Children's Life In The Southern Area Of The Yangtze River During The Ming And Qing Dynasties

This thesis takes "life" as the problem orientation and uses identity roles as the basis for classification.Based on the exploration and absorption of senior scholars' achievements,this thesis studies children's game,education and destiny of marginalized children,with the historical materials on a variety of novels,notes,genealogies,poems and woodprint.This paper focuses on the study of the middle and lower class children's game life,life skills,learning and work,as well as the life and fate of the marginal children in the Southern Area of the Yangtze River during the Ming and Qing dynasties.Playing games is the main activity of children in the early years of their life.Games are the beginning of children's acceptance of the world of daily life and gradual socialization.The first chapter classifies games into several categories and analyzes some common games.The author divided several common games of children in the south of the Yangtze river during the Ming and Qing dynasties into "natural games" and "social games".In "natural games",children gradually understand and control the power of nature and life experience."Social games" focus on social relations.Children control socialize by games gradually and exercise their thinking,interpersonal skills,practical activities.Children's games provide is not only the function of entertainment,but also the ability to shape an individual's future life from various levels.In the second chapter,the author analyzes and studies the life skill learning and labor life of middle and lower class children in the Yangtze river during the Ming and Qing dynasties.Children's education has always been the focus of academic circles,but scholars usually focus on the elite education in the upper middle class.Scholars seldom pay attention to the mass education of the middle and lower classes,but the popularization of mass culture education is just one of the characteristics of children's education in this dynasties.Compared with other regions in the former and sameperiod of China,the development of the commodity economy in the Yangtze river during the Ming and Qing dynasties provided the possibility and necessity for the popularization of children's basic cultural knowledge education.In addition,In this dynasties,the middle and lower class society often paid attention to the vocational skills training for their children from childhood,and the learning process of life skills was often closely combined with labor activities.Children use labor to learn the skills which they need to survive in the future,such as: agricultural skills,textile skills,fishing skills and business skills,and eventually become an individual who can live independently.At the same time,children's laboring plays a role in sharing the pressure of family life with their parents.The third chapter makes a deeper research to children's life in the context of social history by exploring the misfortune of children,including being drowned,abandoned or sold to be child bride,servant,beggar or prostitute.The text found that the actual operation of the people and the official legal provisions are disjointed.Many of the marginalized groups of children are trafficked by their parents like cattle or trafficked by human traffickers.They leave the shelter of their parents and enter the society at an early age.They take on the pressure of life alone and become "adults" in miniature.Through their lives to enhance the understanding of society,aware of the gaps in a seemingly stable society,restore a real world of everyday life.