"Zhenhu Yuan Meng"

Author: Huang Haiguang / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Since I first learned a little about the world, the family history I could understand was truly a simple and unclear general history. In the legend of the Huang family, there was an ancestor who had served as a high-ranking official in the capital. Calculating back, that ancestor probably prospered during the mid-to-late Qing Dynasty. It wasn’t really a great honor—Han people serving as officials under the Manchu Qing. Moreover, his descendants did not inherit his good fortune, because he had committed some offense. As for what crime he committed, no one in the Huang family knew later, and it became a mystery passed down within the family. To avoid execution and the punishment of being implicated in nine generations, the descendants of the Huang family could only flee to a distant land. The branch of the family that fled to the Zhenhu Lake area had a declining population. The original five older brothers had dwindled to only one surviving descendant by my father’s generation. The changes in the family’s history and population growth are natural milestones in the flow of time. Fate’s attention to the Huang family was like a weasel watching chickens—it only grew rarer. If later generations had the interest of compiling a family chronicle, it would be much simpler, like repairing a bald head—few remaining hairs could not be transformed into many styles by a gust of wind, and it would never lead to the great taboo of forgetting one’s ancestors. Counting back, by the time of my father, Huang Yuanlai, there were five generations of people who drank Zhenhu Lake water and ate Zhenhu Lake fish, all living in the Zhenhu Lake area. Five generations are considered ancestors, three generations are considered lineage, and the place where ancestors lived is the ancestral homeland. Calculating this way, Zhenhu Lake can be considered my hometown, but where was the ancestral homeland of my ancestors? It is said to be in Suzhou’s Changle Gate. As for which ancestor’s ancestor settled in the white-haired, paradise-like Jiangnan city and took root there, according to historical records, it should have been during the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. The gentle ruler Zhang Shicheng was defeated by the future founder of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, and many residents of Suzhou who were suspected of involvement were relocated to the northern Jianghuai River area, some to cultivate wetlands, others to salt marshes by the sea. This was likely the time of the eighteenth generation of our ancestors. My father certainly couldn’t clarify it, nor could his father. All we knew was that the closest ancestors had already moved to the northern Jianghuai River area. When my father was young, he accompanied his grandfather to pay respects to the ancestors during the Qingming Festival. The ancestral graves (known as “zuying” in Zhenhu dialect, referring to ancestral tombs) were near Xiaohuangqiao in nearby Jiangyan Baimi Town in central Jiangsu. According to my father’s recollection, it was a large cemetery, and the ancestral graves had become short and humble. However, the cemetery still had ancient trees, some so large that several adults had to join hands to embrace them. This alone proves that our ancestors were truly wealthy. It perfectly matches an old folk saying: “Tall graves and tall trees indicate a wealthy family; tall graves and short trees indicate a sudden fortune seeker; short graves and tall trees indicate a declining family.” The ancestral graves are likely still there, but where our ancestors lived is now untraceable. According to old customs, wealthy families with high thresholds (symbolizing status) could not, like emperors, build numerous suspicious tombs, but they often chose a auspicious site not too far from home to build ancestral graves. This was done for two reasons: first, to conveniently protect their descendants from the blessings accumulated by their ancestors, and second, to prevent those with enmity toward the family from tampering with the graves. Any small disturbance to the ancestral graves was considered highly inauspicious in the past. I don’t know if our ancestral graves were ever tampered with, but the Huang family has always been plagued by misfortune. The Huang ancestor who once served as a high-ranking official in the capital was like a city gate catching fire. Fortunately, my grandfather’s grandfather and his four brothers were clever fish swimming upstream, escaping to the downstream area, rich in reeds, wild grasses, fish, shrimp, clams, and beautiful women—later known as the Zhenhu Lake area, which became my hometown. The terms “upstream” and “downstream” have long been used in the central Jiangsu region. Because the ancient city of Jiangyan in Jiangsu has relatively high terrain with rivers flowing through it, it appeared as if it were suspended in the air, so the locals called it “upstream.” Another theory is that since Jiangyan, in the west, borders the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which has high water levels year-round, water always flowed from Jiangyan to Zhenhu Lake, earning Jiangyan the name “upstream” and Zhenhu Lake the name “downstream.” The banks of the few rivers in the upstream area were usually sparse with trees, or occasionally had neat rows of large trees whose branches swayed in the air. In contrast, the Zhenhu Lake area was the famous “wok-bottom depression” in the lower river region of central Jiangsu, like the bottom of a wok. The rivers seemed to wind through this depression. Before the famous Jiangdu Water Conservancy Project, even a little extra rain made it impossible to distinguish between river surfaces, lake surfaces, or shorelines—everything was a waterlogged paradise. During floods, the most striking sight in the Zhenhu Lake area were the reeds that had once grown along the rivers, lakes, and swamps. Row after row, patch after patch, group after group, only the tips of the reeds were above water, looking like helpless drowning people with strands of hair fluttering on the water. However, for the Huang family, who instinctively fled in the last century, Zhenhu Lake became a good refuge. With the sky high and the emperor far away, it allowed later generations to forge a new geographical connection, growing close to and living alongside Zhenhu Lake. A person’s life and character are greatly influenced by the time and era they live in, and their connection to a place (or “geographical destiny”) also plays a huge role. Ancient fengshui beliefs have their own wisdom. The old saying “Don’t bury dog bones in dragon sites” aligns with Western environmental theories. Take the outstanding figures of the early 20th century: Sun Yat-sen would not have grown up in a closed inland area, and Mao Zedong would not have emerged from Shaoshan without it. Therefore, a person’s birthplace holds a certain fateful significance for their life. As for those born and raised in Zhenhu Lake, their bodies, minds, and even daily habits could not help but bear the imprint of the lake’s waves. P1-3