Genealogy software built for Chinese clans — know where you came from, light the way forward.
ZhiZhu is a genealogy management system designed around Chinese clan records. Most genealogy software was built for Western family trees — a simple parent-child structure that cannot express how Chinese clans actually record their people. ZhiZhu was built the other way: clan rules first, software second.
It runs entirely on your own computer (Windows). No cloud, no account, no upload. Your family records belong to your family — not to any platform.
Chinese genealogy has its own grammar. ZhiZhu speaks it natively:
A son adopted by another branch keeps his position under his birth father and gains a formal position under his adoptive father. Both lineages display in parallel — a real relationship in the data model, not a note in a remarks field.
One son continues two branches at once. Each branch keeps its own wife and children, clearly separated by household. ZhiZhu tracks the multi-lineage state and enforces the correct recording of both.
A husband marries into his wife's clan and continues her family's line. The woman can found her own branch and act as head of household; children follow the maternal lineage automatically.
Every region calls these things differently — 過房, 頂房, 螟蛉子. ZhiZhu standardizes the database and translates to local wording on export, so the book you print speaks your clan's language.
In traditional genealogy books, married-in women were often reduced to a surname — "Madam so-and-so" — and married-out daughters to a single line: "married to such-and-such a place."
A name omitted is a thread cut. When her descendants come searching generations later, a surname alone leads nowhere. ZhiZhu records women in full: name, origin, parents, siblings, destination, children. It is not a feature we added. It is how the data model was written.
Enter the data; the typesetting engine produces the book. Four traditional formats — from the classic vertical "hanging pearls" layout to modern connected-line charts — in six page sizes, print-ready PDF with bleed and CMYK. No typesetting knowledge needed.
A clan of tens of thousands becomes a living starfield: each person a star, generations as orbits, parent and child joined by light. Rotate, zoom, click any star to trace its line. It stays fluid even for very large clans.
Excel, CSV, JSON, GEDCOM. Column names in over a hundred variants are recognized automatically — 父親, 爸爸, father all map correctly. Six-dimension cross-checking keeps duplicates out.
The interface switches between Traditional and Simplified Chinese in one tap, and exported books can be generated in either script. Overseas families can work in the script they grew up reading.
Export everything to Excel, CSV, JSON or GEDCOM at any time, free of charge, no permission needed. A century from now, the file will still open in any database tool — whether or not ZhiZhu still exists.
A family record should never be locked inside someone else's server. It should survive platform shutdowns, outlive companies, and remain readable decades from now — simply by opening a file.
We know this scene well: in many overseas Chinese families, the last words an elder leaves behind are a place name. "We came from Taishan — there was a big banyan tree at the village entrance." "The ancestral home was in Chaoshan, next to a pond by the ancestral hall." Nothing more. And yet those few words carry a family's longing across generations.
We do not hold anyone's data. What we do is connect: you give us a clue, and we ask among the clan-record keepers in China who may hold the other half of it. One person searching is finding a needle in the sea; many people searching together changes the odds.
Any fragment can be a beginning:
Opens our Chinese site — the interface supports both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Or visit the full site at zhizhuclan.com.
宗族數位化管理系統 —— 知所從來，燭照其往。
知燭是一套圍繞中國宗族譜牒設計的管理系統。大多數族譜軟體依循西方家譜的邏輯——簡單的父子樹，根本無法表達中國宗族真正記錄人的方式。知燭反過來做：宗法在前，軟體在後。
它完全運行在你自己的電腦上（Windows）。不上雲、不需要註冊帳號、不上傳。族譜資料屬於你的家族，不屬於任何平台。
中國族譜有自己的文法。知燭原生就懂：
一子出繼他房，在生父家保留血脈位置，在嗣父家建立承嗣位置——雙線世系並行顯示。這是資料結構層面的正式關係，不是備註欄裡的一行字。
一子雙向承嗣兩房，兩房各自娶妻，配偶按房歸屬，各房子女按生母歸屬清晰分離。系統標記兼祧狀態，並要求完整錄入兩房的配偶與子嗣。
男方入贅女方家族、承女方香火。女方可以獨立建支系、可以作戶主，子女世系自動對齊母系主幹。
同一個宗法概念，各地叫法不同——過房、頂房、螟蛉子。知燭的做法是底層標準化、表層柔性化：資料庫認標準術語，印出來的書用你的地方叫法。
翻開傳統老譜，嫁進來的女人大多只有一個「某氏」，嫁出去的女兒只寫一句「適某地」。
一個人的名字被省略，她後人的尋根線索就斷了。若干年後她的後人想找外祖母，翻到老譜上只有一個姓氏，什麼都找不到。知燭完整記錄女性：全名、來處、去向、父母、子女。這不是我們加上去的功能，是資料模型本來就這樣寫的。
錄完資料，排版引擎直接成書。四種傳統版式——從蘇式垂珠古法到現代垂珠連線版——六種開本，導出的 PDF 內建出血線與 CMYK，可直接送印刷廠。不需要學任何排版知識。
數萬人的大宗族化作一片活的星系：每個人是一顆星，世代是一圈圈星軌，父子之間以光線相連。可以旋轉、放大、縮小，點擊任意一顆星，串起他上下三代。
支援 Excel、CSV、JSON、GEDCOM。上百種欄位命名自動識別——「父親」「爸爸」「father」都能對上。六維交叉驗證去重，錯誤資料不入庫。
介面一鍵切換繁體與簡體中文，族譜書同樣支援繁簡輸出。海外華人可以用自己熟悉的文字查閱族譜、錄入資訊。
任何時候都可以把全部資料匯出為 Excel、CSV、JSON、GEDCOM——不需要我們的許可，不需要支付任何費用。一百年後，用任何資料庫工具都能打開這個檔案，不依賴知燭是否存續。
我們相信，一份家族的記錄，不該被鎖在別人的伺服器裡。它應該能穿越平台關停、超越公司存續，在幾十年後，仍能透過打開一個檔案而被讀取。
我們知道，很多海外華人家庭裡，長輩臨終前留下的最後一句話，是一個地名。「我們是從台山來的，村口有棵大榕樹。」「祖家在潮汕，祠堂旁邊有個池塘。」只有這些——但就是這幾句話，撐起了一代又一代人尋根的念想。
我們不持有任何人的資料。我們做的是中轉：你給我們一條線索，我們幫你去問國內正在修譜的人——他們手上可能正握著線索的另一半。一個人的尋根是大海撈針，一群人一起找，可能性就大得多。
哪怕只有隻言片語，也可能是突破口：
將開啟中文主站，介面支援簡繁中文。或直接訪問主站 zhizhuclan.com。