01-25-2025, 10:00 PM
Han clan patrilineality (宗法) [zongfa] is symbolized by this interesting Chinese phrase: “父之党为宗族” translated as "The party of the father is the clan.".
Han clans are those that share the same ancestral hall, venerating the same male clan founders and ancestors, and sharing - generally - the same surname (姓)[xing]. In the north, clans are more dispersed, in the south villages usually belong to the same clan. The clan is 宗 [zong], its literal meaning something along the lines of hall. The clan itself is apart of a larger clan and patrilineage, the 大宗 [dazong], or large clan/main lineage. Those of same surname have a sense of common clanship and patrilineage as well, even if sometimes the surnames are actually distinct but are confused for one another due to dialectal pronunciation, e.g. Huang and Wang in certain dialects sounding similar, and as such considered the same surname/clan,
Clans have various association houses, genealogy books, various shrines and grave-shrines. The choosing of venerated ancestors has sometimes to do with the proportion a branch of the patrilineage makes up in regards to other smaller branches, making the worship of their specific male line progenitor more likely to be done at a shrine. Other illustrious or pious ancestors are also generally included with their portraits in the shrines. Most Han conceive of themselves as having a shared common male line ancestor for the entire Han ethnic group personified in Huang Di and his own male line ancestor Shen Nong. Han ethnic belonging as such is a patrilineal one, as even those who have foreign male line ancestors are unlikely to make note of this fact and instead emphasize the Han ethnicity of their clan forebear.
Clan genealogy books (家谱)[jiapu] can be thousands of pages long, with genealogies stretching back millennia, from what I remember even as far back as the Han, perhaps even further. Older clan books usually do not include anything outside of males, and are usually revised several times by the more scholarly inclined members of the clan. Many have been lost in the turmoil of the cultural revolution, along with the destruction of clan shrines and temples.
Patrilineality not only defines Han ethnic belonging and clanship, but even goes as far as to explain the relationship between gods and men, as the near mythical ancestor Yu - himself of divine provenance - founding clans such as the Xia. Ancestral prestige of the forefathers also lead to early state formation, as the defeat of the Youshu clan at the hands of the Xia and their subjection to slavery directly lead to the founding of the first dynasty. The clan system also provided the backbone of national power, as the ruling clan was itself backed up by the loyalty of the ducal clans and in earlier times powerful clans such as the Youreng and Zhenxun, and the dissolution of the state being prevented by powerful clans under the Qi of Duke Huan, and Duke Wen of Jin.
Han Chinese clans function not just as a patrilineage, but as common defense, collective labor and finances, and local legal enforcement and administration. Clans in China also have and continue to have a role in the private sector, as industrialization and industrial specialization is in part driven by Chinese clans and the pooling of their common resources, many of which succeed in the face of not so favorable factors in comparison with SOE's. Clanship and patrilineage is also strongly beneficial when it comes to industrial sectors that are more human relationship dependent. Even sharing the same surname means Chinese businesses have higher likelihood of business exchange, as pointed out in this paper
It is as such not so shocking that clanship and resource usage would almost inevitably lead to conflict over resources with other clans, as has been the case in all of Han Chinese history, going back to the Shang vs Xia, Zhou vs Shang, and Qi and Qin clan conflicts of earlier millennia. As such, clan conflict is fundamental to Han Chinese history, state formation, and even individual access to education and power. For example, it no doubt helped that Confucius had belonged to a formerly noble clan when it came to his rise to fame, or that the backgrounds of many Han thinkers were similar, coming from landed and aristocratic clans. Even persons who had a higher chance of becoming 舉人[juren] after passing the 鄉試[xiangshi] state examinations were disproportionately associated with certain surnames and clans and matrilineages despite its meritocratic character.
Han Chinese clan conflict was widespread in the past century, with notable cases ongoing especially in the south as recently as the 2000-10's. Mass mobilization of clansmen with stiff fines was an occurrence as of the 80s, and a complexity of clanship with small clan disputes going on to enlist the help of other related clan-umbrellas (or "larger-clan") other same surname clans in the name of clanship leading to full scale regional conflicts. These conflicts are defined by their brutal nature and in modern times, crude weaponry that leads to deadly and large casualty figures and lower death rates. Large scale martial training for young men was the norm in rural China in the 70's, 60's, and even into the 2000's in some regions. Women and children were also enlisted with running logistics and laboring to aid the fighting clansmen in clan-conflicts. Clan conflict as such, even recently, was a form of total war engaging the whole of the Han clansmen, clanswomen, and children of the clan, with the ancestral shrines being a center for mobilization.
Clan conflict seems to be so deeply embedded in China that it had a very significant influence even on individual family planning and was an active thorn on the side of PRC national policymakers and security services. I looked at a Chinese paper that attempted to measure the factors playing and leading into clan clashes and violence, and the impact of intra-ethnic Han clan conflicts looks to be responsible for 1/4 of the male/female gender disparity for certain Han birth cohorts in the 90's-2000's from certain Chinese regions. Conflict itself is strongly correlated with several factors: more diverse multi-clan (presumably ethnically homogenous) areas, lower government anti-clanist actions such as forced relocation and land seizure which intensified in the 1990's forcibly breaking apart clansmen and dispersing them into various urban and urbanizing regions. A small amount of clans dominating the regional socio-economic structure was also correlated with Han clan conflict, presumably due to weaker clans wanting to get a piece of the pie for themselves.
Here's the finding of the paper, Clan Conflict, Sex Imbalance, and Its Evolution.
Clan fighting was especially common in the earlier half of the 20th century, and many of the clashes seem to have been smaller in scale, but even then deadly with their casualty figures making it clear the fighting was quite especially driven by strong impassioned and vivacious Han Chinese clanship. But even then, clanship could only go so far, as in the face of foreign non-Han enemies and interethnic (族際)[zuji] conflict, Han ethnic affiliation made clan conciliation highly likely as the Han clans would band together to defend their common home and ethnic kinsmen.
To illustrate a good example of what a clan conflict would have looked like in the pre-Republican era, and how alot of the reasons that initially incite clan conflict remain just as trivial:
translation:
Of the major clan conflicts in the latter half of the 20th and the early 21st centuries, the Chen and Lin clan clashes in Jiangnan on August 16, 1992 was one that had a larger than average casualty figures. This conflict began with something trivial, concerning the placement of selling fish, and involving at first a fight between a few individuals which then spiraled into involving thousands of clansmen in all out fighting with 40 dead and hundreds wounded, and massive urban and rural destruction, all resulting from 2 hours of active fighting between the two clans. Then there's the more famous Matian and Jinggang villagers clash in Hunan in 1993, which at its peak involved some 5000 fighters, complete artillery bombardments zones, and 2+ days of exchanging fire. The Matian clashes was one of the deadliest clan flareups in more recent Chinese history.
All this of course does not compare to much larger clan conflicts embedded within tribal wars, such as the Hakka-Punti conflict of the late 19th century, and the hundreds of thousands of dead, the resulting exodus of Hakka Han out of China, and the current distribution of clans in the south which was heavily reshaped with large government oversight so as to prevent further tribal and clan violence, although clan and tribal hatreds and violence still continued.
One last thing of note - the word for a certain type of earthen clan village/compound in Hakka - [tuluo] - is almost identical to the Somali [tuulo], a small settlement which also has strong connotations of clanship, and as such being a settlement associated with the patrilineal descendants of a certain man.
Han clans are those that share the same ancestral hall, venerating the same male clan founders and ancestors, and sharing - generally - the same surname (姓)[xing]. In the north, clans are more dispersed, in the south villages usually belong to the same clan. The clan is 宗 [zong], its literal meaning something along the lines of hall. The clan itself is apart of a larger clan and patrilineage, the 大宗 [dazong], or large clan/main lineage. Those of same surname have a sense of common clanship and patrilineage as well, even if sometimes the surnames are actually distinct but are confused for one another due to dialectal pronunciation, e.g. Huang and Wang in certain dialects sounding similar, and as such considered the same surname/clan,
Clans have various association houses, genealogy books, various shrines and grave-shrines. The choosing of venerated ancestors has sometimes to do with the proportion a branch of the patrilineage makes up in regards to other smaller branches, making the worship of their specific male line progenitor more likely to be done at a shrine. Other illustrious or pious ancestors are also generally included with their portraits in the shrines. Most Han conceive of themselves as having a shared common male line ancestor for the entire Han ethnic group personified in Huang Di and his own male line ancestor Shen Nong. Han ethnic belonging as such is a patrilineal one, as even those who have foreign male line ancestors are unlikely to make note of this fact and instead emphasize the Han ethnicity of their clan forebear.
Clan genealogy books (家谱)[jiapu] can be thousands of pages long, with genealogies stretching back millennia, from what I remember even as far back as the Han, perhaps even further. Older clan books usually do not include anything outside of males, and are usually revised several times by the more scholarly inclined members of the clan. Many have been lost in the turmoil of the cultural revolution, along with the destruction of clan shrines and temples.
Patrilineality not only defines Han ethnic belonging and clanship, but even goes as far as to explain the relationship between gods and men, as the near mythical ancestor Yu - himself of divine provenance - founding clans such as the Xia. Ancestral prestige of the forefathers also lead to early state formation, as the defeat of the Youshu clan at the hands of the Xia and their subjection to slavery directly lead to the founding of the first dynasty. The clan system also provided the backbone of national power, as the ruling clan was itself backed up by the loyalty of the ducal clans and in earlier times powerful clans such as the Youreng and Zhenxun, and the dissolution of the state being prevented by powerful clans under the Qi of Duke Huan, and Duke Wen of Jin.
Han Chinese clans function not just as a patrilineage, but as common defense, collective labor and finances, and local legal enforcement and administration. Clans in China also have and continue to have a role in the private sector, as industrialization and industrial specialization is in part driven by Chinese clans and the pooling of their common resources, many of which succeed in the face of not so favorable factors in comparison with SOE's. Clanship and patrilineage is also strongly beneficial when it comes to industrial sectors that are more human relationship dependent. Even sharing the same surname means Chinese businesses have higher likelihood of business exchange, as pointed out in this paper
Quote:A firm located in the region with a stronger clan culture will more likely trade with supply chain partners (both suppliers and clients) with the same surname.
It is as such not so shocking that clanship and resource usage would almost inevitably lead to conflict over resources with other clans, as has been the case in all of Han Chinese history, going back to the Shang vs Xia, Zhou vs Shang, and Qi and Qin clan conflicts of earlier millennia. As such, clan conflict is fundamental to Han Chinese history, state formation, and even individual access to education and power. For example, it no doubt helped that Confucius had belonged to a formerly noble clan when it came to his rise to fame, or that the backgrounds of many Han thinkers were similar, coming from landed and aristocratic clans. Even persons who had a higher chance of becoming 舉人[juren] after passing the 鄉試[xiangshi] state examinations were disproportionately associated with certain surnames and clans and matrilineages despite its meritocratic character.
Han Chinese clan conflict was widespread in the past century, with notable cases ongoing especially in the south as recently as the 2000-10's. Mass mobilization of clansmen with stiff fines was an occurrence as of the 80s, and a complexity of clanship with small clan disputes going on to enlist the help of other related clan-umbrellas (or "larger-clan") other same surname clans in the name of clanship leading to full scale regional conflicts. These conflicts are defined by their brutal nature and in modern times, crude weaponry that leads to deadly and large casualty figures and lower death rates. Large scale martial training for young men was the norm in rural China in the 70's, 60's, and even into the 2000's in some regions. Women and children were also enlisted with running logistics and laboring to aid the fighting clansmen in clan-conflicts. Clan conflict as such, even recently, was a form of total war engaging the whole of the Han clansmen, clanswomen, and children of the clan, with the ancestral shrines being a center for mobilization.
Clan conflict seems to be so deeply embedded in China that it had a very significant influence even on individual family planning and was an active thorn on the side of PRC national policymakers and security services. I looked at a Chinese paper that attempted to measure the factors playing and leading into clan clashes and violence, and the impact of intra-ethnic Han clan conflicts looks to be responsible for 1/4 of the male/female gender disparity for certain Han birth cohorts in the 90's-2000's from certain Chinese regions. Conflict itself is strongly correlated with several factors: more diverse multi-clan (presumably ethnically homogenous) areas, lower government anti-clanist actions such as forced relocation and land seizure which intensified in the 1990's forcibly breaking apart clansmen and dispersing them into various urban and urbanizing regions. A small amount of clans dominating the regional socio-economic structure was also correlated with Han clan conflict, presumably due to weaker clans wanting to get a piece of the pie for themselves.
Here's the finding of the paper, Clan Conflict, Sex Imbalance, and Its Evolution.
Quote:This study’s findings provide evidence that current variations in sex imbalance are shaped by differences in local power struggles—that is, clan conflict has a significantly positive effect on sex imbalance. Clan conflict itself contributes to nearly 28% of the variation in sex imbalance across counties in China.
Clan fighting was especially common in the earlier half of the 20th century, and many of the clashes seem to have been smaller in scale, but even then deadly with their casualty figures making it clear the fighting was quite especially driven by strong impassioned and vivacious Han Chinese clanship. But even then, clanship could only go so far, as in the face of foreign non-Han enemies and interethnic (族際)[zuji] conflict, Han ethnic affiliation made clan conciliation highly likely as the Han clans would band together to defend their common home and ethnic kinsmen.
To illustrate a good example of what a clan conflict would have looked like in the pre-Republican era, and how alot of the reasons that initially incite clan conflict remain just as trivial:
Quote:比如在清光绪八年的时候，广东林陈两大家族的两个成员，因为打牌发生了矛盾就直接演变成了大规模的械斗事件。即使是当地的官府出手，也没有将事情给平息下来。并且两个家族的人，一直斗到民国五年才停止。根据资料记载，双方家族因为械斗一共有接近九百人，死于械斗当中。
translation:
Quote:For example, in the eighth year of the Qing Guangxu period, two members of the Lin and Chen clans in Guangdong Province had a conflict over playing cards that turned into a large-scale armed struggle. Even the local government did not calm things down. And the two families, until the Republic of China five years before the fight stopped. According to the data records, the two families because of the armed fighting a total of nearly nine hundred people, died in the armed fighting.
Of the major clan conflicts in the latter half of the 20th and the early 21st centuries, the Chen and Lin clan clashes in Jiangnan on August 16, 1992 was one that had a larger than average casualty figures. This conflict began with something trivial, concerning the placement of selling fish, and involving at first a fight between a few individuals which then spiraled into involving thousands of clansmen in all out fighting with 40 dead and hundreds wounded, and massive urban and rural destruction, all resulting from 2 hours of active fighting between the two clans. Then there's the more famous Matian and Jinggang villagers clash in Hunan in 1993, which at its peak involved some 5000 fighters, complete artillery bombardments zones, and 2+ days of exchanging fire. The Matian clashes was one of the deadliest clan flareups in more recent Chinese history.
All this of course does not compare to much larger clan conflicts embedded within tribal wars, such as the Hakka-Punti conflict of the late 19th century, and the hundreds of thousands of dead, the resulting exodus of Hakka Han out of China, and the current distribution of clans in the south which was heavily reshaped with large government oversight so as to prevent further tribal and clan violence, although clan and tribal hatreds and violence still continued.
One last thing of note - the word for a certain type of earthen clan village/compound in Hakka - [tuluo] - is almost identical to the Somali [tuulo], a small settlement which also has strong connotations of clanship, and as such being a settlement associated with the patrilineal descendants of a certain man.
