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15
“A better-than-average apprenticeship for the examinations meant beginning to learn to write characters at the age of 517, memorizing the Four books and Five Classics by the age of 11, mastering poetry composition at age 12, and studying ba gu 八股 [eight-legged] essay style thereafter.”18
Elman explains the influence of the training for the examination path in pre-modern times, that “the civil service examination system in late imperial China became a dominant force in determining the character of Chinese society on the state and cultural terms that Chinese and Manchus set for themselves before the onset of Western imperialism. Confucian learning, literati prestige, state power, and cultural practice were all accommodated to the educational testing system… [It] functioned as a measurable arbiter of elite culture, politics, and society.”19
Content in the corpus of instruction also included a particularly important dialectic found in Wang‟s bian fa zhong essay, as well described by Wolfgang Bauer as polarities between “Inner” and “Outer”, “Knowledge” and “Action.”20 Bauer points out the increasing awareness of this dialectical dilemma in the late nineteenth century, which assists for understanding the nature of its inclusion in the Wang‟s bian fa zhong argument.
17 Approximated by age 4 in Western age calculations, and subsequent ages also being about one year less.
18 Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. The Fall of Imperial China, p23.
19 Elman, Benjamin A., “Political, social, and Cultural Reproduction via civil Service Examination in Late Imperial China”, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 50, No 1 (Feb., 1991) p.8.
20 Bauer, Wolfgang. tr. from German Michael Shaw, pp. 338-345.
Object Description
| Title | The nation, evolution, and transformation: the new ideas of Wang Tao |
| Author | Brown, Gregory David |
| Author email | gregory.d.brown@usc.edu; gdb@hawaii.edu |
| Degree | Master of Arts |
| Document type | Thesis |
| Degree program | East Asian Languages & Cultures |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2010-06-25 |
| Date submitted | 2010 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2010-08-02 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Cheung, Dominic |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Hayden, George Lippit, Akira Mizuta |
| Abstract | The translation made here of Wang Tao’s (1828-1897) Bian fa zhong 变法中 essay links Confucian values with bi-cultural educational and geographical experiences to aspects of modernity, print capitalism, and cultural identity.; Preceding the translation is a biographical sketch of four periods suggesting influences from Wang Tao’s unorthodox path of experiences as contributing to his developing insights for China and modernity. Combining a classical scholar education in China, with significant exposure to Western thought, Wang Tao developed his alternate views towards modernity in his presaging writings on bian fa reforms. At the earliest stages of reform-minded intellectuals and as a window to late-Qing literati identity, the individual Wang Tao was the first person preceding Yan Fu (1854-1921) that had reconciled the “inner vs. outer, constancy vs. change” dialectic from Han (206 BCE – 220 CE), and thus unique in bringing China’s classical Confucian culture into a synthesis with the West. |
| Keyword | China modernity; literati identity; print capitalism and nationalism in 19th century China; Yijing dialectic of change in government reform; Wang Tao Confucian reformer |
| Geographic subject (country) | China |
| Coverage era | Nineteenth Century |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m3243 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Brown, Gregory David |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Brown-3903 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume23/etd-Brown-3903.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 20 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 15 “A better-than-average apprenticeship for the examinations meant beginning to learn to write characters at the age of 517, memorizing the Four books and Five Classics by the age of 11, mastering poetry composition at age 12, and studying ba gu 八股 [eight-legged] essay style thereafter.”18 Elman explains the influence of the training for the examination path in pre-modern times, that “the civil service examination system in late imperial China became a dominant force in determining the character of Chinese society on the state and cultural terms that Chinese and Manchus set for themselves before the onset of Western imperialism. Confucian learning, literati prestige, state power, and cultural practice were all accommodated to the educational testing system… [It] functioned as a measurable arbiter of elite culture, politics, and society.”19 Content in the corpus of instruction also included a particularly important dialectic found in Wang‟s bian fa zhong essay, as well described by Wolfgang Bauer as polarities between “Inner” and “Outer”, “Knowledge” and “Action.”20 Bauer points out the increasing awareness of this dialectical dilemma in the late nineteenth century, which assists for understanding the nature of its inclusion in the Wang‟s bian fa zhong argument. 17 Approximated by age 4 in Western age calculations, and subsequent ages also being about one year less. 18 Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. The Fall of Imperial China, p23. 19 Elman, Benjamin A., “Political, social, and Cultural Reproduction via civil Service Examination in Late Imperial China”, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 50, No 1 (Feb., 1991) p.8. 20 Bauer, Wolfgang. tr. from German Michael Shaw, pp. 338-345. |
