A thousand-year-old family that began with the Battle of Makino

Chapter 866: Songxi Bai Family Dreams of Bai Manor, the Manor's Structure Destroyed in Luoyang

Hedong, Taiyuan, Songxi, Bai's Manor

With carved beams and painted buildings, pavilions and terraces, winding streams and green woods, over a hundred years, this Bai's Manor covering hundreds of acres has been completely integrated into the local environment.

The Bai family manor is surrounded by a two-person-high gray wall and is located on the western foot of Songxi Mountain. The Songxi River on Shaoshan Mountain flows through the center of the manor, flows eastward into the Mianman River, and then into the Taibai Canal.

Nearly 10,000 members of the Bai clan live in the manor, both men and women. Some are picking mulberry leaves and weaving cloth, some are farming and transplanting rice, some are sitting in a room and chanting scriptures, and some are practicing martial arts.

There is a school in the manor where students can attend for free, and there is also a training ground where students need to train for three months every year.

The Bai family's ancestral precepts say that all members of our clan must be wise in thinking, healthy in body, and combine civil and military skills as the foundation.

Therefore, among the Bai family, there are few people who are weak, unless they have a serious congenital disease and cannot do strenuous exercise.

Looking at the people inside who were living in peace and happiness, I thought of the people outside the mountains who were suffering greatly from the war.

Such a strong contrast made Bai Jing feel that Bai’s Manor was outside the world and did not exist in the world.

Therefore, many students from Songxi Academy in the mountains saw Bai's manor and wrote poems to praise it:

Although there are thousands of sufferings in the world, there is Baizhuang in Anping. Common people in the countryside chant classics, and nobles and nobles go to the hall.

Jumping out of the five directions and three realms, not entering the cycle of reincarnation, Songxi appears. Without cultivating virtue for a hundred lifetimes, I am afraid that even the prince will not be able to enjoy it.

After saying hello to the clansmen on the roadside, Bai Jing stepped into the core courtyard complex in the manor. Under the lintel of the three doors, a large plaque with white characters on a black background hung high, with the two characters "Bai Mansion" written in a flamboyant style.

Once you step over the calf-high threshold, you've entered the core of the Bai family.

In the front yard, the various departments in charge of clan affairs were divided into the left and right wing rooms. The clerks, managers and other family affairs who came and went were busy, but they also took time out of their busy schedules to greet Bai Jing.

After politely responding to these clan officials, he walked a few hundred steps and arrived at the central hall. There was a sign with the words "Council Hall" hanging high below the hall. There were many chairs placed inside, but the chair in the middle was obviously larger and more exquisite.

The entire meeting hall can accommodate hundreds of people and is where the Bai family’s important matters are discussed on a daily basis by the elders, homeowners, clan leaders, hall masters and other personnel.

After passing the central hall, you will arrive at the middle courtyard. Unlike the hustle and bustle of the front courtyard, the middle courtyard is relatively quiet. It is the residence of the direct descendants of the Bai family. The middle courtyard is also divided into left and right wings based on the main road in the middle.

There are ten courtyards and thirty rooms on each side. There is a summer garden on the left and an autumn garden on the right, which are places for the clan members to play.

Between the central courtyard and the back courtyard is the back hall, where the owner of the house meets guests privately. It is much smaller than the meeting room in the central hall and is called the "meeting hall". The "record room" that belongs exclusively to the owner of the house and the "main room" that is responsible for miscellaneous matters are located close to the left and right of the meeting hall.

Therefore, the meeting hall is also where Bai Qing usually discusses confidential matters with core clan members.

Bai Jing did not stop because Bai Qing was not in the hall at that time.

He walked directly into the record room on the left side of the synagogue.

There were more than a dozen clerks of different ages writing furiously inside. They were Bai Qing's personal secretaries. They each performed their duties and assisted Bai Qing in handling various complicated ethnic affairs.

"Young Master." When the secretaries inside saw Bai Jing coming in, they all stopped writing, stood up from behind the copybooks, and bowed.

"Where is the head of the family?" Bai Jing didn't bother him any more and directly asked about his purpose.

A secretary who was standing behind the desk, about thirty or forty years old, came out from behind the desk, walked up to Bai Jing, and saluted:

"I am the secretary of the office, Bai Zonggui. The master of the family has already given instructions. Please lead the way for the young master."

The original chief recorder was Bai Shaopeng, the secretary that Bai Qing valued the most. However, at this time, he had been sent by Bai Qing to Shandong to serve as a retainer, and jointly managed Shandong clan affairs with the Shandong Council. Bai Zonggui was Bai Shaopeng's successor, and was now the head of all the secretaries in the record room, managing all the secretaries, and was called the "chief recorder".

Bai Jing returned the greeting slightly, turned sideways, made way, and motioned for him to go ahead and lead the way.

Bai Zonggui saluted again and then led the way, followed by Bai Jing and his only two followers.

They walked around the central hall and entered the corridor on the left that connected to the backyard. The family guards who were guarding the corridor naturally would not step forward to search the young master and others, but would bow their heads slightly to show respect.

When you come to the backyard, there is no rule of dividing it into left and right wings. The entire backyard is integrated, but it can be divided into left and right with the Spring Garden on the left and the Winter Garden on the right as reference points.

The largest courtyard in the middle is naturally the main courtyard. There are courtyards of different sizes dotted on the left and right, which are allocated to the children of the owner to live in. There are trees, flowers and plants separating them, but they are not messy and are maintained by special people.

Bai Jing has a courtyard just to the left of the main courtyard, but his children are all adults, so they have moved out, and only he and his wife live in it.

According to the regulations of the Bai’s Manor, the entire Bai’s Manor is publicly owned and cannot be transferred privately.

Every member of the Bai clan who lands will be allocated a suitable house. If there are fewer people, they will be given a house; if there are more people, they will be given a courtyard.

Take Bai Jing as an example. When he was a child, he and his father Bai Qing lived in the middle of the backyard. When Bai Qing succeeded to the throne, he moved to the side of the main courtyard.

If Bai Qing dies in the future, he will move into the main courtyard, and his son Bai Xin will move into the courtyard where he lives now.

As for those who live in the backyard now, they are of the same generation as him, and are all brothers and sisters of Bai Qing’s bloodline. They will all move to the middle yard after he succeeds to the position of head of the family.

After three generations, their descendants will move out of the Bai Mansion, and the "House Management Office" in charge of allocating houses in the Bai Mansion will be allocated a house inside Baizhuang outside the Bai Mansion.

As for the clansmen in Baizhuang, the Bai Mansion will conduct a census within Baizhuang every fifty years.

All the families who had not made any contribution to the family within three generations were given the "Three Treasures of the Bai Family" to set up their own sects, compile their own family tree, and make their own living.

Or you can contact the Bai clan halls in other places in advance and gain a foothold with their help.

Most of the other influential Bai clans in other places followed the lead of the main family and implemented the three-generation division method to maintain the vitality of the clan and reduce the pressure on the clan members.

In the past hundred years, the Songxi main family has sent out the most people, while the Qiannan region has received the most Bai clan members.

It is precisely by relying on this method of sowing seeds that the Bai family was able to flourish and bear fruit throughout the world.

In addition, local clan halls, under the leadership of the head family, protect their family members from being bullied by local powerful families, so the Bai family has been able to maintain strong competitiveness in various places for a long time.

It is also because of this that the Bai family was able to take root in Qiannan, Shandong, Korea, Kyushu Island of Japan and other places, and in just two or three hundred years, became a local aristocratic family.

Originally, Hebei, Guanzhong and Henan were to be included.

However, because of the Anshi Rebellion, family members in Hebei, Guanzhong and Henan suffered a severe blow.

According to incomplete statistics, dozens of Bai family names disappeared and more than 100,000 members of the Bai family died in this war, especially in Luoyang, where almost all of them were arrested by An Lushan.

It originally flourished for hundreds of years near Yanshi, Luoyang, and was ranked fourth in the sequence of Bai's ancestral halls. It was passed down to the Luoyang Hall of Bai Xuan in the Eastern Han Dynasty, which was also the Bai's hall name where Bai Juncai was located, but was implicated by An Lushan.

The Luoyang Hall, which previously had thousands of clansmen, now has only dozens of clansmen serving as officials outside surviving, and for a time it has been reduced to fifth among the Bai clan's ancestral halls.

(End of this chapter)