#huangdi

[izvletchenie]

“Huangdi said: ‘Before you address gods, before you address demons, speak to your mind.’”

Wei Liao, Military Science of Wei Liao Zi

[the-tru-story]

My Paternal Grandpa’s Genealogy Book (族譜)

How I attempted to find my family’s naming convention (字輩詩) and instead traced my lineage back to Huangdi (2711-2598 BCE).

I can explain...but where do I start?

My paternal grandpa, DaDa (爹爹), adopted a son to take care of his aging father in China, as DaDa’s mother migrated down to Vietnam with him. How they got all the way down to Cần Thơ from Taipu (大埔), I may never know. I’m not sure when the adoption happened, but this uncle of mine is significantly older than my dad, and now has great grand children. My great-grandfather also had a second wife, as many men did at the time, who also cared for him. My dad calls her 細奶 (Sei Nei).

Photos of my dad’s Sei Nei, Nei Nei (grandma), and DaDa (grandpa) in my grandpa’s ancestral home, which was also his childhood home. My immediate family also had my great grandparents’ photos framed up in our house for most of my life.

I visited this adopted uncle of mine some years ago in China. During this trip, my relatives said that we can discover our roots here, and emphasized all the attractions and accommodations for visiting members of the Taipu/Hakka diaspora from around the world. I made sure to ask my parents to ask them about our genealogy book or 族譜 (chuk pu). Many East Asian and Vietnamese clans have this genealogy book but I had never seen one for myself prior to this trip to China. When my mom asked 大舅 (Tai Kiu) and 姐公 (Jia Gong) about it, they said it was all on a computer and brushed it off as something old and uninteresting. Good job, Four Olds Campaign.

Just before making the trip to Taipu, I visited my great uncle (舅公 Kiu Gong) who is a retired professor and came from a prestigious family. Despite his Alzheimer’s and me trying to hide my tears while seeing him so fragile, he lit up when we asked about his genealogy book and promptly shuffled to his bedroom to grab it, cautiously carrying the heavy book into the living room. This book was no simple feat. My great uncle served on the book’s editing board, and it was as huge as an encyclopedia, red and hardcover. From what I remember, the pages were entirely in color, and I was pleasantly surprised to find detailed descriptions of the latter generations of women.

My dad’s paternal side on the other hand had a more modest looking book, printed in the late 90s. No pictures, no color, and unsurprisingly, no women. Still, I took a photo of every single page. My uncle said he would arrange to make a copy for us and we insisted that the pictures would be enough. At this point, even his quiet grandson pleaded for him to let us be. Traditional Chinese folks don’t take no for an answer. They eventually copied some pertinent pages of the book, and mailed it over to us. When my mom and dad went back to visit them recently, they provided a new full color edition of the book, which my uncle was an advisor for.

The book has a number of significant errors and omissions related to my family, which is not abnormal for a genealogy book, I presume. My distant uncle (related to my paternal grandma, so he also came from a prominent family) had collaborated with his siblings to put together a book honoring his parents, and he gave me a page of corrections to handwrite in the book.

Back to looking for my family’s naming convention. When my family and I visited Taipu, my mom asked what would be the next generation’s 輩數 (boi shu), or generation name. My brother’s is 明, my dad and uncle’s is 克, and my grandpa’s is 德. They said the generational names had been written in the family’s ancestral hall, located in my grandpa’s home village. Unfortunately, some years ago, they did not put out a fire after praying and making offerings to ancestors, so the hall burned significantly and the boi shu was gone.

So being who I am, I obviously could not accept this as an answer and wondered if another person within our clan had memorized my family’s generation name poem (世輩詩). How’s it possible that no one had memorized the poem? Each character in the poem is a new generation name, and of course, the poem even rhymes so that it’s easy to remember. 

I examined the extended family tree in our genealogy book, just to see if I could somehow “discover” a rhyming pattern based on each generation’s boi shu. Oddly, while members of my grandpa and great grandpa’s generations used their same respective generation names for the most part, my dad and brother’s generations did not. They varied immensely, but usually siblings at least carried the same generation name. I’ve also scoured the internet for poems that contained 德克明 in that order but came up with nothing. So that’s the most recent status of this little project.

The Zhang clan’s earliest ancestors, between the first and 68th generation. Based on the genealogy book, I’m part of the Zhang clan’s 162nd generation. Zhang Hui, grandson to Huangdi, was the legendary inventor of the bow and arrow, and the progenitor of the Zhang lineage.

Oh, and because I saw that Ming Tsai could date his family lineage back to Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor, and the legendary ancestor of all Chinese people), I decided to check our genealogy book again to see if I could trace my ancestry as well. Turns out that I can, all the way back to Huangdi. Since it’s all already in print, I won’t explain too much of it, but here are a few interesting things from the book, combined with some research online:

Hua Sun is considered the earliest ancestor, or the 始祖, of all Hakka people surnamed Zhang. Originally from Ninghua, Fujian, Zhang Hua Sun migrated to Shanghang, Fujian and had 18 sons and 108 grandsons. I have no idea what this means but he was regarded as Yinjiangzhen’s (situated in today’s Guangdong) earliest ancestor.

Zhang Hua Sun’s son Zhang Xiang Yun is buried in Xianshi Village, Yongding, Fujian.

I may not have found my immediate family’s naming convention, but Hua Sun’s generation name poem is printed in the book. Yun comes after Hua. All of Hua Sun’s sons have Yun as the second character of their names. After that, the generation name is used as the first character again, and then the next name is used as the second character. Not sure if this is related to 昭穆, a concept I’m still trying to figure out.

Another forefather who is considered an “earliest ancestor” is Hua Sun’s great great great grandson, Zuo Cheng, who is buried in Guye, Taipu. More than 15 generations of Zhang Zuo Cheng’s descendents stayed in Taipu, so this may be why he is regarded as a 始祖. His descendants did not follow Hua Sun’s naming convention.

My ancestors from the Southern Song Dynasty apparently lived to be over 90 years old.

Anyway, that was a lot. I have more name-related stories for another post.

[shitidoinmysparetime]

New Podcast Ep: Train of Snitches

It’s Part II of our series on Empress Wu, the only female emperor of China! In this conclusion to our series, Wu goes through crown princes like Kleenex and then declares herself a living God–as you do. But surprisingly, she’s not even close to being the craziest person in the royal family!

I KNOW!

Sadly, this is the last new episode for awhile. We’re taking a break for a minute so that we can rest and research for season two. HOWEVER, we will continue to update the website with new material, so please be sure to check things out here.

Itunes

Spotify

SoundCloud

[towabunga-blog]

#huangdi #lechienduqigong #黃帝 #ewok #shitzu #chiedessus (at Brussels, Belgium)

[nikiulehla]

4 kings. Very soon these small ones will be coming to life with @wildrumpus_music for their performance may 5th of beautiful and exciting music from Brian Baumbusch! #ebony #puppet #newmusic #wildrumpus #kings #4kings #atahualpa #tut #brianboru #huangdi #shadows #brianbaumbasch

[pictochinia]

[sophieewu]

黃帝

Хуанди ("желтый предок", "желтый государь"), в китайской мифологии олицетворение магических сил земли; отсюда его связь с желтым цветом лёссовых почв. Считалось, что Хуанди был огромного роста (около трёх метров), имел лик дракона, солнечный рог, четыре глаза или четыре лица. Ему приписывали изобретение топора, ступки, лука, стрел, одежды и туфель; якобы он научил людей отливать колокола и треножники, бурить колодцы, мастерить повозки и лодки.

На кратинке самая известная война в истории Дренвего Китая между королем Хуанди и мятежником Chiyou.

С Хуанди связывали начало врачевания и медицины как науки. "Желтый государь" искусно владел копьем и покарал правителя юга Яньди, не явившегося к нему с данью. Хуанди собрал всех тигров, барсов, медведей, сразился с ослушником и одержал над ним верх. По некоторым источникам, он никогда не пребывал в покое. Хуанди расчищал горные склоны под посевы, прокладывал дороги. Его почитали как первого государя Китая, будто бы правившего с 2698 по 2598 год до нашей эры. Считается, что Хуанди, имевший 25 сыновей, погребен на горе Цаошань, хотя многие верили, что там похоронена лишь его одежда, а он сам, став бессмертным, вознесся на небеса.