With a history of over 2,500 years covering more than 80 generations, and the longest family tree in the world according to the Guinness Book of Records, the fifth edition of the Confucius Genealogy will be printed in several volumes in 2009, according to an organizer of the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee (CGCC).
It has taken ten years to compile this latest list of descendants of revered Chinese thinker and educator Confucius (551-479 BC) but along the way there have been wrangles as to whether it is of national significance or purely a family affair, and whether the genealogy should be seen as a Chinese cultural heritage or a hangover of Feudalism.
You can read more about this in a Xinhua (Chinese News Agency) article at http://www.china.org.cn/china/features/content_16696029.htm.
NOTE: I used to live in China and can tell you that Xinhua often mixes real news with the government's ideology. You should be aware of that when reading any article written by Xinhua.
