Zhuo Bing Quan researched for Zhuo family records after he retired from his career as a school principal in Guan Tang Village. He felt a great desire to fill in the gap for Zhuo family Guan Tang jia pu. The gap came about in the Cultural Revolution, when Mao Tse Tung ordered the destruction of the family/clan temples and the burning of the ancestral records. (Eyewitnesses living in Guan Tang at the time of this great destruction recall that it took three full days and nights to fully destroy all of the records that were being preserved in the village.)
Zhuo Bing Quan has three books. The first one is The Great Source for Zhuo Family History (a great book for finding our branch families, Zhuo Bing Quan actually helped with this book). The second and third books were written by him, second one is The history of Guan Tang Zhuo family (describing 700 years history about Zhuo family living in Guan Tang), the third one is the most important one, The Branch of Zhuo Family Jia Pu (this is the one with all our family members, and goes all the way to the Chu record). These are the records that are now available to all Zhuo descendants.
The count of generation begins from Zhuo Hua, he was great grandson of the King Wei of Chu who reigned between 339 BC – 329 BC. His name is in the history books, and his story has been published in many places. It illustrates the crucial importance of the ancestral pedigree for Chinese people, and particularly for the royal house. Here’s his story.
Zhuo Hua rescues Chu ancestors’ records from fire
Chinese traditional bamboo slips. This is one of the main media for literacy in early China. Chinese characters were inscribed on a long, narrow strips of bamboo each, and many slips were bound together in sequence with thread
Zhuo Hua, a Chu aristocrat born about 338 BC, was the great grandson of King Wei of Chu. He served in the court as one of the King of Chu’s trusted ministers; it was not uncommon for the king to appoint his relatives to serve important roles in the government.
He was known as a very savvy minister who had great knowledge and an extraordinary memory. It is said that a fire erupted at the palace, and the books of the ancestors of Chu (written on bamboo slips) were destroyed in the fire.
A look inside an unrolled scroll of Bamboo Slips.
This would be a huge loss for any Chinese family, but for the king, losing these treasured books detailing the pedigree of the royal family was catastrophic. The King of Chu was extremely angry. He wanted to execute the record keeper, but Zhuo Hua intervened. He relied on his own memory, and was able to recite every word in the books so scribes could re-create the ancestral records in every detail.
Deeply impressed and grateful, the king of Chu decided to spare the life of the record keeper. This supreme feat of memory, and the devotion to these records that enabled him to recall them in detail, was the making of Zhuo Hua’s reputation and fame.
To us, this version of the story makes more sense than him reciting every record in the library. It is still an incredible feat, but it is far more likely that he would have spent enough time and rigor immersing himself in the King’s jiapu (which was also his family’s record), that he was prepared to actually recite it by heart in the face of this terrible loss.
Zhuo Hua’s descendants commemorate this great sage by honoring him as their first Zhuo ancestor. He was probably the first person who changed his surname as Zhuo; but in any case, the clan has used the surname Zhuo in his honor ever since.
Generation Count
Recently Louise discovered a variation of this story in the Wu Hua Zhuo Zupu. It is a little different than the one we commonly find on other records. In this version of the story, all the records were able to be brought out during the fire except the King’s jiapu. The King was enraged by the loss, and wanted to kill the record keeper. Zhuo Hua begged the king not to kill the record keeper and then proceeded to recite the whole jiapu including the dates.
Shang dynasty oracle bone. This is a record inscribed on a scapula.
From the first Chu ancestor to Zhuo Hua is 31 generations.
From Zhuo Hua to Zhuo Feng (Guan Tang’s first ancestor) is 42 generations.
From Zhuo Feng to me is 20 generations.
Were it not for Zhuo Hua's extraordinary memory, the records of those first 31 generations would have been lost forever to the flames.
When we begin to work on the Shang dynasty (the lineage of the wife of the first Chu ancestor, who was the daughter of the last king of the Shang dynasty), there are another 26 generations to go up.
Unlike the Chu records, which were written on Bamboo Slips, the Shang royalty names were written on oracle bones.
Oracle Bones (also known as Dragon’s Bones) were the shoulder blades of oxen or plastrons of turtles (the flat, underside of the turtle’s shell) which were used in the Shang Dynasty of China (c. 1600-1046 BCE) for divination. The symbols carved on the bones eventually became words and a recognizable Chinese script developed from this practice.
We are grateful this long history of our ancestors has been preserved by so many different means, on different media, and rescued from both accidental and deliberate burnings by great Zhuo heroes like Zhuo Hua and Zhuo Bing Quan.
