Genealogy is the best testimony to the kinship between the two sides of the strait

【Listening to the tide on both sides of the strait】

Author: Shi Peilin (Professor from Taiwan Province, Minnan Institute of Culture, Minnan Normal University)

At the end of the winter vacation in 2022, a few days before returning to Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, the author handed over a copy of the "Genealogy of the Chen Clan in Jingshan, Nanjing, Fujian" to His friend Mr. Chen Hougu in Taipei. "This genealogy of the Nanjing Dynasty, which was donated by the relatives of the Chen clan of Shan, crossed the ocean to Taiwan and was handed over to me; this kind of blood relationship, which has been endless for thousands of years, has finally been initially linked and interacted." A few days later, he commented via social media.

Chen Hougu was my colleague in the media in Taiwan. At a gathering, he once mentioned to this writer who often walked the village and alleys that since he was a child, he had been taught by his father and grandfather to be cautious and pursue the concept of pursuing the distant and seeking the roots of the ancestors. Behind the ancestral shrine in the family, there is a family tree written by my grandfather with a brush. Every year when the tombs of the ancestors of the Qingming Dynasty were swept away, Chen Hougu's father and uncles would proudly tell their descendants: "Our first generation of ancestors, Chen Lugong, was a waiter in the Ming Dynasty's Imperial Ceremonial Department; most of his descendants also have meritorious names, and most of the families are scholars and filial piety." ”

Soon after, Chen Hougu sent a note left by his father and grandfather twenty years ago, which read, "The Yongfu Sheren Clan of WugenJingxia Village, Nanjing County, Zhangzhou Province." Chen Hougu mentioned that his father and uncles had always remembered their desire to return to their hometown one day to find their roots, but there was no news related to their relatives. Therefore, the author asked questions in the circle of friends, and soon there was teacher Lu Huizhu of Nanjing No. 3 Middle School in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, to assist in docking with the Chen clan relatives of Wugenliao, and at the same time sent their compiled genealogy to Zhangzhou City for transfer to Chen Hougu. The author even ran a trip to Nanjing at the end of 2020 to let Chen Hougu and his relatives recognize him through video. "Although it is thousands of miles away, the heart and gratitude that throbbed when I saw the video were surging with excitement!" He said so.

In the process of participating in the writing of the Fujian-Taiwan family tree and walking the villages and alleys after class, the author has personally experienced the stories of many Taiwan compatriots and friends who have recorded the roots and ancestors through genealogy records.

Jiang Wuchang, who currently lives in Yuanlin Town, Changhua County, Taiwan Province, is a well-known expert in folklore and opera research in Taiwan. Two years ago, the author took advantage of the summer vacation to return to Taiwan to visit him in Yuanlin and listened to him tell the story of his genealogy to find his ancestors. On October 22, 1990, Jiang Wuchang returned to his ancestral hometown of Pinghe County, Zhangzhou for the first time with a handwritten copy of the "Genealogy of the Descendants of the Jiangdongxing Duke of Jiyangtang". He traveled alone from Quanzhou, Fujian Province, all the way to Dongshan Island and Zhao'an in Zhangzhou, and then walked the mountain road to Jiangzhaiyuan Township, Daxi Town, Pinghe.

Jiang Wuchang was the 12th descendant of the Duke Dongxing of Pinghe Jiangzhai and went to Taiwan. In the ninth year of Qianlong (1744), Dongxing Gong died; in order to survive, Dongxing Ma led her five sons and three grandchildren and daughter-in-law to embark on the road of "Tangshan Mama Crossing Taiwan" to Yanwu Fort Sancuozhuang (now Yuanlin Dongshan) in Changhua County.

After Dongxing Ma crossed the platform, she broke off the news with the original township, and the 13th ancestor DongxingGong was buried in a lonely grave, and there was no one to pay homage to and visit for more than two hundred years. Soon after, according to the copy of this genealogy left by Jiang Wuchang, the Jiangzhai clan relatives took Luo Geng to look for it, and finally found the Dongxing Gong buried in the mountainous area near Jiangzhai, where no one worshipped, on the mountain that was a little far away from Pinghe Jiangzhai and was usually rarely inhabited.

Jiang Wuchang told this writer that dongxing gong was sent to five major houses, and the descendants of the Taiwanese family have multiplied and flourished to the 24th and 25th generations, with a total population of nearly 1,000 people. In the past twenty years, Jiang Wuchang's father and uncles of the clan in Taiwan have jointly formed the "Dongxing Gong clan clan ancestral association" to investigate the xiatian mu, tax rent, land, land, and Dingkou, and reprint the genealogy of the Jiangdong Xing gong; a few years ago, in the Jiangmu Mountain of taiwan's Bagua Mountain, where Dongxing Ma was buried, a few years ago, a family-shared Naku Pagoda was built. What is even more touching is that Jiang Wuchang's elderly father is more thoughtful, hoping that his descendants can take another trip to the Daxi River Village, and the bones of Dongxing Gong will also be placed in Jiangmu Mountain, so that Dongxing Gong will be reunited with his wife, children, and grandchildren in Taiwan and future generations.

In fact, as many Fujian-Taiwan genealogies have been unearthed, many women like Dongxing Ma immigrated to the island in the Qing Dynasty. Tu Zhiwei, president of the Minnan Cultural Research Association of Zhangzhou City, according to the statistics of the "Zeelandia City Journal", from 1648 onwards, there were more and more records about women and children from the coast to the island of Taiwan on the Rongke ship, and the number and batch gradually increased, almost every month. Until 1657, there were a total of 203 records of 1984 women and 208 children. Among the Fujian-Cantonese immigrants who moved to Taiwan in the Qing Dynasty, there were many women who opened Taiwan to be grandparents. In addition to some women who followed their husbands to Taiwan to cultivate, there are also many women who lead their children and grandchildren to migrate across the sea alone, becoming a special phenomenon of reclamation, such examples are mostly Fujian and Guangdong Hakka. Scholars such as Yin Zhangyi and Chen Zongren believe that "widowed immigrants" account for one-tenth of immigrants and are the third type of immigrants in addition to male immigrants and family immigrants. These histories deserve further study and discussion.

In a broad sense, there are quite a few types of "genealogy", but it can still be slightly divided into genealogy, shi genealogy, miscellaneous genealogy, genealogy, branch genealogy, general genealogy, family inheritance, genealogy and so on. "Genealogy" can be understood as the memory of a family, as Cai Xin, who has served as the five Shangshu of the Qing Dynasty, expressed in the "Genealogical Order", the family has a genealogy, the Judah kingdom has a history, the history is a documentary, the genealogy is in the order of Zhaomu, Zhaomu can be ming, then the family school has no mix. "Genealogy" is like a collective memory jointly constructed by many families with the same surname, which is explained by Ouyang Xiu, a member of the Northern Song Dynasty, as it is said: "If the family has a genealogy, then people know what they come out of, they know what they have come out of, they know to respect their ancestors, they know to respect their ancestors, they know to love their bodies, they know to love their bodies, they are cautious about self-cultivation, they cannot be careless, and they are not disciples with zhao surnames, order Zhao mu, and other relatives who are alienated from each other." ”

As we all know, the value of genealogy or genealogy is that it allows future generations to understand the development of the family in history, the records as the ancestors of immigrants, and even the statistics of the analysis of clans, marriages, and populations in the great history. In cross-strait relations, the family tree is the best witness of the kinship between the two sides of the strait. In the future, how to spread and circulate the Fujian-Taiwan family tree more widely is also an important research topic.

Guangming Daily ( 2022-04-05 08 edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily