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The Zeng (曾) Surname: From Confucian Lineage to the Wuyi Diaspora

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The Zeng (曾) Surname: From Confucian Lineage to the Wuyi Diaspora

A Sage’s Name: The Kingdom That Became the Surname

The Zeng (曾, Zēng) surname carries a Confucian pedigree no other Wuyi surname can claim: its first ancestor is 曾子 (Zēngzǐ, Zengzi), the disciple Confucius made the model of filial piety and later canonized as 宗圣 (Zōngshèng, Sagely Ancestor). That 2,500-year lineage traveled from Shandong’s 武城 (Wǔchéng), through the 珠玑巷 (Zhūjī Xiàng) corridor, into the villages of the Wuyi (五邑, Wǔyì) and across the Pacific with the Gold Mountain migrations.

The name begins not with a single man but with a conquered state. According to the lineage’s own record — the 源流 (yuánliú, origin narrative) repeated across Zeng genealogies — the surname descends from the Xia dynasty: King 少康 (Shàokāng) enfeoffed his son 曲烈 (Qūliè) at the state of 鄫 (鄫国, Zēngguó), annexed by the state of Ju in 567 BCE. The crown prince, 巫 (Wū), fled to Lu and dropped the 邑 (yì) radical from his state’s name — 去邑为曾 (qù yì wéi Zēng). 曲烈 is honored as the origin ancestor, 巫 as the first generation.

A caveat belongs here, stated once and set aside: this two-and-a-half-millennium chain is the clan’s self-understanding — the standard origin convention of Lingnan genealogies — not externally verified biography. Textual scholarship has documented interpolations in many Guangdong family records; the distant reaches of any surname’s 源流 are inherited memory rather than audited history. What matters is that the memory is real, and strong enough to carry a name across an ocean.

What is not in dispute is the anchor of the claim. 曾参 (Zēng Shēn, 505–435 BCE), known as 曾子 (Zēngzǐ), was born in 南武城 (Nán Wǔchéng, Southern Wucheng) in the state of Lu and became the disciple most closely identified with filial piety and self-examination — his motto 三省吾身 (sān xǐng wú shēn), “I daily examine myself on three counts.” In 1530 he was canonized as 宗圣 (Zōngshèng, Sagely Ancestor), one of the 儒家五圣 (Rújiā wǔ shèng, Five Sages) alongside Confucius, Yan Hui, Zisi, and Mencius; in the 道统 (Dàotǒng, transmission of the Way) the line runs 孔子 → 曾子 → 子思 → 孟子.

The 1995 revised genealogy identifies 曾参 as the first ancestor of the unified Zeng lineage — why a Zeng villager in Taishan and a Tsang in a Vancouver storefront can each claim descent from a man who sat at Confucius’s table. The surname is not rare — roughly 38th among Chinese surnames, about 0.49 percent of the Han population — but no other Wuyi surname can claim a sage for its founding ancestor. (The name was later carried far beyond Wuyi by the Hunan statesman 曾国藩 (Zēng Guófān) — a different chapter of its fame.) For another Wuyi name’s journey, see the Lee surname’s diaspora story.


武城 and the Hall Names: A Geography of Virtue

曾参 was born in 南武城 (Nán Wǔchéng), which official and clan sources locate in today’s 嘉祥 (Jiāxiáng) county, Shandong, at the foot of Nanwu Mountain. The identification is not undisputed — some scholars, following the late-Ming 《曾子费人考实》, argue for 平邑 or 费县 — but the surname went with the name anyway: 武城 (Wǔchéng) became one of its great hall names, 武城堂 (Wǔchéng táng, Wucheng Hall), carried from Wuyi village halls to overseas Chinatowns.

The other two great hall names come from doctrine. 三省堂 (Sānxǐng táng, Sanxing Hall) takes its name from 三省吾身 — the daily threefold self-examination. 追远堂 (Zhuīyuǎn táng, Zhuiyuan Hall) comes from 慎终追远 (shèn zhōng zhuī yuǎn) — care for the end and remember the distant. Together the three names form an identification system: walk into any Zeng hall in the world and the plaque over the door tells you which doctrine the branch honors and which birthplace it remembers.

The sacred center is the 宗圣庙 (Zōngshèng miào, Temple of the Sagely Ancestor) in 嘉祥 — first built, by the site’s own chronology, in 426 BCE, now thirty buildings over five courtyards, a national protected site since 2006. Genealogy pages were once stamped with a vermilion seal granted by the Yongzheng emperor reading 省身念祖 (xǐng shēn niàn zǔ, examine oneself, honor ancestors) — a single-source detail, probable rather than certain.

Then came the turn south. In the late Western Han, 曾据 (Zēng Jù), a fifteenth-generation descendant of 曾参, led roughly a thousand kinsmen across the Yangtze to escape the Wang Mang interregnum, settling at 吉阳 in 庐陵 — today’s 吉水 (Jíshuǐ) county, Jiangxi. He is remembered as the “ancestor of the southern migration” (曾氏南迁之祖); 吉水 became the surname’s second homeland, the hinge between Shandong and everything that followed.

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珠玑巷: The Corridor South

The 珠玑巷 (Zhūjī Xiàng) in 南雄 (Nánxióng), northern Guangdong, is the founding place of nearly every Guangdong surname story. Originally called 敬宗巷, it was renamed in 825 CE after Emperor Jingzong bestowed a jade circlet on a seven-generation filial household there. In Cantonese memory it became the “ancestral home” of the 广府 people — the way-station through which Central Plains families passed on their way south. The story form is so universal that the 2022 inscription of the migration legend as provincial intangible cultural heritage applies to the genre itself, not to any single family’s record.

Keep two registers in hand, as the Tan surname’s account of the same corridor does. The dated chain is the clan’s own record, corroborated by county materials: the 39th-generation 蟾公, a Five Dynasties court official, moved to 虔州 in Jiangxi; the 40th-generation 中美公, in the early Song (960–964), moved to 珠玑巷 itself; the 52nd-generation 耕莘公 (Gēngshēn gōng), in 1135, left 珠玑巷 with his father and settled at 岭头 in 新会 (Xīnhuì); the 54th-generation 子荣公, at the start of the Yuan, moved to 曾边村 (Zēngbiān cūn) in 广海 — today’s 其乐村 (Qílè cūn) in 斗山 (Dǒushān) town, Taishan; and the 57th-generation 郎公, in the Ming, crossed to the island of 下川岛 (Xiàchuān dǎo). The frame — a family walking out of 珠玑巷 in the Southern Song — is the province-wide founding memory nearly every Guangdong surname reproduces; the dated particulars are the clan’s own. Both registers are kept.

The generation poem — the 派语 (pàiyǔ) or 字辈 (zìbèi) system — was the invisible thread that kept the chain intact. The Qing court issued a unified sequence of generation characters for the four surnames of Confucian orthodoxy — Kong, Meng, Yan, and Zeng — together, beginning 宏闻贞尚衍 兴毓传纪广 昭宪庆繁祥, with further characters added by later reigns. Which emperor initiated the system is disputed, so specifics are attributed cautiously; the shared sequence itself is well documented. A generation character places its bearer in the lineage relative to 曾参 himself; a Zeng line in Heshan’s 双合镇 kept its own local sequence — village records show characters running from the 68th to the 75th generation — proof that the technology traveled with the families.

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Wuyi Settlement: A Surname’s Map of the Five Counties

The Wuyi (五邑, Wǔyì) — literally “five counties”: 台山, 开平, 新会, 恩平, and 鹤山 — was where the name came to ground, a region this site has mapped in full. The anchor village is 其乐村 (Qílè cūn) in 斗山 (Dǒushān) town, Taishan — the old 曾边村, renamed. The village government records 622 registered households and 2,514 registered people, of whom only about 705 still live there — 2,500 registered, 700 present, the diaspora written in census numbers. The rest of the registers are in Toronto, London, and San Francisco, and in the rows of overseas-built houses — the architecture of the emigrant villages surveyed on this site.

One correction matters: some accounts place a 曾边村 in Kaiping, but the genealogy materials agree that 广海上阁曾边村 — the 曾边村 of the migration chain — is today’s 其乐村 in Taishan’s 斗山 town. Kaiping’s Zeng presence is real but modest: its surname survey lists 292 surnames, and Zeng does not appear among the top nineteen. The surname’s Wuyi geography is Taishan-centered, with branches: 耕莘公’s landing at 岭头 in Xinhui, a Heshan line at 双合镇, the Ming-era branch on 下川岛’s southern coast, and 那洲美南村, whose village hall names three brothers who lead the Macau Taishan association.

One county is an honest blank: despite repeated searches, no Zeng village, hall, or lineage record could be verified in 恩平 (Ēnpíng). Book sources assert a region-wide Zeng presence across all five counties, but village-level evidence for Enping remains unverified, and this article will not invent it.

A survey of ancestral halls in 台城 documents major lineage halls for more than twenty surnames but no 曾氏 great hall in the county seat: the Zeng halls are village-level institutions, at 其乐村 and in the 广海 and 下川岛 settlements. The port town of 广海 sends its overseas Chinese to Toronto and Britain — defining where the surname’s overseas story would begin.

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Gold Mountain: The Surname Chains That Crossed the Pacific

The Gold Mountain era turned a surname geography into a surname network. The mechanism was chain migration along lineage and village lines — the pattern the Taishan library’s emigration history describes: “mostly one village, one surname; several villages, one surname… once a foothold was won, relatives were pulled along, near and far.” The documented parallels are exact: the Chen lineages of 斗山 to Seattle, the Mei surname of 端芬 to Chicago, the 广海 overseas Chinese to Toronto and Britain. No Zeng-specific emigrant totals exist in any source consulted, and none will be invented here; but the Zeng base at 广海 and 斗山 fits the pattern precisely — this is how the surname crossed, one sponsored kinsman at a time. The Yu surname’s account of Wuyi migration traces the same currents from another name’s vantage.

The economics of the crossing were clan economics. Under the credit-ticket system (赊单制, shēdān zhì), a contractor advanced the fare and the migrant repaid it from wages; the ledger was often a clan ledger, the guarantor a fellow villager — a debt was also a kinship bond. Occupational niches — laundry, restaurant, railroad work — circulated within the same kinship chains; studies of Chicago’s laundries found more than sixty percent of owners were relatives or friends. The binding language was 台山话 (Táishān huà), the county dialect that served as the network’s private code. The name itself mutated in transit — Tsang in Cantonese, Zeng in Mandarin pinyin, Tang in some Southeast Asian records.

San Francisco’s Chinese population was roughly three thousand in 1852; by 1876 the Ning Yung association claimed 46,000 members — 43 percent of all Chinese in the city. Behind every Zeng family story stood what one account calls “two Taishans”: one in Guangdong, one in California.

The era’s archetype was the 金山客 (Jīnshān kè, gold-mountain sojourner) — the returned emigrant who walked the village lanes in Western clothes, built a house that announced his success, and became a legend his neighbors measured themselves against. Remittances flowed back to rebuild halls and fund schools, and the money carried messages.

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Exclusion and Paper Sons: Carrying the Name Through a Closed Door

In 1882, the United States closed the door. The Chinese Exclusion Act (排华法案, Páihuá Fǎ’àn) barred Chinese laborers and, in effect, their wives, and the door stayed mostly shut for six decades. At the Angel Island (天使岛, Tiānshǐ Dǎo) station, from 1910 to 1940, roughly three hundred thousand people were detained — about a third of them Chinese — some for months, some for years. The era’s cruelest irony was its invention: the paper son (纸儿子, zhǐ érzi).

Because the Act admitted the children of resident Chinese, a thriving market grew in purchased identities — slots in a family tree that could be bought and coached. A young man memorized the details of a “father” he never met: the village layout, the rooms in the house, the neighbors’ names. The best-documented case is 李绍南 (Lǐ Shàonán), a fourteen-year-old detained for eighteen months in 1935 before being deported, who finally returned in 1963 when his father admitted the paper-son relationship. He is not a Zeng, and this article will not invent one: no Zeng-surnamed paper-son case surfaced in the research, and the Zeng experience of this era rests on the general documentation of the system and on Madeline Hsu’s study of Taishan transnationalism, 1882–1943.

The paradox of exclusion is that it strengthened the networks it was meant to break: a paper son needed an association to vouch for him, a job, a burial society, credit — the surname association became identity certifier, job broker, and first stop in one. When America closed, the routes diverted — to Canada, where a head tax (人头税, réntóushuì) from 1885 and a near-total exclusion law from 1923 produced their own paper-son system; to Cuba and Peru; to Nanyang, the South Seas.

Then the century’s rupture: the Japanese occupation of 1937–45 intercepted the silver letters and cut the remittance lifeline; the 1949 border closure froze lineage communication. The split households of the Gold Mountain era became households of silence.


银信: Money Plus Message

The spine of the transnational family was the 银信 (yínxìn, silver letter) — a remittance and a family letter in one document. In Chaoshan and Fujian the same genre was called 侨批 (qiáopī), inscribed in 2013 on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register (世界记忆名录, Shìjiè Jìyì Mínglù). Delivery ran on clan rails: remittance firms (银号, yínhào) like 五洲 and 振盛, couriers (批脚, pījiǎo) who walked village circuits like the old 巡城马, letters routed through surname associations to ancestral halls — the machinery set out in this site’s guide to reading the Wuyi remittance letters.

The money and the message were one system, the allocation a moral hierarchy: survival first, then land, then rites, then education. A Taishan nursery rhyme ran: “Papa has gone to Gold Mountain, send silver quickly, the whole family depends on you…”

One Zeng-family letter is documented, resting on a single published account: in a 2026 report on a 国家版本馆 exhibition, a husband named 郭炳桂 (Guō Bǐngguì), writing from Sarawak (沙捞越, Shālāoyuè), addressed his letter to his wife, “曾氏荆妻” — “my wife of the Zeng family.” He entered Sarawak at the end of May, sends 15 大银 (dà yín, large silver dollars) for her to receive, and admonishes her about the children: “男女儿至切教示,不可外口与人相骂” — teach the sons and daughters carefully, and never let them quarrel with outsiders. Money and moral instruction in one envelope, addressed to a Zeng woman holding the other end of a split household. Single-source and exhibition-derived, its provenance should not be over-claimed — but it is the closest thing the record offers to a Zeng family’s voice from inside the system. The museums that hold such letters — the Wuyi Overseas Chinese Museum’s forty thousand objects dating to 1883, the Haikoubu Silver Letter Museum in 端芬 opened in 2017, the Sanyi Silver Letter Museum in 四九镇 built inside a converted 碉楼 — are where a descendant can hold the actual envelopes. What a silver letter did was make a family that had not shared a table for twenty years still one family, on paper.

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The 金山婆: The Women Who Held the Other End of the Name

The other half of the split household had no ship to board. Early emigration largely excluded women, so the normative family form of the qiaoxiang — the emigrant village — required a woman to hold one end alone: the 金山婆 (Jīnshānpó, gold-mountain wife). She ran the farm, managed the household, protected lineage property, performed the ancestral rites, and raised the children — sometimes for decades, sometimes for a lifetime. This is documented across the Wuyi literature, though Zeng-specific village detail at the web level remains unverified; this account rests on the book-derived record. The competence and the cost must be held together: the 金山婆 was the allocator of the remittance economy, the manager of the lineage’s land, the keeper of its rites — and she was also the one who read a letter like 郭炳桂’s and then went back to the fields.

Read that letter again, now, from her side. Fifteen silver dollars and an admonition: teach the children carefully, don’t let them quarrel with outsiders. The money is the household’s survival; the admonition is the father’s attempt to parent from three thousand miles away; both arrive together in one envelope. Many women could not read the letters addressed to them and relied on a literate neighbor or the courier to read the husband’s words aloud — making the letter a village event rather than a private one. Photographs were sometimes tucked inside — a studio portrait of the man in San Francisco, so his children would know his face.

The split household (两头家, liǎng tóu jiā, household of two ends) was the era’s normative family form, and the women at the home end ran the qiaoxiang economy — deciding which remittance dollars went to land, which to rites, which to a son’s schooling. When the 金山客 returned, he reshaped the lineage from inside: returnee wealth created a new hierarchy, rebuilt halls, and bought the family’s place in the ancestral order. The material culture of waiting survives in village trunks and in the overseas houses (华侨屋, huáqiáo wū) built with remittance money — the architecture of that waiting made solid. The fullest portrait of these women’s lives appears in the women of the Wuyi diaspora; this article adds only what the surname’s own record shows: the 15 大银 and the admonition, and the woman addressed as 曾氏荆妻 who received both.

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The Halls and the Associations: 三省堂 at Home and Abroad

The network became visible when the hall-name triad became institutions. The confirmed example is the 温哥华曾三省堂 (Vancouver Zeng Sanxing Hall), founded in 1980 by Vancouver Zeng clansmen “to connect clan members’ feelings, strengthen unity, mutual help and encouragement,” holding an annual spring banquet, its 1984 president 曾宗敬. A hall named for a disciple’s self-examination motto, meeting in a Canadian port city, is the identification system working as designed — the same 三省堂 that names halls in Wuyi villages and Southeast Asia, where the 曾邱 (Zēng-Qiū) linked-clan pattern is common. A New York 曾三省堂 is probable but rests on thinner evidence, and a 纽约曾氏宗亲联谊会 is attested by its delegation leader attending Doushan events in 2024 — a man named 熊维登, whose surname is Xiong, not Zeng. The San Francisco and Seattle Zeng halls asserted in book sources could not be confirmed on the web; the official census of San Francisco surname associations omits 曾氏, so none is asserted here as verified. The institutional world these halls belong to is traced for another Wuyi clan in the Li surname’s diaspora story.

The pattern is a Wuyi pattern. Taishanese migrants formed surname associations before county associations — the surname first, the county second — and they were multifunctional: schools, cemeteries, newspapers, mutual aid, credit circles, remittance firms. The clan was government, bank, and welfare state at once, its charters citing 家训 (jiāxùn, family precepts) and 家规 (jiāguī, family rules) as founding law. It was also a political machine: revolutionary bonds for the 1911 Revolution and anti-Japanese fundraising moved through the same channels as the remittances. The Zeng halls add a sacred orientation — every one faces toward the 宗圣庙 in 嘉祥.

At the world level, the surname institutionalized its unity. The 世界曾氏宗亲联谊会 was founded on 27 September 2004 in 嘉祥, with more than eighty delegates from across Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; its honorary chairman 曾宪梓, its honorary advisers including Hong Kong’s then-chief executive 曾荫权. A 曾氏宗亲联合总会 followed in 2006, also headquartered in 嘉祥. 曾宪梓 — the textile magnate who donated generously to the 曾庙 restoration — is Hakka, from Meixian, not Wuyi; he belongs to the surname’s pilgrimage story, not its Wuyi branch. The slogan of the modern clan movement is 天下一曾无二曾, 四海曾氏一家亲 — “Under heaven there is one Zeng and no second; the Zeng of the four seas are one family.”

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The Name Endures: The 1995 Genealogy and a Descendant’s Next Step

The re-assembly had a document. In 1995, editors 曾惟宽 and 曾广焜 published the 武城曾氏重修族谱 (Wǔchéng Zēngshì chóngxiū zúpǔ, Revised Genealogy of the Wucheng Zeng Clan) — forty-seven volumes under the 武城堂 hall name, containing prefaces, lineage charts, generation poems, origin narratives, and biographies of notable members (名人传略, míngrén zhuànlüè). Its founding claim is the one this article opened with — first ancestor 曾参 at 南武山, 嘉祥; its migration record begins with 曾据 fleeing the Wang Mang chaos to open the line in 吉水. It was a deliberate all-branch project, drawing on overseas branch records so that a Tsang in Vancouver and a Zeng in Taishan could sit in the same book. The volume count varies by edition — forty-seven in the clan’s own record, a six-volume reprint donated to the 广东省方志馆 (Guǎngdōngshěng Fāngzhìguǎn, Guangdong Provincial Local Records Museum) in 2024 by a donor named 曾锦初, twelve in a later reprint — a matter of binding, not content. FamilySearch holds a microfilm of the genealogy covering the Wucheng, Ningxiang, Bao’an, and Kowloon branches down to 1890 — overseas and Hong Kong branches were being recorded before 1900.

In September 2006, more than five hundred Zeng descendants from home and abroad gathered in 嘉祥 to worship at the temple of 宗圣曾子. 曾宪梓, identified as a 74th-generation descendant, performed the rites — offering silk, incense, and wine — and donated 8 million yuan for the restoration of the temple’s rear hall, the imperial pavilion, the 三省堂, and a dozen other structures. The post-1978 revival that made such gatherings possible — halls rebuilt in the 1980s and 1990s, genealogies renewed with overseas participation — is documented for the Wuyi region generally, though Zeng-specific revival cases remain unverified on the web.

The contemporary proof of the arc is in the villages and the associations. 曾伟军, president of the California Doushan Fellowship Association, told the 2024 Doushan assembly he wanted “to connect with fellow villagers and with government departments, and to find opportunities to bring investment, talent, and strength back to Doushan for the construction of our hometown” — the 金山客’s remittance logic restated a century and a half later. The three brothers from 那洲美南村 — 曾玩棠, 曾富德, 曾富祥 — run the Macau Taishan association as president and vice-presidents.

For a reader who carries this name, the trail is concrete. Find the village: 斗山镇其乐村 has government records to compare with a family’s own register. Find your generation: the 派语 characters — 宏闻贞尚衍, 兴毓传纪广, 昭宪庆繁祥 — place you on the same ladder as every other Zeng. Consult the genealogy: the digitized 1995 族谱 is searchable online, and the 方志馆 holds the donated reprint. Contact an association: 温哥华曾三省堂, the Macau Taishan association, the New York Zeng association. Visit the sacred center in 嘉祥, and read a silver letter at 海口埠 or the Wuyi Overseas Chinese Museum. Join the digital clan — 曾氏宗亲网 has run since 2003. The 寻根 (xúngēn, roots-seeking) that the surname’s institutions now organize is the same search this article has traced from the start: a kingdom, a disciple’s self-examination, a corridor walked in 1135, an ocean crossed, a letter with fifteen silver dollars, and a book that gathered it all back together. Under heaven there is one Zeng — and the network that carried a family across the ocean still exists.

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Sources

  1. 《武城曾氏重修族谱》(Revised Genealogy of the Wucheng Zeng Clan), 曾惟宽、曾广焜 eds., 武城堂, 1995 (47 volumes); donated copy to 广东省方志馆, 2024; digitized at jiapulib.com (#13528); FamilySearch microfilm 2425982.
  2. Madeline Y. Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration Between the United States and South China, 1882–1943 (Stanford University Press, 2000).
  3. 嘉祥县人民政府, 《曾子故里在嘉祥》(2023); 中国孔子网, 《曾参》 entry — for the 南武城 geography, canonization ladder, and 曾据’s southward migration.
  4. 台山市政府网 cnts.gov.cn (2024): 斗山镇其乐村 village data; 那洲美南村 乡贤 records; 斗山乡贤大会 coverage (曾伟军 quotes).
  5. 五邑华侨华人博物馆; 海口埠银信博物馆 (端芬, 2017); 三益银信博物馆 (四九镇) — 银信/qiaopi collections; the 曾氏荆妻 letter (郭炳桂, Sarawak, 15 大银), exhibited at 国家版本馆 (sina finance, 2026-06-09; single-source, probable).
  6. 国务院侨办 gqb.gov.cn (2004): 世界曾氏宗亲联谊会 founding; 百度百科: 温哥华曾三省堂, 曾庙, 曾氏派语, 鄫国; chinanews (2017): 曾氏宗亲联合总会 slogan; sina (2006): 曾宪梓’s 嘉祥 pilgrimage and donation.
  7. 广东省方志馆 dfz.gd.gov.cn (2023, 2025): 珠玑巷 history; 武城曾氏重修族谱 donation record.

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