"Quanzhou: World Marine Trade Center of Song and Yuan China" successfully applied for heritage in 2021. Since then, Quanzhou has gone out of China to the world. It tells the world about China's history in its own way. The city, which was praised by Mark Polo, welcomed the birth of Li Zhen in the Ming Dynasty. But it unexpectedly brought us back to Zheng He's voyage to the West.
Because of the inadvertent discovery of the "family pit" with information about the ceylon country, he also found the princess of the ceylon country, Xu Shiyin'e. However, after the world knew her identity, this princess chose to give up hundreds of millions of family properties and return to the ordinary life in China. Today Xiaobian will take you into the story of the princess of Ceylon.
Perhaps everyone is unfamiliar with Ceylon, because this name is recorded in ancient China, and the current ceylon country is called Sri Lanka, which is a tropical island country located in the Indian Ocean sea. If it were not for the discovery of the "Shijia Pit", we would never have known that there was still a princess of a country living in China, and even many people would not know that there was such an incident in the history of Zheng He's voyage to the West, which is well known to the Chinese people.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, China was during the Ming Dynasty, and Zheng He went to the West seven times, which is now the Indian Ocean. For the Ming Dynasty, it was a broad alliance of the world's countries and pushed the Ming Dynasty from the sea to the world. Sri Lanka, on the other hand, is the gateway to East-West maritime traffic in the Indian Ocean.
But China's friendly exchanges with Sri Lanka date back to before the 1st to 2nd centuries BC. It is recorded in the "Book of Han and Geographical Records". The "Monument of Zheng He Ceylon" records in detail the specific events of Zheng He's arrival in Ceylon. However, according to the History of Ming, Zheng He had died in 1459 and was in the town of Zhu Qi, the emperor of Ming Yingzong.
The king of Ceylon sent his son, the prince of ceylon, Glison Shara Shali, to pay tribute to the Ming Dynasty with countless rare treasures. In order to enhance the friendly cooperation between the two countries. At that time, Zheng He's nephew Zheng Yuan joined the company in Quanzhou. It was unusually happy to hear that the Prince of Ceylon was coming.
Because he had been to Ceylon as a retinue of Zheng He when he was young, he was not only warmly treated by the ceylonian state, but also treated as a guest of honor, and received no less treatment than the royal family of the ceylon state. And Chinese is very hospitable in ancient times and now, not to mention the guests who once treated themselves warmly.
Therefore, Zheng Yuan asked Zhu Qizhen for orders to personally escort the prince of Ceylon from Quanzhou to Beijing. Zhu Qizhen was unusually happy after seeing the countless treasures paid by the prince of Ceylon, and said bluntly: Yongjie has made good friends between the two countries, not only returning many treasures of our country, but also leaving the prince of Ceylon to stay in the capital for a year.
When he learned that the kingdom of Ceylon believed in Buddhism, in order to show his sincerity, he specially presented a porcelain statue of Guanyin Bodhisattva treasured in the palace to the prince of Ceylon. This porcelain statue was not only exquisitely made, but also printed with the words "Great Tomorrow Shun Emperor Offering", which was considered a great honor by people at that time.
The prince of Ceylon lived in the capital with the mentality of learning Chinese culture, but because he did not adapt to the winter in the capital, he was infected with wind and cold. Zhu Qizhen hurriedly asked Zheng Yuan to take him to Quanzhou, where the climate was relatively warm, to recuperate. Zheng Yuan even let the prince of Ceylon live directly in his own mansion, Xu is unsatisfied with the water and soil and the wind and cold invasion, this maintenance is a few years.
In 1466, the prince of Ceylon returned to China bye Ming Yingzong Zhu Qi. Just as he was about to leave, he rescued a seriously wounded Ceylon soldier, and when he saw the prince of Ceylon, he begged the prince not to return home. The prince of Ceylon did not understand, but still stayed in Quanzhou to heal the soldier.
However, the news that the general woke up and informed the prince of Ceylon made him very devastated, it turned out that during his mission to the Ming Dynasty, the king's health deteriorated, and the cause of the illness could not be found until his sudden death some time ago. The prince went on a foreign mission and did not return, and his life and death were uncertain. The throne became uninherited, and the king's nephew Barolada not only did not assist the new king, but also sought to usurp the throne.
He brutally killed all the other sons and nephews of the king, and sent assassins to find news of the prince in order to cut the grass and root it out. And the soldier was secretly instructed by other princes to pass on the news, who knew that the leaking wind was being hunted down and killed all the way. Now everyone in Ceylon thinks that the prince has long passed away, and the prince is extremely sad when he learns everything. With his current ability to go back, he was also sent to death in vain, so he could only think about it in the long run.
After Zheng Yuan learned of what had happened in ceylon, he quickly bought a house for the prince of Ceylon and secretly sent the prince and his entourage to live there. But the prince still couldn't let go of his country in his heart, so he sent his retinue to sneak back to Ceylon in secret. But after waiting for a whole year, there was no news. A year later, when the prince learned that his entourage had returned home, he had not yet made contact with the prince when he was found by Barolada and imprisoned.
In order to learn the prince's news, Barolada tortured the retinue severely, but the retinue preferred to die and was eventually beaten to death. The prince was so grief-stricken when he heard this that he had no choice but to push the day of his return trip back. But with the passage of time, the prince is 39 years old.
So he decided to settle in Quanzhou, and under the introduction of Zheng Yuan, he married an Arab woman. The woman, surnamed Pu, was an Arab aristocratic woman who fled into exile in China. In order to hide his identity, the prince changed his name and took the first word of his name, "Shi", as his surname, and his full name was Shilipa Jiao laja.
His descendants also inherited his surname and bought a property in Quanzhou and started a business. Not only that, his descendants also participated in the Chinese imperial examination, and the family also became a famous and prestigious family in Quanzhou, and held a prominent position in both the Ming and Qing dynasties. Although it is not known how many children Sripa Kagyalha had, before the arrival of the prince of Ceylon, there was no written record of the family and things of the people with the surname "Shi" in China.
However, in 1618, during the Wanli period of Emperor Ming Chengzong, there was a person named Shi Huanwang in Quanzhou, and during the Qing Dynasty, there was also a famous person named Shi Huanwang, who was "peach and plum full of the world". It can be said that the family is a well-known family at that time or after. Why did it end up with no reputation?
This matter must start from our "exiled princess" Xu Shiyin'e. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, there was no more hearing about the Quanzhou family, and later China experienced the baptism of war until the founding of New China. At that time, my country embarked on the development of diplomacy and resumed friendly cooperation with Sri Lanka. In 1985, SriLan sent a cultural delegation to Visit Beijing.
In the process of exchanges, our country learned that during the Ming Dynasty, the king of ancient Ceylon had visited China and had not returned, so the head of the Sri Lankan exchange delegation wanted to ask China to help find the descendants of the king. It turned out that the prince of Ceylon had already inherited the throne at that time, but because he wanted to send an envoy to our country, the old king was the overseer of the country, so the state of Ceylon was still called a prince.
After looking up relevant documents, in early 1986, this news was published in the Quanzhou Evening News, although it caused a great sensation at the time, many scholars also re-examined the history of the Ming Dynasty, and also found envoys from ceylon, but there was no follow-up record.
In 1996, when Liu Zhicheng, an archaeologist in Quanzhou, was investigating the Qingyuan Mountain Ancient Tomb Group in the eastern suburbs of Quanzhou City, he accidentally found a large stone with three large characters written on it, "Shijia Pit". Even though the search for the descendants of the kings of Ceylon has been going on for a long time, they often deal with these things and will not forget, Liu Zhicheng immediately realized some things.
So he continued to search for the "family pit" and found that it was very likely to hide the ancient tomb group of the family. He immediately joined hands with the local cultural relics protection department to investigate and study it, and this ancient tomb contains ancient tombs of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and many tombstones are engraved with the words "Ceylon Envoy". This further enlisted Liu Zhicheng's ideas.
However, this matter was quickly published in the major newspapers, and many curious people also went to the tomb to watch. In order to prevent tomb robbers from attacking them, the state decided to list the Shijia Pit tomb as a key cultural relics protection unit to prevent tomb robbers and unscrupulous people from destroying it. The Quanzhou Overseas Transportation History Museum will also store 28 Ming and Qing tombstones found in the tomb group and store them in the museum for protection.
Only at this time, a family in Quanzhou had a phone call to Hong Kong. The phone call was made by Xu Shiyin'e to her father who was far away in Hong Kong. When Xu Shiyin was young, her great-grandmother could still hear her grandmother every day, muttering something again. Once she saw that her great-grandmother was still sober, so she made a fuss about the old man telling her a story.
So her great-grandmother said I'll tell you the story of our family, she said that our ancestors came from far and wide seas, my father said it was beautiful but he had never been there, and he listened to his grandfather. But there is a "family pit" on Qingyuan Mountain, and you remember that it is a place that we have to guard for generations...
At that time, Xu Shiyin'e was young, and her great-grandmother was telling and intermittently. As a result, she had a lot of things she didn't understand, so she chased after her great-grandmother and couldn't say it clearly, and her grandmother said that her great-grandmother was telling a story, which made Xu Shiyin'e always think that this was her great-grandmother's story.
Until her father moved to Hong Kong to inherit the family business, and Xu Shiyin'e, as the eldest daughter, had to stay in Quanzhou. She knew that her great-grandmother's story was the truth. Even she has a new understanding of her surname, when she was a child, she did not understand where her surname came from, just like her classmates often asked her: Your father's surname is Xu Shi's mother's surname, so your name is Xu Shiyin'e, isn't it?
At that time, she did not know how to tell her classmates: My father's surname was Xu Shi. When she asked the question to her family, her father told her: Our last name is magical. But it didn't say much. It wasn't until his father's last night in Hong Kong that he informed Ms. Hui of her origins.
It turned out that her ancestor was really the prince of Ceylon, and the prince of Ceylon at that time changed his surname to "Shi", but in the generation of Xu Shiyin'e's grandmother, there was no male in the family, so the family had to allow her grandmother to recruit a son-in-law. So her grandmother recruited a son surnamed Xu into the family. After entering the family, he learned that this family surnamed Xu was also the only man in the family. Therefore, after discussion between the two sides, they changed their surname "Shi" to "Xu Shi".
During the ten years of difficult times experienced in China, the Xu family was afraid of being implicated in their ancestral overseas relations, so they deeply hid their family background. After the "Shijia Pit" reappeared in the world, Xu Shiyin'e communicated with her father, who originally wanted Xu Shiyin'e to report to the relevant departments at that time, but her mother said: The state will definitely protect it when it finds out, in case you tell the matter, what to do if something happens.
So Xu Shi Yin'e put it down, and they did not expect that after eighteen generations (Xu Shi Yin'e was the eighteenth generation of the prince of Ceylon), Sri Lanka still did not forget their once exiled king. Later, Xu Shiyin'e heard that There was a piece of land in Qingyuan Mountain to be outsourced to the orchard, so she couldn't sleep all night, and the state found out that it would protect it, but outsourced it to private individuals In case the pair of ancient tombs were damaged.
The destruction of ancestral tombs is a taboo for the people of southern Fujian, and it is also a taboo thing in China. So Xu Shiyin'e's soul was not guarded for several days, and she decided to go against the ancestral precepts and tell her husband about this matter. Because her husband was working in the cultural department at that time, he suggested that Xu Shiyin'e ask the Quanzhou Evening News for help in this matter, and contact the relevant leaders.
It's just that when Xu Shiyin'e called the Quanzhou Evening News, she was still a little hesitant. He simply told that he was a descendant of the prince of Ceylon. Before the staff of the Quanzhou Evening News could ask for other information, they hung up the phone. The staff knew it was a very important thing. It was then reported to the leadership to publish again the newspaper looking for the descendants of the princes of Ceylon.
Xu Shiyin'e knew that she could not be timid and must protect the tombs of her ancestors, so she called the leader of the Overseas Transportation History Museum, hoping that he could protect the tombs of the "Shijia Pit", and the two sides agreed on a time to meet. Originally, the leaders of the museum did not believe Xu Shiyin'e's words.
However, on the day of the meeting, Xu Shiyin'e revealed the origin of her surname and took out the family tree. And the content of the genealogy is correct with the ancient books about the family and the prince of Ceylon. The leader could not have imagined that after nearly 400 years, the descendants of the prince of Ceylon still lived in Quanzhou, and even lived in the streets that he had to pass through to commute to and from work.
As soon as Hsu's life was revealed, the state immediately contacted Sri Lankan diplomats. In 2002, Sri Lanka sent a number of officials and archaeologists, and after repeated investigations, it was finally determined that Xu Shiyin'e was a descendant of the prince of Ceylon.
In the same year, the Sri Lankan government strongly invited Xu Shiyin'e to return to her "homeland" to have a look. And Xu Shiyin'e was also very willing to go to the beautiful country that her great-grandmother said, to see for the princes of Ceylon and for the ancestors who could not see the "hometown". In this way, she followed the Quanzhou delegation to the place where the Prince of Ceylon was born.
Sri Lanka has always been a great believer in Buddhism, and is known as the "Beautiful Buddha Country", a country with a history of 2,500 years, and there are seven world cultural heritage sites alone. When Xu Shiyin'e came to Sri Lanka, the local residents were dressed in costumes and very enthusiastically presented beautiful flowers to the "Princess of Ceylon".
Sri Lankan officials took them to pay homage to the tombs of the parents of the ceylon princes and visited many of the local places of interest. Sri Lanka paid the highest tribute to Xu Shiyin'e, who also brought a sapling from Quanzhou and planted it in the national park, which was named "China-Sri Lanka Friendship Evergreen Tree". Before leaving, Sri Lankan officials also cordially invited Xu Shiyin'e to return home.
But Xu Shiyin'e refused, even though she liked the enthusiasm of the Sri Lankan residents, and the ten-day trip was unusually beautiful and nostalgic for her. But she is still accustomed to the fireworks in the streets of Quanzhou, and the life of the princess is graceful and luxurious, but the life of ordinary people also has a variety of tastes. She returned to Quanzhou again as the xu shiyin'e who was doing business and watching her children, and everything had not changed but everything had changed again.
In 2003, Xu Shiyin'e again violated her ancestral precepts and did things that shocked people. She made a copy of her genealogy and gave it to the Institute of History, making it easier for experts to study the princes of Ceylon and their descendants. And she used the media and other channels to try her best to contact many descendants of the prince of Ceylon at home and abroad, so that many descendants of the Shi family felt that Quanzhou worshiped their ancestors.
In 2009, the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, and Quanzhou became sister cities, and the friendship from the Ming Dynasty to the present hundreds of years has never stopped, and Xu Shiyin'e not only gave up returning to Sri Lanka, but also gave up going to Hong Kong to live with her father.
She said: There must always be someone to stay in Quanzhou to receive the descendants who are looking for roots. This Ceylon princess with Chinese nationality is working hard for the friendly development of China and Sri Lanka with her own strength. Today's story is over, what do you want to say? Feel free to let me know in the comments section.