Four families with a history of esophageal cancer were studied and their family trees analyzed. All the families had lived in Chaoshan for about 20 generations, speak Chanshan dialect, and generally have a predilection for drinking scalding Gong Fu tea and eating pickled Chinese cabbage. The majority of the esophageal cancer patients of the first generation were diagnosed 40 or 50 years ago after presenting with the typical symptom of dysphagia, whereas patients of the second and third generations were diagnosed mainly by means of radiography and pathology. The ratio of male to female patients was 14:5, which corresponds to that in the general population. The average age at occurrence of esophageal carcinoma in the patients studied was lower than in the general population and had progressively decreased from generation to generation.