At age 40, in 1988, he traveled to China for the first time, visiting Wushi, a hamlet in the coastal province of Guangdong, where he discovered that the Cheng family has lived for 26 generations, since 1044.
The trip animated him to combine his passion for genealogy with his mission as an educator and his belief in the importance of family history as an aspect of identity. Soon, he led his first group of young people to China in search of their ancestral villages.
Cheng then cofounded In Search of Roots, a San Francisco organization that annually selects about a dozen young Americans with Chinese or mixed ancestry for a yearlong intensive genealogical search, culminating in a trip to China.
It introduces them to cultural values, the history of China and the Chinese experience in America, including the more than 60 years of immigration exclusion that ended only in 1943.
“Knowledge of their Chinese heritage makes them stronger Americans and better people,” says Cheng. “They don’t have to imitate or adopt other cultures. They know who they are."
