A Comparative Study On The Literature Of The Yu Family Of The Hui Nationality In Taizhou In The Qing Dynasty

Taizhou Yu's family moved to Taizhou from Suzhou in East China's Jiangsu province during the Emperor Yongle's rule in Ming Dynasty.Since then,the family developed into one of the best-known families for their prestigious social status and cultural achievements,possibly in late Ming Dynasty and the beginning of Qing Dynasty.The family's cultural taste,reflecting the thriving and decline of the family,could be founded in the family members' poems,essays,traditional opera,calligraphy and painting.The Yu's family members'active participation in arts and cultures had boosted the development of the regional culture.Its numerous literature works were widely praised for their superb tastes,real recording of family situation,and reflecting regional features and characteristic of their era.Initiation and development of Yu's family literature took place under the particular historic,regional and cultural backdrop.The movement of using Confucius to interpret the Islamic classics by talents of Hui ethnic group during the time of late Ming Dynasty and the beginning of Qing Dynasty pushed up the localization of Islam in China.The Hui talents,well prepared for unexpected changes,moved actively to adapt to such changes and promote exchange between the Islam and Confucius.During the period,increasing cultural works and social activities among them indicated confidence of Hui people,as well as their wise for life and spirit.Like its sister cities of Yangzhou and Jinling,Taizhou,profoundly influenced by cultures in the regions south of Yangzi River,or Jiangnan culture,likely through migrants and flourishing domestic trades,provided relatively free environment for different religions.Yu's family in Taizhou followed the Jiangnan cultural traditions,put much emphasis on building of the family's superb cultural taste.This efforts could be found in the family's reading pavilions and family garden,in the family fathers' teaching with their own experience as well as the family mothers,efforts to get educated.Also,their respect to the good cultural taste was passed through fathers to sons,from brothers to brothers,and successfully formed a well-noticeable and favorable atmosphere of good education and superb culture.For the family members,their family was not only a shelter,but also a resting place of their spirit.In such a harmonious atmosphere,fellow members of the family could be able to complete up-standard literature education and heritage,while with communication with cultural celebrities in the region,the family literature could absorb nutrition and boosts from outside the family.Yu Kai,Yu Mei and Yu Guojian,the outstanding writers of the family,had their names well recognized in literature at their time in China,with positive attitude to participate in the social life.Their emotions written between the lines of their works,were interpretations put up by them via well experience of real life,and echoes of their spirit when reflecting from their living under the particular society and environment at that time.Yu Kai was the most talented writer of the family with the highest achievement in the literature.He was also known for his quick mind as a poet.Number One Book of Yuzi,a poem collection published by Yu Kai at age 22,included fifteen volumes of poems,four volumes of essays and four volumes of other styles of works.He was good at long poems and suite poems,with non-flattering in language skills,outstanding thoughts and conveying Transcendent spirits.He was a Islam believer,especially at his old-age,and had intimate friendship with Liu Zhi,another scholar of Hui people in Jinling.Yu Kai agreed on Liu Zhi's thought and backed Liu's efforts on of using Confucius to interpret the Islamic classics.Yu Kai himself also went in full swing to promote the movement of Confucius-Islam interpretation and harmony.Yu Mei,as a cultural official of Qing Dynasty,was an editor of masterpiece of All Poems of Tang Dynasty,and A Dictionary of Kangxi,funded by the imperial court at that time.His works included Collection in Year of Jiashen and Collection of Dreaming Relics,compiled mostly his poems written between age 35-40.In this work,he expressed a lot of his weary and nostalgic feelings.Yu Mei's major focus was put on poem writing,recorded with poems of different styles and expressing various feeling.Yu Guojian's gift on literature was known when he was young.And he had frequent communications with local cultural celebrities.Then he went to the Chinese capital Beijing to seek opportunities on his career,but without satisfying results,he finally returned hit hometown.Unsatisfying experience cast influence over his poems to undertake a change from an basic emotional setting of joyful to a relatively gloomy in his late years.Such change could be easily spotted in his work of Poems at House of Qiaoyueshan.Even with depressed career in his life,Yu Guojian kept straight to be a good man all the time.His poems showed his tolerance,calmness and observation of nature and good virtue.Besides the above-mentioned three representative of Yu's family,other talents such as Yu Hu,Yu Tao,Yu Yu,Yu Qi,and Yu Linshu,also made respective achievements in literature by their very different works,contributing to the reputation of Yu's family as a cultural turf.As part of the family culture,Yu's family literature indicated different situation in history,in accordance with the family's thriving and decline.While as part of the regional culture,the family's literature activity,as a group accumulation,saw increasing numbers of works and various of contents,boosting the cultural development of the region.As part of culture of Hui people in China,the family literature indicated Hui people's efforts to learn and absor'b Han culture.As part of literature history of Qing Dynasty,it should have received influence from different literature schools and literature theories at that time,and form the common features of poems in Qing Dynasty and their own characters.These factors,including regional,natural environment,family culture and aesthetic habits,exerted influence on Yu's family literature to show its common features like emotional depicting of hometown,social intervention by a well-educated tradition of Chinese intellectuals,plain-writing,frank-speaking styles.These features were also evidence to close links between family literature and regional literature,and provided favorable example to study on Hui people's valued aesthetic views,attachments with the time and characters of Hui people.