Family tree culture in China faces crisis

A family tree is a special book with lists and charts recording generations, important figures and events of a blood-related family. Currently, the family tree culture in China, which has lasted thousands of years, is in a crisis.

In the "seminar on construction of a region for inheriting and renovating the family name culture and Chinese historical civilization" held recently in Nanyang, Henan Province, family name experts and scholars pointed out defects and shortcomings of the traditional family tree and said that young generations' attitude of "Admiration instead of participation" is making the family tree culture face a crisis of extinction.

Lin Xianzhai, director of Henan Family Name Culture Institute, said that a major cultural activity of the current rural area in China is that blood-related relatives get together and continue to write their family trees, but the problem is that only the elderly are doing this work. Due to limits of their life experience and educational backgrounds, the family tree writing is going at a low level and badly needs guidance from professionals and experts.

The director of Henan Gushi County Root-kin Culture Institute Chen Xuewen, who has been researching the family name culture for a long time, believes that historical factors, such as the shift of dynasties and social turbulence, have made it difficult to "connect" ancient family trees with current ones and it is a common problem faced by families of various family names; on the other hand, "the old have the will but not enough energy to do the work while the young have the energy but not the will", and the fact that family trees are usually written by only one family or individual has its own limits.

"One concern is that many young people are not interested in the work. Some family trees are coming to their end as the old people are passing away."

A company manager doing the business of spreading the family tree culture frankly said that currently the frequency of interactions among relative families and within in a family is so low that people's senses of the blood relationship and family tree have weakened.

In fact, as a link between the past and future, a family tree could give great cohesion and vitality to a family. Chen suggests that, in order to solve the bottleneck problems mentioned above, experts and scholars should be invited to do the compiling and writing work of family trees.

According to surveys by experts, 97 Chinese family names have something to do with Henan Province. 77 Chinese family names originated directly from the province and the thriving places of 98 Chinese family names were in the province. These family names cover 90 percent of current Chinese people.

In recent years, domestic and overseas Chinese people's activities of tracing their roots are becoming more and more frequent. But, due to various factors, such as the long history, migration, and contradiction of different historical records, original places of some family names are still in dispute, leading to confusions of recognition in root-tracing activities of many family names. "Therefore, it is very important to have family trees for reference and have ancestral halls to worship", said Lin.

However, regarding the current situation of many families compiling and revising their family trees, a researcher from Zhengzhou University Zhao Changhai believes that people should not have blind faith in ancient people and documents.

Currently, many associations aiming at inheriting and carrying forward the family name culture have been founded in Henan Province and they are trying to upgrade the family tree compiling work into a cultural inherition level and build the clan association into a tie for uniting overseas and domestic Chinese. The construction of China Family Name Culture Museum is also being planned.