1.The main way nowadays：
This is data obtained from interviews with 50 people from China’s Generation Z population.
Oral history and books are still the most dominant methods of family history and family information dissemination. The disadvantages of such methods are: 1. having to be present or owning the books; 2. in the current era of short videos, most people find it difficult to read a long text or listen to a long story; 3. lack of a sense of interaction and immersion, and difficult to connect emotionally because of generational or contextual differences.
2.Shortcomings：
It is also worth noting that oral histories require significant time costs to record and preserve. And because of the diminished enthusiasm for family culture in recent years, many of the older people who knew special stories have passed away, and much of the family history will be forgotten forever, which is a great shame. And after collecting a large number of oral stories, the cost of producing a book (as was common practice in the past) or a family tree would be around £30,000, and it would take a full small press (around 5 people) around 3 years to complete the compilation.
Genealogy of families with the same surname in different areas. Incomplete and geographically disorganized information makes correlation research difficult.（‘堂’ represents the family temples of a region, and the families of different temples would hardly be connected.）
It’s reassuring to know that as the web and technology evolve. Digital family history platforms are beginning to emerge, which solves the problem of the difficulty of preserving and the scarcity of paper books. At the same time, accessibility and convenience were enhanced. Well-known ones such as Ancestry.com, Chinese Roots Search, and Find Ancestors. However, problems such as privacy exposure, difficulty in verifying information, lack of management of the platform or excessive platform commissions have arisen. Meanwhile, problems such as emotional connection and long text reading still exist or even strengthened. For example, in the past, even though it is difficult to substitute the physical object of handwritten letters from ancestors, there are still internal emotional fluctuations. Digitized text or blurry photos, on the other hand, can greatly diminish the emotional value.
Ancestry.com：Lots of reading and information that is difficult to verify for authenticity.
Find Ancestors: underfunctioning, essentially software for locating ancestral graves and buildings.
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