ON the first Saturday of every month, Daughter and I head down to the offices of the Cornwall Family History Society in Truro’s Lemon Street. It’s a fantastic resource stuffed to the gunwales with fascinating books about Cornish towns and villages, online subscriptions to genealogy websites like Ancestry, and lever arch files full of research representing the toil of others keen to know more about their forefathers, and generous enough to allow potential relations access to their work.

The centre is manned throughout the week, and once a month at weekends, by friendly and enthusiastic volunteers who know their way around the groaning bookshelves and the labyrinthine recesses of the internet. They rush to the aid of those of us baffled by the riches on offer; many’s the time we have arrived to find them already occupied in the service of visitors who have flown halfway around the world to learn more about the Cousin Jack ancestors who once mined Cornwall’s depths but had to leave these shores in search of paid employment in Australia, South Africa, Mexico, the USA.

So far, Daughter has drilled into her Cornish paternal grandmother’s family line, which includes five generations of doctors in St Agnes and has been traced back to agricultural Ladock and the Roseland peninsula in the 1700s. In the spirit of the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? the quest has taken us to family graves and the gates of former farms, now comfortable homes and/or holiday cottages.

Over Easter, however, we were given a wonderful opportunity to travel further – much further – in pursuit of my father-in-law’s history. Tom sailed to the UK from his native Hong Kong in the 1950s, and has retained strong links with the former British colony ever since, meaning our two-week trip was as much a voyage of cultural discovery as it was a sight-seeing mission.

Of course, there are plenty of attractions to wear out your shoe leather in this most vibrant of megacities, which is one of my favourite destinations of all time. We trammed up Victoria Peak for the classic view of Hong Kong’s vertical skyline; swam in the South China Sea; travelled by cable car to see a giant buddha through the mist; and took the bus along the 55km bridge–tunnel system linking Hong Kong to Macau, the longest sea crossing in the world.

We spent our cash at colourful night markets and ate countless meals in back-street noodle bars and tea cafes, often pointing at pictures on the menu (my Death Row last meal of choice is now a Hong Kong-style spam and egg sandwich - glorious).

But most meaningful of all was the journey into the remoter parts of the New Territories to explore the place where Tom was born, close to the border with China. In the company of relatives, we paid our respects at the family temple, the walls adorned with photos of my partner’s grandfather meeting Queen Elizabeth II. A respected educationalist who adopted many children, he received an OBE for his work in the community.

It was roasting hot, but compared with the bustling metropolis, the village was tranquil, the homes facing fields of green. Aside from the odd flutter of a butterfly, it was as if time had stood still.

But, like so many, this way of living is disappearing. While there was evidence of life – a washing line strung with clothes, the bark of a dog – many houses were empty and bordering on derelict. Those who stay either grow their own food or require private transport to access it.

In the temple, edible offerings left for the spirits had gone mouldy for lack of visitors to take it away. Those relatives who remain in Hong Kong have their own lives to lead, and admitted to not having made the trip for some time. We were deeply grateful to them for making the time to do so for us, as without their help, our own pilgrimage would have been nigh on impossible.

It was a deeply moving experience, another piece in the jigsaw of Daughter’s historical make-up, without which she might never have come to be. As such, it was an undisputed highlight of her holiday.

Daughter’s mind was blown, much like mine, by Hong Kong’s showiness, but it was the personal experiences that meant so much: eating dim sum with relatives, the bottle of orange juice gifted by an English-speaking stranger in scorching Macau.

After two weeks, our feet (and my hips) ached from hoofing it around in the heat and Daughter was dying for a Cornish pasty, or at the very least the familiarity of Grandad’s cooking. But now the dust has settled, it’s clear the break created memories that will last her a lifetime and underscore her place in the world.