Descendants of the Bird Hunters of Old China

By Loh Shen Yeow

My ancestors once own a “Kingdom” in ancient China. This ‘kingdom’ has its founding amid embers of destruction at the dawn of a new dynastic civilization. The only warrior Ancestor of my direct lineage is also the founding Ancestor. His descendants go on to procreate many lineages throughout China over three millennia. Along the journey, someone loses the “Kingdom”.

Of course, there are collateral great Ancestors but this book’s narration is on stories of my direct Ancestors along my direct lineage. And not just about every Ancestors, or any. Only the LOH legends are told.

Their stories are narrated against their days’ historical background. It commences from China’s pre-historic tribal nomadic migration through Ancient and Imperial China, and subsequently to the Hakka Diaspora.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Dec 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543755633

Loh Shen Yeow

When the Author got his hands on his Family Book, he found its contents extremely detailed, and the depicted family Tree very dense, if not confusing and complicated. Rarer still were the stories of these Ancestors. He had to seek their stories on-line but they were too disparate to form a whole picture. For the benefits of his children, and relatives, and other hobbyists, he decided to collate these disparate stories and simplify the complicated Tree. Loh Shen Yeow is an Optometrist by profession. He himself is a migrant, like his book’s protagonists. He hailed from Malaysia, landing in Singapore in his late twenties. He settled here for good, raising a handsome family.

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Copyright © 2020 by 罗善耀 Luóshànyào (Loh Shen Yeow).

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-5437-5562-6

                            Softcover                           978-1-5437-5564-0

                            eBook                                978-1-5437-5563-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

Descendants of the Bird Hunters of Old China

2019, One and Only Edition

好记性不如烂笔头。

(Hǎojìxìng bù rú lànbǐtóu)

An imperfect pen is better than a good memory.

Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.

An Indian proverb

To hell with facts! We need stories!

Ken Kesey, American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure

For

my wife,

Eilene

and

our twins,

Yang Zhi and Yang Jie

Keep calm ’cause I’ll be taller than you one day.

Yang Jie, 2017

The profile picture of this user has been disabled due to unbearable good looks, charm, and charisma.

Yang Zhi on his handphone’s profile picture, 2019

Contents

What’s Up?

Listen Up

The Tour

A House Long Gone

Dawn of the Chinese

Prehistoric Mythical Era

Yellow Emperor (黃帝) 2697–2597 BC

Clan Genesis

The LOH Legends

Ancestors’ Round Table—Genesis

匡正公Kuāngzhènggōng

Clan Story

Luō guó’s Short Reign

Origin of 豫章 Yùzhāng

Origin of 南昌 Nanchang

豫章 Yùzhāng Ancestor始祖珠公

Dàbù大埔系大一公Dà yī gōng

Yùzhāng Zhugong G46 Hongde

Tribal Genesis

Hunter–Gatherer Origin

Surname Genesis

The Fall

The Story of the House of Chu

The Lineage Linkage?

The Revival

乘公 讳凌甫Chénggōng huìlíngfǔgōng

Luó Yíngmù gōng’s Ancestry

Ancestor Tracing

高陂系Gāopí Line始祖文德公

The Great Migration

Journey of Ancient Chinese People—Migrations and Emigrations

Hakka客家

The Hakka’s Missile Silos and Warships

Chinese New Year

Hakka Cuisine

Han Chinese (漢人) vs Tang Chinese (唐人)

Historic Context

Fēngjiàn (封建), the Political Ideology of the Zhou Dynasty

What’s Up?

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Listen Up

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A dedication to the

Descendants

of the Bird Hunters of

Old China

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The Tour

The halting motion of his personal horse carriage shook His Majesty from his slumber. It had been a long, hot afternoon of travelling. The humid weather had lulled him to a nap as he pondered over state affairs. Boring stuff, I suppose.

‘Your Majesty,’ his general reported, ‘we are near the settlement.’ His Majesty groggily straightened up on his dragon seat, which also served as his bed. He was eager to get out but must await the proper protocol. His aide, ever standing just outside, peeped and saw that His Majesty was ready. He invited the emperor to step out and down the carriage. All knelt in his presence. He motioned for all to rise as he stepped on to the floor of the terrain. His foot soldiers had lined the nature’s undefined path into the forest, creating a walking path for His Majesty to walk on the forest floor. It looked dark and eerie inside the forest.

On this day, His Majesty had come to see for himself a rather famous tribe. It’d survived in the wilderness effortlessly and even assisted the previous dynasty’s ancestors in their military conquests. His Majesty had heard of this tribe’s exploits and survival abilities. He was curious about this tribe and keen on learning from the tribesmen. Like other tribes which had settled in permanent settlements, this particular tribe had settled down in this mountainous valley for generations. They had abandoned their ancestral nomadic lifestyle to form colonies of settlements in this valley. They were famously skilled in trapping birds for food. While other tribes depended on many sources of food to sustain through the four seasons, the tribe seemed to have no lack of meat.

The forest the royal contingent entered was darkish and primitive. His Majesty trudged along the uneven path which was littered with thick tangles of vine and undergrowth lain under layers upon layers of leaves. As the large contingent of the imperial party followed into the forest, the sky vanished almost completely; only a few slivers of bluish rays broke through the canopy of dense green roof. The air was rich with the fragrance of leaves, and damp too. Outside was the late afternoon daylight, but inside, everything was cool, and the colours have the softness of that time just before twilight with occasional streaks of sunlight. Voices of the wild prevailed and permeated every pore of the body, causing uncontrolled shivering. Even the trees spoke in their own language, brushing together to create sound.

The dark shadows of the voluminous trees and the surrounding bushes had become the backbone of the forest, standing as passive protectors of a peaceful place. Ahead, the forest trees were getting sparse as the visitors entered deeper into the tunnel-like interior, a clearing perhaps. The path had grown wider and stretched, in a gentle incline, towards a hillock of moderate height entirely free from trees. The peaceful symphony of the forest was broken by rustling sounds of branches and bustling voices of humans going about with some activities from afar.

On reaching the end of the ‘tunnel’, the imperial party came to a clearing under a bright blue sky. The blinding glare required a moment for the eyes to adjust. His Majesty gazed through his squinted eyes and saw a bustling world of tribesmen and tribeswomen setting up piles of logs and branches in the centre of the open clearing in preparation for some event. They were mouthing some melody which sounded strange to his ears. It sounded like a duet without accompanying musical instrument at all. After a while, their voice intonation sounded music to the ear.

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The headman, an aboriginal chieftain, approached His Majesty and offered his kowtow and his welcome greetings. His dark complexion was painted over with multicoloured paints, likely their tribe’s ceremonial colours. He wore a headdress which feathered his crown and a tiny loincloth which was also woven from feathers (birds’?). (No live birds were harmed or plucked in the making of these wearables.)

The chieftain and tribal natives were forewarned of the imperial visit. The tribe was in full ceremonial mode. They were preparing the site for a live demonstration of their tribe’s famous trap operation. The chieftain proceeded to give His Majesty and his party a brief on the set-up and its operation as they toured the site and its surrounding. At one point, the chieftain invited the emperor to look up the sky. His Majesty saw beautiful fluffy cloud formations against the bluish sky. The chieftain reported that the tribe’s trap was already in place before the imperial party’s arrival, and they were all surrounded by the trap and were within it. This piqued His Majesty’s interest. ‘But I see nothing that looks like a trap or a net!’

‘Err, that’s our secret, Your Majesty. In daylight, it is invisible. At night, it becomes a deadly trap for the birds,’ the chieftain whispered conspiratorially.

In the dusk of the evening, the tribesmen lit up piles of bonfire. As