Among the emperors, the Qing Dynasty was the most strict in educating their children.
The royal education of the Qing Dynasty did not establish a formal system until after the Kangxi "pacified the Three Domains", according to the "YangjiZhai Series": "I went to the family law, and the crown prince and the emperor's grandson were six years old, that is, they studied with foreign teachers. This means that the prince began to read when he turned 6 years old, from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m., a total of 10 hours. There can only be 5 days of rest a year, that is, New Year's Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, the emperor's birthday, his own birthday, in addition, even Chinese New Year's Eve can not take a holiday.
Although the class starts at 5 a.m., the prince needs to go to the study at 4 a.m. to review the day's homework, although it is hot in the summer, the prince is not allowed to use a fan to dispel the heat when reading, and every time he learns a word, he must write 100 times, and a text must be recited 120 times.
The Kangxi Emperor was a young scholar, and he was tired of coughing up blood, so the Four Books and Five Classics could be memorized backwards like a stream, and the Qianlong Emperor was able to do this at the age of 14, so he was deeply loved by Kangxi.
In addition to learning the Chinese classics, the princes also had to learn Manchu after the age of 12, and at the age of 14 they began to learn horseback riding and archery, and the teaching was filled by The Manchu Master, they did not have the title of master, and when they saw the prince, they had to kneel down and ask for peace, calling themselves slaves. When the prince grew up, he also had martial arts classes, including boxing, shotguns, swords, firearms, etc. The Western missionary Zhang Cheng once said that in the summer of the thirty-first year of Kangxi (1692), Kangxi took 7 princes on a tour of Saiwai, and for a whole month, these princes spent all day on horseback and raised their whips, took bows and arrows, and were very happy.
According to Ye Shizai, the chief master of the study during the Qianlong period was the famous minister Wang Jie, who later played an important role in the overthrow of Hezhen. Once Qianlong wandered around in the upper study and saw that Wang Jiezheng was punishing the prince who did not use his merits in reading to kneel, he felt very angry, and said: No matter what, this is also a prince, and he may become an emperor in the future, how can he ignore the courtesy of the monarch? Wang Jie replied, "The teacher Yao Shun, the non-teacher, is the way of the teacher!" "It means that if you teach well, you may become a wise king, if you don't teach well, you may become a tyrant, and the teacher must have the dignity of a teacher." Qianlong had no choice but to order the crown prince to kneel again.
Of course, this is only the understanding of the author of the wild history, in fact, in the Qing Dynasty, the emperor would go to the study almost every day to inspect, Kangxi Youqin, every day at about 9 o'clock to listen to the endorsement of the princes, sometimes at four or five o'clock in the afternoon will come again, with the ministers to listen to the endorsement of the prince. The princes could not be exempted from this hard labor until they were married and divided into provinces.
Prince Yizhen of Alcohol recorded in the "Notes on the Bamboo Window": "If the homework is not completed or the penalty is punished, Master Qian is allowed to go to dinner, and those who do not dare to urge with the attendants, eunuchs, etc., go down to the study." The master was eating dinner in the study. Both a certain house and a person's lower house are designated by the upper. ”
Zhao Yi of the Qing Dynasty once sighed about this in the "Miscellaneous Records of Eaves Exposure": "The strictness of the family law of this dynasty, that is, the matter of the prince's reading, has been extinguished for eternity. ”
Although there was no prince during the late Qing Dynasty, he also paid attention to the cultivation of nobles, but the form changed. In 1905, the Military Department and the Military Training Department set up the Army Noble School, with Prince Yi Li of Qing as the minister of management and Feng Guozhang as the general office, and the school began in April of the following year, setting up military, astronomy, geography, history, arithmetic and other subjects, conducting a new type of education for the Eight Banners guiguan, recruiting nearly 100 students, and more than 40 serving princes and princes were also appointed as lecturers.
——Quoted from "Beijing Local History, Forbidden City Chronicle"