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Tang: tale of breaking the hat tassel
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TANG, a popular surname, ranks the 18th most common family name in China. There are an estimated 14 million people surnamed Tang, accounting for 1.05 percent of the Chinese population.
There are also Tangs in ethnic groups. The sinicized surname of a leader of the White-wolf Kingdom in the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220) was Tang, according to the “Book of the Later Han.” There are also families surnamed Tang in many ethnic minorities today including the Manchurin, Hui, Yao, Miao and Mongolian.
Primarily living in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hebei and Henan provinces, the Tang families moved southwards to Fujian and Hunan provinces in the Northern and Southern Dynasties (AD 420-589). The Tangs can be found in various countries, such as Japan, Indonesia, Koreas and the Vietnam. The number of Tangs in Hunan Province today constitutes 18 percent of the total population of Tang.
A story in bibliographer Liu Xiang’s historical story collections saw an old Chinese saying derived from Tang Jiao’s repentance.
A concubine of King Zhuang of Chu Kingdom was sexually harassed by an unknown man at a victory celebration party as the lights went out by accident.
She pulled off the hat tassel of the offender and asked the king to punish him. Instead of doing so, the king ordered everybody to take off their tassels before the light was on again. He told the concubine that it is improper to kill a hero at the celebration party for such a “trivial incident.”
Tang Jiao, the sex offender, admitted the crime many years later, and saved the king’s life in a battle disregarding his own safety.
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