Looking into the long past

Over the Christmas break I worked on digitizing the family tree. It was quite interesting work, apparently my family from Liam goes back twenty nine generations. From the fourteenth generation on there was detailed description of birth day on the Chinese lunar calendar, birth year under which emperor's rule, marital status, sons born, and when they died. I know that at least the family goes back to the Qing Dynasty but what my parents have is only a copy of the cliftnotes version of the actual family history, apparently there is an entire box of books with family history somewhere out there my father believes with one of the uncles.

My parents want to at least scan in the documents so that there will be a record somewhere in case the paper copy disappears. I want to do one better, I want to do as through a genealogists work up with a computer program so that we can have a more meaningful understanding of where and when my ancestors existed. Also I would like to have that genealogy reach to the modern generation of Yeung/Young family members (the east coast 楊 are spelled Ye/the west coast 楊 are spelled Yo). My father is one of ten children and from looking in the history my grandfather had the largest family in history. My grandfather and grandmother had 6 sons and ironically of those six sons only three of those sons had male children, which would make it my generation there are in total four male children who carry the family name, two already have children, myself and a cousin in California who is the son of my fifth uncle. My cousin Gene who is not really into making a family, and my brother Marvin. I would love to see the Yeung family name carried on to future generations.

Of course there are a number of problems in finding a genealogy program for recording the family history.

1. That is all of my ancestors had Chinese names, therefore any software I use must be able to support Chinese characters if nothing else just for their names.
   
2. I want to use a program that will exist for years and generations to come so I need a program that will be continued to be upgraded for a long time.
   
3. I don't really know enough Chinese to do justice for my ancestor's history.

I have been looking for a software that will do family trees but the only one that I have a sustained interest is Personal Ancestral File which is published by the Church of the Latter Day Saints. I do not agree with the beliefs and practices of the Mormon church, but the thing that they do well is genealogy, I know that this software will be supported for years to come since they have a fascination with genealogy.

It is somewhat humbling to realize that I am part of a much larger family, a family that has history that goes into the past for hundreds of years, that has survived war, plague, and hardship that are inconceivable today. I look at Liam and hope that he will help carry the family name for generations to come. On the other hand I hope there will be a world for Liam's children and his children's children to inhabit. I fear that humanity may have reached its peak, I fear that life will become increasingly harder, our resources depleting, the rise of extremism all around the world. I fear that within 30 generations humanity will cease to matter because we would have choked ourselves out of the picture with war and or pollution.

I hope that thirty generations from now some one like me is pondering the same questions as they try to create or update a family history for the Yeung family.