The family of Rao Ruiye, a youth from Taiwan province, spent 23 years searching its root.

"The Raos in Taiwan are merely a small clan, but I was amazed to know in my childhood that there were many more people from my clan on the mainland," said Rao, who is from Miaoli county of the island.

"Once, coming with my father to Wuping county of Fujian province, I felt I was reuniting with them although I had never met them before," said Rao.

He made the remarks during a forum in Wuping on June 1.

In 1988, as both sides of the Taiwan Strait resumed civil contacts, Rao Hongqi, a senior member of the family in Miaoli, came up with the idea to search for the family root and he knew the root was on the mainland.

His efforts did not succeed until 2001 when he got evidence from an old family book sent to him from Guangdong province, according to Rao.

There are about 1,000 Raos people in Miaoli, the largest settlement of the family in Taiwan, said Rao.

Public data show there are more than 720,000 people with the surname on the Chinese mainland.

In recent years, Fujian province has been adopting digital measures to protect family books, according to the forum.

"The digitized family books could better help the clansmen separated by the strait to refresh common memories," said Lin Wenchang, an expert on family books.