The Prosperity Of Chin Shih In The North Fujian During Song Dynasty And Its Influence

Song Dynasty is a historical period of rapid development in social history, when the material and spiritual civilization of Fujian had made a great achievement. Especially the Imperial Examination of Fujian ranked first in Song Dynasty. The ups and downs of the Imperial Examination and the numbers of scholars who passed the examination would always be the most important and objective scale to measure the writing style and education level of a district. No different from other districts, plenty of scholars from the north Fujian had passed the national examination. This paper studies the profile, cause and social influence of Chin Shih in north Fujian during Song Dynasty. The writer not only collects a great number of material on Chin Shih in the north Fujian, such as the official records of Fujian province and those of counties, but also reads some historical records and monographs concerned and has carried textual criticism, analysis, comparisons and summaries on the above materials. The Imperial Examination in the north Fujian took on a prosperous look during Song Dynasty while 2092 of scholars passed the examination and the number of Chin Shih geographically differed in each state and county. The probable cause of the prosperity of Chin Shih in north Fujian during Song Dynasty could be the geographical element, the development of education and economy, the carving for printing boom, living studying style and the rise of study-persuading custom and the Minology (Min is the byname of Fujian). Many of the Chin Shih in the north Fujian were celebrities in political, economic, military and cultural field.They had made great contributions to the country and were recorded in the History of Song and General Record of Ba Min. Most of the Chin Shih secured an official position in Fujian. They contributed a lot to the politics, economy, culture and education of Fujian at that time—they had made the carving for printing more flourishing, finalized and popularized the Minology and eventually made Cheng and Zhu's Neo-Confucianism a dominative position throughout the country.