thebegats:On Saturday I sat down with my friend alexanderchee, who recently finished up his second
thebegats: On Saturday I sat down with my friend alexanderchee, who recently finished up his second novel, and he shared with me the most breathtaking family history records I’ve ever seen in person outside of a museum. Published in a collection of nine bound and slipcased volumes, his family’s JokBo — genealogy records — are written in HanJa, which Alex says is the Korean name for Chinese characters. A friend of his who knows Chinese says that the characters in these books are an old-fashioned, almost archaic form of the language. Alex’s family on his dad’s side, the Korean side, are Yangban, members of the traditional ruling class. His records date to the Joseon Dynasty, which began in 1392. Not everyone’s JokBo are this elaborate and beautiful, but Alex explained that in general knowledge of ancestry is so important in Korea that “if you don’t know who your family is, you enter a space of disgrace.” This is especially difficult and painful for Korean adoptees who return to the land of their birth hoping to make a connection with the place they came from, he says. The emphasis placed on ancestry is because of ancestor worship. “Each ancestor becomes a little bit of a house god when they die.” In the photos above are portraits of three of Alex’s ancestors, three stark and stunning “feng shui grave maps” (I hope I haven’t turned any of them upside-down and in so doing displeased the ancestors), and a couple of photos of the books themselves. The pictures in the books are a small part of the whole; mostly they’re devoted to detailed family genealogies: birth dates, marriage dates, dates of death, and career accomplishments. A woman who marries “dies to her old family,” and her record becomes part of her husband’s record and starts over again in his book. I learned so much more, but I’ll stop there for now. Thank you for sharing your family history with me, Alex! -- source link