Confucianism and applied it to 'the forty-seven letters of the (Japanese) alphabet, the composition of letters, bookkeeping, the abacus, and the use of scales', as well as geography, history, natural philosophy, economics, and ethics, all of which latter subjects were to be studied from translations of Western works. (Fukuzawa Yukichi, Encouragement of Learning CGakumon no Susumel, 1872, translated in Herbert Passin, Society and Education in Japan CNew York, 19651, pp. 206-207.)
set up in Hangzhou in 1801, and the Xue Hal Tang, set up in Canton in 1820.
These were renowned centres of Han learning. Zhang Zhidong was following
these models in establishing, during periods of office as provincial educa tional official, the Jingxln Academy in Hubei in I860 and the Zunjing Academy in Sichuan in 1874, and subsequently, as governor of Shanxi, the
Lingde Academy there. In doing so he was impelled not simply by philo
sophical preference, but by the wish common to statesmen active in the
reforms of the Tongzhi Restoration: the restabilization of the state in
the face of internal and external enemies. Over the same period, language
schools were set up in Peking, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, naval schools in
Fuzhou and Tianjin, and telegraph schools in Tianjin. Though some eventu
ally expanded into wider areas of study, the narrowness of their original conception indicates the restricted role allocated to Western learning by the majority of Chinese officials, who were still seeking the answer to
Chinese problems within their own tradition. Their attitude contrasts with
that of that of the reformers of Meiji Japan, whose creed was that 'know- 3
ledge was to be sought for throughout the world' and who introduced a
highly Westernized system of schooling in 1872.
Further modifications of the established pattern were made when Zhang Zhidong set up the Guangya Academy in Canton during his period of
governorship in 1887. Students could study in one of four departments
4
of classics, history, neo-Confucianism or government. This again was an
example in which Confucian precedent and Western example were mingled. The
famous Song educator Hu Anding had divided the prefectural schools he
headed into departments of classics (jingyi ^5. ^ ) and government (zhishi
ja % ), the latter being divided into military studies, water transport,
mathematics and the calendar, and other subjects.“* Hu had few followers;
normal Confucian practice subsumed all branches of learning under the study
3. The phrase forms part of the Charter Oath of the Meiji Emperor, made
public in April 1868 (Passin, Society and Education in Japan, p. 63).
4. William Ayers, Chang Chih-tung and Educational Reform in China
(Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 59.
5. Chen Qingzhi, Zhongguo jiaoyushi (Shanghai, 1936),' pp. 238-39.
Hu Yuan (Hu Anding) lived from 933 to 1059 and was the author of Zhou yi kou yi and Hong Fan kou yi.
of the classics, and it was with Western learning that subject divisions were usually associated.
Zhang Zhidong was not, of course, the only patron of the reformed
academy. Among their most prolific sponsors was Huang Pengnian who in
the course of his official posts in the early Guangxu period resuscitated the Guanzhong Academy in Shaanxi, the Lianchi Academy in Zhili, and the
Zhengyi Academy in Suzhou. The ancient Yuelu Academy in Hunan,Nanjing in
Jiangsu, and Luoyuan in Jinan were also renowned centres of scholarly
6
enquiry.
That the traditional framework of the academy offered considerable scope for adaptation is evident from a list of topics set for the monthly
essays in Suzhou in the early 1890’s. In addition to questions set on the
Five Classics 'subjects concerning current affairs are also frequently
given out, as for example, the Best Methods of Military Defence; the
Conservation of the Waterways; China’s Relations with Foreign Countries,
etc., etc.'^ The continued vitality of a revivified Confucian scholarship can be seen in Shu Xincheng's account of the Hunan academy he attended in
1907. ’Luliang Academy', he wrote, 'belonged to what was called "the new
school". We composed elucidations of the classics and topical dissert
ations instead of eight-legged essays, and old poems and ordinary regulated
poems instead of the examination forms'. Shu found stimulating and inspir
ing the example of the head, who expounded the classics and history in a way Shu had never heard before, and shared with the students notes he made
on his reading. The college was filled with a spirit of diligent emulation.
From what Shu says of his own reading while at the academy and from the head's background as the teacher of numerous successful examination candid ates, it appears that the stimulus derived from Chinese historiography and
6. See Xie Guozhen, 'Jindai shuyuan xuexiao zhidu bianqian kao', in Cai
Yuanpei et al., (ed.), Zhang Jusheng xiansheng qishi shengri jinian
lunwen j i, (Shanghai, 1937), p. 289.
7. A.P. Parker, 'The Government Colleges of Suchow', The Chinese Recorder
a n d M isnionary Journal, XXIV : 11 (1893), 538. 8. Shu, Wo he jiaoyu, pp. 44-46.
classical studies, with little Western admixture. Shu’s academy was among the last to continue functioning: in 1909, this centre of advanced
9
study was made into a lower primary school. The academy appears to have provided an e q u a l l y satisfying environment for hi Zonghuang, who a t t e n d e d one in Yunnan from 1898 to 1903: he speaks with affection of his friends and teachers, and of the ’excitement’ and 'enlightenment' he received from lectures on the Four Books and Five Classics.^
A parallel, movement to the reformation of academies was that for the expulsion of the eight-legged essay from the examination system. Though argued for by numerous advocates of reform in the late Qing - among them Xue Fucheng, Zhang Zhidong, Chen Baochen, Yan Fu,
Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao^ - change was slow in coming. Whereas alteration in the course of study or essay topics of an academy could be achieved by the injunctions of its official founder or benefactor, or through a change of heart or personnel among the scholars and officials who set the topics, the examination system could not be reformed piecemeal; as a unitary system, it had to be altered from the top. The abolition of the eight-legged essay was among the unrealised reforms of 1898; it was not until 1902 that the topical dissertation was finally substituted for
12
it. Some students had difficulty coping; much hilarity was caused by the incompetence of those who, for example, replied with an essay on 'taking a broken wheel' (na po lun f ^ 4 ^ )> complete with classical allusions,
13
when asked to write on Napoleon. Others made a smooth but superficial transition, concealing ignorance with the linguistic deftness born of their
14
training in the eight-legged essay. Nonetheless, the new system made possible
9. Ibid., p. 49.