Confucius family documents inscribed on regional register of Memory of the World

Confucius family documents have been listed as documentary heritage by the seventh general meeting of the Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific (MOWCAP), the antiquities bureau of Qufu City in east China's Shandong Province said Tuesday.

The Ming and Qing Dynasty archives of Confucius family were officially inscribed on the Memory of the World (MOW) regional register for Asia and Pacific on May 19, at the meeting which took place in Hue, Vietnam from May 18 to 21.

The archives, running to over 9,000 volumes, are records from 1534 to1948, one year before the founding of the People's Republic of China. The The documents contain details of the family history during feudal times.

The documents are important in research into China's feudal patriarchal system, said Li Yuchun, deputy director of the cultural relics management committee of Qufu City.

Qufu plans to apply for inscription of the documents into the Memory of the World register, Li added.

Established in 1998, MOWCAP is the regional forum for UNESCO's global MOW Program to protect and allow access to documentary heritage, especially that which is rare or endangered.

The Confucius family is regarded as the world's biggest family in terms of how many generations it contains. The 2009 version of Confucius family tree records 83 generations, more than 2 million people.

China has 10 inscriptions in the MOW, including documents on the Nanjing Massacre, the Compendium of Materia Medica -- a classic of Chinese medicine -- and The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine, China's earliest medical text. Endi