Other related information about family trees
If the embodiment of a family tree can be integrated with books, pictures, histories, tables, and aspirations, its use value will be greater. Family trees mainly contain text content, supplemented by pictures, but a good picture or photo can still convey the spirit and characteristics of the times.
The significance of incorporating pictures and photos into the family tree is to provide the most direct environmental background for family inheritance, so that the family tree is no longer limited to written records, and the overall concept becomes clear and vivid.
As long as it is an ancient map or old photo that can give people a better understanding of the family tree, it should be included in the family tree, including:
1. Old photos: Old black-and-white photos at home, family photos, etc. all have historical value and are also the most original materials to witness family trees.
2． Ancestor pictures (posthumous portraits, figure paintings, portraits): China has produced a large number of figure paintings and portraits throughout the ages, most of which are to commemorate ancestors or express admiration for sages and relatives. There are also some genealogies that depict the appearance of the prominent ancestors of the family and place them at the beginning of the volume, in order to achieve the purpose of enhancing the family's prestige and enlightening future generations. Some also publish some of the ink left by the ancestors.
3． Feng shui map (ancestral hall map, tomb map): Ancestral hall is a place to worship ancestors, and in ancient times it was a place for family gatherings. Therefore, general family trees record and publish the layout and description of the building, and some even include tomb maps. , some even record the geographical location in detail. People believe that the rise and fall of a family is closely related to the place where their ancestors lived and were buried. These contain rich "Feng Shui" content, so they are also called "Feng Shui diagrams".
4. Maps of former residences/villages: Genealogies of the Ming and Qing dynasties not only record the migration of residences, but the genealogies compiled by many wealthy families also print their families’ courtyards, pavilions, studies, houses, etc. in exquisite layouts. Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, ancestral halls have become an important place for clans to worship ancestors and discuss major issues. Each ancestral hall generally has its own hall name, which in a sense is a symbol of the clan. Hall names can be divided into two categories: one is a hall number with surname characteristics, such as Wang's "Sanhuaitang", Zhao's "Banbu Tang", etc.; the other is a hall number without surname characteristics, such as " Shidetang", "Chongbentang", etc. Most of the origins of hall names with surname characteristics are accompanied by allusions with certain meanings, and they appear repeatedly in different branches of the surname. Most of the hall names without surname characteristics are unique to a certain clan or rarely overlap with the hall names of other clans. The remaining small number of hall names have a high recurrence rate among clans with the same and different surnames. Other hall names, supplemented by surnames and geographical restrictions, can also play a certain role in determining the clan. For example, "Shidetang" has dozens of surnames such as Yang, Ding, Wang, Li, Wu, He, Shen, Shao, Zhou, Hu, Qin, Xu, Lu, Chen, Sun, Huang, Cao, Xu, and Zhang. There are such hall names, and there are also different tribes with the same surname. The repetition rate is extremely high, but the scope can be narrowed down by restricting the surname, nationality and other conditions.
Tonghao names are usually taken from county names or created to commemorate family history ancestors or celebrities.
Generally speaking, the name of the hall is mostly taken from the name of the county. The county is the establishment of the administrative area during the Qin and Han Dynasties. The name of the county is also taken from the name of the county, or the name of the vassal state or the local government. , state, county name. With the development and growth of families with surnames, county names began to be based on the county names of the birthplaces of famous families with each surname.
When a large family grows in numbers over time, or encounters natural disasters for many years, the clan members will be dispersed throughout the country due to migration. So there is a way to add the name of the "branch hall number" under the "main hall number". The "main hall name" represents the birthplace of the family (surname), so that future generations will not forget their origins. The "branch hall name" refers to the county name of the place where the clan members moved to a new place and became a famous local family. The "main hall number" and the "branch hall number" are collectively referred to as the "county number".
Because the surnames of various ethnic groups basically use the county name as the county name of their family, there is a phenomenon that several surnames share the same hall name. For example: Wang and Hu, the two county commanders with the surnames are "Qinghetang".
Another origin of the name of the hall name: a self-created hall name is a hall name established by a member of the family. The name of the hall name refers to the branches and sects that are different from each surname, and the second is to remember the ancestors or The moral deeds or teachings of celebrities. For example: Yang's "Four Knowledge Hall" means "knowledge from heaven, knowledge from earth, knowledge from me, knowledge from son". The middle and late Ming Dynasty was an important watershed in the evolution and content update of Chinese genealogy systems. The changes in style and rich content are rare in previous genealogies.
The "Yu Family Huitong Pu" compiled in the first year of Zhengde includes the old and new prefaces, postscripts, differentiations, pictures, external biographies, external chronicle diagrams, genealogy diagrams, tomb domain diagrams, end postscripts, and prefaces. "The Genealogy of the Jin Family in Xiuning Wenchang" is relatively comprehensive, including preface, rules, scholars, Jin family's country, lineage, brief history, actions, deeds, epitaphs, miscellaneous writings, notes, poems, praises, and regulations. In the 18th year of Jiajing, Xu Pu and Xu Han compiled the "Genealogy of the Xu Family", which covers prefaces, biographies of famous people, deeds, epitaphs, and lineages. In the 34th year of the Jiajing reign, Zhu Shien compiled the Genealogy of the Zhu Family Lineage, which includes genealogical prefaces, edicts, rules, portraits, ancestral halls, tombs, biographies, and genealogy. In the 37th year of Jiajing reign, Huang Shi and Huang Rende compiled the "Zuotian Huang Family and Meng Genealogy", which includes preface, pictures, geography, surname origin, lineage, and text. In the sixth year of Longqing, Xu Fu and Xu Fengxiang compiled the Genealogy of the Eastern Branch of the Xu Family in the North of Xin'an, which absorbed and summarized the relevant content of the genealogy before Jiajing, and expanded it. This genealogy involves genealogy prefaces, catalogs, genealogy diagrams, examinations, ancestral texts, prefaces, narratives, biographies, notes, longevity narratives, poems, poems, songs, lyrics, elegy, lines, praises, sacrificial essays, genealogy, and later liars. , lead the spectrum font size and other contents. After Wanli, the content of calligraphy became richer than before. During the Longqing and Wanli years, the Yin clan in She County "began to have a genealogy, which generally has three tests: surname, origin, and lineage." Later, the content was expanded to include "morals, norms, training codes, documents, residences, mounds, tombs, "Nine Examinations of Relics, Relics, and Lishes" compiled by Lu Shidao in the fifth year of Wanli, including catalogues, calligraphy, common examples, prefaces to genealogies, portraits, origins of migrations, diagrams of ancestral tombs and temples, and pictures of Liju. , origin of surnames, lineage, morals, norms, training codes, documents, remains, mounds and tombs, sacrificial fields, family rules, titles of genealogies, general introduction to genealogy, prefaces, postscripts, etc., the list of the genealogy covers It provides the basic content of the genealogy of later generations. In the 18th year of Wanli, Cheng Hongbin compiled the Genealogy of the Bairen Cheng Family in Yanzhen, Shexi, which is divided into genealogical preface, genealogical examples, sources, legends, letters, lineage, ancestral biography, internal biography, Baoying, Yihan, clan. Appointment and continuation of twelve chapters. Xiuning's Genealogy of the Cao Family, completed in the last year of Wanli, involves sequence, inscription, quotation, song composition, poem composition, enrong records, Cao family's pioneers, migration origin, tombs, postscript, postscript, and genealogy , branch genealogy diagrams, genealogical narratives, genealogy diagrams, story outlines, reconstructed genealogy narratives, family genealogy prefaces, poem collection prefaces, wills, postscripts, etc., are all listed in various names. Compared with the genealogy compiled before Wanli, the content has been greatly improved. The scale expanded to include almost all matters related to the clan. Through the analysis of the above-mentioned genealogy of the Ming Dynasty, we can easily find that compared with the genealogy of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the newly added content of the Ming genealogy is mainly reflected in the relevant aspects of the clan system such as family rules, family training, ancestral halls and clan property. This is also the reason why the Ming Dynasty It is a reflection that the clan system has developed compared to before.
In terms of style, while following the Ousu genealogy, Mingpu added new contents such as "Zhi", "Pictures", "Tao" and "Record". This is a sign that the Ming Dynasty genealogy further absorbed official history. and an important manifestation of achievements in local chronicle compilation. According to Mr. Zhai Tunjian's research, there are three main forms of genealogical styles in the Ming Dynasty: first, the outline style, which unifies the items with the outline; second, the item style, where one thing is under one item, and they help each other to govern; the third is a mixture of the outline and items. As time went on, this hybrid method became more and more widely used in genealogy compilation. Compared with the genealogies compiled after the Ming Dynasty, the style of the genealogies compiled in the Ming Dynasty is relatively complete and has been generally finalized. The style of the genealogies compiled in the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China basically followed the Ming genealogy with minimal changes.
March 2016 media reports: "Yimen Chen Family Jiangzhou Old Genealogy" preserved by 81-year-old Chen Jiangpei from Xinxi Village, Zhanggou Town, Xiantao City. The regular script "Yimen Chen Family Jiangzhou Old Pu" on the title page is simple and vigorous, and the date "the fourteenth year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty" (1501 AD) is clearly visible. The genealogy is made of yellow silk and copied by hand. The genealogy records the family history of the three ancestors of Chen's Niugongzhuang in Yimen who moved from Jishui, Jiangxi to Yuezhou Lake in Mianyang, Hubei in the second year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1369), and inherited the family until the fourteenth year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty (1501). . Now this branch has grown to nearly 20,000 people, distributed throughout Xiantao. Liang Hongsheng, a national "intangible cultural heritage" review expert and professor of the History Department of Jiangxi Normal University, believes that this "Yimen Chen Family Jiangzhou Old Genealogy" is the earliest and best-preserved genealogy ever found. It has great historical value and can be regarded as " National historical relics".