iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — More than 500 members of a family in China recently got together for a reunion in their home village to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
The reunion of the Ren family took place in the village of Shishe in the eastern province of Zhejiang. It was captured in stunning photos taken by photographer Zhang Liangzong, according to the BBC and state news media.
Zhang had to use a drone to capture all the family members, who stood in long rows in front of basalt formations near the village.
The photographer told the BBC that the Ren family’s origins in the village can be traced back 851 years.
However, their modern family tree had not been updated for more than eight decades, which prompted village elders to want to track down the family’s living descendants, Zhang said.
Village elders were able to find at least 2,000 living descendants spanning seven generations, according to Zhang.
The village’s chief, Ren Tuanjie, told state news agency Xinhua it took more than two-and-a-half years to complete the updated family tree.
He added that the village decided to get all the family members together for the new year “so as to let our ancestors know where they are.”
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