A Thick Description of Cao Quan’s Home Information in Cao Quan Tablet from the Eastern Han Dynasty

Abstract: With the help of the native place information of Cao Quan indicated in the Cao Quan tablet of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the bamboo slips unearthed in Dunhuang area of the Han Dynasties, the history of Xiaogu County, where the Cao family lived and developed, was partially reconstructed, especially the relationship between the local residents and the operation of Xuanquan and Zheyao state-run hostels, as well as the impacts on the Xiaogu people, and the ways of local people’s post promotion and the development of Confucianism were explored. Based on this, combined with the concept of genealogy and the official families of the Han Dynasty who came from Dunhuang as seen in the literature, this paper points out the limitations of the current research concerning family history, and believes that in addition to ordinary common people’s families, it is more common to only maintain several generations, or even only one or two official families. Taking these into account will help us to think about the ways of family development and the possibility of family research from the perspective of those “meteor families” that seem to be unsuccessful but are more common.