their often emotional, sometimes eventful, and occasionally frustrating, searches for their roots.

"Between the 1850s and the 1940s, countless Chinese left their homes in South and Southeast China - today's Guangdong and Fujian provinces - for destinations as close as Singapore and Malaysia and as far as the United States and Canada," Hai said. "Driven by poverty and by hope, they set foot on foreign lands, struggled and thrived in their adopted homes. But what had happened before that? And for the younger generation, what was life like before the life they know? We unearth these long-buried stories for those who care to listen."

The company, located in a traditional part of northern Beijing, was founded by Lie Huihan, a sixth-generation Chinese-Dutch whose ancestors on both the paternal and maternal sides traveled first to Indonesia, which was a Dutch colony, in the mid-19th century, before leaving for the Netherlands in the early 1950s, when the newly independent Republic of Indonesia was shaken by anti-Chinese riots.

"My parents met in Holland, where I was born and grew up. Despite their Chinese looks, they spoke no Mandarin, and knew nothing about the family's days before Indonesia," Lie said.

In 2004, he moved to Beijing and spent the next few years studying Chinese while working for a foreign investment consultancy. He also managed to unearth some family history. In 2008, with the help of a distant relative who lives in South China, he visited Shimei, a village in Fujian.