Nov 18, 2012, Part 4, "Lim/Lum Clan"

Part 4

Dr. Oliver Lee's short history talk November 18

The 3000-year history of the Lim/Lum Clan

Three thousand years ago in North China there was a Dynasty, the Shang Dynasty （商朝) , which lasted about 200 years. It was coming to an end. Under it there were a dozen more or less independent kingdoms. One of them was the Zhou Kingdom （周国) .  Its ruler was Wen Wang, which means “Literary King”.

Wen Wang was overthrown by a rival, Zhou Xin（纣辛) , an evil and cruel tyrant. His uncle Bi Gan （比干）was an honest adviser but the king didn’t like his advice and had him executed -- by means of tearing out his heart while he was still alive.

Bi Gan’s son, named Gian （坚)，feared for his life and fled with his family to a forest called  Tsong Lim (长林), which means “Long Forest”.  So Gian, who had no surname, took the word Lim from the forest and made it his family name. So he became Lim Gian (林坚). I have good reason to believe that in North China at that time that’s how his name was pronounced.

Meanwhile, the evil tyrant Zhou Xin was overthrown. When he was losing out, he set fire to his own palace and perished in the flames. Good riddance.

The overthrowing was done by the Literary King’s son, Wu Wang （武王）which means “Military King”. This king, in honor of the honest adviser who had been executed, officially bestowed the surname “Lim” on Lim Gian and his family. Kings in those days, when not everybody had a surname, often bestowed surnames on deserving families. Over the centuries, Lim Gian’s descendants spread among the dozen kingdoms under the Zhou Dynasty.

One of the descendants was Prime Minister Lim Gao (林皋) of the Zhao kingdom (赵国)，north of the Yellow River. He had nine sons, all smart and able and ambitious. The king was jealous and planned to kill all of them. So Lim Gao led his nine sons to hide in the Bai Yu Mountains （白于山), west of the Yellow River, near a small tributary called See Ho (西河). So the Lims in that branch set up an establishment called See Ho Lim Tong（西河林堂), and our President Keith Lim knows about a building with almost the same name, Lum Sai Ho Tong, on River Street, just beyond the Cultural Plaza.

About 300 A.D., during the Jin Dynasty （晋朝), branches of the Lim clan  in East China escaped from the warfare and turmoil in East China and migrated southward to what is today Fu Zhou City  （福州市). Other Lim descendants settled in other parts of Fujian Province, including the part near Guangdong Province, where later the Hakka people set up the core region of the Hakka people.

A thousand years later, in the Song Dynasty, a man named Lim Pin Szi (林评市) was an official in that core region, namely in Moy Yan（梅县). After retirement, he settled in a nearby county called Tai Poo（大埔), where our Vice President Ben Duong’s grandfather came from, as he told me. (Ben is from Vietnam, but his grandfather was from Tai Poo). Lim Pin Szi founded his branch of the Lims in Tai Poo; and when a branch of the clan is formed in a new area, the founder is counted as of the first generation, his children the second generation, and so forth. In my own case, I am of the 26th generation in my village, which was settled some 300 years ago. One of Lim Pin Szi’s descendants founded the Lim branch in Ziao Liang （蕉岭), which is also in the Hakka core region.

In recent centuries the Lims or Lums of Fujian became major settlers in Canton’s Red River Delta, and Hong Kong and Taiwan, and in the past 20 years were among the huge number of Fujian people immigrating illegally to the U.S. in rickety boats, settling mainly in New York’s Chinatown. New York’s Chinatown used to be controlled by people from Toi San and Zhung San, but now it is controlled by the recent immigrants from Fujian or Fukkien.

Coming to the end of my story: In 1881, a man named Bung Yun Lum migrated from Guangdong to Hawaii. Married a Chung girl, and they had 13 children. I brought this book, "Sailing for the Sun: The Chinese in Hawaii, 1789 to 1989", published by Arlene Lum, who used to write for the Star-Bulletin. The great grandchildren of BugnYun Lum are now senior citizens. Arlene tells of a reunion of the Lum clan in 1996, attended by 500 Lums, and another reunion in 2012, attended by 200.

And that’s the end of my story.