Ming Dynasty Chinese Books In Yunnan Geographic

Yunnan has been well-known for its ethnic groups and multi-cultural diversity since ancient China, during which Ming Dynasty has played an essential role in the process of Han culture's merging into Yunan society. It was in Ming Dynasty that Han group gradually became the major one in Yunnan and Han culture dominated the mainstream. As the indispensible documentary of Han culture, its relevant Chinese scriptures and records has experienced development and changes.Since Ming dynasty, Chinese scriptures and records have been recorded in Yunnan chorography. For instance, Fang Guoyu, Fang Shumei, Li Xiaoyuan, and other scholars edited bibliography of Yunnan documents retrieval. However, the scholars only regarded Chinese documents as the key elements of Yunnan culture progress, and mainly focused on historical geography from historical linguistics, leaving the research on the location of time and space diversity a bare land. Based on the previous literature review, the author targets on Chinese scriptures and documents, and aims to reconstruct its position in the Yunnan culture progress and analyze the environmental effects during the evolution.The paper reviews the development of Han culture scriptures and documents before Ming dynasty, and divides the progress into two eras, pre Tang dynasty and post Tang dynasty. Before Tang dynasty, the documents were mainly the inscriptions on metals and stones, leaving very few paper based Han culture scriptures. Since Tang dynasty, the numbers of Han culture scriptures and documents began to increase dramatically, most of which are historical documents and poetry, together with the increasing number of writers from all walks of the society. However, the Han culture scriptures and documents still remain scarce and scattered. During Ming dynasty, Han culture scriptures and documents witnessed its own critical period, with the large amounts of immigrants flooding into Yunnan, the prosperity of schools in different places, and the popularity of Confucius education, in particular, the rising of the new elite classes who did academic research in Chinese. Han culture was characterized in the rising number, categories, and geographical location. As is recorded, there are about 622 scriptures and records written by people from Yunnan. During different eras of Ming dynasty, Han culture scriptures and records were various. For example, there are about 20 scriptures and records from Hongwu to Xuande, and over 50 records from Zhengtong to Zhengde, and the numbers increased up to 100 in Jiajing era, even broke the historical record of 180 from Taichang to Yongli, and kept the stable development till the end of Ming dynasty. There appeared distinct location from very intensive areas, such as Yunnan capital, less intensive areas including Dali, Lin'an, Yongchang, generally intensive areas including Heqing, Chuxiong, Qujing, Lijiang, Yao'an, Chengjiang, Menghua, sparse intensive areas including Guangxi, Beishengzhou, Wuding, and the least intensive or bare areas, which covers Yuanjiang, Jingjiang, Zhenhuan, Shunning, Yongning, Xundian.Besides, the researcher has several close-up studies into the two cases during the development of Han culture scriptures and records. One research focuses on the influence of scholar Yang Sheng, who played the leading role in the academic group, who specialized in the study of Yunnan. It is recorded that Yang Sheng has researched Yunnan for over 30 years, and people in various circles socialized with him, took example from him, and formed typical research teamwork, thus has promoted the Han culture development. The other research mainly focuses on the Yunnan local chronicles from time, numbers, locations, and the writers'biography, and then probes into the evolution of Yunnan history, culture and geography.The author expects that the research of Han culture scriptures and documents of Yunnan would benefit the regional culture and the establishing of a ethnic- group province. Due to the implicit classification of Han culture scriptures and documents, and other elements, certain points of view may appear one-sided, thus all the criticism and communication are sincerely welcomed for my further research.