At Shanghai’s Library, Chinese Seek the Stories of Their Lives

Long before there was the census in China, there were the genealogy records. Every family had one, from the emperor to the poorest peasant. Like time capsules, these private archives captured vital statistics about the life and times of a family’s ancestors.

After the Communists took over in 1949, tens of thousands of these family dossiers were destroyed as vestiges of a backward-looking feudal society. Now China’s most modern city is racing to rescue what’s left of these ancient manuscripts.

The Shanghai Public Library has the world’s largest depository of Chinese genealogy records, or jiapu. Many of the collection’s 12,000 genealogies--in 100,000 volumes--were salvaged from dumpsters and paper mills where they had been tossed as trash.

Time and neglect have turned the precious homemade tomes into unrecognizable stacks of moldy waste paper. Some have been chewed so badly by bugs that the pages look as if they had been sprayed with bullets.

In a sort of emergency ward for books, dozens of librarians are working tirelessly to nurse these fragile pieces of history back to life.

They use steam and water to separate pages that are stuck together like sheets of lasagna noodles. They uncurl yellowed corners and flatten them with heavy hammers. They use paintbrushes to wet the sheets and bandage the holes with fresh paper. They rebind the pages, sewing them back together by hand.

“We’ve already restored 40,000 volumes,” said Chen Jianhua, the head of the library’s genealogy department. “We want to become the ultimate source of information for Chinese people around the world who want to find out who their ancestors are.”

A Chinese genealogy is a biography of a clan. It includes information such as origins of names, times of birth, locations of burial grounds, marriage records and migration patterns, as well as claims to fame.

The earliest records were carved into turtle shells, cattle bones and bronze. Most of the documents that survive today were written on paper made from organic materials such as bamboo and grass.

In the past, family records were tightly guarded, accessible only to clan elders. Now the jiapu of Chinese luminaries from Confucius to Mao Tse-tung are on display for public consumption and scholarly research. They are invaluable tools not only for Chinese citizens but also for the estimated 55 million ethnic Chinese scattered around the world.

Public figures who recently found their Chinese ancestors include former Philippine President Corazon Aquino and Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s former prime minister, according to library officials.

Some of the Shanghai library’s archives are available on a Singapore-based bilingual Web site.

“There are lots of Chinese who emigrated but want to know where their ancestors are from,” said Ivy Kuah, a spokeswoman for Chineseroots.com (https://www.chineseroots.com). “Previously, they had to go all the way to China. Now they can do it in cyberspace.”

Much more information, however, is yet to be digitized. The library is working to build a comprehensive directory of all Chinese jiapu from around the globe. Meanwhile, the best way to download information is still the old-fashioned method--with a pen.

“My family has been in Taiwan for four generations,” said Ann Chang, 30, a Taiwan native visiting Shanghai on a business trip. The first thing she did when she had a break from work was head for the library. “I want to know where in China they came from.”

She may be in luck. Of the more than 300 family names the library has collected, the most popular are the Chens and the Changs. (In mainland China, Chang is spelled Zhang.)

But her youth may work against her. According to Wang Tie, a professor of ancient books at East China Normal University, older people have the advantage of memory and other useful clues.

Many young people don’t know the names of great-grandfathers or their ancestral villages, which can hamper their search. Those who do strike gold, however, are reluctant to leave the library.

“I’ve been here a week, and I’ve read through 2,000 years of my family’s history,” said Yin Qingxiang, a 73-year-old retired Communist Party cadre who journeyed to Shanghai from the far-off northern province of Heilongjiang. “I come every morning at 8 a.m. and stay until they close. I plan to come back for 10 more days and copy as much information as I can.”

The silver-haired great-grandfather said he had traveled up and down China to the places where his grandparents were born but came up empty. Until now. His goal: to find out what his ancestors intended to name their descendants.

In Chinese tradition, the family elders decide the middle names of the clan’s future offspring. After reading through the records in Shanghai, Yin not only found references to 11 generations before him but also jotted down the designated names for 20 generations after.

Unique middle names can designate membership in a particular generation and reinforce clan identity. This helps build unity within the extended family and avoids duplicating names with other people with the same surname, Yin said.

The Communists had mostly wiped out this tradition. Instead, children were given names such as “army” and “red.”

Now, the government has embraced and supported the genealogy project. Beijing sees it as a way to promote cultural unity--and it’s also good propaganda toward Taiwan, to show that Taiwanese and Chinese have a common ancestry.

To continue the family legacy, Yin hopes to create a new edition of his jiapu, including using his status as family elder to designate the names of his descendants.

“Water has a source, and trees have roots,” Yin said. “People have ancestors. Family history is just as important as national history.”