On The Historical Cultural Geography Of Eastern Hubei In The Late Qing Dynasty

In the late Qing Dynasty and Republican China,a peak of a large number of talents suddenly appeared in Hubei Province,especially in the East,"only Chu is talented,and the East is the most";which has become a characteristic in the cultural history of the East Hubei.This article focused on the selection of three cultural indicators which were education,characters,and works,to present the cultural figuration of eastern Hubei in the late Qing and also thought about its causes.In the late Qing,education was well developed in eastern Hubei,various levels of schools and academies were all over the city and countryside.In terms of official education,the academic palaces in eastern Hubei were generally underwent several times of reconstructions in the Qing Dynasty,and the period from Shunzhi to Yongzheng and Xianfeng to Guangxu were two large-scale construction periods.In the early Qing,Huanggang,Qishui and Huangmei possessed the mostly education places,followed by Macheng,Huang’an,Guangji and Qizhou,and the number of places in Luotian was the smallest.However,the government financial crisis caused by the war in the late Qing broke the balance,and the number of places in various counties increased to varying degrees.Comparing to the official education,academy was the representative form of private study.There were many academies in eastern Hubei in the late Qing,but the regional distribution were uneven,among them Huanggang,Qishui and Huang’an were intensively distributed;Macheng,Guangji,Luotian and Huangmei were sparse.Noted that the builders of many academies were local officials,which also reflected the "officialness" of academies in the Qing.Since the official education and academies declined in the late Qing,new schools were started in various places.In terms of number,Qizhou had the largest number of new schools in eastern Hubei,Macheng and Luotian had the least.Most of them were built in the late Guangxu Dynasty,as the product of the education reform of the New Deal in the late Qing;the abolition of the imperial examination system cleared the biggest obstacle to the reform and accelerated the establishment of new schools.In the late Qing,the regional distribution of characters in eastern Hubei were very uneven,Huanggang,Guangji and Luotian were dense areas,while Huang’an and Macheng were relatively sparse areas.In terms of character types,eastern Hubei had a complete range of character types in late Qing,especially political,military,and cultural characters.Among them,the number of political and military characters accounted for an absolute majority,followed by cultural characters;and the number of technology and economic characters were relatively small while gradually emerged.Generally,this kind of distributed feature was closely related to the era background of the humanistic development in eastern Hubei.Under the inertial influence of the highly developed humanities in eastern Hubei during the Ming and early Qing dynasties,traditional cultural characters were still abound in the late Qing;meanwhile,anti-Qing revolutions were surging,countless revolutionaries embarked on the road of revolution,many of them have made extraordinary achievements and entered in the scrolls of history.The total number of works of eastern Hubei was huge,but the geographical distribution was very uneven during the Qing Dynasty;the number of works in Huanggang occupied an absolute advantage,followed by Qizhou.Generally speaking,the administrative center in one place was also the local cultural center,attracting the accumulation of talents and becoming a dense area for the production of works.As the capital governance county of Huangzhou State in the Qing Dynasty,Huanggang had attracted a large number of talents in the region for a long time and produced a large number of works;before the unity of Huangzhou and Qizhou,Qizhou had also long assumed the role of administrative center,and its cultural status did not collapse with the loss of the administrative center,its cultural attraction reserved and still had quite influence for a long time after the merger of the two states.In the Qing Dynasty,the number of works in Qizhou was not as great as that of Huanggang,but far exceeded the remaining counties.Observing from the micro-level of social transformation in the late Qing,"Education Promoted by Temple Property","Study Style of Pragmatism" and "Gentleman’s Crisis" have become three representative factors to promote the evolution of the regional culture in the East of Hubei.First of all,"Education Promoted by Temple Property" could not only solve the school premises,but also alleviated the government’s insufficient funding for education,which provided a perfect economic basis for cultural development.Under the vigorous derivation of the ruling class,"Education Promoted by Temple Property" became the main measure of the late Qing education revolution.Secondly,in terms of cultural orientation,"Study Style of Pragmatism" advocated that learning must be beneficial to the state,paying attention to the real society and facing social contradictions.With the strong promotion of Hu Linyi in Hubei,this new cognitive orientation through culture and society had generated profound impact for the cultural ecology of eastern Hubei in the late Qing.Finally,a large number of people obtained the status of gentlemen through informal ways in the financial crisis caused by the unrest in the late Qing,the number increased so sharply,and mainly low-level gentlemen;that many of them embarked on the road of revolution in the social turmoil because of the decrease in their status value.Anyway,it became a great political assistance to promote the evolution of regional culture in eastern Hubei.