A few years ago, when a pair of brothers and two brothers were doing sanitation at home in Changsha, Hunan Province, they inadvertently turned out a pile of "rags"; at first, they wanted to sell it as waste, and then take a closer look, oh, no, this tattered line-bound book is actually a family tree!
The two brothers are named Li Keming and Li Ziheng, the older brother has been a teacher for many years and has retired, and he will clean up all the house with his younger brother when he has nothing to do, and this pile of genealogies is also turned over from the old cabinet of his uncle Li Yuxing. There are 23 volumes of genealogies, and although the paper is yellowed and brittle and almost cracked, the handwriting on it is clearly visible.
According to the genealogical records, this branch of them is the "Jianshan Li Clan", and the family tree was handed down during the Qing Jiaqing period, specifically in 1803 AD, and the ancestor's name was Li Dingchang. The genealogy records in detail the origin, ancestors, and distribution of their branch, and it is from this that it is known how glorious the ancestors of This originally infamous Li Dingchang has had a glorious past--he is the concubine of Li Shimin, the King of Qin.
The genealogy clearly records such a sentence: "Emperor Gaozu of Tang passed on the Miao descendants of the Thirty-two Lineages, originally from Longxi." "Miao refers to the descendants of a long generation, and Tang Gaozu is Li Yuan, the founding emperor of the Tang Dynasty. Li Dingchang was originally born in Jiangxi during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, belonging to the Humu Li clan, and later moved to Changsha, Hunan Province due to war and other reasons, and founded the Jianshan Li clan.
Hu Mang Li was the younger son of Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, the fourteenth son, and a descendant of Li Ming the Prince of Cao. During the reign of Emperor Gaozu of Tang, Empress Wu gradually gained power, causing dissatisfaction among the Li Tang royal family, and Li Ming, the Prince of Cao, and the deposed crown prince Li Xian joined forces against Wu but were defeated and demoted to the throne of Lingling County.
In 690, Wu Zetian officially proclaimed himself emperor, the country was called Zhou, and at the same time, Li Tang was killed and exiled to the imperial family, and Li Ming was assassinated on the way to being degraded. After Li Ming's death, his heirs were all assigned to Lingnan. It was not until 705 AD, when the chancellor Zhang Kamzhi launched the "Shenlong Coup" (Shenlong First Year), that Wu Zetian was forced to give the throne to Emperor Zhongzong of Tang, Li Xian, and the regime returned to the hands of the Li Tang imperial family, and all the Tang clan relatives, including the descendants of Li Ming the King of Cao, were able to return to the dynasty.
Due to the persecution of Wu Zetian and the hardships of the exile years, only a few royal sons could return, and only 4 of Li Ming's 5 heirs, Li Li, returned to inherit the title of Cao Wang; after Li Li's death, because he was childless, the title fell to Li Yin, the son of Li Ming's second son Li Jie.
In the blink of an eye, the late Tang Xuanzong period, in 755 AD, the Anshi Rebellion broke out, and the Tang Dynasty fell into the depths of the water. Li Longji was forced to flee to Sichuan Shu, and li gao (Li Yin's first grandson) the king of Cao at the time was ordered to serve as king of Qin, and King Cao entered the chaos of the late Tang Dynasty. In the last years of the Tang Dynasty, the political situation was turbulent, and the descendants of King Cao were determined to go into hiding due to the sudden change of the war situation, and became the Later Humeng Li clan.
If it were not for this genealogy, the two brothers Li Keming and Li Ziheng would not have known that their ancestors had such an exciting past, and through another Jianshan genealogy revised in 1948, they also learned that there was another historical celebrity who was also their ancestor, and that historical celebrity was Li Huangxian. Li Huangxian had been under the command of Zeng Guofan and was the father-in-law of Tan Sitong, a patriotic warrior and one of the "Six Gentlemen of Wushu".
Now that these genealogies have been handed over by the two brothers to the Hunan Library and the Xiangtan City Archives, they hope that this family glory can be better preserved and become a long-standing witness to their family inheritance.
Reference: Old Book of Tang