Daniel Chan, an 18-year-old second-generation Chinese American, knows his extended family lives in China but has never met them before. Born and raised in San Francisco, Chan will cross the Pacific Ocean this winter and finally meet them.

Chan, a freshman majoring in mechanical engineering, will visit Taishan, China, where his ancestors used to live, as well as Hong Kong as part of the Chinese-American Migration History Tour organized by the Asian-American studies (AAS) chair, Marlon Hom.

Chan’s aunt, who is married to a businessman in Hong Kong and currently lives in San Francisco, will make an arrangement for Chan to meet with them in the city.

“I don’t know what to expect. It would be a whole new experience to me,” said Chan. “Gaining a lot of understanding about why Chinese or other races came to the United States is the main point that I’m hoping for.”

A group of students, registered for AAS 629, which is a class based on selected topics in Chinese-American studies, joined by Chinese community members from the Chinese Historical Society of America will travel around Cantonese-American ancestral villages along the Pearl River Delta in the southern part of China near Hong Kong from Dec. 29 through Jan. 16. This is the fifth tour Hom has organized since 2000.

Visiting these villages will expose students to the Chinese culture and the origins of Chinese-Americans, who began migration to the United States because of the Opium War in the 1840s, according to Hom.

The students will also witness how their American experience in the middle and late 1800s influenced the delta by identifying commonality from the western culture.

“Students will have visual and physical recognition of why [their Chinese ancestors] had to leave the area for survival,” said Hom, who emmigrated from the delta when he was a teenager.

Hom expects the students to study the history of Chinese immigrants and how they had been treated by the U.S. government when the labor migration started in the 1840s before they embark.

“It’s an empirical trip. Students use the information they have,” said Hom. “I want students to look back to what kind of region [Chinese immigrants) were from and what the condition looked like in the local area.”

Like Chan, some of the past participants visited the villages their ancestors came from. Hom wrote an essay after the summer trip program in which he stated “this activity was very enjoyable for the members who made it to their ancestral village for the first time. It was an intensely enjoyable and yet memorable experience of self-discovery.”

Chan’s mother is from mainland China, and his father was born to Chinese immigrants coming from Taishan. Both of his parents encouraged him to join the tour.

“He has never been to China,” said Chan’s mother Marie Chan. “I believe one of the villages they are going [to] is where his grandparents were [from]. It would be interesting for him.”

Chan thinks that the travel to China would not be the same experience if he went there by himself for pleasure. The instructor will give the students detailed descriptions of what happened to the Chinese immigrants at the villages, Chan said.

The tour will visit history museums in Honk Kong, Macau, Guangzhou and other local villages. The group will also visit the Opium War Museum in Humen, which, as Hom wrote, exhibits “how chaos and desperation led to emigration from the Pearl Delta.”

The other focus of the program is on American influence on the villages after labor immigrants came back to their homes from the United States. The students will see the western influence on the village but also witness the villages that have not changed, Hom said.

Pictures from the previous travel can be seen at www.chsa.org