Studies of Tujia Ancient Social System and Culture — Clan System Culture (Part 1)
Chapter 8: Clan System Culture. In ancient Chinese society, the clan was once a common form of rural social organization, and clan authority was an auxiliary force of state power. Whether in northern or southern China, a considerable number of villages were typical examples of the Chinese clan system. Historically, Tujia areas were home to powerful clans and great families...
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Chapter Eight: Clan System Culture
In ancient Chinese society, the clan was once a common form of rural social organization, and clan authority was once an auxiliary force of state power. Whether in northern or southern China, a considerable number of villages were once typical examples of China's clan system. In the Tujia areas in history, there were once settlements of powerful clans and great surnames; clan forces dominated or influenced the development of rural society in different ways, and clan organizations played a crucial role in the politics, economy, culture, and daily life of rural society.
Section One: The Organizational Forms of the Clan
The clan has two forms: one is the form of a bloodline group, and the other is a highly institutionalized state of social organization. After the Song and Yuan dynasties, the clan form underwent a large-scale transformation, that is, from a bloodline group to a social organization. Clan organizations became the social foundation of rural self-governance. This organized clan form was constituted by the ancestral hall, genealogy, clan fields, clan head, and clan rules. The ancestral hall is the symbol of the clan; the genealogy is the bond of the clan; the clan fields are the lifeblood of the clan; the clan head is the leader of the clan; and the clan rules are the code of the clan.
I. The Meaning and Characteristics of the Clan
At present, the academic community has not reached a consensus on the connotation of the concept of clan, so that concepts such as clan, family, and patriarchal law are confused and substituted for one another in use. However, the academic community is consistent in its understanding of the patriarchal or familial characteristics unique to traditional Chinese society.
In his book On Modern Chinese Scholarship, Mr. Qian Mu pointed out the significance of clan research: "To study China's political history, one must first understand China's social history, and to understand China's social history, one must first study China's history of patriarchal law." This is because one of the characteristics of traditional Chinese society lies in its patriarchal nature: "China originally had no word for society, hence no sociology, and also no social history. Yet Chinese society has endured long and expanded greatly, which is unmatched in the world. I once called it a patriarchal society, a clan society, or a society of the four occupations, to show its difference from Western society." Professor Feng Erkang also believes: "The clan is the social organization that has existed for the longest time and spread most widely in Chinese history, and the breadth of the populace it encompasses cannot be matched by any other organization. The Chinese people's clan relations are the most important social relations. The patriarchal spirit runs through ancient and modern Chinese social structures; it is the bond that maintains the social structure and a factor that stabilizes society."
Regarding the meaning of clan, the ancients offered many interpretations. The term "clan" first appears in the Rites of Zhou, "Spring Offices, Grand Minister of Rites": "With the rites of food and drink, bring harmony to clan brothers." The Erya, "Explaining Kinship," says: "The paternal party is the clan," meaning the clan refers to the patrilineal bloodline group of the same founding ancestor. The Book of Rites, "Great Commentary," appropriately divides the scope of zong and zu: "A son by a secondary line becomes the ancestor; the successor of the secondary line becomes the great lineage; the successor of the father becomes the small lineage." Those descended from the same distant ancestor are called zong; those descended from the same near ancestor are called zu. Within the clan there is a division into the great lineage and small lineage. The great lineage is the direct descendant of the founding ancestor; the small lineage is a branch line. Zong refers to the trunk and commander of the clan members: "Zong means honor; it is the principal one for the ancestors and is honored by the clan members." "The great lineage can lead the small lineage, and the small lineage can lead the various younger brothers, sharing their surplus and shortage, and thereby governing the clan members." Zu generally refers to the collectivity of male members of the same patrilineal ancestor who have blood relations, composed of many households of the same surname and ancestor. Clan members include the heads of each household, their wives, and children. In the Han dynasty, the clan was not merely an expression of blood relations but also included relations of geographical co-residence. For example, the Book of Han, "Biography of Zhao Guanghan," records: "The great surnames Yuan and Chu of Yingchuan had clans running rampant." Here, the clan already included the geographical meaning of co-residence of the same lineage. After the Song dynasty, the state gave up intervention in clans: "By the time of the zong, private genealogies flourished, and the court no longer inquired into them." "The people were permitted to unite lineages and establish temples, and so ancestral halls spread throughout the realm." The clan gradually developed from an aristocratic organization into a popular organization, and the concept of clan incorporated a great deal of political character. The basic structure of rural society was from family to lineage, then assembled into clan, with the result of the unity of family and state, the isomorphism of family and state, the close combination of political power, clan power, and divine power, and the trinity of monarchical power, divine power, and paternal power.
Contemporary scholars define the concept of clan with different emphases, and their definitions are not entirely the same. The famous historian Mr. Lü Simian believed: "Zong refers to honoring one person as the head among kinsmen; zu refers to all those related by blood." Some historical researchers also believe that "the clan is a social group composed of various families related by male-line blood ties and regulated by patriarchal concepts," or "the clan refers to the patrilineal blood-related kinship group that arose along with class society." Legal researchers attempt to explain the clan from the perspective of legal culture: "The so-called 'zong,' in brief, is the concept of kinsmen after excluding the female line. That is, the sum of all branches of the male bloodline descended from a common ancestor is the 'zong.' In Chinese folk custom, it is generally called 'clan,' 'same lineage,' and so on. ... In law, the male bloodline and their wives are collectively called the 'ben zong' or 'ben zu,' while the female bloodline and the wife's natal family are collectively called 'wai yin,' and 'kinsmen' is the combined term for this 'ben zong' and 'wai yin.'" Sociological researchers' definition of the concept of family seems very close to the connotation of the concept of clan. "The so-called family refers to the social group formed by several generations of the same bloodline, which some also call the 'large family.'"
Although the family system is based on the defining nature of the household, a given family system also needs to possess its own defining features, mainly including: a relatively close family structure linked by blood and kinship relations; a family system based on each member's assumption of certain obligations and rights toward the family group; family power based on hierarchy determined by blood relations; family functions that provide convenience to each member with the family group as a whole; family activities organized by the family as a unit and involving all members; family norms that restrain members' behavior through customary rules; and family concepts of a certain durability formed through subtle transmission. From these defining features, the concept of family explained by Professor Wang Huning seems equivalent to the concept of clan. Anthropologists are keen to study clans from the perspective of cultural comparison. For example, the Chinese American anthropologist Mr. Francis L. K. Hsu, in his book Clan, Caste, and Club, compared the differences among the traditional cultures of China, India, and the United States, pointing out that the characteristics of the three traditional cultures lie in: "In the vast intermediate zone between family and state, the most important group for Chinese is the clan, for Hindus the caste, and for Americans the club." From the perspective of cultural comparison, he conducted an in-depth analysis of Chinese clan organizations: "Generally speaking, clans have the following characteristics: (1) a name; (2) exogamy; (3) a unilineal common ancestor; (4) a core sex—male for patrilineal clans, female for matrilineal clans; (5) the use of kinship terms in speaking to or referring to one another among all or most members; (6) some form of common property in many societies; (7) some degree of joint liability. ... In addition to the seven characteristics mentioned above, Chinese clans also have the following characteristics: (8) patrilocal residence; (9) wives automatically becoming members of the clan to which their spouses belong through marriage; (10) financial resources used for education and public welfare; (11) a common form of ancestor worship; (12) the clan ancestral hall; (13) the clan cemetery; (14) a system of rules of conduct; (15) a council of clan elders for adjudication and settling disputes." On the basis of fully absorbing previous research results, this book mainly adopts the academic views of Xu Yangjie. We believe that the clan refers to a special form of social organization formed by the descendants of the same male ancestor, with several generations living together, according to certain norms, and bound together by blood relations.
China's feudal clan system was not fixed and unchanging; it had different manifestations and structural characteristics in different historical periods. At the same time, due to the influence of specific economic factors and geographical environments in different places, clan organizations also displayed diversity of types. Generally speaking, clan organizations after the Song and Yuan dynasties had the following common characteristics.
Living together as a clan. In traditional Chinese society, the historical fact of living together as a clan was both a precondition for the long-term continuation of the clan system and inseparable from the tradition of the clan system advocating feudal ethics, emphasizing filial piety and the cardinal virtues, and esteeming Confucian thought. The teachings that "while one's parents are alive, one should not travel far; if one must travel, one should have a definite destination" and that "if one carefully attends to the funeral rites of parents and follows them with sacrifices to ancestors, the virtue of the people will return to fullness" were deeply rooted and far-reaching in the vast countryside; filial respect for parents and fraternal love for brothers were regarded as basic principles of conduct. The residential pattern of natural villages living together as a clan strengthened people's sense of closeness and identification with those of the same bloodline and common ancestor centered on themselves, or with kinsmen of quasi-blood relations, and also strengthened the mutual aid relationship among clan members of the same surname in watching out for and helping one another and sharing a common hatred of the enemy. It was precisely the geographical factor of living together as a clan that made the ties among clan members close and constructed the natural environment for clan activities. As one scholar said: "If blood relations are the growth point of family culture, then localism is the condition for the existence of clan culture. The localism of self-sufficiency and closed co-residence is the objective condition that ensures the blood-relation network will not disintegrate."
Most clans adopted the form of living together as a clan. Today's Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Sichuan, Shanxi, Hebei, and other places were areas where powerful clans were spread throughout the Han dynasty. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, the custom of clan co-residence was extremely prevalent, and some powerful hereditary families lived together in one place and dominated a region. From the Tang and Song to the Ming and Qing dynasties, the custom of clan co-residence flourished even more. Especially in the Qing dynasty, powerful clans and great lineages could be seen everywhere: "In Shandong, on the left and right of the Western River, and between Fujian and Guangdong, the custom is especially strong; those living together may number more than ten thousand families, or at least several hundred families." In the late Qing dynasty, among the 649 villages of Houguan County, Fujian, apart from 138 villages whose clan surnames were unknown, there were 194 single-surname villages, about 30 percent; 182 dominant-surname villages, about 28 percent; and 135 mixed-surname villages, about 21 percent. If villages with unknown clan surnames are not counted, single-surname villages and dominant-surname villages together accounted for 74 percent of the total number of villages.
Great relatedness to politics. After the Song dynasty, successive feudal dynasties attached great importance to controlling rural society and implemented a social control policy of using blood relations to control geographical relations. The li-she system of the Yuan dynasty was based on natural villages and embankments of bloodline groups. The li-jia household registration system of the Ming dynasty used blood relations to control geographical relations even more: "If any household is entirely unregistered, if it has taxes and corvée the household head shall be beaten with one hundred strokes; if it has no taxes and corvée, eighty strokes, and it shall be registered for service." This household registration management system powerfully promoted the formation of household clans combining blood and geography. This household-clan structure marked by li-jia household registration was the common form of clan society in the Ming and Qing dynasties, as in the saying "the brothers and uncles of the household clan gather to recount their parting and have the elegance of affection and harmony." However, a bloodline group lacking strict institutional means was not sufficient to control rural society. Therefore, the feudal dynasties encouraged and promoted the gentry to establish clan organizations to honor the ancestors and gather the clan, causing clan organizations and li-she and li-jia organizations to interlace and jointly maintain the ruling order of rural society.
As a tool of rule of the autocratic monarchy in rural society, clan organizations were endowed with certain political power. They were not only bloodline units but also quasi-political units, and their internal structure and functions were greatly similar to the governmental organs of the time. For example, within clan organizations there existed a status hierarchy corresponding to class relations; a clan authority structure corresponding to the bureaucratic apparatus; and clan law corresponding to state statutory law. All these characteristics are enough to show that clan organizations had changed from the earliest bloodline groups into political bodies maintaining the feudal order. With the further development of private ownership, economic factors began to penetrate patriarchal relations, and people's status hierarchy began to be determined by three standards: economic, political, and blood. Among these, economic relations gradually took the dominant position. Thus, clan organizations were permeated with more political factors, and the tendency toward becoming governmentalized became increasingly obvious.
Partial common ownership of property. Although clan organizations lived together as a clan, they were not a common unit of production and livelihood. The individual families within a clan organization were still independent production and management units; their production and livelihood were still controlled by their respective household heads and not subject to interference by the clan organization. However, there were also certain economic ties among the individual families within a clan organization, namely that every clan organization had public property shared by the clan members—clan property. Clan property was mainly clan fields, including sacrificial fields (great-grandfather fields), grave fields, charitable fields, charitable estate fields, and so on. In addition, in some areas clan property also included mountains and forests, houses, and cemeteries owned in common by the clan organization, and even included public facilities such as transportation and water conservancy.
As the main form of clan property, clan charitable fields were a special form of collective clan land ownership in traditional Chinese society. The creation of charitable fields began in the Northern Song dynasty. By the Yuan and Ming periods, charitable fields had developed considerably. After entering the Qing dynasty, establishing charitable estates and setting up charitable fields became a prevailing custom. The scale and quantity of charitable fields, the breadth of their distribution, and the depth of their influence on people's social life exceeded any previous period. During the Daoguang reign, when the Anhui provincial governor learned that the Zhang clan of Lujiang had "donated three thousand mu of fields to support the clan. Its planning combined charitable gates, charitable granaries, and charitable schools," he specially memorialized the court requesting commendation.
The sources of clan charitable fields were mainly of two kinds: donations by clan members and apportionment among clan members, with donations by clan members predominating. The donors were mostly bureaucrats and scholar-officials, merchants, and local gentry. The emergence and development of clan charitable fields was an objective requirement of the development of the patriarchal family system from the Song and Yuan onward. It consolidated the material foundation of the clan system and was conducive to realizing the desire and demand to honor the ancestors and gather the clan. At the same time, clan charitable fields also possessed and fulfilled multiple functions such as supporting and relieving clan members, assisting education and emphasizing teaching, helping with corvée and service, providing relief in famines and grain, and honoring ancestors and offering sacrifices.
II. The Structural Forms of Clan Organization
In rural society after the Song dynasty, the widely existing clan organizations were established by individual small families within the geographical relations of living together as a clan. The descendants of the same ancestor living together as a clan was in itself a naturally formed phenomenon and not a feudal clan organization; it had to possess a strict organizational system. All clan organizations living together as a clan were constituted by organizational elements such as the ancestral hall, genealogy, clan fields, clan rules, and clan head.
(1) The Symbol and Center of the Clan
The ancestral hall is the symbol and center of the clan. Every clan living together as a clan must have one or several ancestral halls as the symbol and center of its clan. "A clan must have a hall." The ancestral hall symbolizes blood relations with a common ancestral source and symbolizes the unity of the clan. Ancestral halls are also divided into general halls and branch halls. The one where the whole clan jointly sacrifices is the general hall; those where branches and rooms separately sacrifice are branch halls. "Custom values the clan branch; every large or small clan has a hall. In a village where people live together as a clan, there must be a family temple, which is also a hall. In the prefectural city there is a great ancestral hall, one jointly built by the clans of several counties in the whole prefecture." The ancestral hall is the "home" of the deceased ancestors of a clan and the place where their spirits gather, so the ancestral hall enshrines the spirit tablets of all or part of the clan's ancestors. On every spring and autumn sacrifice, the whole clan gathers, bathes and fasts, assembles in the ancestral hall, and the clan head leads the sacrifice. Participants "stand in order by seniority and rank, and must not frolic." The ancestral hall is also the meeting place where the clan discusses clan affairs and the clan's court. For public affairs in the clan, the clan head summons the clan members to gather in the ancestral hall to discuss and resolve them publicly. The recitation of clan rules, community covenants, and family instructions also took place in the ancestral hall. If clan members violated clan rules and family law, they were certainly punished publicly in the ancestral hall. The clan head weighed the severity and ruled on the spot: "For minor matters, the ancestral hall governs by family law; for major matters, the public court governs by official punishment." The ancestral hall was also the clan's management organ. It had specially assigned people in charge, responsible for the clan's public affairs, such as receiving and lodging visiting guests and fellow clansmen, managing clan fields and clan property, and safekeeping and using clan public funds, and so on.
Distribution Table of the Ancestral Halls of the Eight Great Surnames of the Tujia in Changyang County
┏━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Surname ┃ Location of Ancestral Hall ┃
┣━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Tian ┃ Ziqiu, Baishaping, Taoshan, Tianchikou, Lianzong ┃
┣━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ ┃ Houlangtuo, Malianping, Dingzinao, Xiufengqiao, Quanxi, Yansongping, Dashui ┃
┃ Li ┃ ┃
┃ ┃ Quan, Duzhenwan ┃
┣━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Zhang ┃ Zhulishan, Shuanggumu, Fujiayan ┃
┣━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Qin ┃ Zhizheping, Baihulong, Shiba, Sanyouping, Shiling ┃
┣━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Liu ┃ Dongliuxi, Zhengjiabang, Shiwuxi, Ziqiu ┃
┣━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Xiang ┃ Liuxi, Yangjiaqiao, Qiaoliao ┃
┣━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Qin ┃ Langping ┃
┣━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ Tan ┃ Moshi ┃
┗━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Source: Changyang County Gazetteer, p. 659, Beijing: China City Press, 1992.
In the Tujia areas throughout history, ancestral hall architecture became very common after the Song and Yuan dynasties. In Enshi, the Xiang, Qin, Tan, Liao and other surnames were all prominent local Tujia clans, each with its own ancestral hall and genealogical records, with a history that can be described as long and deep-rooted. Descendants of the Xiang surname in the Enshi region once built the Xiang Wang Temple outside the north gate of Enshi city, enshrining a statue of King Xiang within; each branch of the Xiang surname took turns serving as the "annual duty" host of the sacrificial ceremonies, and every Qingming Festival, those coming to pay respects to their ancestors formed an endless stream. In Changyang County, a total of 51 ancestral halls, large and small, were built across the area, among which the ancestral halls of the eight major Tujia surnames—Qin, Tian, Li, Liu, Zhang, Qin, Xiang, and Tan—accounted for 30. In Longzhouping Town, the county seat of Changyang, during the Qing dynasty, ancestral halls of eight surnames—Shangguan, Xiong, He, Peng, Zheng, Fang, Qin, and Yang—were already built.
(2) The Bond That Maintains Clan Blood Relations
Genealogies are the bond that maintains clan blood relations. A genealogy, also called a clan genealogy, family genealogy, or family chronicle, records the history of the clan, and its main content is the generations, branches, and names of clan ancestors. "Each clan has its genealogy; all branches must be separately listed to order the generations, so every household can be traced and deceit has no place to hide." The reproductive circumstances of each generation of the clan surname and the mutual relationships among them can be seen at a glance through the genealogy. Its main function is to prevent confusion in blood relations, so that clan members can grasp and understand the clan's situation and create conditions for clan members to revere their ancestors. Cheng Yaotian of the Ming dynasty said: "The making of a genealogy governs ancestors above, descendants below, and brothers at the side, so that those who are scattered without order and cannot establish family rules to unify them are all written down in the book." Genealogies record the history of the same-surname clan's migrations and prosperous development, and therefore clan genealogies became the bond of clan connection. They provide clan members with a bond linking them to the founding ancestor, an unbroken bond that ties together the bloodline of clan members. It can be said that a genealogy is both the clan history and the encyclopedia of the clan. After the Song dynasty, with the formation of the feudal clan system, the practice of compiling clan genealogies became very prevalent. By the Ming and Qing dynasties, in rural society, it could be said that there was neither a clan without a genealogy nor a person without a genealogy. In the Tujia areas throughout history, all clans compiled genealogies. Some were compiled during the Kangxi period of the Qing dynasty, and some were continued in the late Qing and early Republic.
The purpose of compiling genealogies was mainly to revere the ancestors and gather the clan, trace the roots, and clarify the origins of the clan surname. "Some say that a family's having a genealogy arises from the thought of water's source and wood's root, and further clarifies the meaning of revering ancestors and gathering the clan." For example, the genealogies of the major indigenous surnames in Tujia areas, such as Ran, Tian, Bai, and Zhang, record the origins of their clan surnames. The Ran Clan Genealogy of Youyang states: "According to history, Ran originally bore the surname Feng. Zhuanxu begot Cheng, Cheng begot Laotong, Laotong begot Chongli and Wuhui. ... One of his branch sons received a fief at Ran, and thus became the Ran clan." From Zhuanxu, one of the Five Emperors of the Central Plains, it speaks of being enfeoffed at Ran during the Zhou dynasty and thereby obtaining the Ran surname, then down to the Spring and Autumn and Han-Wei periods, and further to Ran Rencai of the Tang dynasty and Ran Shouzhong of the Song dynasty, common ancestors of the Ran surname descendants of the Tujia in Chongqing and Guizhou. The Tian Clan Genealogy of Qiannan states: "Examining the Tian clan, it emerged from the Gui surname and was from Lantian County, Jingbei Road, Shaanxi. Later, King Wu conquered Shang and enfeoffed a descendant of Shun in Chen. In the Spring and Autumn period ... he received a fief at Tian, and thus was named after it." "From the Sui-Tang period, Zongxian and Weikang, father and son, came south by imperial order, going from Shaanxi to Guizhou, passing through Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming ... the various Tian lords opened up territory and expanded land, controlling half the southwest, suppressing rebels and pacifying the wicked, subduing the many barbarians and unifying them." The Bai Clan Genealogy of Youyang states that the Bai surname came from Jiangxi: "Later the ancestor Chang passed the examinations and was promoted to a post in Jishui County, Ji'an Prefecture, Jiangxi ... He had two sons, Bai Wen and Bai Wu. Ancestor Wen moved to Yunnan and Guizhou, multiplied and prospered, spreading almost throughout Yunnan and Guizhou. ... In the second year of Hongwu, hearing that the Man rebels of Youxi were causing chaos, he intended to enter the land to suppress them ... and moved to live at Dajiangping in Liye. ... In the third year of Hongwu, our ancestor raised troops, and the Man rebels fled at the sight of the wind." Thereupon, "our ancestor governed the five dong, five jia, and five clans of wild people of Houxi," and thus became a major Tujia surname of Youyang, inheriting the post hereditarily. The Zhang Clan Genealogy of Qiannan records: "Those who narrate the Zhang clan believe that Zhang emerged from the Ji surname. The fifth son of Qingyang of Xuanyuan, named Hui, first made bows and arrows, presided over the observation of the Hu star, and was granted the surname Zhang ... Thus our ancestor Zhang Xiang ... was a man of Xianning County, Xi'an Prefecture, Shaanxi. ... His third son Zhang Hui, as a jinshi, served as a military officer of the cavalry and infantry command of Kuizhou Route, Sichuan. During the Shaoxing period of the Song, he had merit in suppressing the Miao barbarians of the thirty-six dong of Sizhou and was promoted in rank to Yazhong Dafu. ... His son Zhang Huan, because of merit, was first appointed assistant commissioner of the Sizhou Pacification Commission and was ordered to remain and garrison Sinan, and therefore made his home there. Thereafter his descendants multiplied, branches divided, and it became a mighty prominent clan of Qinghe."
(3) The Material Foundation on Which Clans Depended for Existence
Clan land was the material foundation on which clans depended for existence. For a clan to exist and develop, having only ancestral halls and genealogies was not enough. All clan activities, such as building ancestral halls, compiling genealogies, establishing charitable schools, and supporting clan members, had to raise funds from the income of clan land. Therefore, clan land became the economic means of maintaining clan organization. By the Ming and Qing dynasties, it was extremely common for clan organizations to establish clan land. Statements such as "a clan of a hundred people, or an official of a single appointment, immediately plans to establish ancestral halls and sacrificial fields," "each surname must build an ancestral hall to settle the ancestors; each hall must publicly establish property to provide for sacrifices," and "large clans within the hall mostly establish charitable fields to prepare against famine and poor harvests" all show that the practice of establishing clan land was quite prevalent in southern regions. Clan land became an important feature of the clan system; a clan organization completely without clan land or clan property did not exist.
The main method of managing clan land was to rent it out for rent. To prevent clan members from contending for and encroaching upon clan land, it was generally stipulated that it must be rented to people of other surnames; members of the clan itself were not allowed to rent it, nor to serve as intermediaries in the tenancy. If someone falsely established a name to rent it or recommended someone, once discovered, family law would be applied: "Clan members may not rent charitable fields; those who falsely establish names are treated the same," "Public fields should forever be rented to other surnames, and members of the clan may not serve as recommenders, in order to eliminate abuses," "Among the clan, regardless of whether they receive rice or not, none may rent and cultivate charitable fields." The management of clan land was nominally entrusted to specially chosen persons publicly elected by clan members, but in reality it was mostly controlled by the wealthy and prosperous households of the clan. These managers were called financial managers, directors, or heads, or managers of the public hall. Their terms were either one year, or three to five years, and a considerable number of managers held their posts hereditarily.
In the Tujia areas throughout history, clan organizations all had clan property to varying degrees. For example, in the Tujia area of western Hunan, the three major clans of the Xiang, Wang, and Qu surnames in Qinglong Village of Yongshun County all possessed differing amounts of clan property. The clan property of the Xiang clan mainly included public fields, public mountains, and tea-oil tree groves. Each year the income from clan property was sold after being converted into cash, and the proceeds were mainly used for the Qingming gathering, that is, for sweeping the ancestors' tombs at Qingming. The clan property of the Wang clan consisted of a two-fen pond and several fen of public fields, and its income was mainly used for building water conservancy and improving transportation. The clan property of the Qu clan mainly had two types: sacrificial fields (also called Qingming fields) and temple fields (also called land fees). The sacrificial fields were about 5 fen, producing about 250 kilograms of grain annually, used for the annual Qingming ancestor worship activities of the Qu clan. The temple fields were about 2 fen, jointly donated by the Qu, Xiang, and Wang clans and nearby villages, with the Qu clan as the main donor. In addition, the Qu clan's property also included ancestral grave land, the Maotuping tea mountain, and ponds. Among these, the Maotuping tea mountain was about 70 mu, harvesting about more than 40,000 kilograms of tea seeds each year and pressing more than 800 kilograms of tea oil. The Qu clan also had a pond of about 2 mu as clan property, managed by members of the Qu clan, from which a certain income was drawn each year as the clan's common assets. The Qu clan's cemetery was about 3 mu, the burial place of the village's founding ancestor Qu Changlin, and this ancestral grave land is still preserved very completely today.
(4) The Clan's Code of Law
Clan rules are the clan's code of law. Clan rules are norms of behavior that clan members must observe. They are both admonitory and compulsory, and are the concrete embodiment of clan authority: "A clan's having rules is like a state's having laws." Clan rules include both written and unwritten forms. Written clan rules are mostly contained in genealogies and family genealogies, existing in forms such as family instructions, clan instructions, precepts, clan models, clan covenants, and clan rules; unwritten clan rules exist in the form of customs. The main contents of clan rules include: promoting feudal ethics such as filial piety, fraternal duty, chastity, and obedience, so that clan members' words and deeds conform to the ethical requirements of the patriarchal system; promoting clan concepts in order to maintain blood kinship; and promoting the court's statutes so that clan members know and obey the law. In addition, clan rules also contain the administrative authority of the clan head and regulations for managing ancestral halls and clan land. In short, clan rules were a powerful tool used by clan organizations to regulate the behavior of clan members, strengthen clan consciousness, and maintain clan order; therefore, clan rules were often called "family law" by clan organizations.
In the Tujia areas throughout history, all clan organizations had clan rules and clan instructions. These clan rules and instructions were generally printed in the genealogies of each clan, and some were also carved on the stone pillars of ancestral halls. For example, the Zhang Clan Genealogy of Yuxiakou in Changyang contains a total of 16 clan instructions: "Esteem filial piety and brotherly respect to value human relations; strengthen the clan to manifest harmony; harmonize with neighbors and village associates to settle disputes; value agriculture and sericulture to ensure sufficient food and clothing; uphold diligence and frugality to increase wealth; promote schools to rectify the conduct of scholars; reject heterodox teachings to honor orthodox learning; explain laws to warn the foolish and stubborn; practice propriety and yielding to enrich customs; devote oneself to one's proper occupation to settle the people's aspirations; instruct sons and younger brothers to prohibit wrongdoing; stop false accusations to preserve the good; warn against harboring fugitives to avoid implication; promptly pay taxes and grain to reduce urging by officials; organize the baojia to eliminate bandits and thieves; resolve hatreds to value life." The clan instructions contained in the Zhang Clan Genealogy were in fact copied from the imperial edict to instruct the people issued in the ninth year of Kangxi (1670)—the "Sixteen Sacred Edicts." Another example is that the clan rules contained in the Qin Clan Genealogy of the Tujia area of western Hubei are detailed regulations formulated around the concrete realities of social life within the clan, with clear outlines and distinct items and strong operability. They are copied as follows: "(1) On the first day of each month, the clan head shall send one articulate and thoroughly understanding son or younger brother to expound the Sacred Edict and Broad Instructions, and gather the crowd to go to the ancestral hall and listen respectfully, so that they may know filial piety, fraternal duty, and human relations. If anyone excuses himself and does not come, the clan head may lightly punish him. In busy farming months, the lectures stop. (2) If a son or younger brother is unfilial to his parents and greatly disobedient, his father or elder brother may bring the matter to the ancestral hall for discussion and punishment. If he does not accept restraint, the clan shall jointly send him for investigation. (3) Sons and younger brothers in the clan must be named in order according to the generation sequence set by the ancestors, and may not change it without authorization. (4) An only son in the clan may not divide the household from his parents. (5) If within the mourning circle a son or younger brother has a dispute with an elder, he must first bring it to the ancestral hall for mediation and must not immediately file a case, and must not offend without cause; even the elder must not deliberately bully him. (6) If a son or younger brother does not engage in proper work, drinks excessively, gambles recklessly, or even commits adultery, robbery, kidnapping, or abduction, or any unlawful matter, once he offends, the clan shall jointly report and send him away. (7) Persons of different surnames may not be improperly incorporated into the clan. If there is no heir, and a son of another surname is taken in as a live-in son-in-law or adopted, after the person's death the ancestral hall shall impartially grant property and order him to return to his original clan; separately, from close branches a person of corresponding generation shall be chosen as heir to continue the sacrifices. Members of the clan may not recklessly harbor covetous designs. (8) If a woman of the clan is unfilial or disrespectful in her husband's family and then takes her own life out of momentary despair, no report or lawsuit shall be allowed. Only if the husband's family has worn her down by dislike and even threatened or beaten her to death may the matter be brought to the ancestral hall for public discussion. If she does not follow instruction and returns home at will to complain, she shall merely be comforted and sent back, and may not appeal to the ancestral hall. (9) The clan shall publicly choose four persons of upright character and respected seniority who are ordinarily feared and respected to serve as principal and deputy clan heads, to restrain the clan members and manage all accounts within the ancestral hall, and they shall be recommended in turn each year at Qingming. (10) If there are women in the clan who maintain widow chastity with firm and steadfast resolve, the clan head shall report them at any time to encourage moral conduct. (11) The ancestral hall shall establish a family school, choosing those in the clan of excellent character and learning as teachers, and poor sons and younger brothers may also enter school to study."
(5) The Leaders of Clan Organizations
The clan head was the leader of the clan organization. The power system of the clan organization was composed of household heads, branch heads, and the clan head. Branch heads governed each branch, and the clan head commanded the entire clan. As the controller of clan authority, the clan head was the greatest centralizing figure in the clan organization's power system. As for the title of clan head, names differed from place to place; some called him clan rectifier or clan elder, and some called him assembly head, chief officer, or director. The arrangement of the clan head also differed: some clans had one clan head, some had one principal and one deputy, and some had one principal and three deputies. The main powers of the clan head were: presiding over clan sacrificial activities; serving as notary for clan members' household division, establishment of heirs, and property inheritance, as well as arbiter of clan disputes; being responsible for expounding clan rules and community covenants and supervising the implementation of clan instructions and rules; and, as the highest representative of the clan, being responsible for external negotiations and personally resolving all matters involving disputes between the clan and other surnames and all affairs involving the clan's interests.
All clan organizations in Tujia areas had the post of clan head. The clan head was the highest decision-maker of the clan organization. Whenever major matters involving the clan arose, such as sacrificing to ancestors, setting clan rules, rectifying clan customs, continuing the genealogy, and establishing clan property, the clan head convened the branch heads and representatives of each branch to discuss and decide, and the clan head confirmed them. The clan head enjoyed "the privilege of being respected and accommodated." At the same time, the clan head was also the person in charge of major events, such as handling preparations, arrangements, and notifications for the whole clan's sacrifices; being responsible for preserving old genealogies, continuing and revising new ones, and other matters related to genealogies; being responsible for handling the clan's external affairs, entertaining guests, and ceremonial exchanges; being responsible for handling civil and criminal litigation within the clan; and being responsible for matters concerning the schooling of clan sons and younger brothers.
In addition to one clan head, each clan also had 2 to 5 deputy clan heads. Each clan organization had clear regulations for serving as clan head. For example, the Xiang clan of Changyang stipulated that candidates for clan head must simultaneously meet the following six conditions: (1) upright in conduct and profound in learning; (2) having rendered great service to the state and having received honors; (3) enthusiastic about public welfare or of outstanding credit, with achievements known to clan members near and far; (4) of long-established moral prestige, never having improper behavior or habits, and worthy of being a model for the whole clan; (5) of substantial family means and consistently very enthusiastic about public welfare, and relied upon by the clan; (6) having more than three years of service in the clan's public affairs. Among these, the most important conditions were "long-established moral prestige" and "substantial family means." From the relevant regulations of the Xiang clan organization, we can see that within the clan, prominent emphasis was placed on the functional conditions required for the clan leader to maintain his power. These functional requirements would not seriously damage the clan head's actual control over the clan; on the contrary, they helped maintain the clan's blood relations and the factors of clan belonging. "If we equate the clan head's power with a kind of secular power, or simply regard this power as a derivative of some political system, then we cancel the particularity of the clan as a lineage group."