Keith Kamisugi

The Chinese Culture Center’s “In Search of Roots” Program involves a yearlong commitment on researching one’s Chinese American family history and genealogy. After exploring their Chinese roots in America, participants will explore their roots in China through visiting their maternal or paternal ancestral villages in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong Province.

The program culminates in an exhibition of the interns’ research at the Chinese Culture Center in San Francisco, where participants share what they have learned with family, friends, and community:

January 18, 2008 to March 15, 2008
6:00pm to 8:00pm on January 18, 2008
Chinese Culture Center Gallery
750 Kearny Street, 3rd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94108

Twelve interns from the 2007 program present their journey throughout San Francisco’s Chinatown, the National Archives, and the homes of their ancestral villages. Each brought to the program their own personal history – their own life experiences, and their own identities.

Each was searching for something different and of course found distinctive answers, but very often discovered more questions.

This exhibit shows their journeys through the Pearl River Delta region of the Guangdong Province of China, and through the counties and municipalities of Guangzhou, Foshan, Doumen, Xinhui, Kaiping, and Taishan. See their experiences and encounters with water buffalo, long bus rides, towns, villages, cities and the people of their homeland.

These experiences brought the interns together in their unique quest and also brought them closer to understanding themselves, their family, and their history.