Analyze Charitable Ferry From Annals Of Ferry In The Qing Dynasty And Republic Of China

Annals of Ferry is a kind of annals that is written by the builders and maintainers of charitable ferry in order to prevent it from missing and praise the efforts of its builders and maintainers. Generally speaking, charitable ferry is a ferry crossing built by either nongovernmental or governmental assistance, helping people to cross a river at a low price or for free. It has a long history in China and early in the Song dynasty, it already appeared. However, at that time, it was a rare facility. Through the development of the Yuan and Ming dynasties, it ushered in its first peak and this thriving momentum continued until the Republic of China. Possessing with a perfect management organization and a strict management system, many charitable ferries can keep a long lasting development and with the improvement of its operation mechanism, the management organization starts to write annals to record ferry. Hunan famous with its countless rivers shares superior water transport conditions but these rivers cut apart the land and impede the transverse traffic. In order to overcome this situation, people usually tend to build bridges or establish ferry crossings. However, due to the technological and environmental limitations or the huge expenditures on the construction and maintenance of bridges, the second method is usually adopted to transport people and commodities to the other bank. This directly leads to the existence of a large number of ferry crossings in Hunan and among these, charitable ferry plays a significant role.Charitable ferry consists of many factors such as builders, administrators, ferrymen, ferry property, ferry systems and ferryboat passengers, and gets involved in governmental officials, gentries, clansman institution, charity association and the masses of people. So it not only has reflected a part of the public transport situation of the time, but also is a social issue which should be deeply explored from the perspective of social history. As the first-hand material recorded by ferry management organization, Annals of ferry can reflect many details about charitable ferry. Based on the microscopic study of charitable ferry of Hunan, this thesis is written to supplement the current related studies and provide some meaningful experience and suggestions for the current public services and facilities.