The Crippled Tree by Han Suyin (5)

[CHUNG Yoon-Ngan <chungyn@mozart.collective.com.au>]

     The Crippled Tree by Han Suyin (5) 
 
    This is an excerpt from the book "The Crippled Tree" by Han Suyin
    a Hakka medical doctor-cum-author. 
 
   I possess a copy of the Family Book of Generations, prefaced by my
Third Uncle, my father's younger brother, the only one of his generation
devoted to genealogical research......................................
...........................Third Uncle's preface gives compendiously the
Confucian moral structure which propped the feudal gentry family in its
social and economic framework. 
 
   "All things under heaven have their rise and fall; and these occur
beyond our intercession; only resolution and uprightness, virtues
bequeathed by our ancestors, can transform ruin into resurgence. That is
why a family erects its ancestral sanctuaries, to maintain the veneration
due to progenitors and the remembrance of its own humble beginnings. Hence
the necessity for filial virtue to accomplish the rites due to the spirits
of predecessors; hence forbearance among members of a household, to
remember one's responsibilities, to strenghten the clan and the breed, to
inspire sacrifice of self for the common good. In these ways our Chou
clan, remembering and holding fast to virtue, has risen once again. From
the seventh generation, when ancestor Chienhsi entered into the southern
province of Kuangtung (ater the Mongol ravages) till the fifteenth
generation, when ancestor Mofah moved from thence to Szechuan, these
filial rites were followed. Loyal and upright, practsing agriculture, and
industriously learning, our family held together, in spite of manifold
disasters. In the seventeenth generation our ancestor Hsinghua first
established himself in Chengtu at the Street Si Fu Nan, where he acquired
a piece of land for building. In the eighteenth generation ancestor
Chaochung and his younger brothers, on that piece of land, erected a
Sanctuary dedicated it to the ancestor Hsinghua, calling it the Hsinghua
Branch Sanctuary. Here now, at the Branch Sanctuary, we offered ritual
sacrifice, from generation to generation, continuing until our present
twenty-third generation. Thus the family was not parted, but remained
together, acquiring merit by fulfilling the ideal of five generations
under one roof."...............................
.......................................................... 
 
   From 1720 to about 1820 the Chou clan in Meihsien received formal
visits from representatives of the branch in Szechuan. Births of sons,
deaths, marriage contracts, establishments of sanctuaries, extensions of
commerce, successful competitons in examinations, were announced in the
ancestor's hall to the soul tablets there. Then came the Opium Wars, and
after that the Taiping rising, and the connection ceased. Impoverishment,
dislocation of travel, the exile of many Hakkas now suspect, put a stop 
to it............................................
................................................ 
    
   Third Uncle in his probings into the familiana came against certain
discrepancies when he compared the records of the family in Szechuan with
those of the "root" clan of the Chous still resident in the district of
Meihsien in Kuangtung. He recorded these in an appendix to the Book of
Generations: 
             "From ancestor Mofah (the one who left Meihsien to come to
Szechuan in 1690 or thereabouts) to the present, nine generations have
passed, fifteen to twenty-third. From ancestor Jenteh to ancestor Chienhsi
there are six generations. It seems we should add six generations between
Mofah and Chienhsi (the seventh-generation head of the clan who fled from
the Mongols after A.D.1276). Ancestor Mofah should be the twenty-first
progenitor, not the fifteenth." 
 
   Who was ancestor Jenteh? According to the records, another founder of
the Meihsien clan. To make a complicated story simple, our Szechuan
records had mislaid six generations. Third Uncle at one time worried a
good deal about those strayed six generations. Where, and how, had the
mistake happened? He went to Sikang, in the west of Szechuan, to consult
another branch of the clan there established, and reported his findings: 
   "Venerable Great-Uncle Yichieh tells me that he is the twenty-fifth
generation after Chienhsi. According to my original record, he was the
nineteenth generation." 
 
   Venerable Great-Uncle Yichieh was eighty-seven years old in 1932.  I
never met him, he had become a soul tablet by the time I reached Szechuan
in 1939. But here are two branches of the same clan differing in their
records. Obviously a serious matter. Third uncle made further research; 
then came the Second World War, which for China lasted from 1937 to 1945.
After that came the Civil War, and then the last Great Revolution of 1949,
and after that everything was changed, and there was a lot more work to do
than worry over family genealogies. At Land Reform the fields were
divided, the large burial grounds had their graves removed since some of
the best fields were taken by them; our family graves were not
spared..............................................
......................................................... 
   From "The Crippled Tree" by Han Suyin.