| In ancient China,the society was under the governing of the patriarchal clan system and filial piety concept.At the nation level, the law would maintain the society’s order, while the clansmen played an important role in the management over prefectures and counties."Loyalty,filial piety,chastity, righteousness" are core concepts in Confucian thics,and are also the Four Virtues in Chinese traditional ethics,and derive other ethics in China.In traditional rural society,"loyalty, filial piety, chastity, righteousness" are the most often mentioned,the most familiar,the most rutinely obeyed ethics.To study the practice of them is important for us to understand ethic reality in rural society.Huizhou was a typical lineage society in Ming and Qing Dynasty. There was a set of patriarchal system as well as regulations of clan which constraint people’s behaviors and coordinated relations between different clans. Besides the national laws, there were a kind of folk laws that had universality and public binding--which was between national laws and moral and ethical relationships.Clan possessed the most fundamental constraints for morality and ethics, especially for coordinating the ties of various clans. The cases of ethics relations seem to be more practical and direct.Typically the Huizhou counties, every clan strove to get harmonious development within and good relations with other clans, and they all payed their efforts for the village governance.this is also the wisdom key to the stable development of counties for centuries in Huizhou. Xitouwu village is a natural village in Huizhou,which has only a population of less 300,but has a history of more than 400 years.Four clans Wang,Wang,Hu, Jiang have lived there from Ming Dynasty till now.Its social structure is so stable that there must be some key factors.In this village we find some documents which are not great in number but great in in information.These first-handed documents, connected with ethics,provide us the possilities to understand the ethic reality in the village.Based on the relevant documents we have in hand and the field research we have taken in Huizhou,we study the practice of loyalty, filial piety, righteousness" in Qing Dynasty and the period of the Republic of China.Through reviewing the academic history,the introductory of this thesis provides academic background for the study. There are many thesises about Huizhou documents,however, they just use the theories of literature materials to elaborate theories,and most of them are theoretical while few of them combined theory with practice. However,the Ethics emphasize on practice,in other words, ethics embody the practice of human daily life. This thesis tries to combine the new discovery of Huizhou documents, the knowledge of The Ethics with field researches.The body of this thesis is divided into four parts.The first part is about the introduction of Xitouwu village and its remained documents.The second part is about the practice of "loyalty" in this village,which is reflected in obeying the national laws and in paying national taxes.The third part is about the practice of "filial piety" in this village, which is reflected in building ancestral temples,repairing family trees,emphasizing offering sacrifices to ancestors;and which is also reflected in supporting parents,respecting elders etc.The fourth part is about the practice of "righteousness"in this village,which is reflected in taking care of or helping each other among people. |
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