Study On Plaque Archives In Jin Merchant's Grand Courtyards In Ming And Oing Dynasty

In the long history of China,various types of civilizations have been bred in this vast expanse land.Dominated by Han ethnic,Chinese nationality gives birth to the cultural thought,which is the historical foundation of china's 5,000 years civilization.From yelling to each other in order to exchange massages to engraving pictographic characters on shells,then to recording information by precise words,it is a difficult journey.This is the history of a nation and a country,also a vivid history of archive.In the history which had no modern tools,words became the best tool to record information.The expression of all our history,thoughts,behaviors were depend on words.We can say our civilization is reflected by words to a great extent,and also the prime choice to express the degree of each civilizations in chronological sequence.Archive is the root of a nationality's culture,and a foundation of a country's existence and development.Neither a ethnic group nor a country can abandon archive.Through human history,using archives to extent memory has become a formal recognition of society's development,and new practical activities of society have been launched by our consistent consider and circular recall of archives.Plaque is this kind of a civilization display,which utilizing original history record to condense memories into the deeply meaning of words,and it is also a kind of a culture deep expression,which using masterpieces as contents to reflect historical facts by hanging it on the door.Thus,plaque is not only a complement to traditional archival histroty facts and history records,but also a "converging place" of literature,art,and calligraphy.Merchants from Shanxi province were a symbol of China's business area in Ming and Qing dynasty.They started with running salt business in Ming dynasty,and then vote became their main business in Qing dynasty,and soon their private banks were all over China and even had business with European countries.When their wealth accumulated to a certain level,they began to build courtyards one after one in Qixian county,Taigu county and Pingyao county of Jingzhong,Shanxi,and this made them change from pedlars to keepers.Generations after generations,merchants of Shanxi established a monument of Jin merchant,and bred a commercial culture.Behind this commercial culture,there was so many ceaseless efforts made by cultural businessmen,the plagues in Jin merchant's grand courtyards were a good reflection of that.Some of the plagues were hanged by merchants themselves,and some were given by the ruling class or members of other social strata,this was an affirmation to them.We can tell from above that plagues in Jin merchant's grand courtyards in Ming and Qing dynasty were a true record of their families and pratical activities at that time,and a solidification of memories which passed from history at that time to today,and also a efficient way to find historical memories behind the plagues.This paper discusses with plague archives in Jin merchant's grand courtyards in Ming and Qing dynasty,and meant to deeply analyze and study on Jin merchant's grand courtyards in Ming and Qing dynasty from archival perspective.Take broadening the research of science of achive as a train of thought,riching existing research system of science of archive as original intention,this paper bases on the further thinking towards plague archives in Jin merchant's grand courtyards in Ming and Qing dynasty,to realize the deep digging on archive memory of Jin area and study of "archivalization" of Chinese traditional cultural memory.Through combining theory and practice to have a integrated consideration about the historical and realistic meaning of plague archives in Jin merchant's grand courtyards in Ming and Qing dynasty.While having a thinking of plague archives resources in Jin merchant's grand courtyards in Ming and Qing dynasty from cultural construction perspective,and taking development and utilization of its resources as final goal,in order to realize the comprehensive and systemic recognition and analysis towards plague archives in Jin merchant's grand courtyards in Ming and Qing dynasty,and made it a meaningful thought of which using archive as its memory extent.