📖 中文版 — 点此查看中文导览 → · This is the English guide to Lijie's family; a Chinese-first version is at /zh/.
Eesley · Wildermuth · Zhou · Li
Lijie's family of Qingdao, Shandong — an English guide.
Welcome to Lijie's side of the family archive. This archive was built together by Chuck Eesley and Lijie Zhou 周丽婕. It records Chuck's American families — the Eesley and Wildermuth lines — alongside Lijie's family of Qingdao: her father's Zhou line and her mother's Li and Shang lines. This page is the English doorway into Lijie's side, for relatives on Chuck's side who want to know the people they'll meet.
Chuck's grandfather Robert Earl Wildermuth — a WWII B-24 navigator, a 1948 Stanford biology graduate, and a lifelong genealogist after the war — left a note on the last page of his memoir addressed to "the family researcher of the future." This whole archive is the next generation's answer to him.
The relationship backbone of the American Eesley line comes from Chuck's great-aunt Mary Eesley Bean's 1985 family history; the modern genealogy is maintained by Dale Eesley on FamilySearch and now carries more than 3,400 family members. The structured tree can be downloaded from the archive's GEDCOM page.
📖 If you read only one thing, read this: Family Threads — the values and practices that run across the generations. It's a synthesis essay that names the common threads running through three generations and across the Eesley, Wildermuth, and Zhou branches — education, patience, record-keeping, returning to the places that matter, service, humor, daily presence, the Japan-and-China curiosity, and the impulse to cross oceans for what's next — each anchored to specific people, documents, and places in the archive.
The Zhou and Li family of Qingdao
Lijie's lineage, as recorded from the updated family tree (June 2026), can be browsed by generation below. Each person's page carries both English and Chinese; names are shown in Chinese characters with the pinyin spelling beside them.
Lijie herself
- Lijie Zhou周丽婕Wife of Chuck Eesley.
Lijie's parents
- Zhou Ling周玲Lijie's father.
- Li Xun李恂Lijie's mother.
Grandparents
- Zhou Zhaoxiang周兆祥Lijie's paternal grandfather.
- Sun Yunzhe孙云哲Lijie's paternal grandmother.
- Li Zhongchu李仲初Lijie's maternal grandfather.
- Shang Yaozhen尚耀真Lijie's maternal grandmother.
Aunts and uncles
- Zhou Quan周全Lijie's paternal uncle; brother of Ling Zhou (Lijie's father).
- Zhou Ai Qin周愛琴Lijie's paternal aunt; sister of Ling Zhou (Lijie's father).
- Zhou Ai Hua周愛華Lijie's paternal aunt; sister of Ling Zhou (Lijie's father).
- Li Mengling李孟令Lijie's maternal uncle; elder brother of Xun Li (Lijie's mother).
- Li Bo李勃Lijie's maternal aunt; younger sister of Xun Li (Lijie's mother).
Great-grandparents
- Zhou Maoli周茂礼Lijie's paternal great-grandfather.
- Pang Huancai庞焕彩Lijie's paternal great-grandmother.
- Li Fengting李丰庭Lijie's maternal great-grandfather.
- Qiu Rongjing邱蓉镜Lijie's maternal great-grandmother.
- Shang DeChen尚德臣Lijie's maternal great-grandfather on the Shang side.
- Tan Chune譚春娥Lijie's maternal great-grandmother on the Shang side.
Great-great-grandparents
- Zhou Huiting周慧亭Lijie's paternal great-great-grandfather.
- Leng (Zhou)冷Lijie's paternal great-great-grandmother.
Great-aunts and great-uncles
- Zhou Zhaozheng周兆帧Lijie's paternal great-uncle — brother of her grandfather Zhaoxiang Zhou.
- Zhou Xiuzhen周秀珍Lijie's paternal great-aunt — sister of her grandfather Zhaoxiang Zhou.
- Shang Yaoxiang尚耀香Lijie's maternal great-aunt.
- Shang Yaofu尚耀福Lijie's maternal great-uncle.
- Shang Yaoli尚耀礼Lijie's maternal great-uncle — the elder of Yaozhen's two brothers (Li Xun's 大舅, her eldest maternal uncle, older than Yaofu who was born 1925).
- Li Yunhua李蕴华Lijie's maternal great-aunt.
- Li Chengwu李城武Lijie's maternal great-uncle on the Li side; brother of Zhongchu Li (Lijie's grandfather), Yunhua Li, and Yunying Li.
- Li Yunying李蕴英Lijie's maternal great-aunt; sister of Zhongchu Li (Lijie's grandfather).
Places
- Qingdao 青岛 — the modern hometown of the Zhou, Li, and Shang lines.
- Jiaozhou Shi 胶州市 — the ancestral place of the Zhou line, where Lijie's grandfather Zhaoxiang Zhou was born in 1930.
About the Chinese name characters
The surnames on Lijie's side — Zhou, Li, and Shang — are confirmed. The given-name characters (the part of a name after the surname) were the editors' best transliteration guesses until Lijie's family confirmed them. Confirmed names are marked "characters confirmed by the family."
Names confirmed by the family:
- Sun Yunzhe 孙云哲 — Lijie's grandmother
- Zhou Ling 周玲 — Lijie's father
- Zhou Quan 周全 — Lijie's uncle
About the generation-name characters
Chinese families often share a single character across all members of one generation, drawn from a generation-poem written by an ancestor. The tree suggests the Zhou grandfather generation was named on "Zhao" (兆) — Lijie's grandfather Zhou Zhaoxiang 周兆祥 and his brother Zhou Zhaozheng 周兆帧 share it — and the Shang maternal-grandmother generation on "Yao" (耀) — Shang Yaozhen 尚耀真 (Lijie's grandmother) and her siblings Yaoxiang, Yaofu, and Yaoli share it.
If anyone in the family keeps a genealogy book or a generation-poem, we'd love to record it — it's one of the deepest lineage documents a Chinese family can hold.
The rest of the archive
Chuck's American families (the Eesley and Wildermuth lines) are the larger part of the archive:
- Home
- All family members
- Long-form documents & memoirs
- All places (including Germany and England)
- Photo & letter archive
- 中文导览 — the Chinese-first version of this page
This English guide to Lijie's side was built by Chuck and Lijie. For any correction, addition, or name confirmation, contact Chuck directly.