Chinese philosopher Confucius' family documents, considered biggest in the world, have been listed as documentary heritage by a UN programme aimed at protecting documentary heritage, especially heritage that is rare and endangered, officials said today.
The Ming and Qing Dynasty archives of Confucius family were officially inscribed on the UNESCO's Memory of the World (MOW) regional register for Asia and Pacific on May 19, at the meeting which took place in Hue, Vietnam from May 18 to 21, the antiquities bureau of Qufu City in east China's Shandong Province said.
The archives, running to over 9,000 volumes, are records from 1534 to 1948, one year before the founding of the People's Republic of China.
The documents contain details of the family history during feudal times, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The documents are important in research into China's feudal patriarchal system, said Li Yuchun, deputy director of the cultural relics management committee of Qufu City.
Qufu plans to apply for inscription of the documents into the Memory of the World register, Li added.
Established in 1998, Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific (MOWCAP) is the regional forum for UNESCO's global MOW Programme to protect and allow access to documentary heritage, especially that which is rare or endangered.
The Confucius family is regarded as the world's biggest family in terms of how many generations it contains.
The 2009 version of Confucius family tree records 83 generations, more than 2 million people.
China has 10 inscriptions in the MOW, including documents on the Nanjing Massacre, the Compendium of Materia Medica -- a classic of Chinese medicine -- and The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine, China's earliest medical text.
