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Post by jrcisa on Jun 17, 2012 21:33:34 GMT -5
Above is the zupu listing for my eldest great uncle. A Chinese literate acquaintance said that this uncle was deceased and that the name of another relative was posted into the lineage to promote the birth of more sons, however, I am not sure if I understood him correctly. Can you clarify and tell me if this was common practice? Attachments:
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Post by laohuaqiao on Jun 18, 2012 19:01:25 GMT -5
Yes, this was common practice. In this case, your great uncle did not have any male children, one of his nephews, a younger son (usually 2nd son) of one of his brothers, was designated to carry on his lineage. The words 侄繼 mean "nephew inherit".
I have a lot of questions on this process. Here are some of my thoughts.
This is a designated inheritor of lineage and property, occurring after a person's death or shortly before death. As long as a person was very much alive, he had a chance to bore a son, one wouldn't need to designate an inheritor. At the time of designation, the inheritor could have been an adult, so it wouldn't really be considered an adoption. Sometimes the surviving family do go outside of the family to adopt a child. Was it only when there was no close relative to be an inheritor?
If a family male member died before becoming an adult (or not married, which to Chinese technically not an adult), there wouldn't be any property nor any need for an inheritor.
I think there were some practical reasons for having a designated inheritor, instead of simply dividing up the deceased 's estate among surviving male relatives. This avoided any in-fighting among relatives as to who was getting a fair share or not. Also, if the deceased left behind a widow (widows), the designated inheritor would be responsible for providing support for her(them) until she (they) die.
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Post by jrcisa on Jun 18, 2012 22:39:09 GMT -5
Thank you for your informative response & interesting thoughts. I neglected to include generations 24 & 25 in the zupu, which might shed more light on the lineage. If I matched up the characters correctly, then it seems that the eldest son of my great uncle's brother became the nephew-inheritor (pinyin & Toisanese name please?). I don't see evidence of a wife for my great uncle, so could it be that he died while he was still single? Also, what is the meaning of those characters in parentheses in generations 24 & 25? This is all so very intriguing. Attachments:
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Post by laohuaqiao on Jun 19, 2012 8:47:45 GMT -5
OK I'll revise my theory still in process of formation. In case the son-less clan member was the eldest son, the designated inheritor would be natural head of the household had the inheritance transfer not taken place, which was the elder son of the second brother. Had the second son became the designated inheritor, he would have become head of the household over his older brother, upsetting the natural order.
In 24th generation, in parenthesis after Kong Hong 孔宏 are the words 出 meaning "to go out" and 繼 meaning "to inherit".
In 25th generation, in parenthesis next to Wei Mei 維美, Kong Hong's second son, 在美 出戰陣亡 "in US died in battle of war".
I don't know what to make of the wives' names, clearly some were listed and some not.
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Post by Doug 周 on Jun 20, 2012 5:59:38 GMT -5
I have uploaded a page of my jiapu which uses different words to indicate adoption. It makes it easier to tell if the adoption is an 'incoming' or 'outgoing' adoption. This is just so others who are studying their jiapu can see differences and stylistic changes. laohuaqiao, I am really interested in your theories about adoption and inheritances. Please don't hesitate to expand. I am thinking of getting one of the two books on death rituals of Chinese, one by Watson and the other by Chung, to try to understand further what you are talking about. I feel what you are theorizing is the whole basis of maintaining a jiapu. IMHO Attachments:
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Post by laohuaqiao on Jun 21, 2012 23:11:22 GMT -5
Used in the context of a zupu, the words ji 继 (繼 ) si 嗣 are used almost interchangeably, meaning to inherit. 嗣, as a noun, means heir. Together 继嗣 means to adopt a son or adopt an heir.
However, 嗣子 means heir son, while 继子, 继父, 继母 etc. mean step-son, step-father, step-mother, different meanings.
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Post by laohuaqiao on Jun 22, 2012 0:58:38 GMT -5
Doug,
The example in your zupu page the lineage of a younger great uncle was inherited by a second male child in the family.
I think one obvious rule is the inheritor must have been of the correct generation; otherwise, there would be strange relations where father-son became cousins or brothers became uncle-nephew, etc. Then the question is was there a definite order among the males of the same generation as to how the inheritor was selected? If there was a choice among all eligible, who made the decision?
In your genealogy tree, in the later generations there were adoptions from outside of the extended family. A hundred or more years ago, men could have married many times with multiple wives it was not unusual to have many sons in the family, 5, 6, 10 or more. There were many males within the extended family for inheritance/adoption when needed. And, this topic we have discussed before, starting about 150 years ago, when men from the Pearl River Delta region began to head overseas and stayed away for long periods of time, families were fortunate to have one son, none to be adopted out, and many without a male heir had to adopt from the outside. Does your tree reflect that phenomenon? I would interesting to look at other zupus from Siyi region.
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Post by Doug 周 on Jun 23, 2012 7:28:40 GMT -5
laohuaqiao
Yes, there are adopted sons who are outside of this displayed lineage's bloodline. My jiapu has recorded 4 branch lineages. You might have noticed my annotation of numbers next to all the names. These are the GEDCOM ID numbers so I can correlate back to my software program. The same numbers indicate the same person (easier for the Chinese illiterates). As I digitize the other 2 lineages (2 are already digitized), I will then search to see if adoptions are across lineages. This is one of the reasons for digitizing your jiapu, and a reason for using genealogy software.
Do you feel that adoptions occur across lineage branches, or are they from totally outside the clan? One would surmise that some genetic relationship is better than no blood relation.
You bring out an important point about Chinese genealogy: the generation number has great significance. That number is started by calling the progenitor 1st generation. Philip had difficulty with my jiapu because the generation numbers are not displayed. The generation number is like an index, and connotes social order and cohesiveness. People identify themselves by their generation number. Unfortunately, this is one aspect all genealogy software do not easily record. I will have to think of a way to incorporate it into GEDCOM and then convince programmers to sort and display the generation numbers on the interface.
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Post by laohuaqiao on Jun 25, 2012 7:30:12 GMT -5
Do you feel that adoptions occur across lineage branches, or are they from totally outside the clan? One would surmise that some genetic relationship is better than no blood relation. I agree that having blood relation is better than not. That why in the past it was more likely for nephews to inherit an uncle's lineage. My guess is even in other regions in China where there is no history local men going away for long periods of time, thus no shortage of male children within the extended household, adoption of sibling's children continues to be fairly common. I don't know if or how money was involved when adopting sibling's child. Adopting a child from the outside was really purchasing a child, though the expression often used was to compensate for the expenses of raising the child to that point. Knowing the health history of the child and of the child's parents would have been important in the adoption. So when a nephew was not available, a child from the same village or nearby village, ie from the same clan, would have been preferred over one from a distant village. |
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Post by philiptancl on Jun 26, 2012 1:04:12 GMT -5
The following taken from below may offer some understanding on adoption: weber.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/hbfamilism-u.html#jyebay" VI. Adoption & Other Fictive Kinship
Given the critical importance of kinship in Chinese society (as elsewhere), it is not surprising to find adoption and other forms of fictive kinship. Such arrangements can establish by cultural convention relationships thought badly handled by fickle nature. (Kinship, after all, is a cultural idea with a biological inspiration; where nature fails, culture makes the necessary repair.)
In Chinese, the syllable yì 义 / 義, "righteous," was frequently used as a prefix to designate adoptive relationships. For example, an adopted son would be called an yìzÇ ä¹‰å / 義å or "righteous son" and his father an yìfù 义父 / 義父 or "righteous father." However other terms are found in local use, sometimes with more specialized meanings.
Adoption ranged from full responsibility for a child to a kind of superficial god-parenthood, depending upon the period, place, circumstances, and personalities involved. In general, adoption occurred when:
A child needed to be cared for.
An example might be a daughter born to a family too poor to raise her. Another example might be a child whose parents died.
Someone needed a heir (1).
An example might be a couple who had failed to produce a son, and who adopted a son from a relative. Such adoptions varied in actual detail, although they were nearly always boys. Such an "heir adoption" was often purely nominal, the only actual transfer being the boy's eventual obligation to tend to ancestral rites for the adopting parent. At the other end of the scale, a child might be transferred to a new family, given a new surname, and cut off from any continuing relationship with his natal family. But many intermediate forms are found. For example, parties would somtimes agree that the adoptive son's first child (or first son) would be filiated to the adopting descent line and subsequent children to the adoptive son's original line.
Someone needed an heir (2).
Occasionally an heir was needed but no appropriate boy was available to be adopted, and a couple lacked a daughter whose husband could be made their successor. In such a case, a girl might be adopted, whose eventual husband would be treated as the son for purposes of continuing the family line. In a kind of "pre-nup" contract, parties would agree to a division of future children between descent lines for ritual purposes, more or less the way plans would be made in the case of an adopted son, just mentioned.
A daughter-in-law was needed.
This is the comparatively rare case of the adopted daughter-in-law mentioned above.
An especially frail child was born.
Such a child could be reassigned to a friend or relative who had conspicuous success in raising children, although often without any actual change of residence. In some parts of China —my impression is especially western China— this practice became quite common.
A friend of the family seemed likely to contribute to the welfare of the child.
Such a friend might be a prominent scholar or even a Buddhist priest, who was not expected to raise the child, but merely to express concern about its general welfare and provide benign moral guidance. Sometimes an affluent friend might have such a relationship, but also contribute materially to the child's welfare.
Sworn siblinghood was created by the parties themselves by means of a simple oath, usually accompanied by made-up ceremonial trappings and a meal. Depending upon whether the group was male or female, they were thereafter described as "sworn brothers" (jiébà i xiÅngdì 结拜兄弟 / çµæ‹œå…„弟) or "sworn sisters" (jiébà i jiÄ›mèi 结拜å§å¦¹ / çµæ‹œå§å¦¹), although other terms also can be applied. Sworn siblinghood could occur when:
Two or more people (usually of the same sex unless the group was large) felt a special affinity to each other.
Two or more people (usually of the same sex unless the group was large) joined in a common cause (commercial, military, criminal, political, or other).
Communities required a code of laws, which could be incorporated into an oath among their leaders.
A striking feature of sworn siblingship is that it can entail responsibilities between family members of the parties involved, even though it may be undertaken, even by young people, without consulting other family members. There is little research on this topic, but it may be one of the very few spheres in which traditional Chinese society permitted autonomy in formalized social relations for young people." |
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Post by Doug 周 on Jul 1, 2012 0:26:33 GMT -5
Philip, That was a very interesting article by Dr. Jordan. I knew of his web site prior but never explored it fully until you pointed out his explanation of adoption in China. His site is a great resource and explains Chinese culture and customs in an erudite and Western manner. As we explore adoption (sorry jrcisa for hijacking your thread) I ran across this post about adoption of infant girls (or purchasing of potential brides). Rearing baby-bride (童養媳) Tong Yang Xiclick. This practice was also mentioned by Dr. Jordan. One then wonders if the Westermarck phenomenon would occur. IMHO |
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