The gifted and the celebrities : a study of child education in early medieval China = Yan jing yu yang ming : zhong shi qian qi er tong jiao yu yan jiu

Abstract

BEING A CHILD is among the basic life stage with which the most of the people, from the east and from the west, has been a usual personal experience since the rise of human civilization thousands years ago. Thanks to the hard work of the anthropologists from generations, we now know that people from different societies and of different time periods, however, don’t necessarily share the same understanding about the term “children” and “childhood.” As the above phenomenon suggests, it is easier to realize that “childhood” is not a process solely shaped by the nature, which can be analyzed through studying biology; instead, “childhood”, at the same time, also belong to a culturally-constructed product.

The issue of children is occupying one of the prominent places in the Western historical studies; unfortunately, it is not the case in China. By reviewing the remained documents and antiques nowadays, there are still sufficient sources for constructing a history of Chinese children from the per-Qin period up to now. It is hoped that this thesis, which discusses about children in the medieval time of China, will to a certain extent help stimulate the research development in this aspect. Admittedly, it is my personal goal to add as many aspects of the children in Medieval China as I can into this thesis, which is not a realistic task by using two years. Consequently, the issues of learning process as well as emblazonment have been chosen as the major discussing topics of the thesis.

Of the uncultivated ground in Chinese historical studies, the concepts of “children” and “childhood” therefore have to be examined at the very beginning. Chapter 2 of the thesis tries to review the history of Chinese word “tong” 童 and to find out the connection between the meaning of slave and child. There were proscription against the hairstyle of the slaves, which the latter had to shave all of his hairs to help identify them from the ordinary people. At the same time, children’s hairs were usually cut off in their earlier period. As slave system finally collapsed and the notion of childhood gradually increased, the meaning of children turned into the major meaning of “tong.” Chapter 3, on the other hand, talks about the magical feature of the children in ancient China, which have frequently appeared in historical records. Instead of labelling these stories as the religious imagination of the author, whom were mainly the believers of the Daoism, we should accept this as a common viewpoint. In fact, we can discover the link of this features with an ever older concept—children as the mediator of the heaven and the god.

Six chapters, from Chapter 4 to 9, have been used to discuss the issue of learning process among the children in Medieval China. Amongst the subjects taught at that time, it was Confucianism enjoying the most influence. Consequently, most of the content in this section has been used in examining the case of children which were related to the study of the Book of Changes 易, the Book of Documents 書, the Classic of Poetry 詩, the Book of Rites 禮, the Spring and Autumn Annals 春秋, the Analects 論語 and the Classic of Filial Piety 孝經. The age which the children finished these Confucian texts are collected and served as indexes in order to make comparison between different periods of the time. Every case, influenced by more than one factors, was complex, so the pattern of concentric circles is applied in the purpose of directing different factors into suitable levels.

As the second paragraph has mentioned, emblazonment is another major focusing point of this thesis. Emblazonment towards children, on the one hand, can partly reflect the abilities and characteristics of the person; on the other hand, the frequency of the abilities and characteristics show the emphasis of the society at that time. As a result, by calculating the content of the emblazonments, we can understand what the people were dreaming for in different period during the medieval time in China. In general, chapter 10 discusses emblazonments which were in the form of adjective, while chapter 11 deals with noun-cantered ones.