Many families write their genealogies, and they tend to fall into one of two traps.
The first is a dense list of names — reads like a phone book. The second is a desperate scramble to link themselves to distant emperors and generals, as if a single sentence could vault them into royal lineage.
But the truly moving part of a family's story often lies not in "who our ancestors were," but in "how the generations that followed chose to live."
The story of our Li clan of Keshan (磕山李氏) begins, roughly, in the chaos of the late Tang Dynasty.
According to the Keshan Li Clan Genealogy and the Santian Li Clan Genealogy, the Keshan Li branch belongs to the Santian Li lineage. The Santian Li trace their roots to the Tang imperial house, with ancestral ties to Longxi. The line can be traced back to a descendant of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (Li Chen). From Li Rui, the ninth son of Emperor Xuanzong and Prince of Zhao, came Lord Li Jing. Lord Li Jing was originally named Li Yang, later renamed Li Jing.
During the Huang Chao Rebellion at the end of the Tang Dynasty, around 880 CE, Lord Li Jing migrated south, settling in Jietian, Fuliang, Raozhou — in the area of today's Jingdezhen, Jiangxi. Later, his descendants branched out to Xintian in Qimen, Yantian in Wuyuan, and Jietian in Fuliang — known thereafter as the "Three Fields Li" (三田李氏).
This part sounds distant. As distant as a page from a history book. But family history moves closer, one step at a time.
From the late Tang through the Song and Yuan dynasties, from Jiangxi to Anhui, from Fuliang in Raozhou to Gukang in Dongzhi, to Yangshan, and finally to Xiaokeshan in Fanchang — generation after generation migrated, fled turmoil, sought livelihoods, and put down roots. Then, during the Jingding era of the Southern Song, Lord Rongsheng's son, Lord Rongyi, took his three sons down the Zhangxi River and along the Yangtze, arriving at Xiaokeshan in Fanchang.
The mountain is small. The name carries no fame.
But Lord Rongyi and his party stopped here.
They settled at the foot of Xiaokeshan, in a place called Laowuji — the Old House Foundation. From that point on, this branch of the Li clan took root and grew. Descendants honor Lord Rongyi as the founding ancestor of the Keshan Li.
This is, perhaps, the most authentic beginning for many Chinese families: not a tale of armored cavalry or court intrigue, but a few people, with their children and belongings, following the river downstream, finding a place where they could survive — building houses, clearing fields, lighting fires, raising children. And then, passing the days down through the generations.
What makes the Keshan Li truly worth writing about is not just their origins, but their family tradition.
From very early on, this clan placed a high value on education.
During the Ming Dynasty, the clansmen built the Jiashutang ("Hall of Shelved Books") ancestral hall at Laowuji. It is said to have covered twenty mu of land, with three courtyards, ninety-nine and a half rooms, all timber-framed — known locally as the "Hall of a Hundred Beams." Carved beams and painted rafters, majestic in scale.
The name Jiashutang is telling. It is not "Hall of Gathering Wealth" or "Hall of Prominence." It is "Hall of Shelved Books."
Shelve the books, teach the children, and the lifeblood of the family continues.
Later came Xigong Ci, which elders recall was primarily a private school — a place where the clan nurtured its young and conducted lectures. Xiaokeshan is just a mountain valley, but because of these ancestral halls, private schools, and teachers, it gradually filled with the sound of recitation. For a time, students from both sides of the Yangtze traveled to Xiaokeshan to study.
This is what I find most moving. A mountain valley that could draw students from near and far — not by scenery, not by power, but by education.
Sadly, both Jiashutang and Xigong Ci were destroyed during a particular era, and the genealogical records were nearly scattered and lost. The old buildings are gone, the wooden beams gone, and the sounds of study seem to have faded into the distance.
But some things, even when the buildings are destroyed, cannot be erased. Because they have entered the bones of the people.
Over seven centuries, the Keshan Li clan has produced, generation after generation, scholars, educators, physicians, soldiers, and researchers.
In the Qing Dynasty, there was Li Dahua, courtesy name Dunlun, pen name Xiangzhai. A suigongsheng during the Guangxu period, he served as magistrate of Huichang, Shangyou and other counties in Jiangxi, and in his later years returned home to teach, with disciples in great number.
There was Li Hucen, born into a tradition of farming and scholarship. In the 19th year of the Guangxu reign, he founded the Fanchang Higher Primary School — later Fanchang No. 1 Primary School — and donated thirty mu of farmland as a school endowment. Founding a school was not about slogans; it was about giving your family's land so the school could survive.
There was Li Shixiu, who devoted his life to running schools and teaching. He founded the Chongshi Chinese College and Keshan Primary School, donated over ten mu of farmland, and served as headmaster without taking a salary. These words may sound light today; in that era, they meant truly investing one's family fortune and life's energy into education.
There was Li Yingwen, a Meiji University graduate in political science who spent his life as an educator. During the War of Resistance, when the Japanese army attacked the Keshan area, they invited him to serve as county magistrate of Fanchang. He refused to serve the puppet regime, skillfully maneuvering before making his way to the Wuwei anti-Japanese base area, where he continued his educational work. In times of chaos, a scholar's integrity sometimes rests in a single word: "No."
There was Li Yingfan, who during the War of Resistance served as colonel secretary to General Gu Zhutong, commander of the Third War Zone. Later, unwilling to leave his homeland, with aging parents and young children, he declined three invitations to relocate to Taiwan. In subsequent years, amid shifting times, he endured years of imprisonment. In his later years, his reputation was restored, and he served as a researcher at the Anhui Literary and Historical Archives, leaving behind more than ten volumes of his collected poems. His poetry, at once classical and playful, stands as a representative work in the cultural heritage of the Keshan Li.
There was Li Huaibei, given name Pu, who was shaped by his family's educational tradition from a young age and later rushed to the front lines of the War of Resistance. He participated in revolutionary work, experienced the Huaihai Campaign and the Yangtze Crossing Campaign, and ultimately gave his life in 1955.
There was Li Ruofei, given name Qin, who fought in the War of Resistance, the Huaihai Campaign, the Yangtze Crossing Campaign, and the Korean War, later transferring to the Hefei Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, leaving behind battlefield diaries from each period.
There was Li Mingjie, a chief surgeon who practiced medicine his entire life, prioritizing efficacy, minimizing costs, and always thinking of his patients' welfare. A physician's compassion is rarely found in grand words — it is in every yuan saved for a patient, every bit of suffering spared.
There was Li Yangzhen, who spent forty-eight years in clinical practice, teaching, and research in traditional Chinese medicine — writing books, publishing papers, teaching, treating patients, decade after decade. Beyond medicine, he wrote travelogues, family histories, and poetry. In a person like him, you see the quintessential scholar of an older generation: someone who did solid work and wrote prolifically — like an old well, its water never ceasing.
In modern times, clan members have also entered fields like computing and artificial intelligence.
Looking back now at the words "Xiaokeshan Li Clan," you realize it is more than just a surname attached to a place.
It is a thread.
A thread that runs from the chaos of the late Tang, through Fuliang in Jiangxi, through Gukang and Yangshan in Dongzhi, finally settling in Xiaokeshan, Fanchang.
It passes through ancestral halls, private schools, genealogical records, war, the Cultural Revolution, and the Reform and Opening — and through one real person after another: the teacher, the doctor, the soldier, the poet, the researcher, the AI engineer.
The most precious thing about this thread is not how illustrious our origins were. It is the reminder to those who come after: how far a family can go depends not on the halo of its ancestors, but on whether later generations keep reading, keep being good people, and keep doing solid work.
Ancestral halls can be destroyed. Old houses can collapse. Genealogies can scatter.
But as long as someone still asks, "Where do we come from?" — as long as someone still remembers the names of those who came before, and still tells the children the family stories of valuing education, valuing integrity, and valuing responsibility — this cultural thread has not been broken.
Xiaokeshan is nothing more than a mountain valley.
But seven centuries later, the sound of recitation that once echoed there still resonates in the destinies of its descendants.
