Study On The Reading Behavior Of Modern Scholar Xu Zhaowei

During the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China,it was a period of great turmoil and great change in modern Chinese society.The new cultural environment was constantly changing,and new reading media began to emerge.Xu Zhaowei was an intellectual who grew up in the old society.He studied Confucian culture since he was a child,but before and after the Republic of China when the new culture prevailed,he successively experienced events such as the abolition of the imperial examination system,studying in Japan,and serving as a member of Congress.From the old civilization to the new society,he tried to catch up step by step,constantly adjust himself to learn new cultural trends.In this process,as the largest source for the literati to obtain cultural knowledge and external information,their reading behavior has undergone a great change.This paper taking The Diary of Xu Zhaowei as the interpretation text,taking Xu Zhaowei’s reading behavior as the research object,under the framework of the era background and regional environment,combing and examining Xu Zhaowei’s reading activities in the turbulent late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China,from four aspects of reading content,reading media,reading approach and reading function,analyze Xu Zhaowei’s reading preferences,understanding of books,and changes in his reading behavior over time,so as to outline a relatively complete history of his reading behavior.This paper consists of more than 60,000 words and is divided into four parts.The main contents are as follows:The first chapter mainly introduces Xu Zhaowei’s life experience,as well as the contents,characteristics and writing background of his diary,and discusses the value of diary research in the field of new cultural history.The second chapter interprets the historical background and regional environment of the research subject,and analyzes the distinctive era characteristics and strong regional characteristics of his reading behavior in a specific cultural atmosphere.The third chapter interprets the changes of Xu Zhaowei’s reading behavior under the changing times,which is the focus of this thesis.By studying the text content of Xu Zhaowei’s diary,I have sorted out the changing process of some aspects of Xu Zhaowei’s reading behavior.In terms of reading content,Xu Zhaowei has experienced the evolution from old-fashioned books such as classics and history to new learning books,new novels,and professional discipline books.In the reading medium,it has also experienced an evolution from the old to the new.Before the emergence of new newspapers and periodicals,Xu Zhaowei’s reading texts were mainly hand-copied and engraved editions of ancient books.With the emergence of newspapers and periodicals,Xu Zhaowei began to read a large number of newspapers and magazines,and later radio broadcasting emerged as a new reading medium.As an intellectual in the traditional society,Xu Zhaowei’s reading sources are diverse.At the beginning,he mainly bought books in bookstores.With the further expansion of book publishing and distribution channels,old book shops gradually derived from borrowing,ordering,mail order,marketing,renting books and other ways of selling books.In terms of reading function,Xu zhaowei read a large number of neo-Confucianism books in his early years to hone his intelligence and cultivate his mind.Then,as the situation became more and more turbulent,the idea of "benefiting the country so that it can be used" became more and more popular.During this period,Xu zhaowei read a lot of classics to absorb the successful learning experience and apply it to the world.Later,under the rising tide of new novels,Xu Zhaowei began to compile novel materials.During this period,he enriched his research by reading a great deal of new novels and other studies of novels.After the intensification of social change and the unpredictable situation of the civil war,Xu zhaowei began to rely on newspaper reading to obtain new knowledge and various war information.The fourth chapter is the extension of the research value of the text of Xu Zhaowei’s Diary,and looks at Xu’s reading behavior in a large social environment.The history of reading change of a group is not only a history of readers’ personal thought evolution,but also a history of social change.To explore the reading process of the local gentry group in modern times is exactly an important aspect of the study of the development history of modern Chinese society.Through the personal reading history of Xu Zhaowei,we can see the reading,education,communication activities and life patterns of the gentry in modern China.This paper probes into the process of establishing new education and local libraries in villages and towns led by Xu Zhaowei,sorts out the development of local modernized public undertakings,and probes into the development of modern Chinese rural society in the rapid change of times and the evolution of local system.