Paper son

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed birth records, Chinese residents could claim more children than they had. The extra places were used for relatives or sold, and the newcomers studied coaching papers about their paper family before their interrogation.

For research, the surname in U.S. records may be the paper name, not the family's true one. A case file may describe a village and family that belonged to someone else, so compare the files of all the claimed relatives.