A Study On The Thought Of Zheng Banqiao 's

Zheng Banqiao’s Family Letters is a collection of letters written by Zheng Banqiao(1693-1765) to his cousin Zheng Mo and is a masterpiece of traditional family letters and instructions. It can be concluded from Zheng Banqiao’s Family Letters that Zheng Banqiao was influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.Among them, the Yangming schools in Taizhou and in the middle of Zhejiang had a great impact on him. Under the influence of Yangming school’s methodology which was “First Having Virtues”, Zheng Banqiao payed great attention to moral cultivation,but had shortcomings in practice. Since Zheng Banqiao was expert in poems and articles, his methods of reading and writing were very valuable to people after him. In the way of life, Zheng Banqiao not only payed attention to morals, but also understood the philosophy of “pretending to be confused” in life. Under the strict feudal hierarchy, Zheng Banqiao had a precious idea of equality. However, his idea of equality was just related to morality, and was different from the so called “everyone is equal under the law” in modern society. Different from the traditional thought that payed attention to agriculture but despised business, Zheng Banqiao payed attention to business. The ideas of Zheng Banqiao’s Family Letters was spiritual reflections of the Chinese scholar group in 18 th century. At that time, the old ideas were still important in people’s mind, but the new concepts such as equality and thinking high of business had appeared gradually. The 18 th century was a transitional era that old ideas were going to disappear, and new ideas were emerging.