The Change Of The Population In Baiguo Village According To The Information Shown On The Tombstone

The situation of accurate statistics of population and the evaluation of population structure is the basic data reserves for effective management of a country.It is this practical need that has led to the specific subject demography.However,it not only consumes a large amount of labor power as well as material resources and time,but also is influenced by various social conditions such as war,national estrangement,social conflicts and personal privacy.As a consequence,in developed countries there was no scientific and normative national population survey until the middle of the 20 th century.In China,as for the national population survey,it was delayed till 1953.In fact,at the time,there was still no scientific methods.The statistic data of population was merely obtained by estimating.Because when the result of national demographic census was published in 1953 that the mainland Chinese population was more than 580 million,statistical bureau didn’t do it precisely,instead,the Tibetan local government,led by Dalai Lama,declared the population was one million without reasonable foundation.Before that,how many people were in the country was concluded in assessment method.Faced with the problems of lack of data,there are countless difficulties to calculate the historical population,even that of a small village.In order to deal with the problems of researching the population,many foreign scholars have tried their best in many aspects,which provided many successful cases for the latter researchers.After taking a view at the research results,it’s not hard for us to find that the approaches of demography haven’t been applied.Instead,with the help of the history of ethnology and ecological ethnology,information was obtained from other channels,researching the files in school district,for example,which made it possible to research the population structure in history.Considering the national conditions of China,especially the ecological environment that the national culture was in,which is greatly different from that in foreign countries,Chinese scholars had to open a new path.In Chinese traditional culture,the clans live together in the most of Han nationality villages,and all of them set clan cemeteries,build ancestral temples and write genealogies.Besides,in traditional funeral it is very necessary to build tombstones.Much information about the deaths are involved,including the precious material which could reflect the elements of population composition,such as the date of birth and death,the situation whether the death have any children,the inscription form,the generation he or she belongs to,the appellation of the tomb’s owner and so on.If all of the valuable information could be extracted,it won’t be difficult to analyse the changes of the population structure.According to this logical reasoning,this paper selects Baiguo village in Fenghuang,Hunan province as the research objective to study the structural changes of historical population.Baiguo village is one that is mainly made up of the military households and descendants of the imperial court.Generally speaking,these military families follow the basic social norms of the Han traditional culture.Although the village is in the distribution areas of the Miao people,it not only maintains a family cemetery,but also has a family tree and a tombstone in the family graveyard.With such family inscriptions and genealogy,detailed information on the demographic changes of the village over the past 100 years can be available for researchers.In this way,the information problem which has been difficult to deal with in the academic circle will be solved to a certain extent,which makes the historical demographic transition of the village clear.It is easy to find that the change of population structure is inextricably linked to the truth of the change of social background and the ethnic relations.With the social causes,the reasons for the change of population structure and the influencing mechanism can be illustrated and explained clearly.Thus,it provides cases which can be used for references to the study of the historical change of population structure.