Lineage and Community

in China, 1100–1500
Genealogical Innovation in Jiangxi

Xi He
5 Writing down the genealogy

In the Song dynasty, and, no doubt, since time immemorial, genealogical knowl-
edge was everywhere. It was remembered, set to stories, associated with graves,
and integrated into village geography (“we lived here, and our cousins lived
there”). However, it was not necessarily written down. Writing down the geneal-
ogy so that it might indicate descent lines, somewhat like a “family tree”, took
root amidst rising literacy during the Song dynasty. Nevertheless, even the family
tree was a long way from the bound volumes that China historians are now accus-
tomed to as family or lineage “genealogies” ( jiapu or zupu). The bound volume,
which incorporated the family tree, short biographies, and archival documents
meant to be related to family history came much later than the Song dynasty.
Families needed to accumulate the documents before they might be incorporated
into volumes.1
Until genealogies were compiled in volumes, they were most commonly found
within grave inscriptions. Such genealogies would name the deceased’s forebear
by three or five generations and his or her offspring of up to three or four gen-
erations.2 Occasionally, one or more founding ancestors of the lineage might be
named, such as the first ancestor to have moved to the location from where the
deceased traced his or her residence.3 There might also be reference to an even
earlier ancestor, usually a personage rooted in the dynastic histories that would
suggest a pedigree. In the early Song dynasty, it would seem that the higher an
official rank was attained by the deceased, the more likely it was that the pedi-
gree ancestor would be cited. By the end of the Song and the Yuan dynasties,
the practice had generalized, so that even families without distinguished sta-
tus might also claim distinguished pedigree. Neither the first-to-settle ancestors,
nor the pedigree ancestors, were necessarily traceable to the deceased genera-
tion by generation, unlike the genealogy within the five or three generations of
descent. It was an invention in genealogical writing during the Northern Song
dynasty that made generation-by-generation tracing an end in itself even beyond
the five-generation limit.
64 Tracing lineages
Ouyang Xiu’s novelty: Boxes and lines
In 1053, Ouyang Xiu, one of the most famous senior officials of his time, intro-
duced to his home village in Jizhou a chart whereby the names of ancestors
might be recorded beyond the limit of five generations. In that year, he returned
to his home village in Yongfeng County in Jizhou prefecture to bury his mother.
Although his father was a native of Yongfeng, he himself was born in Sichuan,
while his father was posted there as an official. His father died when he was three
years old, he was brought up by his mother and his uncle, and while he might
have returned to the home village upon his father’s burial, he had spent his entire
life away from it until his mother died. He had to depend on one of his cousins
(whom Ouyang Xiu addressed as “14th younger brother” in his letters) to take
care of his parents’ graves. Nevertheless, around the time of the burial of his
mother, he set up at the grave a stele that was to become one of the most famous
documents in the history of the genealogical genre in China. That was a copy of
his own genealogy, laid out in a grid. Ouyang Xiu called that his genealogical
chart (putu).4
Until Ouyang Xiu introduced the genealogical chart, genealogies were
recorded in essay form. The oft-quoted observation that in the Song dynasty,
“privately compiled” (sixiu) genealogies had taken over the place of “govern-
ment-compiled” (guanxiu) genealogies is quite misleading.5 The so-called
government-compiled genealogies consisted of lists of pedigree surnames, to
which were sometimes appended short essay descriptions of family histories.
They were not genealogical charts.6 At best, they might describe for a few
generations the succession of sons into the principal line of descent, and refer
to others who moved out from the line. Only the genealogical chart, first pre-
sented in the form of a grid by Ouyang Xiu, and soon represented by lines
indicating descent, could present in a supposed holistic manner all known
descendants in all branches. When the genealogical chart substituted for the
essay description of the family history, the lineage as a social institution was
fundamentally altered.
Certainly, both the chart and the essay format of presentation recorded the
names of ancestors in direct lines of descent (X’s great great grandfather was
so-and-so, great grandfather was so-and-so, grandfather was so-and-so, father
was so-and-so), and, perhaps for this reason, it has not been noticed by students
of the Song dynasty lineage why presentation in a chart made such a great of dif-
ference to keeping genealogies. The difference can be quite readily pointed out:
An essay might lay out a line of descent (that is, a lineage) to as far as names were
known, and it might then nimbly skip over omissions to arrive at some desig-
nated person in whose honour the genealogical essay was being prepared. In con-
trast, Ouyang Xiu’s genealogical chart was rigid. Laid out in five-row segments,
it expected the names of descendents of five generations to be entered in full. No
name might be left out without the omission being noticed. For that reason, an
omission would have to be designated as such, for instance, by the words “que”
(missing) or “mou” (so-and-so). Where an essay-style genealogy might fudge, the
 Writing down the genealogy 65
chart focused attention on continuity, generation by generation. Not to be missed,
the genealogical chart was derived from a new skill that had been developed by
Ouyang Xiu’s colleague, Lü Xiaqing (1015–1068), in compiling an official ver-
sion of the Tang dynasty’s history. In addition to biographies, as an innovation
over previous dynastic histories, Lü had added genealogical charts for members
of the imperial family and the chief ministers. The genealogical charts of the
New Tang History went into 12 rows. For his own genealogy, Ouyang shortened
them to five.7
In a presentation that resembled the New Tang History genealogical charts,
Ouyang Xiu’s charts for his own lineage were prefaced by an essay descrip-
tion of lineage history which included biographical information on individual
ancestors. The preamble was followed by two charts, a genealogical gap sepa-
rating the first from the second. The first traced five generations of descent
from ancestor Jingda to ancestor Xun, and then another five generations from
Xun to Cong (Plate 5.1). Ancestor Cong was the first to settle in Jizhou. After
a gap of eight generations, the second chart began with Wan, who became a
local official in Anfu County (Jizhou) towards the end of the Tang dynasty.
It continued with Tuo, one of Wan’s fifth-generation descendants, and, five gen-
erations after Tuo, continued to Ouyang Xiu (Plate 5.2). In other words, the
Ouyang Xiu method of genealogical compilation consisted of a series of five-
generation charts that, eventually, should information permit, reach back into
ancient ancestry.8

Plate 5.1 First nine generations in Ouyang Xiu’s genealogy. (From Ouyang Xiu, 11th
century, 71/2b–3a, note Xun appears in first column last line, and continues
from eighth column first line.)
66 Tracing lineages

Plate 5.2 Nine generations leading up to Ouyang Xiu’s in his genealogy. (From Ouyang
Xiu, 11th century, 71/3a–5a, note Ouyang Xiu’s name on last line.)

The charts were followed by an epilogue in which Ouyang Xiu provided a

justification for his five-generation principle:

The surname originated from ancient times and, therefore, the names of
most [ancestors] of early generations have been lost and are no longer extant.
The way of the genealogical chart is to limit (duan) [the record] to those
generations that might have seen one another [kejian zhishi]. That is to say,
from the great great grandfather to the great grandson, breaking at the great
grandson [for another five-generation genealogy].9

He went on to explain that the five generations demarcated the distinction of

closeness (qin) and distance (shu). The genealogy should include short biog-
raphies, and they should be more detailed for people who were close and less
detailed for people who were distant. When the great great grandson had sepa-
rated out to form another five generations of descent, Ouyang Xiu expected his
descendants to maintain biographies for the descent group, again, more detailed
for close relatives and less for distant ones. Unity was provided for the genealo-
gies because every such branch should include the five generation charts of the
direct line of descent leading up to its own.
Only two years after Ouyang Xiu constructed his genealogy at Yongfeng,
in 1055, another literary giant of the Northern Song dynasty, Su Xun, was
constructing one for the Su surname in Weishan County, Sichuan Province,
a very long way away from Jiangxi. Ouyang Xiu and Su Xun not only knew
each other through their official connections, but they also had mutual respect
for each other’s interest in reviving the archaic style of essay writing (guwen).
 Writing down the genealogy 67
Thus, while Ouyang, by installing a stele bearing his genealogical chart at his
parents’ grave in Yongfeng County, made an immediate impact on local genea-
logical compilations, Su Xun did the same, by building a pavilion behind his
ancestral graves at Weishan to house a stele bearing the Su genealogy. As schol-
ars and officials, they were part of a “national” literati community. Their writ-
ings drew followings, and when they discussed a subject that was of concern to
ritual propriety, such as how a genealogy might be written, they made an impact
over the entire Song dynasty realm. How genealogies should be written was, in
the eleventh century, a subject of concern that resonated not only in local soci-
eties, but also among the high elite. In a matter of decades, the Ouyang genre
and the Su genre (Ou-ti Su-ti) of genealogical writing were both mentioned in
Jiangxi genealogies.10
Although the Ouyang and the Su genres were considered different, not least by
Su Xun himself, their similarities were really greater than their differences. Su
declared that he adhered more closely to the distinction between the “principal
line of descent” (dazong) and the “lesser lines of descent” (xiaozong). The terms
reflected the movement among men of importance who wrote about what Patricia
Ebrey calls “reviving the zong”, that is, in her words, “the classical descent line
system”. At least as Su Xun understood it, the major line of descent character-
ized descent as practiced by aristocrats of old. The line was maintained unbroken
for “a hundred generations”, or “without limit” (wuqiong). Su knew also that
the practice was predicated upon the maintenance of “temples” (miao). He did
not say it in so many words, but practices as advocated by Fan Zhongyan would
indicate that it was widely known that the temple would have been maintained
by the principal line of descent, passed on from the eldest son of one generation
to the eldest son of the next. Sons who had moved away from the temple, but
maintained a line of descent, that is to say, a lineage, constituted the “lesser lines
of descent”. According to Su Xun, the Su surname genealogy that he had com-
piled followed the method of the “lesser line of descent”. He advocated that as
generations passed, the heirs (dizi) among his descendants should each maintain
a copy of the genealogy tracing descent from their own great great grandfathers,
thereby removing the previous heads of the five generations (the great great great
grandfather) from the record. Yet, this “lesser line of descent” genealogy should
be prefaced by the genealogy that Su Xun had compiled to indicate a common
origin.11
Whether the genealogy was meant to record the principal line or the lesser
line, the invention of the genealogical grid was, eventually, to revolutionize
descent-line record keeping. The written genealogy that is given as a paragraph,
rather than a chart, like a genealogy recalled from memory, necessarily traces
single-lined descent. The genealogical chart, designed to reproduce a complete
record of descent within five generations, appears in multiple lines, each line
of descent giving rise to its own branches. As the multiple-lined genealogies
maintained by branch lines are collated into a unified corpus, genealogies take
the form now familiar to historians: a single line for early ancestry followed by
multiple lines of lineage branches.
68 Tracing lineages
Applying charts to genealogies
It is possible to date fairly precisely when the written genealogy in the form of
a chart became common in the Jizhou and Fuzhou area. In the eleventh century,
it was unknown. In the twelfth century, it was yet uncommon. By the thirteenth
century, it had proliferated.
In 1046, Zeng Gong, a young man of age 27, but having made his mark at the
imperial capital with the high quality of his essays, solicited a grave epitaph for
his grandfather from Ouyang Xiu (see Chapter 4). He clearly had no genealogical
chart. He attached in the letter an essay on his grandfather to give Ouyang the
basics. The essay is not extant, but in it, he would have written only a paragraph
on the family genealogy. Ouyang Xiu chastised him for making claims on early
ancestry on grounds of historical inaccuracy and made the general observation
that “in recent times, scholars and officials do not know the migration of lineages
and clans (shizu), and they have often lost the ordering of generations; even early
enfoeffment or the acquisition of the surname is often unauthentic”. He was well
aware, as he went on, that not all people of the Zeng surname were necessar-
ily descendants of the sage Zengzi (Mencius). Nevertheless, he wrote Gong his
grandfather’s epigraph and noted that the family originated in the Lu kingdom,
where the sage had lived. Gong’s younger brother Zhao (1047–1107), writing
Gong’s biography many years later, glossed over the early origin in a line and
traced the family history only from settlement at his home county of Nanfeng
from his great grandfather. Gong’s grandfather and father had both held office.12
Zeng Zhao’s genealogy was compiled in 1084. We know that precisely
because two people saw a genealogy that proceeded from that edition and left a
record. The Zeng family’s neighbour in Nanfeng County, Liu Xun (1240–1319),
whose family had inter-married with the Zeng family, was approached by a
descendant for a preface. Liu commented that not only did he find the genealogy
arranged in good order, but that it included an impressive collection of essays
written by highly reputable people.13 The other witness was Yu Ji (1272–1348),
who referred to the record as the genealogy of the Nanfeng Zeng surname in
Jinxi County, and said he had, indeed, been approached by members of the lin-
eage who had settled in Jinxi for a postscript. He read Zhao’s preface, written
in 1084, and reproduced a few lines, namely, that much of the early history of
the lineage had been lost in the turmoil of the Five Dynasties, and, in order to
find the names of his forebear of six generations, Zeng Zhao had to look “from
the remains of former essay collections, to inscriptions on stone and bells in his
home village”.14 It should be quite clear from this description that any genealogy
that the Zeng family had was compiled after Ouyang Xiu produced his in his
home village, and that, even then, the Zeng surname did not succeed in estab-
lishing a very long record.
It is no longer possible to tell in what sense the descendants of the Zeng family
at Nanfeng had migrated to Jinxi. We can be relatively certain that genealogies
migrated faster than people did. Zeng Minhang (1118–1175) of Jishui (Jizhou)
noted that his sixth-generation ancestor was orphaned early in life and did
 Writing down the genealogy 69
not know the names of his forebear. He had some vague notion that the surname
had branched out from Jinling (Nanjing) to Jishui via Yichun, in the northwest
of Jiangxi and so in between Nanjing and Jizhou. However, “people had come
from Nanfeng to say that [people of the Zeng surname] in the three prefectures
of Jizhou, Ganzhou and Fuzhou were all of the same clan (zu)”. Not convinced,
Zeng Minhang commented, “I have not seen the genealogies and cannot ascer-
tain that”.15 Such a statement was prophetic. In time, there would be written gene-
alogies to demonstrate common ancestry for people scattered over prefectures
and even provinces. The late twelfth century – the last century of the Southern
Song dynasty – was yet a little early for that.
More attuned to the mood of the times was a conversation between newly
appointed Jizhou Prefect Jiang Wanli and local man Ouyang Shoudao in the
early 1240s towards the last decades of the Song dynasty. In commemoration
of repairs at Ouyang Xiu’s sacrificial hall in the village where he had set up his
parents’ graves, Ouyang Shoudao recalled that the prefect, possibly in compli-
ment, remarked that as the county was popularly known as “Master Ouyang’s
county”, he wondered if Ouyang Xiu had left many descendants there. Shoudao
said he had not. “My ancestral graves, some having lasted two or three hun-
dred years, are all extant. None of the names, official positions, locations of resi-
dences and graves, is the same as any recorded on the gravestone at Shuanggang
Village [that is, the gravestone set up by Ouyang Xiu recording his genealogical
chart]”. Thereupon, the prefect remarked, “You, sir, refuse to append yourself as
a descendant of a reputable person of your surname, you will certainly stand on
your own in the literary circles”.16
In a separate essay, Ouyang Shoudao went into a tirade about the errors in
Ouyang Xiu’s genealogy. He noted that in its 260 years of history, the Tang
dynasty saw 16 emperors, and, according to Ouyang Xiu, the lifetimes of
only four ancestors spanned all those years. Moreover, in the 40–50 year his-
tory of the Southern Tang kingdom, in his family, 14 ancestors succeeded one
another. Fundamentally, he pointed out, Ouyang Xiu lived his life outside the
home village. He spent little time at home, consulted no member of the lineage,
and, instead, made enquiries of Lü Xiaqing, his colleague in editing the New
Tang History. Shoudao noted that many families also held written genealogies.
He himself had seen half a dozen of those in Jizhou alone, “all large volumes
written in small script”. He had compared not only those with Ouyang Xiu’s ver-
sion of the early ancestry, but also genealogies from nearby prefectures, and none
bore any resemblance to Ouyang Xiu’s.17
The dense content of these two short passages set the scene of the dissemina-
tion of genealogical knowledge. Ouyang Xiu was famous, and association with
him stood for pedigree. Prefect Jiang Wanli assumed that many people would
have claimed affiliation to the genealogy that he had compiled. Yet, Ouyang
Shoudao was not pleased. For Shoudao, genealogical information stood visibly
available on gravestones, with recorded names, offices attained, residences, and
burials, exactly the information that might authenticate lineage connections.
He confirmed the belief that Ouyang Xiu had consulted Lü Xiaqing, who might
70 Tracing lineages
be credited with applying genealogical tables to the New Tang History. He also
confirmed there was little agreement on early ancestry. Nevertheless, accurate or
not, Ouyang Xiu’s genealogy made its impact: Two centuries after he introduced
the genealogical chart, many families of the Ouyang surname in the county pos-
sessed those “large volumes written in small script”. At the time Ouyang Xiu set
up his family genealogy in that format, no one would have.
A result of applying charts to the writing of genealogies, therefore, was that
they became much bigger. Another result was the proliferation of the practice of
soliciting prefaces for genealogies from famous personages. The written geneal-
ogy, made up of genealogical charts, biographies, texts for grave inscriptions,
prefaces which were written not only by famous men, but also by genealogy
compilers, was becoming an archive.
Yet, it is useful to look carefully again at some extant genealogies for the timing
of the change and the impact it made on the tracking of genealogy. Once again, it
is important to be reminded that extant genealogies, found in library collections
in volumes, are the products of the process of documentary collection within
families and lineages over the centuries since the Song dynasty. They have been
preserved through copying and recopying, and the process has added incremen-
tal changes to the records. I have already made reference to the Xiao surname at
Dragon Creek plagiarizing a preface Liu Song wrote for their namesakes at Tiger
Creek. I am also casting doubt on migration as a reason (or excuse) for the Jinxi
Zeng surname to incorporate a genealogy preface from their Nanfeng name-
sakes. The genealogical archives have successfully preserved many documents
which would otherwise not have survived the ravages of time, but one would
not vouch for their authenticity of authorship, of lineage line ascription, or even
of their full content. Aware of the pitfalls, I look in the genealogies not for singu-
lar facts, but for patterns, especially patterns that show signs of layered changes
through time. And they do tell a story.
An example would be the genealogical charts that may be traced from the
genealogy of the Xiao surname at Tiger Creek for which Liu Song wrote a pref-
ace in ca. 1370. In Chapter 4, I have summarized the preface and noted that he
mentioned the existence of a genealogical chart. There are, in fact, two charts,
both tracing descent from ancestor Shen (954–1027), the first ancestor to settle
at Tiger Creek. Their difference illustrates the difference between the single-line
and the multi-line genealogy.
Plate 5.3 shows the single-line descent pattern. Ancestor Shen (marked “A”)
had four sons, of whom the fourth son, Cao (marked “B”) had three sons, and
his first son Qi (marked “C”) had four sons, and so on. In other words, the chart
notes a single-line of descent, but acknowledges that for each generation, the
successor into the line had brothers.18 Occasionally, genealogies in the paragraph
form included in obituaries also adopted this pattern, one such genealogy may
be found in Lu Jiuyuan’s biography for his brother Jiuling, the leader of the Jinxi
militia.19
Diagram 5.1 presents the multi-line chart as shown in the same genealogy for
nine generations since ancestor Shen. While every name and descent relationship
Plate 5.3 Single-line descent noted in Tiger Creek Xiao surname genealogy. Letters
“A” to “G” indicate progenitor of persons denoted in line following. (From
Huxi Xiaoshi zongpu 1891, no pagination, “Huxi jizu Xi gong chuan Jushen
gong weixia fentu”.)

Diagram 5.1 Multi-line descent noted in Tiger Creek Xiao genealogy. (From Huxi
Xiaoshi zongpu 1891, “Zong shixi” 6a–25b.)
72 Tracing lineages
recorded in the genealogy has been entered into the table, it is necessary to note a
major feature of the genealogy that the table is unable to capture. The page in the
extant genealogy has room for only six generations, and that means, the entire
corpus of Diagram 5.1 takes up 39 pages divided into sections that conform to
lineage branches. The two sectional divisions are represented on Diagram 5.1
by the circle lines.20 As indicated in the diagram, a number of five-generation
descent groups are captured in the genealogy. They include the five generations
from the first ancestor, Shen; from his great grandson Ang (1024–1085), and
individually from three of Ang’s great great grandsons. Prior to Shen, there were
no multi-line genealogies. The first five-generation genealogy of the multi-line
pattern would not have dated before the time of his great grandsons, that is to say,
some time in the eleventh century. There is no way to be certain that the genea-
logical chart that Liu Song mentioned must necessarily conform to this diagram
in detail. However, it should be very clear that the multi-line genealogy is very
distinct from the single-line genealogy.
In the case of the Liu surname of Xiaolun Village in Luling (Diagram 5.2),
the single-line and the multi-line genealogies are found, in two successive com-
pilations, respectively, of 1258 and 1346. In the eleventh century, ancestor Gao
(1055–1117) was a wealthy philanthropist. In 1114, he presented to the imperial
court some Daoist spiritual texts (daojiao xianjing) and, thereafter, turned his
attention to encouraging his grandsons to sit for the imperial examinations. His
son also donated 3 million cash in response to an imperial decree seeking dona-
tions to support military defence. In the twelfth century, the Xiaolun Lius were
wealthy owners of a market wherein lived 600–700 households. In the thirteenth
century, they produced Liu Chenweng (1232–1297), one of the most noted schol-
ars of Jizhou at the time.21

Diagram 5.2 Multi-line genealogy in Xiaolun Liu genealogy. *found in 1258 preface;
**found in 1346 preface. (From Xiaolun Fangjing Ganxi Liushi sanpai
wuxiu tongpu 1920, “Xiaolun pai shangfang laoju shixi” 4b–16b.)
 Writing down the genealogy 73
The earliest genealogy was compiled by Guinian (1188–1275), jinshi of 1208
and Gao’s great grandson. The Song dynasty loyalist Wen Tianxiang (1236–1283)
wrote a preface for the compilation in 1258. This preface describes a single-
line of descent from Heng (953–1033), the second generation settled at Xiaolun
Village, to Guinian.22 In Diagram 5.2, this single-line of descent is marked with
an asterisk against the name. The second compilation was recorded by a pref-
ace written in 1346 by Xu Youren (native of Henan Province). The compiler
was Qiyang (born 1284), who was descended on a different line post-Gao than
Guinian.23 The preface refers to numerous persons who obtained official titles.
These are marked with a double asterisk on Diagram 5.2. It can be seen that they
spanned four sub-branches in two five-generation genealogies.
Time alone would have required many families to produce written genealo-
gies in the chart form later rather than earlier. Liu Huaweng, the dam builder of
Kanxi Village in ca. 1300, was recorded in a genealogy compiled by his great
grandson, Xun (dates unknown) in 1422, well into the Ming dynasty. Huaweng’s
father, Shengpu, is noted in the genealogy as a defender of the county and given
the title of “superintendent” (tiling) in the Yuan dynasty.24 It might be recalled
from Chapter 3, that although Huaweng was credited with purchasing the land
and building the dam, it was his son, Shouke (dates unknown), who had a flair
for engineering, that turned the estate into a profitable enterprise. The geneal-
ogy includes a story of his being robbed of hidden treasures by a neighbour and
his not pursuing his claims. More relevant was the report that Shouke and his
wife were reburied in 1368, the year the Ming dynasty was founded, and that
Shouke’s sons were noted not only as very wealthy men, but also “great cap-
tains of ten-thousand bushels” (wanshi juzhang) in the early Ming dynasty. His
eldest son, being appointed their “leader” (shouling) was held liable for grain
delivery, and having completed that mission, he resumed his position as “tax
captain” (liangzhang). He finally died in the Ming dynasty capital Nanjing in
1390, being detained there because his shipment was delayed by the weather.
Shouke’s second son, had served as “great captain of ten-thousand bushels”
before he did. The poor man fell ill as he transported grain to the capital in 1371
and died back home in 1372. One of their second cousins, who was made “great
captain” in 1370, rather than serving, gave his share of the ancestral estate to his
own younger brother and moved away from the village altogether.25 Wang Zhi
(1379–1462), who wrote a preface for the genealogy said of it, “it covered several
generations and clearly demarcated the lineage branches”.26 It is likely to have
been a multi-line genealogy, but it was a late compilation, prompted possibly
by members of this wealthy lineage serving as “tax captains” in the early Ming
dynasty.
The genealogies I have presented indicate that in twelfth-and-thirteenth cen-
tury Ji’an and Fuzhou, not even rich families possessed very extensive gene-
alogies. The “large volumes in small scripts” cited by Ouyang Shoudao were
not made up of lengthy genealogical charts, but only linked charts of five gen-
erations. As the charts were linked, numeral names and birth order ranks came
to be rationalized. Some families gradually adopted patterned character names.
74 Tracing lineages
The genealogy of the Yang surname at Bantang Village in Jishui (Jizhou), noted
in Chapter 4 for streamlining its numeral naming, shows how and why the two
processes came together.
The extant Bantang Yang surname genealogy does not include an early pref-
ace. However, Huang Zhifan has recovered a collection of essays from wood
blocks found in the ancestral hall which includes two genealogy prefaces.27 One
of them dates from 1123 and was written by Yang Cun (ca. 1058–1128) and the
other from 1199 written by Yang Wanli. No other copies of these prefaces are
extant, but the genealogy includes a grave inscription for Cun written by Wanli
in 1200 and Wanli’s preface was seen by Xie Jin (1369–1415), who had lived near
Bantang Village, and who cited a part of it in a preface that he himself was to
write for a Yang surname genealogy, not of Jishui, but of Taihe County.28 The two
prefaces are likely to be authentic.
Although Cun and Wanli were descended from different branch ancestors as
reckoned even from Cun’s time, both prefaces provided a lineage history to dem-
onstrate that the branches cohered into a single lineage. First-settled ancestor Lu
had served the Southern Tang kingdom. He had two sons, Rui and Yan. Yan was
Cun’s ancestor by six removes. That is to say, Cun was in the eighth generation
following from Lu. (For the five-generation genealogy following from Lu, see
Diagram 4.2.) Rui and Yan each begot a son, who each had two sons. Cun was
descended from one of them, Yanbang. He enumerated his own line in the fol-
lowing terms:

Yanbang… was the great great grandfather of my line. He had seven sons, of
whom Jin was my great grandfather. Jin had five sons, of whom Lun was my
grandfather. Lun had two sons, the one named Jiao was my father. My father
had three sons, the eldest being Buji, the second Benci, that is, myself.29

The description, therefore, fits that of a single-line five-generation genealogy.

He went on to describe how the record had been preserved:

Third-generation ancestor has a grave located at the Rain Pond at East Hill,
and the graves of great great grandfather, great grandfather, grandfather and
father are all extant.30

He did not refer to Lu’s grave, which had been guarded by two sixth-generation
descendants by covenant in 1036. The omission can be explained by the fact
that those two were descended from Rui’s line (that is, the elder of Lu’s two
sons), while Cun was descended in Yan’s line. The subtle difference suggests that
the first-ancestor to settle was sacrificed to in a grave maintained by the princi-
pal line, and Cun’s line, being lesser, had no share in it. Cun’s line maintained
graves from the third-generation ancestor downwards, and that also begs the
question why and if the whereabouts of the second-generation ancestor’s grave
was known.
 Writing down the genealogy 75
Cun’s precise wording is significant as to why he compiled the genealogy:

From first settlement by Lu, his descendants for generations have become
a literary clan practicing the Confucian teachings (ruxing shizu). Some of
them became notable. In the Yuanyou period (1086–1093), they became
people of Zhonggao district in Jishui county. In consideration of the lengthy
continuation of the Yang surname, and their division into four clans (zu),
I present this chart to all those to follow, so that they may know our origins
without mistake.31

Yang Wanli’s grave inscription of Cun in 1200 describes him as a scholar and
an official.32 The move to Zhonggao District would have happened during
Cun’s lifetime and could hardly be in error (he was buried there after he died).
He pointed out specifically that descendants of Lu formed four branches and
lived in four different locations (which he referred to as “zu”, the word I have
consistently translated as “clan”). That description would have agreed with the
1036 covenant regarding protection for Lu’s grave which specified that the sig-
natories represented two lineage branches, both in the senior line.33 It is unclear
from his description if his genealogical chart covered all four branches. It is more
likely that it referred to the four progenitors, but described essentially his own
five-generation genealogy.
However, Cun’s description is at odds with Yang Wanli’s preface. Wanli
collapsed the four branches into two. The principal branch came to settle in a
Yangjia zhuang, and the lesser branch in Bantang. Both the grave inscription
and the genealogy noted clearly that Cun lived in Bantang. Wanli cited Cun’s
genealogical chart, but he went further than Cun in making a claim to the literati
status of the lineage. He said, during the Song dynasty up to his time, 13 people
in the lineage had acquired the jinshi degree, of whom 9 came from Yangjia
zhuang and 4 from Bantang. By the time he wrote the preface, the principal
line had also produced Yang Bangyi, the much awarded martyr and easily the
most famous man of the Yang surname in Jizhou.34 The interest in sharing the
honours achieved by the principal line by persons of the lesser line would have
been good reason for streamlining the genealogies, and that included naming
practices.
Another change that Yang Wanli brought to the genealogy was the inclusion of
an early history for the lineage. He could not represent that in a chart form, but in
both Cun’s inscription and in the extant copy of the genealogy, a single descent
line was traced from ancient times. It could be that the common distant ancestry
provided more of a justification of lineage unity than tracing descent from the
first-settled ancestor, but of that we cannot be certain.
The written genealogy of the Yang surname of Bantang Village, as we
now have it, was edited in the fifteenth century by Yang Shiqi (1366–1444),
not a Jishui, but a Taihe man who sought affiliation with the Bantang lineage.
His friend Xie Jin, who celebrated his efforts in compiling a comprehensive
76 Tracing lineages
genealogy for the entire lineage, recorded that he himself had seen 12 different
genealogical compilations. The titles are interesting. One of them was the Datong
pu (genealogy in common), indicating that Shiqi’s effort was not the first to bring
order to the wide assortment of lineage claims. Another one was titled Dujiang
yuan pu (genealogy of the village after the Yangzi River crossing), a clear refer-
ence to the dynastic relocation after the loss of Jiankang to the Jurchens, and
making a claim to a northern ancestry. Other titles went by the names of villages
where lineage members had settled: Jishui Yangzhuang, Shangjing, Bangtang,
and Xiao Nanjiang, such village names are reflected in the settlement history
of lineage branches recorded in the extant genealogy.35 However, the patchy
appearance of the extant genealogy shows that Yang Shiqi was quite faithful to
the branch genealogies that he collected, and, in those branch genealogies, it is
possible to detect evidence of the genealogical chart. The details would be too
tedious to reproduce here, but suffice it to note that the most complete multi-line
genealogy is provided for Yang Bangyi’s line. It runs from his ancestor by five
removes by the name Kebi, until his descendants by five removes, and more.
Interestingly, a note appended to the genealogical entry on Yangui, Kebi’s father,
refers to a “clear list for family jiao-sacrifice” ( jiajiao qingpu), which suggests
that the names of some of those ancestors, at least, had been recorded for pur-
poses of periodic sacrifice.36 The genealogical record of Wanli’s line is interest-
ing in that it is complete only from his grandfather, indicating that despite his
stature and his interest in the family genealogy, he did not have a chart for the
early generations of his own line of descent. Any effort made towards drafting a
five-generation chart would have taken place two generations after Wanli, that is
to say, well into the thirteenth century.
Not all genealogies were compiled in private. There is always the exception
that proves the rule. In the twelfth century, a Jiangxi man from Yiyang County,
not far from Xinzhou and Fuzhou, not only produced a pedigree genealogy with a
lengthy ancestry, but also obtained an imperial sanction for the record. That was
Chief Minister Chen Kangbo (1097–1165), a staunch pro-war advocate under the
first Southern Song emperor Gaozong. Chen Kangbo’s persistence brought about
decisive victory against a Jurchen invasion in 1161. He was closely involved in
Gaozong’s abdication in favour of his son Xiaozong in 1162, stood down in the
face of opposition and ill health in 1163, and was recalled to the imperial court by
Xiaozong in 1165, in which year Chen died.37
Chen Kangbo must have completed his genealogy in c. 1161. Claiming descent
from the Chen “communal family” of Jiangzhou, he said the Chen surname of
Jiangnan (which, in the Song dynasty, included Jiangxi) was divided into 21
branches, and then subdivided into 54 sub-branches. His close colleague Zhang
Jun (1097–1164) wrote a preface for the genealogy at his request, repeating his
description of the number of branches and sub-branches the lineage had. And
so did many preface writers in later years. Zhang said the compilation for which
he was writing the preface included former prefaces, a history of the surname,
and genealogical charts that demonstrated separate branches. For the genea-
logical charts, the compilation had employed Ouyang Xiu’s method of the “five
 Writing down the genealogy 77
ancestors and the nine generations”. Using this method, he said, it was possible
to trace “upwards to see the origins, and downwards to see how branches fol-
lowed”.38 If the Chen surname accomplished this for all its branches and sub-
branches, it would have been a massive volume. Chen Kangbo’s effort was
exceptional. He claimed he did not merely present it to the emperor, but also
received a decree from the emperor granting the Chen surname that genealogy.39
That is the only instance I know of from Jiangxi where a genealogy was granted
by imperial favour.
The history of genealogy writing among the Ouyang, Xiao, Zeng, Liu, Yang,
and Chen surnames has been cited in these pages by way of illustrating changes
that were coming about from the eleventh to the twelfth centuries, from approxi-
mately the end of the Northern Song to the early Yuan dynasties. Few families,
even wealthy ones, would have traced their genealogies for more than five gen-
erations. Fewer still would have employed multi-lined genealogies. This is not to
say that the intention of maintaining descent lines was missing. As many Song
dynasty writers of prefaces have put it, they were starting from scratch, because,
according to them, due to war and migration from the end of the Tang dynasty to
the Five Dynasties, genealogies had been lost and families had scattered. In time,
there would have been the lengthier genealogies, but for most of the Song dynasty
in most of Ji’an and Fuzhou, the intention of maintaining descent lines remained
more an aspiration than reality.

The lineage on paper

Nevertheless, the introduction of the genealogical chart had made multi-line
lineages possible. Moreover, although Ouyang Xiu back in 1053 had cast his
genealogical chart on stone, the chart was to make its impact, not on stone, but
on paper. The paper and printing revolution was seizing the Song dynasty as
the genealogy made its transition from one recording medium to another. It was
going to be on paper, not stone, that the genealogical charts made their lasting
impact.
Reading from paper versions of grave epitaphs, it is easy for the historian to
forget that they were written to be carved on stone. Many paper versions of stone
stele inscriptions obviously did not survive, hence, the excitement among histori-
ans when, nowadays, steles are recovered from graves or temple walls. The cus-
tom of requesting epitaphs from reputable writers very likely preceded that of
such request for genealogy prefaces. The transition from stone to paper was com-
plete when the genealogical chart was associated with other family documents
such as epitaphs and biographies, and the collective archive came to be known
as a “genealogy”. Again, the timeline for the transition might well have varied
in different parts of China. In Shanxi Province, gravestones have been found
on which the genealogical chart was recorded on the reverse side (the obverse
bearing the name of the deceased), a practice I have not come across in Jiangxi.40
The reasons why such practices might have varied must have been many, but an
obvious reason to consider must be the availability of paper.
78 Tracing lineages
The historians of papermaking in China are in agreement that although bam-
boo paper was first made in the ninth century, it took until the eleventh century
for the technique to be perfected. Paper made from bamboo provided an alterna-
tive to paper that was made from hemp and rattan and underpinned the spread
of woodblock printing. The new technology coincided with a boom in publish-
ing. Zhejiang (especially Hangzhou) and Fujian are singled out by the histori-
ans of the Chinese book as centres of publishing in the Southern Song dynasty,
and Jiangxi is mentioned in the process.41 Cherniack cites Su Shi for recalling
in the late eleventh century that books had been scarce, but were then being
published in abundance. We can safely assume that compilers of genealogies
had easy access to paper and were familiar with books. Moreover, Cherniack’s
description of their attitude towards reading the classics is highly relevant to the
genealogy compilation process. The imprints were considered to be error prone
and collectors as well as readers of books prided themselves on their ability to
collate different editions in order to recover the original text. The Southern Song
dynasty government did, indeed, produce standard texts that might be used in
the examination, but its effort in no way impinged on private editions that made
claims to authenticity.42 It is not hard to detect a similar strand of editorship in
genealogical compilations.
I have come across no indication that Song dynasty genealogies were printed.
Nevertheless, Southern Song dynasty scholars would have been accustomed to
hand copying their books, and because hand copied manuscripts were widely
used and were also collected by book-collectors, many scholars must also have
spent considerable time transcribing. Therefore, although it was widely known
that bogus claims were made for pedigree descent, genealogy compilers would
not have departed from their intellectual training to proceed on the basis that
genealogies of the same surname would have come, ultimately, from the same
origin, and they could justifiably edit texts in order to reveal the hidden lineages.
The application of the chart to genealogy writing fitted into this history of the
wider availability of paper and then of printing. The genealogical chart provided
a measure of historical rigor into pedigree claims. Ouyang Xiu’s harsh words
for Zeng Gong on the inaccuracies of the Zeng surname genealogy reflected
those standards: it was not realistic to allow only four generations between
emperor Gaozu (256 BCE–195 BCE) in the Han dynasty and emperor Pingdi
(9 BCE–6 CE). Yet, in another century, that was almost exactly the same criti-
cism that Ouyang Shoudao made of Ouyang Xiu’s genealogy. Ouyang Xiu the
historian saw the fallacy of erroneous dating in Zeng Gong’s genealogy with-
out Zeng providing the genealogical chart, but Ouyang Shoudao, having access
to a genealogical chart, did not have to be a historian, even though he was, to
see the same discrepancies. The genealogical chart provided a new standard of
proof. It was possible and necessary to claim descent by supplying the names of
all intervening ancestors, and those names could have been supplied by branch
genealogies other than one’s own. No longer would it do to merely claim descent
from a distant ancestor, the descent line had now to be demonstrated.
 Writing down the genealogy 79
The accumulating literature on the history of reading and literacy becomes
relevant to an understanding of this process. David R. Olson sums up a major dis-
covery collectively embraced by Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Jack Goody,
himself, and others when he says,

By creating texts which serve as representations one came to deal not with
the world but with the world as depicted or described.43

Set into the context of the use of genealogical charts in the Southern Song
dynasty, it is necessary to consider how not only the stone inscription was being
replaced by paper, but also how the oral genealogy was by writing.
Oral genealogies came to be noticed by Chinese scholars of genealogies only
in the context of ethnography from ethnic minorities. Studies of the Yao have
recorded that names of ancestors are recalled in single-line descent for a dozen
and up to more than 20 generations.44 Li Xiaonong, writing on the subject pre-
cisely of the origins of the genealogy as seen from ethnographic data, points out
the practicality of descent tracing through the use of patronyms, that is to say,
names given to sons which incorporate an element of the father’s name.45 David
Faure argues from interviews in the new Territories of Hong Kong in the 1970s
and 1980s that the oral genealogy was mapped onto village geography and was
applied in maintaining settlement rights in the village.46 The ease by which a
single line of descent is blended into the five-generation genealogy in Ji’an and
Fuzhou suggests, even though it does not prove, that single-line descent was
truncated when five-generation descent was written down, but possibly not for-
gotten. As families made connections through naming patterns and groupings
of five-generation descent lines in writing, they were doing that with an aware-
ness, not written down, that descent lines proved longer than their written record.
The reality of the five-generation descent line was a reality of the written record
rather than the memory.
The adoption of writing, moreover, had come in the context of changes in
rituals (of which more will be said in the next two chapters). Sacrifice to the
deceased could take many forms: There is no reason to assume that their names
must have been written down and that their presence needed to be individually
acknowledged. The families of Ji’an and Fuzhou, which, by the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, adopted the paper version of the written genealogy, belonged
to a minority. They had vague notions of a lineage, but were only beginning to
tinker with the means for keeping track of descent. Yet, the written versions
seemed real, in the sense that they could be restored to a reality that was assumed
behind the vague lineage notion. Having this notion in mind, rather than that
there were, somehow, “lineages”, will help us to focus our attention on the rubric
from which communities gradually conformed to the paper version of the lineage
model. To be perfectly clear, Song dynasty families of Ji’an and Fuzhou were lin-
eages on paper long before they were lineages on the ground. They were notional
before they were practical.
80 Tracing lineages
Notes
1 A summary account of the history of the written genealogy may be found in Chang
Jianhua 1998, pp. 221–313.
2 Chen Shuang 2015; Angela Schottenhammer 1994.
3 Sometimes such accounts lead to legends of lineage origins, see Zhao Shiyu 2006 and
David Faure 1986 for well-known examples outside Jiangxi.

4 He Xi 2016.

5 Wang Shanjun 1999, pp. 236–260.

6 Cang Xiuliang 2008 points out that Sima Qian, the “grand historian”, made use of
tables in his monumental Record of History (Shiji), but that they were chronologi-
cal tables of events and not genealogical tables. Ouyang Xiu himself said as much
in a preface to his genealogical chart: “Many lineages that survived from the Tang
dynasty hold old genealogies and sometimes I see them. But those genealogies do
not include charts”. (Ouyang Xiu 11th century, 71/12a)
7 Guo Feng 1996; Denis Twitchett 1992, p. 91.
8 Ouyang Xiu 11th century, 71/12a–14b. Ouyang Xiu’s essay collection provides two
essentially similar versions of the genealogical charts. The version cited in Plates 5.1
and 5.2 is the one copied from the stele at his home village.
9 Ouyang Xiu 11th century, 71/9a.
10 Taga Akigorō 1981, vol. 1, pp. 117–133; Patricia Buckley Ebrey 1986, pp. 35–39.
11 Su Xun 1993, pp. 371–393.
12 Zeng Gong 1984, pp. 235–238; Ouyang Xiu 11th century, 47/10b–11b, citation from
11a.
13 Liu Xun 14th century, 7/37a–38a.

14 Yu Ji 1346, 40/4b–6a, citation from 5a.

15 Zeng Minhang 1245, p. 49.

16 Yongfeng xianzhi 1874, 33/Song ji 14a–14b.

17 Ouyang Shoudao 13th century, 19/9b–11b.

18 Huxi Xiaoshi zongpu 1891, no pagination, “Huxi jizu Xi gong chuan Jushen gong

weixia fentu”.
19 Lu Jiuyuan 12th century, 27/1b–2a.
20 Huxi Xiaoshi zongpu 1891, “Zong shixi” 6a–25b.
21 Xiaolun Fangjing Ganxi Liushi sanpai wuxiu tongpu 1920, by permission,
1/4/“Xiaolun shixi tu” 12a–b; 10/5/1a–4b, 8/3b–4b.
22 Ibid. “Xiaolun shixi tu” 4b–5a, 13a-b; 1/1/1a–2a.
23 Ibid. “Xiaolun shixi tu” 4b–5a, 9b–10a; 1/1/2a–b.
24 Liushi Yucheng zupu 1994, “Shixi zongtu” 13b.
25 Ibid. 14b–16b, Shouke, aka Renshou, is noted in Chapter 2.

26 Wang Zhi 15th century, houji 17/37a; Chen Xun (1385–1464) also wrote a preface and

noted that the genealogy included poems and essays by a famous writer. Chen Xun
1594, 5/20b–21b.
27 Huang Zhifan 2018. The pages are portions of a text by the title “Yangshi renwen
jilue” which does not seem to have survived in printed form. Pages from that text are
also cited in Xin Gengru (2007).
28 Xie Jin 1562, 8/34b–38a.
29 Huang Zhifan 2018, p 137.
30 Op. cit.
31 Op. cit.
32 Bantang zhongjie Yangshi zongpu 1900, yiwen 1a–2b, also Yang Wanli 1235,
122/6b–10a.
33 See Chapter 4, p. 10.
34 Huang Zhifan 2018, p. 137.
 Writing down the genealogy 81
35 Xie Jin 1562, 8/34b–38a; Huang Zhifan 2018, pp. 138–141.

36 Bantang zhongjie Yangshi zongpu 1900, “Yu bu zongtu” 1a.

37 Song shi 1977, pp. 11807–11811.

38 Chen Kangbo 1171, 10/77b–79a, 12/94a–96b.

39 Ibid. 5/37a–38a. The preface to the next edition of the genealogy, dated 1245, ibid.

13/104a–105b written by a descendant, made no reference to the imperial grant of the

genealogy, and, so, the claim must be treated with some suspicion.
40 Tomoyasu Iiyama 2016 and 2017.
41 Tsien Tsuen-hsuin 1985; Pan Jixing 1979.
42 Susan Cherniack 1994, pp. 5–125, reference to Su Shi on p. 47.

43 David R. Olson 1994, p. 195.

44 Quanguo renmin daibiao dahui minzu weiyuanhui bangongshi 1958, pp. 9–49.

45 Li Xiaolong 1992, pp. 12–26.

46 David Faure 1986, pp. 30–36.