Our apologies. This is a first Edit of the English translation. Much work needs to be done yet.
Re-edit Bright Creek Ma Family Genealogy Preface
In the fifth year of the Republic of China, Bingchen (1915), Bright Creek Ma continued to renovate the genealogy, and the collection aspect of the work had been completed. Through patriarchal law, clerical diligence, and following the laws of heaven, they requested me to write the preface to the genealogy. I read through the genealogy and learned that the Ma family originated from Fufeng. In the Southern Song Dynasty, in order to avoid the chaos of the Jins, Elder Xiao Kuang moved from Bianjing (now Kaifeng) to Mingzhou (now Ningbo). By the fourth generation, Yunxiang Gong was born. Yunxiang gave birth to three sons, the eldest son Zhong Ming, the second son Zhong Shou, and the third son Zhong Yang. In fact, the two brothers who chose to live in Bright Creek at the beginning were the second and third sons. Three hundred years ago, Elder Binhu gathered to write a genealogy, collected old manuscripts, and compiled them into books. According to the remarks of Zhu Zi, who wrote movingly that Elder Yunxiang was newly added as the first generation ancestor, and it should have been traced back to where he came from. From the Yuan Dynasty to the present, generations said that Ma was originally a large family of Bright Creek. As for the research and study of the surname, the tracing of the lineage in the past, the migration of the survivors, the previous preamble has already been explained in detail. However, I said something privately, and in the past, Su Mingyun said that people who read my books could have loyalty and respect. These remarks are relatively long-term. The ancestors and descendants are in the same line, and nothing can cha this. Those who are indifferent to this, if you show them the genealogy, who is my father, who is my grandfather, who is my great-grandfather, there must be no one who dares to be disrespectful and arrogant. It is speculated that who is the direct line of one of my ancestors, and which are the sidelines of one of my ancestors, no one will be rebellious and arrogant so that people cannot see these. Rumor legend: Respecting ancestors for honoring elders and honoring elders for uniting the tribes are all due to the unconsciously exposed behavior of filial piety. This is not the only reason. If there is no predecessor’s generosity to carry forward, no matter how good it is, no one will know; if there is no inheritance from the juniors, even Shanda will not pass on. Since he chose to live in Bright Creek, Ma family has been a generation of twenty generations, all generations have been faithful and generous heirs, and now its descendants live on the virtues and fields inherited from their ancestors. The accumulation of morality of the Ma ancestors can reach such a long-term situation. Like future generations, if we can truly keep our ancestors’ virtues from generation to generation and pass down the book of sages from generation to generation, then there surely will be someone who will succeed in the future. The ancestor regarded this as filial piety; isn’t it more important? What can one do if one can do filial piety and make everyone in the same race do their best to do filial piety? Writing a genealogy cannot be ignored; it is just a matter of sorting seniors’ ranks, determining the status, and distinguishing the degree of closeness. I originally intended to praise this family’s strengths and tell them to pass on the ancestors’ ambitions, so I did not refuse to preface the genealogy.
November of the fifth year of the Republic of China (1916) Fenghua Shengchen Respectfully written.