Abstract:

(School of Chinese Language and Literature, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China)Abstract： The word “family” in The Book of Songs: Xing Lu is the key to the understanding of the poem. The “family” mentioned in the poem by the man and the woman actually refers to two different levels: the marital “family” and the “family” of blood ties. The marital “family” was the grounds on which the man’s prosecution was based. Hence, it can be inferred that the man and the woman were engaged, but the woman later refused to meet the commitment; the “family” of blood ties was the basis of the woman’s refutation, hinting that the man might be a migrant who left his hometown and engaged with the local woman. If this was the case, it would match with the southward migration of the State of Shen during King Xuan’s reign in Western Zhou Dynasty. What the poem portrays is a litigation caused by the break of an engagement between a migrant man and an indigenous woman, which is in effect, a marital problem of migrants driven by southern land strategy adopted by the monarch of Western Zhou. The interpretation of “family” reflects the changing trend that in the late Western Zhou Dynasty, the marital family replaced the family of blood ties as the mainstream form of “family”.
Key words：

Key words: Xing Lu, South Shen, migrant, family, marital affairs