1,096 People in Taiwan Added to the Updated Kung Clan Genealogy

1,096 People in Taiwan Added to the Updated Kung Clan Genealogy

             Source: United Daily News    March 23, 2010

Last Saturday, Taipei Confucius Temple held a flamboyant spring worship ceremony to commemorate Confucius, the greatest teacher in Chinese history. On the occasion, more than two thousand guests from across the Strait, including descendants of Confucius, gathered at the Temple to honor the Great Sage and First Teacher and shared joy over the completion of the updated Kung Clan Genealogy, which listed the family tree of Confucius for more than 2,500 years and was regarded as the longest genealogy in the world. The newly revised Kung Clan Genealogy includes an additional 1,096 descendants of Confucius living in Taiwan. 【Editor’s Note: the surname “Kung” is spelled as “Kong” in the Mainland.】        

The Kung Clan Genealogy had gone through four major revamps in the past. The first revision could be dated back to the year 1622 in the Ming Dynasty; the fourth revision, in 1937, under the Republic of China. The latest revision project was launched in 1999 on the Mainland and was completed in 2009.    

Kong Xiang-lin and Kung Xiang-chi are both the 75^th generation lineal descendant of Confucius. According to the Mainland’s Xinhua News Agency, they became acquainted and began to cooperate on the revision of the Kung Clan Genealogy when Kong Xiang-lin, then curator of Qufu Confucius Museum in Shandong, came to Taiwan to hold the “Historical Exhibition of 4,000 Years in Confucius Hometown” in April 1995. Kung Xiang-chi brought with him some rare Kung Clan Genealogies when he relocated to Taiwan in 1949.   

The history of the relocation of the descendants of Confucius from the Mainland to Taiwan can be traced back to the Kangxi and Yongzheng eras during the Ching Dynasty. Updating the Kung Clan Genealogy was not an easy task, as over the last several centuries many descendants of Confucius moved all around Taiwan. Over the past century, no one had taken the initiative to search for descendants of Confucius in order to update the Kung Clan Genealogy. However, in 2005, when Kung Xiang-chi assumed the chairmanship of the Kung Clan Genealogy Revision Association, Taiwan Branch, he launched the “finding-a-needle-in-a-haystack” project to find any information about his clan.  

Kung Xiang-chi, an octogenarian, had tried several methods to look for descendants of Confucius, including using the Internet and classified ads. In addition, his daughter, Kung Ling-yi, who is currently a Ph.D student in TamKang University, also joined hands with him in the project. In the newly revised Kung Clan Genealogy, which had traditionally not listed the names of female descendants, Kung Ling-yi was identified as the 78^th generation lineal descendant of Confucius.       

Kung Ling-yi recalled that his father became so emotional when he found clan members living in Pingtung County of southern Taiwan. The recording of that line’s genealogy originally from Qu Zhou in Zhe Jiang Province had ended at the 62^nd generation. However, his father had found its origin indirectly from a genealogy center in the US. Kung Ling-yi said that during a study tour in Pingtung County, she found a plaque inscribed with the words “Hall of the State of Lu” hanging in the family’s ancestral shrine. She said the descendants of Confucius living in areas like Taoyuan and Hsin Chu still kept the old tradition of having all family members get together to express Lunar New Year’s greetings to each other. This proved, she added, that the descendants of Confucius had never forgotten their roots even after centuries of separation.  

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