'Hopeful travel' is my pre-destined name

The other day my father excitedly opened a thick book in brown hard cover to me, and it turned out to be the ancestral book recording our family name's origin, generations, and nobles and their great achievements.

Certainly I could understand why my father acted excited. And I was sure that my uncles and other relatives in this family must have shared it too. Because the last time this ancestral record was revised about 70 years ago, and common practice of revision within ten or fifteen years to record new births and deaths, unfortunately was halted due to social unrest in modern China, including Japanese invasion, civil wars, and all Mao's communist political movements since 1950, especially during the cultural revolution 1966-76, when arts, culture, religion, and Confucius education were so denied as part of backward and feudal vices. So naturally our small ancestral temple in a mountainous village didn't survive the crazy red guards, as well a large amount of ancestral records, ancestors' portraits and name tablets were burned to ashes.

So after three years' hard work, research and coordination, this new record book was finally published. According to it, our family's oldest record dates back to Han dynasty in 145-168 AD in Henan province along middle reaches of Yellow river. And later one branch of this family migrated to Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in eastern and southern China and lasted 11 generations. And then continued further south and settled down till Song dynasty (10- 13th century) around Xuzhou, north of Zhejiang province.

The clearest and most direct record with my father's particular family branch was from Song dynasty. A real romance as it started. A third son of a high ranking military general came to the southern regions of this province to lobby and collect grain supply to help his father's troop defeat pirates. He happily met and then was admired by a daughter of a rich family in the village. After completing his assignment he decided to marry her and live in the village thereafter.

To me another interesting discovery in the book was: I had a destined official name in this family tree. 希行 possibly means : Xi Hang, 'hopeful achievement' or, 'hopeful travel', dependent on different pronouncement. However my parents didn't take this name from an ancetral book for me, in order to avoid any related feudal hints and thus show to be purified 'red' youth during and even after Mao's times.