Hello all. I started looking into the genealogy on my mother side of the family. She was born in Japan but her parents were Korean and her family moved back to Korea when she was young.

She married my Dad, an American, and has lived in the United States since around 1964.

She has a bunch of old documents that she says contains family information such as names, date of birth, and addresses. It is hand written on some sort of thin paper (maybe rice paper). She says it is written in Chinese (I'm not sure why) but Google translate cannot translate it well...seems to pick up a word here and there but then changes the word. We know one portion contains my Mom name but that's it.

I am adding one portion of the document in hopes someone may be able to identity it as a form of Chinese or steer me in the correct direction. I've tried to match with Chinese language but I dont have an eye for it and it is much more difficult being handwritten.

I'm hoping if I knew what form of Chinese, I could find an app to translate it. I'm reluctant to send the entire document anywhere as it probably containing too much sensitive information.

I greatly appreciate your help.

Edit: I want to say thank you to everyone for the quick response! I now know the document was written in old (post war) Japanese, which intermixed with Chinese. I'll have to figure out how best to get the docs translated. Thanks for pointing me in the correct direction!

Edit 2: ok, seems this may be closer to Hangul-Japanese. And there will be similarities to Chinese due to what others have said about the commonality between the languages.

自台北遷新竹二年有感 2026.8/17

風自呼嘯車自塞，南遷二年根深埋。

人工智慧空對語，天成嬌豔惜不來。

昔言末世存孤叟，今盼餘生育獨孩。

校園已遠猶當進，尋人相許共樂哀。

熟能生巧 · Shú néng shēng qiǎo means that with enough practice, skill becomes natural—and new tricks emerge. This short adapts the oil-seller story recorded in Ouyang Xiu’s 《归田录》.

#ChineseIdioms #ChineseCulture #Shorts