Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the world's oldest cultures, originating thousands of years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia and is extremely diverse and varying, with customs and traditions varying grea ...

, hometown or ancestral home () is the place of origin of one's extended family. It may or may not be the place where one is born. For instance, two people may both be born in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, but the hometowns of their ancestors may be different.

Definition

A subjective concept, a person's ancestral home could be the birthplace of ''any'' of their

patriline Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritanc ...

ancestors.

Su Shi Su Shi (; 8 January 1037 – 24 August 1101), courtesy name Zizhan (), art name Dongpo (), was a Chinese calligrapher, essayist, gastronomer, pharmacologist, poet, politician, and travel writer during the Song dynasty. A major personality of ...

limited it to five generations, i.e. it refers to the home of one's great-great-grandfather. Even more broadly, an ancestral home can refer to the first locality where a surname came to be established or prominent. Commonly, a person usually defines their hometown as what their father considers to be his ancestral home. In practice, most people would define their ancestral homes as the birthplace of their

ancestors from the early 20th century, around the time when government authorities began to collect such information from individuals. Moreover, a person's ancestral home can be defined in any level of locality, from

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

and

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

down to town and village, depending on how much an individual knows about their ancestry.

Implications

The Chinese emphasis on a person's ancestral home is a legacy of its history as an

agrarian society An agrarian society, or agricultural society, is any community whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland. Another way to define an agrarian society is by seeing how much of a nation's total production is in agriculture ...

, where a family would often be tied to its land for generations. In Chinese culture, the importance of family and regional identity are such that a person's ancestral home or birthplace plays an important social role in personal identity. For instance, at a university, students who hail from the same region will often become members of the regional/ hometown society or club for other people with the same background. Discussion of personal or ancestral origins is typical when two people meet for the first time. In recent years, the root-seeking (尋根 ''xúngēn'') movement has led to greater interest in ancestral hometowns, especially among overseas Chinese. Ancestral lineages are an important part of Chinese business culture as it plays a central part of negotiating ''

guanxi ''Guanxi'' () is a term used in Chinese culture to describe an individual's social network of mutually beneficial personal and business relationships. The character ''guan'', 关, means “closed” while the character ''xi'' 系 means “system ...

''. It can also have implications in other areas like politics. See:

Shanghainese people in Hong Kong Shanghainese people in Hong Kong have played an important role in the region, despite being a relatively small portion of the Han Chinese population. "Shanghainese" is a term that refers to both the Wu Chinese language and the Han Chinese sub ...

for an example of how ancestry and lineage systems play a part in business practices. Ancestral home is an item to be filled in many documents in the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

Forms that required listing of "ancestral home" (籍貫) included school handbooks to be signed by the parents of schoolchildren.

Taiwan

National ID cards issued in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

by the Republic of China government formerly carried an entry for "home citizenship" (本籍). Citizens would usually have their ancestral home (defined through the

) stated on these documents, despite having never set foot in their ancestral home. This practice was abolished by the government in the mid-1990s amid the

Taiwan localization movement Taiwanese nationalism () is a nationalist movement to identify the Taiwanese people as a distinct nation. Due to the complex political status of Taiwan, it is strongly linked to the Taiwan independence movement in seeking an identity separate ...

Footnotes

External links

籍貫 (zik6 gun3 , ji2 guan4) : ancestral land; native place - CantoDict
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ancestral Home Chinese culture

Definition

Implications

Taiwan

See also

Footnotes

External links