A Study Of The Literature Of The Zhang Family In Lintong,Shaanxi

In the middle of the Ming Dynasty,the government promulgated a policy of "opening up the Chinese salt industry".With the "east wind" of the policy,many Shaanxi people traveled between the Northwest and Jiangnan and embarked on the road of business and fortune.The Zhang family,who live on the banks of the Qing River in Lintong,are an important part of these Shaanxi people.Roughly in the mid to late Ming Dynasty,the Zhang family’s ancestors came from Shaanxi to Yangzhou to work in the salt industry and lived there for a long time,increasingly becoming an important group of salt merchants from Shaanxi living in Yangzhou.During the Qing dynasty,the Zhang family’s economic position became more and more secure,and they were able to finance schools,organise classes,organise literary collections,hold poetry and painting events,and so on,which made them quite famous in the Huaiyang area.Zhang Sike,Zhang Shijin and Zhang Xin,three of the family’s sons,were active in poetry,and the first two in particular had a positive impact on the literary scene in Yangzhou at the time.The introduction section aims to explain the origin of this thesis,the significance of the study and the current status of the research.The Shaanxi merchant gang has long been among the top ten merchant gangs in history,and the literary creation of Shaanxi merchants is not to be underestimated.However,the literature of Shaanxi merchants has not yet been sufficiently researched.At the same time,the link between family and literature is becoming a new entry point for the study of ancient Chinese literature.The Zhang family of writers in Lintong was both a representative of the Shaanxi merchants who entered Yangzhou from Shaanxi and an integral part of the Yangzhou literati group.The study of the Zhang family’s literary output is of great significance to the study of Shaanxi merchant literature and the interplay of literary styles between the north and the south.The first chapter is an analysis of the social context in which the literature of the Lintong Zhang family was generated.The salt policy led to the rise of the Shaanxi merchants,and as ’merchants were superior to scholars’,merchants valued cultural and educational endeavours alongside their commercial interests.In order to enlist Han Chinese intellectuals and merchants,the Qing rulers facilitated the entry of Han Chinese merchants into the civil service.Shaanxi merchants thus set up private schools and hired famous teachers to train their sons and daughters to enter the civil service.In addition to their cultural pursuits,Shaanxi merchants were also actively involved in the cultural activities of Yangzhou,singing and interacting with local and foreign scribes who came and went from Yangzhou to the north and south.However,due to the influence of the Qing dynasty’s writing prison and the policy of book compilation,the poems of the Zhang family’s literati were mostly aimed at social intercourse,landscape scenery and everyday trivialities,and did not dare to face reality.Chapters 2,3 and 4analyse and study the literary works of Zhang Sike,Zhang Shijin and Zhang Xin,three members of the Zhang family.Zhang Sike,a salt merchant in the field,often travelled between Guanzhong and Jianghuai,and had a spontaneous and bold personality.The content of the poems is all-encompassing,advocating the use of dictionaries,and the style of the poems is gloomy and cool has both.Zhang Shijin was a resigned scholar who spent his days drinking and enjoying himself with his friends,and his poetic works are mostly about leisure and everyday life,pursuing a poetic style that is rounded and easy to understand.Zhang Xin was aofficial,and most of his poems were written during his tenure at the Hanlin Academy,with an emphasis on narrative,and he was good at writing long poems of historical significance.In the concluding section,the literary ideas and literary content of Zhang Sike,Zhang Shijin and Zhang Xin are compared.All three men share the literary ideology of truthfulness and authenticity,as well as the human attitude of indifference to fame and fortune,and a willingness to retired.However,due to the different circumstances of their lives and the impact of changes in their natural and human geography,Zhang Sike’s literary thought changed considerably,from generous and open-minded,vigorous and rustic,to clear and gentle.Zhang Shijin’s poetry was composed later and he lived in Yangzhou for a long time,was less influenced by environment.Zhang Xin,on the other hand,lived in the capital for a long time and experienced a single event.As a result,their literary thinking changed less.The literary creations of the three men are of great significance in enriching the study of the literature and history of the Yangzhou region and in promoting the study of regional literature in Shaanxi.In summary,this paper would like to review and discuss the economic and cultural background of the development of the Zhang family in Lintong,Shaanxi,the social and cultural environment of the mid-Qing period,and the economic and literary and historical development of Yangzhou,which will be of some benefit to the discovery of Shaanxi history and culture,and will also be of some reference value to the study of Yangzhou literature in the Qing dynasty.