A Study Of Gu Yanwu's Experiences In Shandong

Gu Yanwu was a famous thinker in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasty and he was also a typical adherent of the overturned Ming Dynasty. Facing the end of his own dynasty and the invasion of the alien tribes, instead of choosing to die so as to show his loyalty, Gu Yanwu preferred to live and took travelling as a way to be reclusive from the society. In 1656, the fourteenth year of Shunzhi's reign, Gu Yanwu went north to Shandong and began his travelling in northern China and Shandong thus became his first station of his travelling.As to Gu Yanwu's experiences in Shandong, the academic field has only made some initial study and no one has ever systematically analyzed this part of his life. On the basis of the previous study, this thesis aims to show as much as possible the whole process of Gu Yanwu's experiences in Shandong by focusing on his various chronicles and his own writings and by comprehensively analyzing the historical materials. This thesis contains four chapters: the first chapter analyzes the reasons that Gu Yanwu went to Shandong from the points of the society, the family, the geographic features of Shandong and so on. The second chapter classifies the people that Gu Yanwu got along with in Shandong, draws the general picture of his association with the most important friends in Shandong and generalizes the rules according to which Gu Yanwu made friends. The third chapter focuses on the lawsuit in which Gu got trapped in Shandong. This part generalizes the reasons, the process and the effects of this lawsuit and pays much attention to analyzing the attitudes of the related people and the effect of this lawsuit. The fourth chapter studies how Gu Yanwu managed his land property in Shandong and analyzes in detail how Gu left Shandong.After the generalization and analysis of Gu's experiences in Shandong, this thesis concludes that Gu's experiences in Shandong were due to the fact that he had no other choice and were forced by the very epochal environment. Also these experiences reflected his expectation of a wise and new Emperor, which was typical to the adherents of the extinct Ming Dynasty. The changing rules of his making friends , his writings and the purchase of his land property in Shandong were the results of his self-adjustment to the control of the early Qing Dynasty and they were also the reflection of the reasonable existence of the adherents of the Ming Dynasty. As to the lawsuit that Gu Yanwu got trapped in, it reflected that the Qing Dynasty had relaxed its attitude towards the adherents of the overturned Ming Dynasty.