Wang Heming: The fate of the family tree and the fate and future of the future family tree

——Wang Heming, a visiting Chinese genealogy research expert and researcher at the Shanghai Library

　"The tree of the heavens will have its roots, and the water of the mountains will have its source." For Chinese, a family tree that carries the history of family glory is the closest contact between people living in this era and their ancestors. But today, there are fewer and fewer Chinese who have actually read their own family trees, and this family history that conveys the warmth and memories of our ancestors seems to have gradually moved away from our lives.

For Wang Heming, a researcher at the Shanghai Library, the Chinese genealogy is almost his entire life. Since joining the Shanghai Library, he has focused on the study of genealogical culture for seventeen years, and has edited the only contemporary book that fully reflects the collection of Chinese national genealogies in the world, the General Catalogue of Chinese Genealogy. On Saturday, he will go to Shenzhen as a guest at the Civic Culture Lecture Hall, and before leaving, the reporter will contact him in advance to decrypt the protection research work of the Chinese national genealogy.

　　People Links

Wang Heming, a researcher at the Shanghai Library, vice president of the Shanghai Historical Society, and executive vice chairman of the Shanghai Cross-Strait Academic and Cultural Exchange Promotion Association, has long been engaged in the collation and research of Chinese genealogical materials, written many treatises such as "Thawing Family Genealogy Culture" and "General Theory of Chinese Genealogy", and edited many special collections such as "Outline of Genealogy of Shanghai Library Collections" and "General Catalogue of Chinese Genealogy". Among them, the ten volumes of the "General Catalogue of Chinese National Genealogies" edited by Wang Heming include a total of 52,401 kinds of Chinese national genealogies and 608 surnames, which is the most numerous national genealogies and the richest bibliographic joint catalog so far.

　　1) Talk about the past: Nearly 10,000 family trees were rescued from the paper mill

Reporter: The Shanghai Library is the institution with the largest number of national genealogies in the collection, can you introduce the genealogy collection of the Shanghai Library?

Wang Heming: In the mid-1990s, the Shanghai Library had more than 11,000 kinds of family trees, the largest number in the country. In the following ten or twenty years, we have purchased through multi-party search, and now the number of genealogies in shanghai libraries is about 20,000, a total of 200,000 volumes. At present, there are about 52,000 chinese genealogies in the world, and the Shanghai Library accounts for more than one-third. Today, the earliest genealogy in the collection is the Royal Family Genealogy of the Song Dynasty, the Xianyuan Genealogy.

Reporter: Generally, family trees are kept privately by ordinary people, how did the Shanghai Library collect these family trees?

Wang Heming: Since 1995, we have taken the procurement and collection of family trees as an important part of our work, including purchasing private genealogies in Anhui, Hunan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places.

In the process of purchasing and collecting family trees, not all families are willing to contribute their own family trees. This requires the use of various ways: one is to carry out publicity and persuasion, so that the people understand that the family tree collection in the above map, can play a greater role; the second is to use the way of money to buy; the third is to copy the family tree, some are to take the original away, the copy is returned to the family to save, if the other party is unwilling, you can only leave the original, the copy is saved in the above picture for research.

Reporter: In the last century, family trees were not valued for a long time, and even were removed as feudal remnants, did this cause great difficulties in the preservation and search of family trees?

Wang Heming: Yes, in the past political movements, the family tree has a lot of fate, and it is often abandoned as the "four olds". Nearly 10,000 copies of the original genealogy in the Shanghai Library were rescued from the paper mill. I began to work in the Shanghai Library in 1995, as the secretary of the party committee and the director of the Institute of Historical Documents, and began to integrate a large number of historical documents in the above picture. The first sightings are truly distressing. Many of the family trees have been badly damaged when they are discarded, and some are covered with dust and spider silk, and it is impossible to distinguish the original face. We set up an ancient book repair team and have been working continuously to this day, and so far 50,000 books have been repaired.

　　2) Looking contemporary: "electronic genealogy" has emerged

Reporter: It seems that Chinese attaches great importance to genealogy, is genealogy culture unique to China?

Wang Heming: Every ethnic group has a complex of roots, outside of China, North Korea, Japan, Vietnam and even European and American countries have their own forms of genealogy, but when it comes to the completeness of the form, the system, the richness of the content, the popularization of revision, and the number of preservation, no place in the world can compare with China.

Reporter: In what era did we know that the earliest genealogy in China appeared? When did genealogy flourish?

Wang Heming: Family trees are the carriers for recording family events and characters. What we call a family tree now is a family tree in a book, but earlier family trees can have other carriers, and the deeds of the family can be written on cloth, stone tablets, and bronzes, which can be family trees. In this sense, the Shang Zhou Dynasty already had a primitive form of genealogy. The large-scale popularization of family trees to urban and rural areas should be the atmosphere that arose from the Song Dynasty, and the atmosphere of folk genealogy cultivation after the Ming and Qing dynasties was more intense, and the cultivation of villages and villages, the repair of families and households has become an indispensable heirloom of every Chinese family.

Reporter: In ancient times, genealogies could be recorded on cloth, stone tablets, bronzes, so as we entered the digital age, was "electronic genealogy" possible?

Wang Heming: The family trees we are studying now are all book-style family trees, but now there are also families that have directly recorded family information on the Internet, which can also bring convenience to reading. It is worth mentioning that in recent years, the Shanghai Library has also been carrying out the digitization of genealogy in a planned and deployed manner. Because a large number of family trees in our collection are orphan books from one or two hundred, two or three hundred years ago, in order to better preserve these documents, we have scanned these family trees page by page, which is a labor-intensive work, and more than 8,000 copies have been scanned so far. The scanned family tree can be found on the Internet, and those who are interested can consult the family tree even if they do not leave the house, which is very convenient.

3) Exploring the future: The feeling of root-seeking in the family tree will not change

Reporter: For traditional Chinese, the concept of genealogy is closely related to the agricultural era, and the clans live in the same village and continue to write the same family tree, but with the process of urbanization, the Chinese family form has become completely different from the past.

Wang Heming: In the Ming and Qing dynasties, a village is the seat of a family, genealogy statistics, compilation are more convenient, in modern times, the rural population poured into the city, and even some people went overseas, although there are many contact tools now, but the difficulty of repairing the family tree is greater than in the past. Now if you want to build a new family tree, the family needs to have a few very enthusiastic people to lead, and to search for the clan in different regions, which requires very meticulous and patient work.

Reporter: In the era of family-style settlement, the emergence and continuation of family trees is a very natural thing, and today's family form has undergone drastic changes, so what is the significance of family trees for Chinese families at this time?

Wang Heming: Genealogy, together with Zhengshi and Fang Zhi, is the main carrier of Chinese history. The genealogy contains a lot of information: population, society, ethnicity, folklore, history, economy, education and other first-hand materials, which cannot be found in the history of Zhengshi and Fang Zhi, which is the value of the data for studying history. Secondly, the function of indoctrination is very prominent in the family tree, each family tree has the family's family training, family rules, although there are some feudal and backward content, but the overall tone is to teach people to be good, there are a large number of good qualities of the Chinese nation in it, and passed down from generation to generation in the folk, for the next generation of each family today is also of educational significance.

For modern people, genealogy can find its roots. Genealogy is the information passed down from generation to generation by a family, and from the family tree, you can learn where your family first lived, what the migration path of your ancestors was, and learn the stories of your ancestors. For example, Mr. Rong Yiren, the former vice president of the state, when he visited the Shanghai Library in 1997, he turned to their Wuxi Rong family tree and found his name on this family tree, which he was particularly happy at that time. We've seen too many such examples. No matter how the times develop, in the hearts of Chinese, finding roots is a very warm feeling.

Reporter: After seventeen years of research and protection of family trees, what is your evaluation of the current situation of family tree protection in China? In the future, how will the research on the protection of genealogy be carried out?

Wang Heming: We still have a lot of work to do in the development and research of The Chinese national spectrum. In the past, most of the research objects were Han family trees, and we are now working on the development of the family trees of ethnic minorities, and such overall development still requires a lot of professional work. In addition, many libraries across the country, including some overseas institutions, have a large number of genealogies, and we hope to strengthen collaboration with various systems and units to jointly integrate Chinese genealogy resources and carry out the overall research of Chinese genealogy in a more systematic and regular manner. I think this work is very meaningful, and I hope to get more people's understanding and support.