The hometown of Zhang Yiming, the founder of Douyin and ByteDance, set up a monument of merit for him:
In the inscription, Zhang Yiming and his parents and grandparents were severely praised, calling him a spiritual idol worshiped by hundreds of millions of young entrepreneurs, with immeasurable merits and boundless blessings. For a Fujianese, this is quite intuitive.
The "three immortals" pursued in the Chinese cultural tradition, virtue, meritorious service, and speech, are the highest evaluation of a person's achievements, and the merit monument is a way to certify such achievements.
It just so happened that I had personally participated in the construction of ancestral halls, genealogies, and meritorious monuments in my hometown, so I have a better understanding of the situation. Taking Zhang Yiming's merit monument as an example, I will give you a brief science popularization of what is going on in the ancestral hall and erecting the monument.
The first sentence of the inscription:
Shengzhong, the word is a sound, Ma Lie Gongshi's grandson is a twenty-three generation grandson.
Here are a few tips.
First of all, there is no surname in the entire inscription, and Zhang Yiming is called Yiming. This is not to appear cordial, but because the merit monument is erected in the ancestral hall of the Zhang family, and all the men mentioned in the ancestral hall are surnamed Zhang, so there is no need to write it again.
Not writing a surname is precisely a reinforcement of clan cohesion, because people with foreign surnames cannot enter the system at all.
Then there is the name Shengzhong, in fact, Zhang Yiming has never been used externally, here should be his family name, Sheng is his character generation, and men of the same generation will have this word in their names when they leave their names in the family tree, which is used to distinguish generations.
For example, the name of my ID card is Xiang Dongliang, but in the genealogy is Xiang Xiangdong, and Xiang is my character. I even suspect that Zhang Yiming himself may not have known that he still has the name Shengzhong.
There are also twenty-three generations of grandchildren of Ma Liegongshi, and Ma Liegong should be the earliest and highest ancestor of Zhang Yiming's family, which can be traced back to the era. Because of the great family of this ancestor, there are many heirs, all of whom are divided into different families, and everyone worships the same ancestor.
Theoretically, everyone in our existence can go back to 1,000 generations and 10,000 generations of ancestors, but due to the migration and turmoil caused by wars, famines and other reasons in history, as well as the devastating impact of breaking the four olds, it is extremely difficult to record the genealogy of the clan. A clan has a complete pedigree of twenty or thirty generations, which can be traced back to the Ming and Qing dynasties, which is already very good. For example, my family's genealogy can only be traced back to the middle of the Qing Dynasty, and there is no clear record further up, so I can only "cling" to celebrities.
The genealogy of the Xiang clan that I participated in the renewal
Further back in the inscription, the record and evaluation of Zhang Yiming's successful deeds, saying that he is a spiritual idol worshiped by hundreds of millions of young entrepreneurs, which is of course very exaggerated, and there is an obvious touting of the statement, but in the atmosphere of the clan ancestral hall, it is really not excessive.
You can imagine that with the mediocrity of the vast majority of clans, it is rare to have a department-level cadre to list the "figures" who have achieved fame in their own clan. But no matter how ordinary a clan is, there is also a strong need for a sense of collective honor, and if you want to record and praise the glory of your clan, you will inevitably exaggerate these people a little higher, a little more divine. What's more, if there is really a nationally renowned person in the clan, he will spare no effort to hold it to the sky.
This is indeed not a civilization tradition of seeking truth from facts, but it is indeed a universal reality in rural China.
Later, the inscription praising Zhang Yiming's parents and grandparents is actually a "fixed program" on the stage of the clan ancestral hall. Why do you want to build ancestral halls? It is for the inheritance and order of "father, father and son" of Confucianism, in order to seek the protection and protection of the ancestors and ancestors.
In the discourse system of the ancestral hall of the clan, the success of a person's career is, of course, a little bit of personal effort, but more must be due to the education of parents and the blessing of ancestors.
Therefore, if you want to praise a person for being good, you must not only praise him for being good, but you must praise him together with the previous three generations and even the ancestors and ancestors. Even if you are an illiterate farmer, you can boast a few words of loyalty and filial piety.
Whether it is exaggerating Yiming or praising his parents, the foothold is actually the honor and interests of the clan.
Looking at the last part of the merit monument, this is actually the real "dry goods" in the inscription, and it is also the direct reason for the merit monument:
That is, real money donations.
The local society is actually very, very realistic, a person is an official outside and earns money, no matter how much you contribute to the country and society, if you don't directly give back to your hometown, feed your clan, don't donate money to your hometown, build bridges and pave roads, then you are a white-eyed wolf who doesn't recognize your six relatives.
As long as you give back to your hometown with real money after you are developed, and vigorously sponsor the public affairs of the clan (such as repairing the ancestral hall and cultivating the genealogy), no matter how the outside evaluation of you changes, the people of the clan will still appreciate your merits. For example, although Xu Jiayin's hometown has changed the name of Jiayin Primary School, it is still voluntarily protecting his family's ancestral grave.
Therefore, Zhang Yiming donated more than 2 million yuan, and almost single-handedly bore the cost of rebuilding the ancestral hall, and it is not surprising that the clan erected a merit monument for him.
For clan activities like this, there is usually a difference in the level of acknowledgment, such as donating more than 10,000 yuan for a single independent merit monument, and donating a few hundred will also be combined to set up a collective merit monument. For example, when my hometown rebuilt the ancestral hall a few years ago, the threshold for a single independent monument was almost 100,000 yuan.
In fact, next to Zhang Yiming's merit monument, there is another merit monument of a big donor, but he is not so famous, so he has not entered the field of public opinion.
After the photo of Zhang Yiming's merit monument came out, some friends expressed doubts, thinking that he was not worthy, and here is actually a misunderstanding of the actual function of the merit monument.
As mentioned above, this monument of merit is a special acknowledgment from the clan to Zhang Yiming's donation to repair the ancestral hall, which is neither a high honor certified by the state and society, nor an evaluation of merit and demerits left in history.