ABSTRACT

Historians and anthropologists, taking their cue from the regional prevalence of ancestral halls and the sacrifices to ancestors made in them, have for a long time looked upon lineage as a peculiar institution of South China. A hotbed of lineage development in its early stages may be located in Jiangxi Province, especially around the Ji'an prefecture, while much of Guangdong, and especially the Pearl River Delta, came later. Guangzhou example of the lineage experience is contained in a genealogy given the title The Genealogy of the Liu Surname of Fengjian Village in Shunde. The ritual features of the Liu lineage at Fengjian Village are, therefore, quite clear. There was not much of any lineage to speak of before the Huang Xiaoyang uprising in 1449 because only single lines of descent were known. A prosperous lineage such as the Fengjian Lius probably held numerous common estates that provided regular sources of income and were shared among separate groups of descendants.