| Since the Opium War, China began the process of modernization. The process proceeded from outward appearance to inner essence, gradually deepening. Until late after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the court above and the masses below in China finally reached an agreement on the importance of education in realizing the modernization and the new-style education began to be carried out like a raging fire. After the imperial examination system was abolished in 1905, this momentum became more violent. Compared with traditional Chinese private school education, the establishment of new-style education needed huge capital investment, but the Qing government that had been beset with troubles internally and externally was unable to provide effective financial support for this, therefore, using temple property became the realistic choice. And then "constructing schools with temple property" rose in the late Qing Dynasty but the movement soon lost control caused by a large number of temple property disputes among the people. In order to include them in the government’s control, both Yuan Shikai administration and Nanjing national government promulgated a series of laws to regulate the movement of "constructing schools with temple property", but this "regulation" was not the negation of "constructing schools with temple property", but in the hope that this movement could be carried out in order. All the governments of each period held supportive or acquiescent attitude towards the practice of using temple property to run schools and made "constructing schools with temple property" achieve sustainable development within a relatively long period of time. The Japanese invasion in 1937 broke the process of "constructing schools with temple property", and the educational circles also generally believed that the movement would basically put to an end after 1937, but seen from the existing data, after the Anti-Japanese War ended in 1945, the movement of "constructing schools with temple property" flourished again, but the research on this period still remains blank. The essence of "constructing schools with temple property" lies in "appropriating temples to run schools". There existed the phenomenon of "appropriating temples to run schools" in most counties in Jiangsu after the war. After looking up a lot of archives data and data of newspapers and periodicals, the author tries to restore the historical situation of "appropriating temples to run schools" in the most typical places, namely, Baoshan, Changzhou, Lishui, Changshu. It is found in this process that the occupied temples can be basically divided into folk belief system ancestral halls and Buddhist temples. Occupying different types of temples would cause the game playing between different social forces, the expropriation of folk belief ancestral halls would provoke the conflict between elites in new and old places while the expropriation of Buddhist temples would cause the conflict between local forces and Buddhist groups. Based on restoring the historical situation in the greatest degree, the author carries out in-depth analysis of the reason for the emergence of another climax of "appropriating temples to run schools" after the war and tries to make a reasonable explanation towards this phenomenon. In terms of the reason for another climax of "appropriating temples to run schools" after the war, in addition to the the two chronic illnesses, namely vague ownership of property temples in the legal level and serious shortage of education funds, the national government vigorously promoted national education after the war, there was a time limit for Administrative Relief and Rehabilitation, Suning branch to restore damaged primary schools with aid supplies, the movement of "donating the school to offer birthday congratulations to Chiang Kai-shek" rising during Chiang Kai-shek’s sixtieth birthday, are all essential to the climax of "appropriating temples to run schools" in the postwar period in Jiangsu, and these are all the new characteristics of "appropriating temples to run schools" as well. All kinds of disputes occurring in the process of "appropriating temples to run schools" presented vivid picture of game playing among the state, local places and religions. The three subjects of "appropriating temples to run schools" were the state and local places and religions and they have different emphasized points. The national level focused on the education level of the ruling group so as to speculate on their attitude towards new-style education. The local level was trying to portray the historical track of "appropriating temples to run schools" that local elites changed in succession, trying to interpret the transfer of local power center in modern times through analyzing the changes of subjects that dominating "appropriating temples to run schools". Buddhism is regarded as the center of religion; discuss the formation of national Buddhist groups in modern times and their interactions with "appropriating temples to run schools" to show the historical process of Buddhism forces safeguarding their own interests from decentralization to union. The three subjects, namely, the state, local places, and religions played different roles in different conflicts and the game playing of the three forces provides a wonderful footnote for us to understand the modern history of China. |
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