A Study On Confucian Ritualism In Hunan Province In Later Qing Dynasty

The Chinese society in later Qing dynasty had already stepped into semi-colonialand semi-feudal society but with great impact of productivity relations and socialsystem of feudal society. Consequently, the concept of ethics and political system offeudal society had not yet changed and the traditional cultural concept and theConfucian ritualism thoughts were still popular and obeyed.The productivity relation and forms in semi-colonial and semi-feudal society hadchanged, as compared to those in feudal society. The thoughts in western countries thatwere gradually imported had some impacts in academic concept and the social sciencein later Qing dynasty, as compared to natural science, had gained new contentaccordingly, therefore the ritualism in later Qing dynasty being completely differentthan before.Hunan province, a place that people always thinks as a rural and underdevelopedarea for long time. In the Qing dynasty and the dynasties before Qing, Hunan provincewas regarded as a underdeveloped area with closed mind and civilization was far lowthan the areas, such as middle plain, Jiang and Zhe, Qilu and Ewan etc. Hunanacademy had not been paid much attention, such as Hunan Jingxue including Hunanritualism and linguistic study. Such situation remained until the beginning of Qingdynasty and the later of Ming dynasty. However, a number of researchers, such asTaiyan Zhang etc, did not respect to Hunan academy and thought it be rough academy,and the researchers, due to not familiar with old Chinese phonology, were not regardedas “being famous”.The purpose to study Hunan ritualism is to explain a fact: the eco that the Hunanresearchers were not familiar with Jing study and ritualism and only with roughritualism was ended long before WangFu. Till the later Qing dynasty, Hunanresearchers had gained a high technology to study ritualism and its theory.Since the later Qing dynasty, a number of talents continuously became to beexcellent everywhere, especially in Hunan province of China. Among them, therepresentative figures of Hunan ritualism included Zeng Guofan, Guo Songtao, WangKaiyun, Pi Xirui and they all had monographs. What is more, there were a number ofpaper, such as Yuan Wei, Zhaoji He, Jize Zeng, Dehui Ye etc, who did not havemonographs or whose monographs were not significant. The society in later Qing dynasty apparently went down, but the scholars inHunan area realized earlier that they should have responsibility for saving China andopen to the world. Zeng Guofan was one of those people who have the idea ofwesternization, Yuan Wei was the first one who proposed the assertion that “shi yizhang ji yi zhi yi”, and Guo Songtao was the first ambassador oversea in China. Howto deal with the foreign affairs was one of important contents for the researchers ofritualism in later Qing dynasty. Chongshou Guo and Yuan Wei became therepresentatives of Chinese ritualism as they protected any insults from the foreigncountries, but Zeng Guofan was a controversial person due to the westernization heproposed.The scholars who studied the ritualism in later Qing dynasty all paid muchattention to daily-life etiquette and ceremony activities and all put it into practice theconventional ritualism and its system. Such popular situation was revealed by theirdiaries and papers.Although the scholars in Hunan area had some open-mind people, most of themobeyed the traditional ritualism and its system. It is worth to notice that the scholarswho studied Hunan ritualism kept the concept and system of traditional ritualism.The opening of Hunan ritualism to be prosperous was before the later Qingdynasty. From Zeng Guofan and Shongtao Guo to Wang Kaiyun and Pi Xirui, theperiod was the rapid development stage for Hunan ritualism. Although, Hunanritualism was generally not good as Jiang Zhe and Wu Wan from the publicationaspects in later Qing dynasty, but it was almost the top level. The overviews to theritualism and its system reached the top level, the knowledge and master to the historyand spirit of ritualism and their relations reached the similar level as the other areas,and the research and knowledge of the ritualism of western countries were the numberone in China.