Zhou Zhaoxiang 周兆祥

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周兆祥（姓氏确定；名字汉字”兆祥”系据拼音及周家辈分用字推测，待家族确认），1930年8月1日生于山东省青岛市胶州市 — 即此支周氏的远祖之地。胶州为半岛上的历史名城（现在的青岛市本身是19世纪末德国租借期以来才崛起的现代港口），是周家更深的地理之根。

他经历了战争年代和共和国初创时期，与孙云哲成婚，在青岛养育四个子女 — 包括周丽婕的父亲周玲及其弟妹周全、周爱琴、周爱华。2022年12月9日卒于青岛，享年92岁。

关于照相馆的更正（2026年6月，据丽婕的母亲提供）：本页早先版本曾写”他在青岛开办了第一家照相馆”，此说不准确。照相馆并非由丽婕的祖父开设，而是由他的表/堂兄弟共同经营。具体表兄弟的身份与照相馆的名号，待向丽婕的父亲请教后补正。本页页首及下文涉及”自己照相馆”的措辞，均应按此理解。

本页页首的这张肖像，最合理的读法是：丽婕的祖父坐在他表/堂兄弟的青岛照相馆里、影楼绘制的一张布景之前 — 那扇有着彩绘旋转楼梯、红地毯、玻璃瓶里插的花、深色镶板门的”客厅”背景画 — 他的右手边（画面左侧）站着一位约五岁、穿着印花上衣、戴粉色项链的女孩，是他的孙女 — 也是我妻子 Lijie 周丽婕 — 这把这张照片的时间锁定在1988年前后，那时丽婕的祖父已近六十岁。他的左手边（画面右侧）站着一位约十岁、佩戴红领巾的男孩，最可能是Lijie父辈兄弟姊妹这一支的表/堂亲，身份待确认。这是本档案中Lijie本人最早的一帧，也是档案中唯一一张她与祖父同框的合影。

照相馆之外，他每日坚持太极拳练习 — 这一缓慢的站桩冥想式拳法，塑造了一代又一代中国老人身姿。摄影机的精准与晨练时太极拳的从容 — 二者合起来，便是他度过九十多年人生的姿态写照。

再往前可追溯至他的父亲 周茂礼（1935年卒于胶州，时兆祥五岁），以及更上一辈的祖父母 周慧亭 与 冷氏 — 这是本档案目前周氏一脉记载最深的几代。兆祥的弟弟 周兆帧（1938年生）与妹妹 周秀珍 同属其手足一辈。

晚年合影

本档案收有周兆祥晚年与周玲、李恂（Lijie父母）合影一张 — 摄于一带有彩色花卉民间艺术墙画的活动室；周兆祥居中，左右为儿子与儿媳；后排立Lijie与Chuck。同次探访中另有一张与女儿周爱华夫妇的合影，存于家中，待补录入档案。

兆字辈

“兆”很可能是周氏字辈诗中的一个字。兆祥的弟弟周兆帧（1938年生于胶州市）名字中也带”兆”字 — 这通常意味着两人同辈，共用家族字辈诗中本代的指定字。若周丽婕的家中保存有家谱或字辈口诀，这首诗本身就是周氏档案中最有价值的文献之一。

注：除姓氏外，本页所用人名汉字均为推测，待家族确认或修正。

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English

Zhou Zhaoxiang was born 1 August 1930 in Jiaozhou Shi (胶州市) — the historic city-region just inland from Qingdao on the Shandong peninsula. Jiaozhou is the ancestral place for this branch of the Zhou family: it long predates the modern city of Qingdao (which itself only emerged as a major urban center after the late-19th-century German concession period) and remains the family’s deeper geographic root.

He spent the war years and the founding years of the People’s Republic as a young man, married Yunzhe Sun, and raised four children in Qingdao — including Lijie’s father Ling Zhou and his siblings Quan, Ai Qin, and Ai Hua. He died 9 December 2022 in Qingdao, age 92.

His working life involved photography — through one of the early Qingdao photography studios, co-owned by his cousin (per Lijie’s mother, June 2026; the studio was not his to found, and an earlier claim on this page that he founded the first photography studio in Qingdao has been corrected accordingly). The cousin’s name and the studio’s exact identity are open questions for Lijie’s father to clarify when he is able.

The studio portrait at the head of this page — Lijie’s grandfather seated in glasses with young Lijie standing under his right hand, a boy of about ten in a red Young Pioneer scarf on his other side, painted staircase backdrop behind — is most plausibly read as a frame taken in the cousin’s Qingdao studio, in front of one of the painted sets the studio used. Lijie is about five; her grandfather is in his late fifties, which places the photograph around 1988. The boy is most likely a cousin from one of Ling Zhou’s siblings’ families — identification still to be refined by the family. It is the only frame in the archive that holds Lijie and her paternal grandfather together.

Outside the studio he kept a daily tai chi (太极拳) practice — the slow standing-meditation form that has shaped the bodies of generations of older Chinese practitioners. The combination — the precision of the studio camera and the unhurried rhythm of tai chi in the morning — is a fair index of how he carried himself across nine decades.

A late-life photograph of Lijie’s paternal grandfather is in the archive: a visit with Lijie’s parents — the elder Zhou seated between his son and daughter-in-law, Lijie and Chuck standing behind, taken in a community gathering room with a colorful folk-art mural behind them. A companion frame from the same visit, with one of his daughters and her husband, is in the family’s keeping and will be placed when re-uploaded.

The Zhou family of Jiaozhou Shi extends further back than Lijie’s paternal grandfather in this archive: his father Zhou Maoli (who died in Jiaozhou Shi in 1935, when Zhaoxiang was five), and before him his grandparents Zhou Huiting and Leng, are documented as far back as Lijie’s family’s oral record currently reaches. Zhaoxiang’s brother Zhaozheng (b. 1938) and sister Xiuzhen complete his own sibling set. Further generations may follow as Lijie’s family is able to add them.

See also — family threads

Zhou Zhaoxiang is the Zhou-side anchor for two of the ten threads in the Family threads synthesis essay:

• Thread #9 — Crossing for what’s next — the Jiaozhou Shi → Qingdao intra-Chinese crossing in his own lifetime parallels Robert Earl’s Marietta → Stanford crossing in the same generation.
• Thread #10 — Building things (entrepreneurship across four generations) — the Zhou-side founder-entrepreneur instance had been provisionally attached to Lijie’s grandfather and the Qingdao photography studio, but Lijie’s mother’s June 2026 correction relocates that founder-entrepreneur slot to his cousin (the actual studio co-owner) and leaves the Zhou-side entrepreneur identification open until clarified.

Structured record: FamilySearch — Zhaoxiang Zhou (GM57-BKY).

Further reading

• Jiaozhou (Wikipedia) — the city-region (historically Jiaozhou Bay’s namesake) just inland from Qingdao; centuries-old administrative seat before Qingdao itself became urban.
• Shandong Province (Wikipedia) — the peninsula on which both Jiaozhou and Qingdao sit; Confucius’s birthplace; one of the historically central regions of Han Chinese civilization.