There is a sentence in the Yuan Dynasty history book "Yan'an Fu" that "if you want to be rich, respect the ancestors", which shows that the ancients attached great importance to the ancestral tombs. Even now, people attach great importance to ancestral graves and do not allow others to move their ancestral graves, otherwise they will fight with those who destroy their ancestral tombs. A woman in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, went to stop others from digging up her ancestral grave and accidentally found herself an overseas princess.
Xu Shiyin'e, born in 1975, is a native of Quanzhou, Fujian Province. She was originally a native of Minnan and grew up with her great-grandmother. Before going to bed, the old man would give her family things, such as "Our ancestors came from a long, far sea", "Family pit", etc., and she was confused. Xu Shiyin'e asked her great-grandmother, and the old man always answered the question and found a reason to prevaricate.
After Xu Shiyin'e went to elementary school, she and her classmates were very curious about "Xu Shi" is not a compound surname, so how did this surname come from? Every time I asked my family, my father always said with a black face: "Don't ask so much, our surname is two surnames, both belong to our family." Until the age of sixteen, when her father was moving overseas, Xu Shiyin'e stayed in Quanzhou as the eldest daughter, and before leaving, her father told her that the family had hidden a secret for more than 500 years, and she promised her father that he would keep this secret. In addition to Teaching her son, Xu Shiyin'e opened a "Xu Shi Su Zhai Restaurant" restaurant and an antique shop on the famous Tumen Street in Quanzhou City, which was no different from others.
In December 1996, Liu Zhicheng, a staff member of the Quanzhou Overseas Transportation History Museum, stumbled upon a stone slab on Qingquan Mountain with the words "Shijia Pit" carved on it. With his own knowledge, Liu Zhicheng knew that this was the ancient tomb of the prince of Ceylon, which is now Sri Lanka.
The History of ming records that in 1459, the king of Ceylon sent Shiliba Jiaoya to follow Zheng He's fleet on an expedition to China to meet the Ming emperor. When the prince was preparing to return to His country after seeing Tianzi, a close confidant came to report that there had been a coup d'état in the country, and the prince's cousin took advantage of his absence to lead his troops into the palace and usurped the throne. He had killed all of the prince's brothers, and he had tried to kill the crown prince and cut down the grass and roots, and the kingdom of Ceylon was now under his control.
The prince knew that he would be sent to death when he returned, and in order to preserve the last bit of blood in the royal family, he chose to stay in Quanzhou and take his first word "Shi" as his surname, and from then on he hid his name. Why is there a surname called "Xu Shi"? It is because in the generation of Xu Shiyin'e's grandmother, the family did not have boys, and the family recruited a son-in-law with the surname Xu, combining the two surnames, and there was the surname "Xu Shi".
After the archaeologists discovered the "Family Pit", they were pleasantly surprised and carried out a large-scale cleanup of the tomb area, and saw some smiling lion motifs on the tombstones, which was officially carved by the ancient Ceylonian Khotis dynasty. In addition, experts also found that the tombstones of dozens of tombs, large and small, were almost all engraved with the words "Ceylon envoys", indicating the hometown of their ancestors.
Xu Shiyin'e heard that someone was cleaning up her ancestral grave and rushed to stop it. It just so happened that the experts were also looking for the descendants of the prince of Ceylon, who said that she was his descendant, hoping that they would put the tombstone back in the "family pit", and the experts did not believe what she said. In a hurry, she did something that violated her ancestral precepts, made a copy of the Genealogy of the Lineage, and revealed her identity.
The genealogical content provided by Xu Shiyin'e is the same as the records of the Shi family and the prince of Ceylon in the Quanzhou Chronicle, and after repeated confirmation, experts believe that she is really a descendant of the prince of Ceylon. Later, the Quanzhou Evening News reported on this matter, and neighbors and friends around them came to ask Xu Shiyin'e's identity. Sri Lankan government officials and archaeologists have also come to Quanzhou many times, hoping that the "princess" will go home to see.
Xu Shiyin'e also wanted to know what the place where her ancestors had lived was like, so she agreed to the request of the Sri Lankan government and formed a delegation from Quanzhou with Wang Lianmao, director of the "Haijiaoguan" museum, and others to start a ten-day trip to The Buddha' Country. I heard that after the "Princess of Ceylon" returned home, the hospitable Sri Lankan people dressed in costume to greet her, and the government also attached great importance to it, and her president personally received her.
The saplings that Xu Shiyin'e brought from Quanzhou were personally planted in Sri Lanka National Park and named "Sino-Sri Lanka Friendship Evergreen Tree". Next to it is a row of international friendship trees planted by then former US President George W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other heads of state.
Xu Shiyin'e still lives in Quanzhou, did not move to Hong Kong like other family members, and also acts as a "Chinese and Sri Lankan civilian ambassador" with a special background, contributing to the diplomacy between China and Sri Lanka.