As noted previously clues from DNA tests to find the ancestry of Mak Sai Pang (aka Mak Sai Ying and
John Shying) have been slow in coming. Patience is needed but each clue adds something to the picture.
The latest result may give some further idea of Mak’s broader
family situation. The match is an autosomal link to a man born in
Indonesia. His ancestry is a mix of Arab, Malay and Chinese.
What do we know of
this man’s Chinese ancestry?
His family story is that he had a Chinese great great
grandmother (that is five generations back) who was born in Singapore but moved
(not far) to Sumatra where she married an Arab man. At the moment, her name is
not known. The other detail is that she had 'small feet' - which probably means
that her feet were bound.
The common ancestor with John Shying probably
goes back one or two more generations – not too far historically.
So, what can we learn from this? This lady’s parents were based in Singapore
at a time soon after it ‘opened for business’ with the British world in 1819 – the year after Mak arrived in Sydney. The fact that her feet were bound suggests that the family was well to do. It’s a guess, but reasonable to surmise that her father was involved in
international trade.
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| Did Mak Sai Pang visit relatives here? Singapore River and Chinatown, 1824. National Museum of Singapore Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore |
The precise connection to Mak Sai Pang is, of course, more speculative
but it’s possible that one of this lady’s parents was a cousin to John Shying. Without
further participants coming forward to add to the data, it’s impossible to tell
which parent is related to ‘our Mak’. What we do have though is a general picture
of a broader family involved in international trade in the region with a definite connection to Guangzhou and a possible connection to Dongguan, an industrial city in the Pearl River Delta.
What next?
It is likely that this lady had siblings
also born in Singapore so there may well be others living there today who have
a ‘Mak’ connection. Hopefully further matches will emerge as DNA testing for
family history amongst Chinese families becomes more popular.
Perhaps 'our Mak' met this lady on his travels and knew
her parents.
Time will tell.