The so-called "nine families", in which "nine families" refer to four generations of father's family, three generations of mother's family and two generations of wife's family respectively. Among them, the father's family of four generations refers to his grandfather, father and his own son and descendants, the mother's family of three generations refers to his grandfather, uncle and mother himself, and the wife's family of two generations refers to his wife's father and mother's parents.

In fact, as long as the relatives are still alive, the number of Julian's nine families can even reach more than 3,000, which is an amazing number. In fact, Shang Yang put forward this kind of sitting system during the political reform, and its main purpose was to restrain the people and expand the central group. However, during the period of Shang Yang's political reform, there was no such punishment as involving nine families, but seven families. In the later dynasties, in order to strengthen centralization, the scope of tongzhi system was constantly expanded, and seven families were involved in nine or even ten families.

For example, in the Ming Dynasty, it was said that Judy, the prince of Yan, seized the throne from Zhu Yunwen for the sake of becoming the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty. Ming Chengzu is a man who knows people well and does his duty well. In order to stabilize the regime, he decided to select talents from the people. At that time, there was a man named Fang Xiaoru, who was very talented and respected by the local people. When Judy, the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, heard about it, she wanted to invite Fang Xiaoru to be an official in the palace. Fang Xiaoru, however, is a man who knows propriety, righteousness and integrity. He thought Judy was in an inappropriate position, not only refused to be an official in the DPRK, but even wrote an article publicly accusing Judy of treason. After reading Fang Xiaoru's article, Judy flew into a rage and directly ordered Fang Xiaoru to implicate ten families, including Fang Xiaoru's teacher.

In fact, the involvement of nine families in a series of attacks is much more serious than the whole family involving only one family, and it can be said that it is very cruel for nine families to directly involve their relatives.