Local Literati And Educational Transformation In Late Qing Dynasty

As a hotspot in the academic circles, educational transformation (or reform) in late Qing Dynasty is usually discussed in the view of the central authorities or provinces. These discussions generally lead to some macro judgments; so to provide a modification to the transforming picture in the micro view, this thesis offers a case study on Rui’an County (in Wenzhou Prefecture, Zhejiang Province) by revealing the details of the local reform and relevant events. Specifically, the out-of-sync between the spread of Western learning and the institutional change provided opportunities for the literati to get the local reform started, and endowed the reform with spontaneity and even autonomy in the early period. The fortuitous success of some members in the local literati in the imperial examinations accidentally induced a collective response to the trend of "taking part in social affairs with one’s talents"{ingshzhiyong}, and then lead to the emergence of some "new"(in the sense of modernization) educational facilities in the area. However, as a small county, Rui’an was not among the first links of the chain of knowledge spreading, so the mechanism of "localizing" the knowledge and applying it to the educational practice undoubtedly differed from the one in those metropolises. Furthermore, during the period prior to the establishment of modern educational system, those local elites had to directly face to the embarrassment caused by the tension between "new learning" and "old educational system". In the latter part of1900s, the modern educational system was finally established, but instead of solving the essential problems of the reform like shortage of funds and deficiency of qualified teachers, it just built the administrative levels related to modern education, which finally caused the integration (through some fierce conflicts) of the autonomy of local elites with the institutional power. In a word, the educational transformation in late Qing could be interpreted as a process from the "mismatching" to the "matching" between the "learning" and the "(educational) system"; the projection of this process in a given area, usually concerned with regional circulation of knowledge or information as well as the institutional influence, is likely to deepen our understanding of the possibility and the way of local literati to respond to the tidal wave so-called "the Western Civilization Spreading to the East". In the sense of methodology, to present the comparison between the macro and micro view will also be of help in reflecting the traditional writing paradigm of varieties of "transformation"(or ’reform") in late Qing Dynasty.