He Tianqiang

Overview

He Tianqiang is a bondservant of the Plain White Banner under the He family section of Volume 77 of the *Comprehensive Genealogy of the Manchu Clans of the Eight Banners*. His family had lived in Fushun for generations, but the year of his arrival is unknown. The genealogy lists his great-grandson Zengshao as a scribe and He Kongxi as a Qiduwei, but does not specify He Tianqiang's own position. Fushun is a historical city in present-day Liaoning, but the phrase "family residence" only indicates the ancestral home region, not the specific village or fortress where the family lived at that time.

A Qiduwei was a military rank within the Eight Banners, belonging to the banner camp organization such as the zuoling (a military officer), and involved in the management of banner soldiers and related military affairs. Bondservant cavalry captains also had responsibilities such as guarding, household registration, and salary management. The specific affiliation of officers should be determined from their official records. A scribe was a clerical official, the Manchu transliteration of which is bithesi, related to bithe (book, document), responsible for copying, registering, and handling official documents.

Zeng Shao and He Kongxi indicate that descendants of the same family could respectively enter the fields of clerical and military service; however, the original text does not specify whether the two were brothers or other relatives, so they can only be understood as great-great-grandsons of the same lineage, and their paternal branches cannot be added on their own. The Plain White Banner refers to the banner color, and the bondservant status refers to their subordinate status. This family information and personal official positions should be stated simultaneously and each should be retained separately.