Family Together Scattered

The dissertation takes the lineage of Northwest in China as research object and chooses Yanchi County in eastern area of Ningxia as field site. The author tries to describe the ambulatory immigrant society and incompact lineage organization. The author also analyses why lineage in disorder takes on the state of scattered form but not scattered soul.The lineage in Yanchi County is different from the lineages of Southeast area in China, which are highly complex, and highly systematization. Without the obvious symbol such as ancestral temple and stemma etc. the lineage still preserve idea of lineage and family, which takes ancestor sacrifice as the core, and convey the demos depending on strong folk-custom. With this idea the lineage in Yanchi County forms pattern of family-phylum -lineage, which is basically the same to the family branch and embranchment of southern lineages. The chaos caused by war since modern times led to change of lineage inhabitation pattern and accordingly formed two types of lineage form: gathered-residing lineage and scattered-residing lineage.Because gathered-residing lineage get together in one part of the village, so they contact quite excessively in daily life. Scattered-residing lineage aggregate because of ancestor tomb sacrifice. They take the chance of aggregation and strengthen self-identity inside the lineage by various means. No matter gathered-residing lineage or scattered-residing lineage they allattach importance to genealogical backwardness within the lineage wondrously and take the "phylum" as activity unit. Under ceremony scene such as wedding and funeral etc. the lineage members still show ideal of big family by various ways.