Dafang Bai Zhao's Genealogical Culture Research

Genealogy,also know as family tree or clan pedigree,keeps records of the development of different generations as well as momentous occasions and prominent people in the clan through chart forms.It contains not only comprehensive accounts of the origin,and migratory tracks of the clan involved,but also historical cultures,such as its prosperity and reproduction,and so on.Genealogy has been a significant medium and document for different ethnics to record their family histories.In recent years,many ethnic groups have started or continue to write their own genealogy along with economic and cultural development at home.There are approximately 1.932 million people belonging to the Bai minority.Eighty percent of them live in Yunnan province and ten percent live in Guizhou province while the rest live in provinces such as Hunan,Sichuan,Hubei.Those in Guizhou mainly locate in the southeast,divided into many branches,the majority of whom are the Zhao family with a population of tens of thousands,who can be further divided into different sub-branches with their separate “family trees” or “clan pedigrees” tracing back to the Ming or Qing Dynasty.The Zhao family who live in Dafang county continued to write the genealogy of the Zhao family in 2002.The genealogy of Zhao Family has very new styles and a large scale(over 300 pages),like an family “encyclopedia”,ranging from origin,precedence and civilization to cultural relics collection,folk customs,literary achievements,economy and technology,education and public health,ethics,ancient and modern characters,ethnic composition discussion and so on.This genealogy contains retrospect of its family history,attaches great importance to the present and sheds light on the future.It is very distinctive and rare among all ethnic genealogies in terms of its style and contents.Therefore,it is significant and profound to research the genealogy of Zhao family in Dafang county,as a prominent example of Chinese documented ethnic genealogy.This paper,based on document data(folk and academic genealogy documents),and field research material,applies ethnology theory to support the overall structure:to introduce the forms and contents of the Zhao family genealogy and conclude the features of Zhao family genealogy,to explore the meaning of genealogy from the perspective of the family within and people without,and to discuss the universality of the Zhao family genealogy.This whole paper is divided into five parts.The first part is an introduction about the reasons of choosing this topic,the research meaning,literary review and research method;the first chapter focuses on the basic situation and the forms and contents of the Zhao family genealogy of Bao minority in Dafang county while the second chapter concludes the essential features of the genealogy;in the third chapter,ethnology theories will be used to illustrate the genealogy culture,the importance and universality of Zhao family;the last chapter will be a perceptual conclusion of the paper.