The genealogy of the villagers in Jinshan Village is collected by the Shanghai Library, recording the history of ordinary households in the suburbs of Shanghai
Recently, Chen Chunhua, Secretary of the Party General Branch and Director of the Village Committee of Yangjia Village in Shanyang Town, Jinshan District, brought a set of nine volumes of "Yangjia Village Villager Genealogy" to the Shanghai Library. In the future, the genealogy of the villagers in Yangjia Village will not only be displayed in their village history museum, but also on a higher collection platform like the Shanghai Library, which makes the villagers feel proud.
Genealogy is a historical book preserved in the folk. In 2021, when the Yangjia Village History Museum was first built, some villagers donated agricultural tools, while others donated their own family genealogy. This also inspired the village cadres to have the idea of repairing the family tree for the entire village. So, the village party branch formulated a plan from the beginning of 2022 and carried out an activity to search for the ancestors of all villagers. The "search for ancestors" operation initiated by 13 village cadres, dozens of party members, and hundreds of villagers from the fields lasted for a year and was successfully completed.
On March 18th this year, villagers in Yangjia Village, Shanyang Town, Jinshan District received not only dividends from the village economic cooperative, but also their own family genealogy. From ancestors to younger generations, there are 9 village groups and 339 family genealogies with blood tree diagrams drawn from thousands of names, like bonds connecting family ties and inheriting family traditions. While warming the "small climate" of the family, it also cultivates the "big environment" of society.
Chen Chunhua said that preserving the imprint of ordinary people is also writing history. During the process of village officials going door-to-door to inquire about records, they also narrowed the distance between themselves and the villagers.
It is worth mentioning that the family tree production work of Yangjia Village has not only received strong support and positive praise from the villagers, but also received numerous mainstream media reports. Especially this summer, the program team of CCTV's "Remembering Homesickness" came from Beijing to Yangjia Village for nearly 10 days to record and shoot the construction of the village history museum and the production of family genealogy in Yangjia Village. On August 11th, CCTV-4 channel broadcasted a special program titled "Remembering Homesickness" for rural revitalization and "Shanghai Village History Museum - Hometown Belongs to Family Tradition from Generation to Generation", telling the story of Yangjia Village inheriting excellent village customs by building a village history museum and producing village genealogies.
With the continuous expansion of publicity influence, the Shanghai Library recently took the initiative to contact Yangjia Village and prepared to include the "Yangjia Village Villager Genealogy" in its collection.
Chen Chunhua happily said, "Our village genealogy can be collected by the Shanghai Library, which is very meaningful and worth remembering for the entire village.".
