History
文氏The history and genealogy of the Man family – from a scholar and general in the thirteenth century, via the drained marsh of San Tin, to Amsterdam and London.
Where this family begins
The Man family descends from the cousin of Man Tin Cheung 文天祥 – Wen Tianxiang in Mandarin – a scholar, army general and to this day one of China’s best-known patriotic folk heroes. The cousin’s descendants moved to Hong Kong in the fifteenth century; their descendants are now in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe.
文天祥 · 1236–1283Man Tin Cheung, the man who wouldn’t bow
He spent most of his life defending the Song dynasty against the Mongols. Despite his efforts, the Mongols put an end to the Song empire in 1279.
Man Tin Cheung was taken prisoner. Neither promises of wealth nor gruesome punishments could make him give up his resistance. Instead, at the age of forty-seven, he asked to be executed himself. His heroism, integrity and devotion to his country remain a source of inspiration to this day.
A life in ten moments
SOUTHERN SONG · 1236–1283- 1236Born the eldest son
Man Tin Cheung is born into a modest, learned family in Jizhou, in today’s Jiangxi. His father Man Yi takes exceptional care over the upbringing of his four sons and three daughters, and hires tutors. When the family falls into money troubles through his generosity, he takes over the teaching himself.
- 1256Top of the imperial examination
Man Tin Cheung comes top of the whole country in the imperial examination. That same year his father dies, and he goes home to mourn. His mother keeps supporting him: later, already past sixty, she travels with his troops, until she dies during an epidemic in the army.
- 1259Sent away for his protest
The court is caught up in a power struggle and wants to negotiate peace. As a junior official he is the only one to protest: in a memorandum he argues for fighting the occupiers. His proposal is rejected and his commander-in-chief sends him back to his birthplace.
- 1271Kublai Khan founds the Yuan
The Mongols, divided for years by internal feuds, unite under Kublai Khan and attack China again. The Song court is in a bad way internally: chancellor Jia Sidao rules almost alone, hides defeats from the emperor and pushes critics aside.
- 1273Xiangyang falls
The key fortress on the Han river is besieged for years. When the court stops sending relief troops, the city surrenders, and other commanders defect to the Mongols too. When emperor Duzong dies the following year, his four-year-old son succeeds him.
- 1275An army from his own fortune
Answering the court’s urgent call to the whole country, Man Tin Cheung raises an army with his family’s wealth and goes to war.
- 1276Negotiator, then prisoner
He is ordered to conclude a peace treaty, but the Mongols hold the negotiators. Other envoys give way and surrender; Man Tin Cheung refuses to serve the new power and is taken north. On the way he escapes with the help of a fisherman.
- 1278Captured again
He takes up the fight again; his wife and children are captured during the campaign. Step by step the Song troops have to retreat southwards, until he falls into Mongol hands once more. Again he refuses to surrender.
- 1279The end of the Song
The young emperor and his court leap into the sea. The Mongols tell the captive Man Tin Cheung that his country and his emperor no longer exist, and that his duty has therefore lapsed. He replies that he deserves death: he has failed to save his country, and he sees no reason to go on living.
- 1283Executed in Beijing
On the journey to the Yuan capital Man Tin Cheung refuses to eat, out of loyalty to his dead emperor. First he is given a fine palace, then a cellar. When, three years later, he still won’t recognise the Yuan emperor as ruler, he is executed.
A scholar whom circumstances turned into a fighter, and who could not save his country – but his unbending spirit and love of his homeland still deserve to be followed today. Much of his work and poetry expresses that devotion. The best known is Jing Hei Go 正氣歌 (in Mandarin Zheng Qi Ge): “Song of Righteousness”, written during his imprisonment in Beijing. He saw death as nothing to fear: whoever dies honourably and bravely for his country is remembered for his heroism.
Crossing the lonely sea
過零丁洋Written in 1279, aboard a Mongol ship in Lingding Bay, after he refused to write a call to surrender. Four years of war, a country blown apart like willow catkins, his own life like duckweed on the water – and then the two lines that are still learnt by heart today.
The full text is in every Chinese school anthology; the closing lines in the original.
人生自古誰無死，留取丹心照汗青。Let me leave a loyal heart to light the annals of history.MAN TIN CHEUNG, 1279
The last of the five great clans
The Man family counts as one of the original families in the history of Hong Kong. The Man clan was the last of the five great clans to come from China to Hong Kong in the fifteenth century and settle in the New Territories.
Other clans, such as the Tang, already held the best land. The Man family had to make do with marshy ground in the far north of the New Territories, up against the border with China. They drained part of the marsh, grew rice on it and aptly named it San Tin – New Field 新田.
Every Man in the New Territories descends from Man Tin Sui 文天瑞, the cousin of Man Tin Cheung. His descendants founded three villages: Tai Hang 泰亨 in the fifth generation, San Tin in the seventh and Chau Tau 洲頭 in the ninth.
GATE OF MAN TIN CHEUNG PARK · SAN TINYanmen 雁門, the name above the name
On the name tablets (神主牌) and gravestones of the Man family, two characters often stand above the name of the deceased: 雁門, Yanmen. It is the name of origin of the family name 文 – the place the family comes from, according to the family story.
That family story goes back to the Zhou period. Qi 文祈, a descendant of King Wen of Zhou, is said to have been granted land in Yanmen, in the north of present-day Shanxi. In honour of his ancestor he took Wen as his family name – Man, in Cantonese.
Nobody can prove that every Man family descends from him. Nor do the characters say that our branch ever came from Yanmen. They are a mark of recognition: anyone who sees them on a grave or in a hall knows it is the same name. For a family that spread out across villages and countries, that is precisely the point.
Out into the wide world
How three villages on the Chinese border spread out across England, the Netherlands and the rest of Europe.
Europe looks back too. When the ancestral hall of Man Tin Sui in Qu Chong 曲冲 had fallen into disrepair, the Man Clansmen Association in London raised money for a new hall.
In the scholarly record
Articles and books have been written about the Man lineage. A few examples – the last three in Dutch.
- 2011The Man Lineage in the Netherlands and Europe (1950–2010): A migration narrative Wan Loi Man
- 2004Presidential Address: Virtual Kinship, Real Estate, and Diaspora Formation – The Man Lineage RevisitedJames L. Watson
- 1997From Hall of Worship to Tourist Center: An Ancestral Hall in Hong Kong’s New Territories Rubie S. Watson and James L. Watson
- 1982Chinese Kinship Reconsidered: Anthropological Perspectives on Historical ResearchJames L. Watson
- 1975Emigration and the Chinese Lineage: The ‘Mans’ in Hong Kong and LondonJames L. Watson
- 2005De Chinezen van de Binnen Bantammerstraat: een geschiedenis van drie generatiesYuk Chong – about the street our clubhouse is on
- 1987San Tin: lineage en emigratie in Hong KongGregor Benton, in De Chinezen (ed. Benton & Vermeulen)
- 1987De Man-lineageTina Romeijn, in De Chinezen (ed. Benton & Vermeulen)
For more on the general history of the Chinese in the Netherlands – now well over a hundred years – see Chinese people in the Netherlands on Wikipedia.
How does anthropology look at the Man lineage? In this essay Wan Loi Man shows how kinship, generations and respect for elders give the family its order, and describes the knowledge and customs that hold it together. Read the essay →