Personal Identity Of Shushi In Transitional China

Since late Qing Dynasty, Shushi, whose thoughts affected the modern intellectuals, has gradually faded from people’s memory. In traditional China, owing to poverty or "favor", many scholars ran Sishu. Compared to a teacher, they preferred to be viewed as Confucian scholars. Besides teaching, they had multipe roles, for instance, the instuctor of traditional ceremony.In transitional period, there were changed and conservative individuals. Both of them mantained the authority in rural areas. The Classics and the Confucian morals were still firmly trusted in that period. Therefore, Shushi, who mainly teach Classics maintained their authority. The "favor" pattern, which was an important characteristic of Chinese society, highly developed pragmatic reasoning in China, Shushi’s gentry status, a variety of social responsibilities on their shoulders and the fact that some of them became a part of the new school system after being trained all contributed to the consolidation of their authority.The inheritance of tradition is a major reason for the persistence of Shushi’s authority, which means that most of them were conservative ones. They still believed in basic Confucian morals. However, different individuals had different views on specific issues.In transitional period, the most significant change of Shushi was that they were oncerned more teaching affairs. They devoted themselves to teaching and had faith in Education Salvation. Their transformation is not only a way to show the transformation of the traditional idea in the bottom of Chinese society and how the new ideas being accepted, but also to reveal a different process in different places of China.