Articles on Ming genealogies

[merantau]

Xin Yu is an academic specialist on Ming genealogies.

Two useful background articles on them from his work.  Here and here.

Summary of first article.

• Chinese genealogy looks much different from western genealogy.
• The genealogies developed because people wanted to know their family.
  
• Some of the stories are made up.
  
• They were made long ago, but these genealogies are still in use today.
• This work is important because it shows how historical events impacted actual people.

He also indicates that adoption was frequent and that seriously affects attempts to use DNA methods.

Second article describes what a Chinese genealogy is like.

[gckimm]

Thank you, merantau, for sharing these informative articles!

Greg