The Study Of The Economy And Social Activities Of Wan Clan Of Hong Village In Qing Dynasty

Ancient Huizhou was a clan community which was comprised of immigrants, its village pattern of the big families that with a race gathering followed the north clans’ pattern and kept it that way. But this village pattern was broken gradually in the middle and later periods of Qing Dynasty, the persons of different surnames settled into some villages and turned into permanent residents had become a common phenomenon in Huizhou. This paper is intended to make use of Wan clan’s documents to study the economic activities and social activities of Wan clan, as well as combining:with Wang clan’s documents and Guo clan’s documents of Hong Village to discuss the historical changes of Huizhou clans in the middle and later periods of Qing Dynasty and the interaction between Wan clan and others clans, to discuss the question of internal release about Huizhou clans in the middle and later periods of Qing Dynasty meticulously. Thus, we can grasp the changes of Chinese traditional local society deeply.The introduction of this paper provides academic background for my study through the review of academic history. The existed studies of Hong Village are abundant, but many study the natural structure of Hong Village, and the studies of rural clans’economic activities and social activities also are from the perspective of individual families, its can’t lay emphasis on economic and social intercourse between several clans so that this piece of researches are still lacking. The domestic studies of clans’interaction are rich, but they always only used family tree, not take advantage of Huizhou household documents to study roundly.This paper is divided into three chapters:Chapter one:Wan clan of Hong Village of Yi County and its remaining documents. This chapter includes the arrangement and overall introduction of Wan clans of Hong village in Yi county. The main content are the source of migration, status, clan’s forming process, the population reproduction and the remaining documents of Wan clan of Hong village, in order to prove that Wan clan is meet the requirements of this paper as a research object and there are more enough documents can be used to study.Chapter two:the economy of Wan clan of Hong Village of Yi County. This chapter is highlight, it will probe three parts respectively:the land acquisition of Wan clan of Hong village, the personal loan of Wan clan of Hong village and the finance benefit between Wan clan and other clans. The first part arranges and studies the land acquisition of Xiqin Hall and Dunmu Hall, and find that Wan clan’s economic foundation was thick relatively and there is a lot of interaction with other clans in economy. The second part studies the personal loan of Wan clan of Hong village, discovering that the loan interest between Wan clan and other clan always much lower than three percent monthly by the law, and the character of loan is partial to mutual assistance, as well as the distance of relationship between debtor and creditor influence the high-low of loan interest. The third part studies the finance benefit between Wan clan and other clans, it deems that the monthly interest of Money Meeting which Wan clan organize or take part,but it also has a good return so that Wan clan have a lot of interaction with other clans in the shape of Money Meeting.Chapter three:the social activities of Wan clan of Hong Village of Yi County. This chapter is highlight too, it will probe three parts respectively:the alliance between Wan clan and other clans, the interaction in social affairs and the establishment of local education. The first part studies the alliance between Wan clan and other clans, it thinks that the numbers of alliance between Wan clan and the common clans are maximum. The second part studies the interaction in social affairs, it consider that Wan clan intervened in local social affairs of Hong village in order to blend in Hong village. The third part studies the establishment of local education, it expects that the teaching contents of private teacher of Wan clan lay particular stress on finding a livelihood, and the local education made contributions to all clans of Hong village.