In Chinese culture, hometown or ancestral home (Chinese: 籍貫, 祖籍 or 老家; pinyin: jíguàn, zǔjí or lǎojiā) is the place of origin of one's extended family. It may or may not be the place where one is born.
For instance, physicists Tsung-Dao Lee (Nobelist, 1957) and Charles Kao (nobelist, 2009) were both born in Shanghai, but their hometowns are considered to be Suzhou and Jinshan, respectively.
Definition
A subjective concept, a person's ancestral home could be the birthplace of any of his/her patriline ancestors. Su Shi limited it to five generations, i.e. it refers to the home of one's great-great-grandfather. Even more broadly, an ancestral home can refer to the first locality where a surname came to be established or prominent. Commonly, a person usually defines his/her hometown as what his/her father considers to be his ancestral home. In practice, most people would define their ancestral homes as the birthplace of their patriline ancestors from the early 20th century, around the time when government authorities began to collect such information from individuals.
An ancestral home is the place of origin of one's extended family, or the home owned and preserved by the same family for several generations.
China
The place of origin of one's extended family in Chinese culture and society.
Philippines
Ancestral homes in the Philippines kept by generations of the same family.
Germany
United Kingdom
See also
Ancestral houses of the Philippines are homes owned and preserved by the same family for several generations as part of the Filipino family culture. Houses could be a simple house to a mansion. Some houses of prominent families had become points of interest or museums in their community because of its cultural, architectural or historical significance. These houses that are deemed of significant importance to the Filipino culture are declared Heritage House by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), previously known as the National Historical Institute (NHI) of the Philippines. Preservation is an utmost importance as some ancestral houses have become in danger because of corrupt business people who have no regard for preservation, buy old houses in the provinces, dismantle them then sell the parts as ancestral building materials for homeowners wishing to have the ancestral ambience on their houses. These ancestral houses provide the current generation a look back of the country's colonial past through these old houses.
The Ancestral Home (Dom Ojczysty) is a political party in Poland, founded after the elections. It is a splinter of the League of Polish Families and led by Piotr Krutul.