In practice, most people would define their ancestral homes as the birthplace of their patriline ancestors from the early 20th century, around the time when government authorities began to collect such information from individuals.
The Chinese emphasis on a person's ancestral home is a legacy of its history as an agrarian society, where a family would often be tied to its land for generations.
[citation needed] Forms that required listing of "ancestral home" (籍貫) included school handbooks to be signed by the parents of schoolchildren.
[1][better source needed] National ID cards issued in Taiwan by the Republic of China government formerly carried an entry for "home citizenship" (本籍).
Birth Certificates of Singapore issued by the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority carried the entries for "dialect group" (labeled as 籍贯 in Chinese) for newborn's parents.