Wang Rongduo has hosted dozens of visitors with the same surname as his over the past three years, but has not met anyone who shared the same ancestry as him.

Wang, in his 70s, lives in Binzhou City in east China's Shandong Province. He knows the ancestors of residents in his village came from Hongtong in the northern Shanxi Province.

"Many visitors from Shandong or Hebei Province come to check their family trees with ours to see whether we shared the same ancestry," said Wang.

A family tree includes the history of a family, names of members and family instructions passed from generation to generation.

"As people's living standards improve, they have money and time to do such a thing," he said.

There have been multiple migration flows throughout history. During migrations, some were separated from others belonging to the same clans.People turn to family trees to get a clue about who their ancestors are.

"This shows the increasing popularity of family trees," said Chang Sixin, vice chairman of China Folk Literature and Art Society.

"Morally corrupt people are not qualified to be inscribed onto family trees," Chang said. "Family trees urge people to have good virtues and behavior."

"The concept of family can bring people some comfort as they migrate from one place to another during urbanization," Chang added.

Electronic family trees attract the attention of the young. Some netizens put their family trees on the Internet and try to find people from the same ancestry.

This could be another direction for the family tree tradition to develop, according to Chang.