My China Roots uses tech to restore Chinese-Indonesian ancestral names

For decades under President Suharto’s New Order regime (1967–1998), Indonesian citizens of Chinese descent were forced to adopt Indonesian-sounding names and suppress public expressions of Chinese culture, causing many to lose knowledge of their ancestral names and clan histories.

In 2016, after learning he had relatives in Hainan through a distant cousin, entrepreneur Huihan Lie realized the broader disconnect and founded My China Roots to digitize Chinese genealogy books (zúpǔ) using high‑resolution scanning and OCR, making them searchable in an online database.

By 2021 the platform hosted more than 15,000 digitized zúpǔ, offered a $150‑annual subscription for users to build family trees, and reported a growing number of Chinese-Indonesians reclaiming their Chinese names and engaging with their heritage.

Built a DB of 15k+ Chinese genealogy books, launched a subscription attracting many users, and sparked renewed interest in ancestral heritage among Chinese-Indonesians.

State‑sponsored discrimination under Suharto deliberately erased Chinese‑Indonesian names, breaking intergenerational transmission of ancestry.

Physical genealogy books remained scattered in libraries and clan associations, inaccessible to most diaspora members without travel or specialist access.

Entrepreneur Huihan Lie saw an opportunity to apply scanning and OCR technology to preserve and disseminate these records at scale.

China’s economic rise and shifting social attitudes have increased pride in heritage, creating demand for tools that facilitate reconnection.

Technology can bridge historical gaps caused by state-sponsored erasure, enabling diaspora communities to reclaim identity when provided with accessible, digitized ancestral records.

Since its launch, My China Roots has continued to expand its database, aiming for 100 million names, and has been cited by scholars and community leaders as a catalyst for renewed interest in Chinese-Indonesian family histories, with more users publicly using their ancestral names and participating in cultural events.