| The shiren, namely literati or intellectuals, were an elite class in China of the old times. Their internal mentality and eternal manners were among what were characteristics of their time, and these also linked up with the vicissitudes of the dynasty under which they lived. In particular, such most social aspects of their activities as the ways, choices of object, and attitudes of their social intercourse could have all the more reflected mutations of their class and their interplay with the society.Within recent years, there has had considerable scholarship in studies of special subjects concerning the Ming shiren of the region south to the Yangtze River. However, most articles and monographs have focused on the ideographical and political aspects rather than have studied the social life of the shiren at the angles of social and cultural histories. If the social intercourse of the shiren is somehow dealt with occasionally, it is mostly attributed to the pursuits of fame and profit. The historical and cultural factors of substratum that imposed impacts on their social intercourse are little surveyed. That is of truth that the social intercourse of the shiren was complicated: its motives were diversified and a certain motive depended on a certain individual. Utility and diversion were nevertheless main concrete motives. Besides, the cultural psychology, ethos, and collective likes and dislikes of the shiren must have been responsible for their acquaintanceship. In this dissertation, it is from a cultural viewpoint that I investigate the shiren' social intercourse so that the class would be known better.The Middle and Late Ming was a period of great changes in politics, economy and culture. The mushrooming of commodity economy and thedeviation of society from the traditional Confucianism, above all, had new, unprecedented phenomena emerging from the background of the whole society, particularly, in the region to the south of the Yangtze River. All this had a great influence upon the psychology, values, attitudes, manners, and activities of social intercourse of the shiren there. In particular, this period witnessed a rapid increase in the population of the shiren, while the imperial examination system could only provide limit chances for them. As a result, many shiren of this region would meet a trouble in a jam of candidates for the examination. The political corruption abated their zeal for a position through the imperial examination, and the principle, "Serve the whole of society while having attained to some.official position, but only cultivate yourself while no achievement", in traditional Confucianism was severely challenged. When no political opportunity saw shiren, they would have no alternative to seek cultural creations. Consequently, they played a better cultural role and promoted cultural prosperity in the region to the south of the Yangtze River in the middle and late periods of the Ming dynasty.The social intercourse was one of their concerns; they had a large, frequent circle of acquaintances including prominent figures and officials. The shiren organized different types of societies and associations. The public forms of their intercourse were the institution and lecture, and the private forms, the visiting study, feast, and tea party. By doing these, they were quite active in society. Nonetheless, against the flourishing scene of the shiren's social intercourse was comparatively infrequency of the social intercourse of some poverty-stricken ones of them, who disdained to make money and communicate with others. Apart from the shiren themselves and officials, their large circle of acquaintances also increasingly included such townsmen as merchants, prostitutes and craftsmen. Since their social intercourse trended to extend to lower and labour classes, the shiren showed a tendency towards popularization by diluting their traditional4concept of "literacy being superior to all other professions". In the meanwhile, the shiren of this time kept the tradition of making frien...
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