Chapter 135 (1/2)

Chapter 135: Your Family Name, My Name I

”My name's Gou Dan, don't laugh . ”

”Right, right . Gou as in dog and Dan as in egg?”

”Yes . My family name is Gou and my name is Dan . ”

”Do you know how valuable my name is?”

”50,000,000! And that's not even inflated . ”

”Me, too! Genuinely good at a genuine price . ”

”Do you wanna change your child's surname? Lowest price guaranteed, 70,000!”

”Wait, why are you leaving? What's wrong with having Gou as a surname? It sounds better than your Li, no?”

”b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Come back! Try that again! Who's the dog?”

2015, October 11 . A news conference, held by the State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, announced the implementation of the nation's two-child policy .

2016, January 1, implementation day, is when all evil started .

The most immediate effect of the policy was a spike in birthrate .

It has always been a tradition for the first child, male or female, to take his or her father's surname .

The second child, if a female, could possibly inherit her mother's .

If the second child is a male, there's only a 10% chance of him following his mother's surname .

This was the general research outcome of that national policy . However, if this subject was brought up in the news channels, all men would say that they are willing to have their second child inherit their wives' surnames .

Ultimately, the idea of taking on a father's family name never changed, which resulted in the collapse of surnames .

By the time people finally realized it, it was already too late .

They were 30 years late and everything had already turned on its head .

From 2016, January 1 to 2020, January 1, the population of China increased by 80% .

The five most popular surnames were Li, w.a.n.g, Zhang, Liu, and Chen .

Statistics:

1 . Li - 14 . 94% = 185,300,000 people .

2 . w.a.n.g - 14 . 41% = 168,900,000 people .

3 . Zhang - 14 . 07% = 164,800,000 people .

4 . Liu - 10 . 38% = 124,600,000 people .

5 . Chen - 8 . 53% = 104,400,000 people .

These surnames occupied about 60% of China's population .

The later generations coined this period the Surname War Boom .

This war led to the demise of two-character surnames from 2022 onward .

Names like Zhuge, Ouyang, Sima, Murong, and so on .

Of course, that was just the beginning . No one really noticed when it was being reported on the news .

Some more time pa.s.sed and from that period until the year 2025, the top five surnames started phasing out the rest .

They took over 80% of the population by 2025 .

Medias started reporting the phenomenon but again, no one really thought about what that meant for the future .

The government came up with a solution, which was to enforce the law that the second child must follow the mother's surname .

However, that just worked to slow the extinction of certain surnames, not prevent it .

10 years later, in the year 2035, the second surname war erupted .

The surname Li, alone, gradually took up 63% of all surnames in the nation .

Li became the official national surname . You could just grab two random people on the streets and it was guaranteed that one of them, possibly both, would be a Li .

This was yet another beginning of the surname war .

It was then that the Book of Family Names became the Book of Family Names .

Before 2016, there were a total of 504 surnames, but by 2035, only 106 were left .

The top three surnames emerged from there: Li, w.a.n.g, and Zhang .

Liu and Chen became part of the minority .

By this point, the experts were already predicting that in the next 10 years, only two major surnames would remain .

People would just be either a Li or a w.a.n.g .

They were wrong, apparently, since only one main surname was left by the year 2045 .

Li - 99 . 94% = 1700,629,418 people .

The rest of the surnames occupied a meager 0 . 06% .

Only 10 million out of 1 . 7 billion had a different surname from Li, and they were scattered all around China, few and far in between .

People finally understood the concept of the collapse of surnames .

20 years ago, the ethnic minorities became history and the Han ethnic group took over the whole of China .

People understood that those occupying rare surnames were like the ethnic minorities in the past .

Seeking one with a rare surname was akin to finding a needle in a haystack .

The collapse of surnames started affecting lives . Police stations, airports, train stations, banks and the like, were all starting to feel the impact .

Let's take a police station as an example .