The plot thickens

Well, kind of.

So when lzh got home yesterday evening I told her what I’d been up to. She said, well, of course you’d be better off researching Shanxi. She’s got a point there- her family fled Shanxi and settled in Yanqing a few hundred years back because of war. Apparently her father knows which part of Shanxi they fled from, lzh told me once but I forgot, and I believe they have a rough idea of how long ago the family fled. Anyway, for the moment I’m going to focus on Yanqing, then I’ll look into Shanxi and see what I can see about the l family history.

Incidentally, I kind of indirectly worked with a guy in Tianjin (he’s a 语文 teacher at that school) whose surname and family history are virtually identical.

Then I told lzh I’d discovered these Shanrong people, and she said, yeah, there’s a Shanrong tomb only 5 or 6 li (2.5 – 3 km) from her village. Wow, so it seems everybody in China knows the Shanrong people, but nobody outside China has any idea. Anyway, that has piqued my interest even more.

Anyway, I’m still in my early morning fug and it’s taking some time to fully wake up, but when I get caffeinated and get some energy together I’ll try pulling some of this stuff I found yesterday together and turn it into a blog post. I’ve also decided that all the posts I do on Yanqing’s history I’ll put on a separate page to make it all easily accessible.

Hehe, the miracles of instant messenger. I just asked lzh which part of Shanxi her family came from. The answer is one I should not have ever forgotten: 红æ¡? (umm… shouldn’t that be 洪洞?) Yes, as in the brick kiln slavery scandal. And a few hundred years ago? No, roughly the end of the 19th century. Ok, got myself a good start for when I start to look at the l family history.