Confucius family documents eye UNESCO Memory of the World

[Photo/Xinhua]

The Confucius family documents have been filed for application to be listed in the UNESCO's Memory of the World Regional Register for Asia and the Pacific, a source with Qufu Bureau of Cultural Relics said Saturday.

Kong Deping, director of the bureau, said UNESCO's Memory of the World Regional Committee for Asia and the Pacific (MOWCAP) accepted the recommendation materials for the archives and the Confucius family documents.

They will compete for the inscription on the regional register during the seventh plenary session of MOWCAP, which is scheduled for May in Hue City, Vietnam, he said.

The Confucius family documents are records of the development of the family from Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to the year 1948, one year ahead of the founding of the People's Republic of China. The 400-year records are precious documents containing the codes, rules and family history during the feudal society, Kong said.

MOWCAP will also send advisors to Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius, to learn more about China's efforts in the protection of the documents as well as the Confucius Temple, Mansion and Cemetery, a world heritage, according to the bureau.

"Inscription will help us make greater efforts to protect the history of Confucius," said Kong.

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

The Memory of the World Register is set up to safeguard, protect and facilitate access to and the use of rare and endangered heritage documents.

China now has 10 inscriptions on the Memory of the World Register, including documents on the Nanjing Massacre, Compendium of Materia Medica, a classic of Chinese medicine, and The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine, China's earliest medical classic on record.