My father, Hsue Chu Tsien (1915–1997), came from the "scholar-gentry" class in Hangzhou, China, where "Tsien" (now more commonly transliterated as Qian) is quite a common surname. Apparently in 907 A.D., Qian Liu, my paternal ancestor 34 generations ago, established a kingdom around Hangzhou and fostered its growth through many civil engineering projects. This fiefdom prospered peacefully under the rule of Qian Liu and his successors until 978, when they surrendered to the Sung dynasty to avoid bloodshed*. I had thought that descent from Qian Liu was an obscure secret of our family, but this factlet somehow found its way onto Wikipedia through no fault of mine. Furthermore, this genealogy is hardly much of a distinction given that everyone in principle has 234 ancestors from 34 generations ago. 234 (about 17 billion) vastly exceeds the earth's population in the 10th century, so practically everyone, at least from that part of China, probably has Qian Liu as an ancestor, even if not so strictly through the Y chromosome. By far the most famous Tsien in modern times is Hsue Shen Tsien or Qian Xuesen, the aeronautical engineer who was deported from the U.S. during the McCarthy era and then became father of the ballistic missile program of the People's Republic1. He and my father were first cousins. Several other Chinese-American bioscientists, including Robert Tjian, now President of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Shu Chien, a prominent bioengineer at UCSD, also have the same Chinese surname as mine and are likewise descended from Qian Liu, so we are distant relatives.