Reading | the real progression of the elite of the Qing Dynasty

"Guide to the Qing Dynasty Traversal 2", by Tangerine Xuanya, published by Chongqing Publishing House in July 2021

Published three years ago, the "Guide to crossing the Qing Dynasty 1" mainly tells the life of the Qing Dynasty's clothing, food, shelter, marriage and funeral, and the life of the concubines from the emperor to the qiding. In this new "Guide to the Qing Dynasty 2", it mainly introduces the real progress of the elites of the Qing Dynasty.

In the Qing Dynasty, ordinary Bai Ding studied hard for ten years, passed the county test, the government test, the township test, and the meeting test all the way to the temple test, and the high school was a jinshi who was selected from thousands of miles and became an alternate official. However, the spirit of crossing the streets of ma is still not exhausted, and the beating of society has begun: there are many people and few officials, and they must "wait for vacancies" for several years; the top of the official uniform must be purchased by themselves; the road fee and rent cannot be less; filial piety to the superior, social colleagues, unity with the same village, it is related to the peacetime discussion and discussion office, regular assessment... If you want to break through on the road to promotion, you can't be less lucky, character and family situation!

However, the road to social advancement is not only a liberal arts department, but also a choice for martial arts and translation. Don't be sad if you don't have a middle lift, such as serving a powerful official, and even having the opportunity to be recommended as a feudal official; even if you are a teacher, your income is higher than that of ordinary people.

The imperial relatives born with golden spoons and the Manchu and Mongolian nobles could not easily go straight up the Qingyun Road, and in order to ration the imperial food, they also had to work hard to take the examination for a "civil servant", after all, there were few hereditary titles, and "Wang Ye Belle walked all over the street" was just the imagination of modern people. Even the emperor who is above ten thousand people has to work diligently, see the ministers, handle government affairs, attend one sacrifice after another, and the emperor who is entangled in the affairs of the harem all day is just a TV drama need.

In short, if you want to understand the Qing Dynasty Baiding counterattack, official records, and the emperor's private life, just look at the "Qing Dynasty Traversal Guide 2".

The author of this book, Tachibana Xuanya, a Manchu, is the author of "Guide to crossing the Qing Dynasty", "The Life of the Meow King's Mansion", "Nine Kings Seize the Concubine" and other works.

Book excerpts

The reading career of the Qing Dynasty

We now go to school in a variety of public and private schools, there are relatively unified teaching materials, there are formally hired teachers, so how to study and go to school in the Qing Dynasty?

Let's give it a taste.

School of the Qing Dynasty

We have all kinds of public schools for young people to study in modern times, but the Qing Dynasty did not have such conditions. Although the Qing Dynasty had an official "official school" system, this "official school" was completely different from the definition of our current public school.

Generally speaking, the "official school" of the Qing Dynasty had two functions, the first function was to preside over the examination, and the second function was to provide the "student" class identity for the "child students", so that they could continue to study in the "official school" after obtaining the primary meritorious name. Neither of these features is aimed at the "zero-meritometric" group. In other words, the official school of the Qing Dynasty was the "Junior Scholar Training College" and the "Examination Authority", not responsible for basic education.

In the Qing Dynasty, the place where basic education was carried out was generally called "Juku". In the Qing Dynasty, there were three main types of "juku", namely yishu, private juku and home juku.

Somewhat similar to today's public schools is the Yoshikaku School. In the Qing Dynasty, some of the righteous schools were set up by officials or local high-ranking officials specifically for basic education, and some were funded by the whole village to hire a teacher to teach the children in the village who were willing to pay a small amount of tuition. However, on the whole, the number of Qing Dynasty yishu was extremely small in the "juku" at that time. For example, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were more than 30,000 "judders" in Henan Province, of which only 828 were righteous schools, accounting for less than 3%. In addition, the level of "Juku" in the Qing Dynasty was the best in the family school and the worst in the Yishu. Therefore, those who go to the charity school are often the kind of children who are "slightly poor in family" and cannot go to private schools and home schools.

As for private schools and home schools, they are actually distinguished as undertakers. A meritorious reader opens a school in his own house or rented house, acts as a teacher to teach, and collects the tuition fees of the students, that is, a private school. A family or family that sets up a school room in its own family or family, and hires a meritorious reader from outside to teach in the school room in its own home, that is, a family school. Whether it is a private school or a home school, its teaching level is directly affected by the teacher's meritorious name and cultural level. There were various teachers in the "juku" around the Qing Dynasty, and generally the worst of them also had the merits of the students. However, if the teacher of the school is just an ordinary student, especially some so-called "old talents", he himself has not passed the higher merits, how to teach students to pass the examination for the examination of lifting people and entering the army? There are even some so-called "shu masters" in remote areas who cannot even understand the Analects, but are just "miscellaneous characters" on the basis of teaching. As for those well-known masters, they may have taught several jinshi, even Yu Zhuangyuan, Bangyan and Tanhua, and the "juku" they opened naturally became a "famous school" sought after by everyone.

Generally speaking, those who have the financial resources to establish a family are the families of officials and eunuchs. Since they have the financial resources to establish a family school, they naturally do not hesitate to pay for excellent teachers. The private school itself is opened by the teacher, similar to the teacher's own "business". Because it is open enrollment, there may be a lot of students. On the other hand, the family school employs teachers on a family or family basis, and the children who are educated are generally young people in the clan or family, and there are many fewer students than private schools. There are also many official eunuch families, especially those who pay attention to education, simply set up small families and only educate their children, basically "one-on-one" or "one-to-two" forms of small class teaching. It is in this context that the level of home schools is generally higher than that of private schools.

School textbooks of the Qing Dynasty

The teaching materials in the Qing Dynasty can be roughly divided into three categories, one of which is "Mongolian Studies", the second is "Raising Karma", and the third is "Cultivation". In fact, it is functional to distinguish between three different periods and states of a person's learning of cultural knowledge.

Mongolian studies are the teaching materials used in the initiation stage of schoolchildren. The main learning content of this stage is to learn common Chinese characters and basic cultural knowledge, and it is also the stage of laying the foundation, which is roughly equivalent to our kindergarten and primary school today.

The Qing Dynasty was an era of great development of Mongolian books, and there were many related books. More traditional, there are "Three Character Classic", "Hundred Family Names", "Thousand Character Text", "Mingxian Collection", etc., of which the first three are commonly known as "Three Hundred Thousand". In the "Three Hundred thousand", the Qing people paid special attention to the "Three Character Classic", believing that it was three words and one sentence, the language was easy to understand, the content was concise and concise, and it was based on the "history of entering and leaving the scriptures", which was the most suitable for enlightenment. Newly popular Mongolian books, such as "Long Wen Whip Shadow" and "Kindergarten Qionglin" dedicated to allusions, as well as books "Thousand Family Poems" and "Three Hundred Tang Poems" as preliminary understanding of ancient poetry, are all all the rage. Among them, the "Thousand Family Poems" were also called "Three Hundred Thousand" by the people of the time, together with the "Three Character Classic", "Hundred Family Names" and "Thousand Character Text". In addition, there are books such as "Sound Rhythm Enlightenment", "Poetic Rhyme" and "Disciple Rules" that specialize in sound rhyme, which are quite popular Mongolian teaching materials at one time and one place. On the other hand, in the Qing Dynasty, there were also a large number of "miscellaneous characters" series of Mongolian books, such as "Five Words and Miscellaneous Characters" devoted to the knowledge of farming in peasant households, "Six Words and Miscellaneous Characters" devoted to the knowledge of the daily life of peasant households, and "Miscellaneous Characters for Merchants, Farmers, Industrialists, and Merchants" and "Miscellaneous Characters for Daily Use", all of which were highly functional "miscellaneous characters" Mongolian studies.

The class of karma is the textbook for preparing for the exam stage, which refers to the fact that after a person has a considerable foundation, he is ready to take the examination and take the meritorious name, then he must further study the Confucian classics and practice the special style of the exam. Roughly equivalent to our secondary school textbooks today.

The Qing Dynasty imperial examination mainly consisted of three contents: the Eight Strands of Literature, the Examination Poems, and the Policy Theory, of which the most critical of most examinations was the Eight Strands of Literature. The Qing Dynasty Eight Strands of Literature had a fixed statute, all of which were derived from the Four Books and the Five Classics, and were based on the theories of Zhu Xi in the Song Dynasty. Therefore, if you want to have a smooth career, the first thing is to study the "Four Books" and "Five Classics" and Zhu Xi's "Four Books, Chapters and Sentences". In particular, the "Four Books" and Zhu Xi's "Four Books and Chapters", because the "Four Books" title is generally the first scene of the imperial examination, it is the most important, so it is necessary to memorize them well. In addition, in the Qing Dynasty, there were also many special "examination-specific teaching materials", such as "Four Books", "Five Classics", "Sexual Theory", "King Ding Four Books", etc., as well as "Dati Wenfu", "Xiaoti Wenfu" and other special topics and sample texts, "Guan Lu Cui Zhen", "Poetry Rhymes with Ying" and other special lecture test post poems, "Policy Theory Collection" and "Policy Theory Authentic" and other special lectures on policy, similar to today's examination book "× College Entrance Examination × Simulation" and "×× Question Bank".

As for the cultivation class, it is a reading material for a more advanced and broader stage. It refers to the fact that students learn those styles and knowledge that are not specific to the exam after having a foundation in Mongolian culture. For example, the extensive and in-depth study of poetry and music, the reading of the Books of a Hundred Schools, and even the study of history books are not specifically for the purpose of the imperial examination, but to increase their own cultivation, culture, and enrich themselves. Of course, if you take the advanced imperial examination, the Eight Strands of Literature and Thesis Poems want to do well, and the questions you want to answer brilliantly, except for the fixed teaching materials, it is very necessary for the sub-books, history books, and collection departments. There is no fixed "textbook" in this category, as long as you are interested in reading, any book can be a "textbook".

With so many teaching materials, different people's choices for them are also very different according to their respective reading needs.

There are some families, just ordinary families with more than enough food and clothing, who often send their children to some private schools of "old talents". In this kind of private school, the level of teachers itself is not very high, and the tuition fee is not much. When I go here to study, a considerable part of them just have the mentality of "not being blind". The teaching materials selected for this kind of private school generally pay more attention to the category of Mongolian studies, and even use the "miscellaneous characters" series of Mongolian teaching materials.

The children of the official eunuchs are specially enrolled in order to go to the private school or family school, and the private school or family school they go to is not only of a high level of teachers, but also the teaching materials are more inclined to the class of occupation. After all, for the families of officials and eunuchs, the descendants entering the career through the imperial examination is the basis for maintaining the door and developing the door.

And many of the children of those royal palaces and clans do not need to go to the court to get out of the world, but rely on the title or the door shade to enter the world. Therefore, what they study in the family school is more of a cultivation type of book, which allows them to go beyond the study of the imperial examination and to dabble in knowledge more extensively.

Teaching methods

In private schools, the "routines" of teachers are more similar, because they need to "respond to changes with no change" in the face of many students who are studying.

The so-called "routine", from the specific method, is the three words of "reading, memorizing, and warming". "Reading", that is, the teacher reads clearly and clearly to the students word by word, and the students read clearly and clearly, word by word. "Memorize", that is, after reading clearly, students recite it by themselves. At this stage, the teacher generally does not explain the meaning of the sentence to the students much, but only pursues the truth of "reading the book a hundred times, and its meaning is self-seeing", so that they can mainly recite it. "Wen", that is, reviewing on time, will be the words and sentences that have been taught, according to the cycle of every ten days, one month, one year for review and consolidation. From the perspective of process, the first step is to read and practice words through Rhymes such as Mongolian Studies; the second step is to learn "pair sentences", that is, from passive "reading" and "backing" to active "doing" conversion, to further familiarize yourself with methods such as confrontation and rhyme, and to learn Mongolian books; the third step is to start learning formal teaching materials such as "Four Books" to achieve the transformation from Mongolian to lifting.

As for the home school, because there are fewer students to be taught, the teacher can teach according to the aptitude, and the teaching content is more complicated than that in the private school. First of all, it is possible that the teachers of the school can be changed frequently. Let's take the Qing Dynasty minister Yinghe as an example. Yinghe was born in the Zhengbai banner Baoyi SuoQiluo clan, and its family was one of the most well-known Keju families in the Qing Dynasty, with a total of seven jinshi and six juren in five generations, which was a famous "Xueba" family at that time.

According to records, Yinghe entered the family school at the age of six (imaginary age), when his teacher was Liu Kun, a direct subordinate. In the winter of the same year, his father was changed to the governor of Caoyun, Yinghe followed his father south to Fujian, the teacher was changed to Jinshi Cheng Zairong of Anhui, and because Yinghe was a flag man, he also learned Manchu language and archery with the garrison Li Duo. When he was nine years old, Yinghe returned to Beijing with his father, and the teacher was replaced by Li Yanglin, a direct subordinate, and the teacher who was full of Chinese and archery was replaced by Zar Hang'a. Since then, until Yinghe was 23 years old, he had a total of 13 Chinese teachers and several Manchu Chinese and archery teachers in the past 17 years. Among his 13 Chinese teachers, there are six Jinshi, five Andiren, and two Gongsheng. From here, we can see that the teachers of the old school were constantly changing, and the higher the door, the more important the examination, and the higher the name of the chosen teacher.

Secondly, the teaching materials chosen by the family, especially the official eunuch family, are not quite the same as those of the private school. I take the example of the famous Qing Dynasty Imperial Household Internal Affairs Office with the Yellow Flag Manchurian Yan Linqing Family. Linqing's family was famous for its literature in the Qing Dynasty, and Linqing himself, his son Chongshi, and his grandson Songshen were all from jinshi, known as "Shishou Shuxiang". Linqing's great-grandson, Mr. Wang Zuoxian, once briefly described what students of different ages learned in their own school. Roughly summarized as follows.

Usually, at the age of six, he enters the family school to study. Before entering the school, most of them had been enlightened by in-laws such as aunts, aunts or sisters with "font sizes".

At the age of six, he began to study the "Three Character Classic", "Primary School Collection", "Long Wen Whip Shadow", "Kindergarten Qionglin", and painted red characters.

At the age of eight, he began to study the "Four Books", "Confucius Language", "Filial Piety", and learned Xiaokai and Xingshu.

At the age of ten, he began to study the "Poetic Compromise" and "Shujing Illustrations", and began to practice pairing and affixing sentences.

At the age of twelve, he began to study "Zhou Yi Compromise", "Etiquette", "Spring and Autumn", "Erya", and "Shuowen".

At the age of fourteen, he began to study the "Ancient Literature Guanzhi", "Interpretation of Ancient Texts", "Article Tracks", "Hundred Pieces of Ancient Writings", "Ancient Tang Poetry Interpretation", "Fuxue Zhenghu", "Piao Body Notes", "Six Dynasties Wenxuan", and "Selected Texts of Zhaoming". If you are already proficient in pairing and affixing, you will learn poetry.

At the age of sixteen, he began to study the "First Three Histories", "Zizhi Tongjian", "Tongjian Collection", "Gangjian Yizhilu", and "Historical Theory".

Here we can see that the better the family lineage, the more extensive the ability to learn cultural knowledge. Moreover, the books at that time were very valuable, and for many people, it was difficult to buy books like the above, let alone study. For the family giants, these conditions are original, naturally "long-sleeved good dance".

If you think that the example of the Yan family is too "high-end", we can also give you an example of Shang Yanjun. Shang Yanjun was a Soldier of the White Banner han stationed in Guangdong. The merchants were originally just ordinary garrison soldiers, and the social class was not high. When the family passed down to Shang Yanjun's father, Shang Tinghuan, Shang Tinghuan decided to take the examination and passed the examination, but failed seven reference township examinations, so he turned to training children to read. Shang Yanjun recalled his reading career in this way:

When I was six years old, I read the Three Character Sutra and the Thousand Character Text, and after I could recite and understand most of the words, I read the "Four Books". Mr. Daily dictates the new book, that is, he reads it well and recites it to him tomorrow morning. Memorize new books with warm old books, read new and warm old every day, without interruption. At that time, the teachings were extremely strict, and if they could not recite them, the gentleman would be punished, and the light ones would beat the palms of their hands with thin plates, the heads of the precepts, and even the buttocks with rattan. After reading the "Four Books", he continued to read the "Five Classics", and also read the "Book of Filial Piety", "The Biography of the Ram", "The Biography of The Grain Liang", "Zhou Li", "Erya", and in the middle, he still read the Tang and Song poems of the Five Seven Words and the "Enlightenment of Sound Law", learned to make pairs, and learned to tune Ping Shu and the "Seventeen Shi Mengben". Among them, there is still one of the most important courses, which is to learn characters, write red at the beginning of the enlightenment, and write imitation grids after painting. After I was twelve years old, I learned to compose eight strands of literature, poetry, endowment, policy, etc., at this time I not only had to read the eight strands of literature, ancient texts, legal endowments, anthology, and the like, but also read history books such as Tongjian and Sishi, and sub-books such as Zhuang, Lao, and HanFei. Between the ages of fourteen and twenty, except for the above reading, they were all day teachers and examination colleges.

Under this strict reading environment, Shang Yanying's brother Shang Yanying won the Jinshi of Guangxu twenty-nine years (1903), and Shang Yanjun himself was even admitted to the Tanhua of Guangxu Thirty Years (1904), and his brothers all achieved a leap in the family door. Whether in ancient times or now, if you want to achieve something in reading, diligence is almost necessary. The Qing Dynasty people also advocated diligence in schooling. Many home schools and private schools, which are known for their rigor, basically only have "holidays" during the year during the Spring Festival, which is called "year-end school". Usually, there is very little rest, and I have to study hard almost every day. In the "Augmentation of The Sages", it is said, "The mountain of books has a path of diligence, and the study of the sea is endlessly arduous", and this truth is the same in any era.

Did women in the Qing Dynasty read?

Some friends have read "Dream of the Red Chamber" and think that what Jia Mu said in the book is "just a blind man who recognizes two words, not a blind man with his eyes open", which is the embodiment of advocating "women without talent is morality" at that time, and even think that most of the women of the Qing Dynasty nobles do not recognize words, which is actually a very incorrect cognition.

In the Qing Dynasty, of course, a considerable number of people could not support women to study because of their lack of family wealth. It is also true that there are very few people's families, although the family is enough, but because the parents' brains are more rigid, they really believe in the "women's talentless is moral" this kind of nonsense, do not let women study. But in general, under normal circumstances, the higher the door of the family, the more attention is paid to the cultivation of women's cultural literacy, and they will not be allowed to become "illiterate". Therefore, the Qing Dynasty was an era of great development of women's education level, and it was also an era of relatively prosperous women's literary creation.

Of course, in the Qing Dynasty, women's reading and men's reading were very different from each other's fundamental purpose. This is because women in the Qing Dynasty could not participate in the imperial examination, and most men had to achieve the goal of becoming a career through the imperial examination. Because of this, the books that women in the Qing Dynasty read when they read books could not be limited to the chapter and sentence learning of the industry, but were completely for their own cultural literacy. The most popular among women at that time were literary and poetry books.

In some of the families of the Qing Dynasty, there were often boudoir women who sang harmony with each other, formed a leisure poetry club, and even walked out of the boudoir to travel and sing with the literati and inkers at that time. This was all formed on the basis of the increasing prevalence of women's reading in the Qing Dynasty.

For the flag woman, we can take the Sheng Yu family as an example. Sheng Yu (盛昱), courtesy name Boxi, was a descendant of hauge the Prince of Suwu, a descendant of Hauge the Prince of Suwu, and a scholar of the third year of Guangxu (1877), and one of the well-known "Qing schools" in the late Qing Dynasty. Most of the women in his family have "literary names". His mother's name was Nasun Lanbao, surnamed Borjigit, who had studied poetry and scripture history since childhood, and had survived the "Remains of Yun XiangGuan". Sheng Yu's sister Ai Xinjue Luoshi and Sheng Yu's wife Erdet Clan can also write poetry. As Nasun Lanbao himself described: "Yu Yi grew up with the master of the imperial family, and his grandmother completed the study taught by Mrs. Yan." At that time, the foreign family was prosperous, and every time the pro-party concubines met, they could not do the rice salt thing, and most of them used poetry to play a corner... Whenever the moon is windy and windy, the life pen chants poems, and sticks to the walls a few times. From this, it can be seen that the female relatives in his family are all literate in poetry, and they take pleasure in chanting poems every day.

There are more examples of Han Chinese women reading. Yuan Ming, a famous poet of the Qing Dynasty who is famous for his name of "Suiyuan", once clearly pointed out that "it is commonly known that women are not suitable for poetry, and ugly words are ugly." Therefore, Yuan Mei had received several female disciples, and in the "Suiyuan Poetry Supplement", he recounted: "Although there are more than twenty female disciples in yu, such as the boya of Ruizhu, the understanding of Jin Fiber, and the first of Xi Peilan's Tui Zun Dynasty, they are also the three major confidants in the boudoir. At the same time, Yuan Ming also collected their works and published the "Selected Poems of Female Disciples in Suiyuan", actively publicizing their female disciples. Among Yuan Ming's female disciples, Gui Maoyi was even more famous. Gui Maoyi, zi Peishan, Jiangsu Changshu people. She was born in Xiangmendi, and her father Gui Chaoxu, who toured Zhejiang Province, and her mother Li Xinjing were both good at composing poetry. Gui Maoyi was also deeply influenced from an early age, with a fairly high level of culture, and later known as the three masterpieces of poetry, books and paintings, and wrote "Embroidery Continuing Grass" and "Listening to Snow Words". As an adult, she married Li Xuehuan in Shanghai. Li Xuehuan is also a knowledgeable and good at poetry, they are "husband and wife, singing harmony in the boudoir, and are famous for Li Lu". Moreover, Li Xuehuang's mother, Yang Fengshu, is also a "gongshi". It can be seen that whether it is Gui Maoyi's own home or her husband's family, she supports women's study.

It should be noted that another identity of Gui Maoyi is "Boudoir Master". "Boudoir Teacher", also known as "Female Juku Teacher", is a female teacher who teaches female students. Tao Shu, a famous minister of the Qing Dynasty, once praised Gui Maoyi, saying that she "consulted the bridesmaids for a long time, and all the wells had the law." In addition, Huang Yuanjie in the early Qing Dynasty, Li Shi'an and Wang Yuzhen in the middle of the Qing Dynasty were all well-known "female masters". The popularity of "female school teachers" in the Qing Dynasty also reflected the degree of development of women's reading at that time.

Author: Tachibana Xuanya

Editor: Xue Weiping