Family Fortunes in the Song-Yuan Transition: Academies and Chinese Elite Strategies for Success

T’oung Pao 97 (2011) 000-000 www.brill.nl/tpaoT ’OUNG PAO

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156853211X592561

Family Fortunes in the Song-Yuan Transition:Academies and Chinese Elite Strategies for Success

Linda Walton(Portland State University)

Abstract

e founding of academies was a strategy that enabled some Chinese elite families to retain their status through the Song-Yuan transition and beyond. Family academies provided both educational and professional opportunities. e Yuan government rewarded support of education by appointing a family member as academy headmas-ter, an unranked post that often led to local or regional educational offices. After the restoration of the examination system in 1315, the descendants of the academy found-ers benefited from family academy education in the competition for examination degrees.

Résumé

Fonder une académie était une stratégie qui permit à certaines familles chinoises de l’élite de conserver leur statut pendant la transition Song-Yuan, et au-delà. Les acadé-mies familiales ouvraient des possibilités aussi bien éducatives que professionnelles. Le gouvernement des Yuan récompensait un tel soutien à l’éducation en nommant un membre de la famille directeur de l’académie, poste dénué de rang mais conduisant souvent à des postes de fonctionnaire d’éducation au niveau local ou régional. Après le rétablissement du système des examens en 1315, les descendants des fondateurs d’aca-démies purent profiter de l’enseignement dispensé dans les académies familiales pour mieux se placer dans la compétition dans les examens.

Keywords

academies, Song, Yuan, education, examination system, family, schools

In the fourth month of 1275, as city after city in the central Yangzi valley fell to the troops of the Mongol general Bayan , newly appointed Minister of Personnel Wang Yinglin (1223-1296)

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composed an inscription commemorating an academy in his home prefecture, Mingzhou .1 Dedicated to the local scholar Shu Lin

(1136-1199), a prominent follower of the Southern Song thinker Lu Jiuyuan , Guangping Academy was established by his grandson Shu Mi (1244 jinshi) at the site of Shu Lin’s private school (shushu ). After describing Shu Lin’s school and his disciples’ desire to continue his legacy, Wang ruminated more broadly on contemporary education and society. He first described the education of the shi in antiquity, proposing that local schools made possible the transmission of learning from generation to generation and sug-gesting that this was crucial to the ongoing reproduction of the shi as a social and cultural elite:

In ancient times the shi had a constant mind, and their households followed uniform customs. At the age of eight, students entered primary school; at ten, they studied with a teacher outside [the home]. Twenty-five households made a community, and [each] community had east and west schools. e elders of the townships who were moral and upright served as teachers of the east and west, they resided in the two schools [and conducted the] “sprinkling and sweeping, facing and responding” [the elementary modes of education]. ere the students carefully attended to the Odes, Documents, Rites, and Music; there they prac-ticed filiality, brotherliness, harmony, and sincerity; there one refined nurturing and teaching. Immersing [the students] in cultivation [in the schools] was the means by which people acquired the conduct of the scholar-exemplar [shijunzi], and the sons of shi always became shi.2

Wang then extended his discussion to the importance of family rules and of maintaining genealogies for the perpetuation of shi values and status. He argued that long-lived and highly esteemed lineages achieved these distinctions by focusing on the transmission of core values over generations through the preservation of family and lineage, and he

1) Wang Yinglin , “Guangping shuyuan ji” , Siming wenxian ji(Siming congshu ed.), 1.16b-18b.

2) Wang Yinglin, 1.17a-b.


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likened the actions of Shu Lin’s descendants in his own day to those of famous lineages in earlier times:

During the flourishing of the Han and Tang, these customs still existed. Students of the classics embraced their family rules and the noble lineages paid close attention to their genealogies. Many of their sons and younger brothers were cultivated worthies… ose who put first cultivation in their own households are like the descendants of the Suiyang Qi, whose virtue across generations was praised by the Nanfeng Zeng;3 or like the Mozhuang Liu,4 whose loyalty, filial piety, and harmony, from the reign of Taizong through the restoration, did not decline and whose genealogy was edited by Zhu Xi. To put it in one or two words, one may say it is the shi lineage rules [that account for their success]. In the pres-ent day the descendants of Shu Lin also faithfully observe their ancestral teach-ings.5

… ;

Wang’s words may seem far removed from the foreboding realities that surrounded him, but the historical precedents he invoked surely

3) For the Suiyang Qi, see Chang Bide et al., Songren zhuanji ziliao suoyin [hereafter cited as SR] (Taipei: Dingwen shuju, 1974-1976), III.2215-2218.

Qi Tongwen , noted for his filiality and his love of books, and five descendants, from the tenth through the eleventh centuries, are represented here, including two who achieved jinshi degrees. For background on the Yingtian Prefectural Academy, built at the former study place of Qi Tongwen, see Linda Walton, Academies and Society in Southern Song China (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1999), 28. For some background on the Nanfeng Zeng as a local elite family, see Robert Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen: e Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), 106-9.4) Liu Shi (948-997) studied at White Deer Academy when he was young (SR V.3843-4). After his death, his widow used the books he left behind to teach their sons, saying that “the several thousand volumes of books he bequeathed were an ‘ink estate;’” she was dubbed “Madame Ink Estate” (SR V.3844). Her efforts yielded abundant rewards: three of the five sons took jinshi degrees (SR V.3932-3). Zhu Xi wrote an inscription on the Liu family “ink estate” (Zhu Xi , “Liushi mozhuang ji” , Zhu wengong wenji [Sibu congkan (SBCK) ed.], 77.18 ). In the Southern Song, their descendant Liu Qingzhi (1134-1190; 1157 jinshi) was associated with Zhu Xi’s rebuilding of White Deer in 1179 (see Wing-tsit Chan, “Chu Hsi and the Academies,” in Neo-Confucian Education: e Formative Stage, ed. Wm. eodore de Bary and John W. Chaffee [Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1989], 395), cared for his homeless kin, and built a retreat for scholars (SR V.3975-6).5) Wang Yinglin,“Guangping shuyuan ji,” 1.17b-18a.



resonated with the concerns of the shi elite in the climate of intensify-ing political crisis when the very survival of the Song state—and the foundation of their social and cultural world—was in question. As events rapidly overtook both Wang and his audience, bringing the Song dynasty to an end, families like the Shu struggled to survive. ose who survived physically sought ways to preserve the status of their families and lineages as they adapted to Mongol rule. e founding of academies was one of the ways that families made use of inherited traditions of learning to sustain their status as local elites during the Song-Yuan transition. By sponsoring schools, families like the Shu identified themselves with the tradition of shi education that Wang Yinglin celebrated in his inscription on Guangping Academy, and laid claim to membership in that social and cultural elite even as the dynastic foundation crumbled. e Shu family’s involvement with academies persisted over at least the next two generations: Shu Mi’s son Ge became headmaster at Wuzhou’s Beautiful Pools

Academy, likely at the end of the Southern Song; and Ge’s son Mingweng was headmaster at Guangping Academy in the late thirteenth century.6 Guangping Academy and others like it were the heirs of a well-established institutional tradition that flourished in the Southern Song in tandem with the growth and spread of Dao Learning (daoxue

). In addition to nurturing Dao Learning, Southern Song acad-emies were physical embodiments of an emerging conception of shi identity as a community capable of establishing its own values distinct from those of the state. roughout the course of the Southern Song, examination success and office-holding remained the focus of shi edu-cation and professional aspiration, but they were both increasingly elusive goals.7 Symbiosis between the values espoused by Dao Learning and the conditions of the shi proved a powerful stimulant to the growth of the Southern Song academy movement. A substantial number of

6) For Mi, Ge and Mingweng, see Song Yuan xue’an buyi [hereafter SYXA: supp.] (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1974), 76.23b-24a. Mi was also involved with another academy in Fenghua , the native place of the Shu and the site of Guangping Academy. is was Dragon Ford (Longjin ), later known as Wengong for Zhu Xi. See Ren Shilin , “Chongjian Wengong shuyuan ji” , Songxiang ji (Siku quanshu [SKQS] zhenben ed.), 1.7a. 7) Walton, 10-14.



Southern Song academies were established as family institutions, ini-tially serving primarily patrilineal kin, but often extended to include marriage relatives and other shi lineages.8 At the end of the Southern Song, as Wang Yinglin’s tribute to Guangping Academy illustrates, academies continued to be founded or restored from earlier schools, as private family schools like that of Shu Lin were often transformed into community schools and renamed shuyuan. As Robert Hymes has shown in his detailed study of the Fuzhou

elite in Jiangxi during the Northern and Southern Song, elite identity in the Southern Song was defined in part by support of local schools and temples, the building of bridges and dams, the creation of militia for local defense, and contributions to a variety of charitable institutions.9 Academy building fit into this repertoire of activities designed to enhance or maintain a family’s position in local society. Unlike other community philanthropic activities rooted in distinctly local needs, however, because of the relationship of schools to state concerns with recruitment and training of officials, support for edu-cational institutions positioned the donors on a much broader cultural and political canvas that stretched across the empire.10 is is not to say that academies and schools were not also sites of community build-ing and local identity, but they were more than local institutions because they were linked to a broader cultural project that extended far beyond the local community. Academies as family institutions—with teaching often extended to the elite community as a whole—date to the tenth century, perhaps even earlier.11 Unlike county and prefectural schools, academies were essentially “private” in origin, either founded at a local scholar’s shrine connected with his family residence or established as a family school.

8) See Walton, Ch. 4.9) See Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen.10) In her study of a different Jiangxi locale across the Song, Yuan, and Ming, Anne Ger-ritsen has argued that, like prefectural and county schools, the educational mission of academies was embedded in an “empire-wide landscape,” rather than a primarily local one. See Gerritsen, Ji’an Literati and the Local in Song-Yuan-Ming China (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 111. According to Gerritsen, despite their obvious cross-regional connections by virtue of belonging to particular sects of Buddhism, temples and monasteries during the Song and Yuan were viewed by Ji’an literati as essentially local institutions, although she proposes that this changed significantly in the Ming (chapter 6).11) For one prominent example, see Walton, 123.



erefore, recognition for community philanthropy through support of an academy added directly and personally to the cultural prestige of a family in a way that building bridges and dams—or even local schools—did not. As part of the Southern Song academy movement, academies estab-lished by families were also part of an institutional network tied to Dao Learning. is meant that they existed in a complex relationship with the state: as schools, they were educational resources that served state interests; but as institutions that promoted Dao Learning—at least before 1241, when Emperor Lizong officially promoted these ideas—they were also at odds with state ideological authority. By the Song-Yuan transition, however, academies were increasingly recognized by the state and regarded as belonging to an official network of edu-cational institutions as Dao Learning became intellectual orthodoxy. Local elite families who built or restored academies commissioned inscriptions to celebrate both family traditions of learning and their support of local schooling as part of an empire-wide educational mis-sion. Reading these inscriptions for what they can tell us about how people chose to represent their investment in academies, the present study focuses on the founding and restoration of academies by elite families throughout the newly unified empire during the Song-Yuan transition. It aims to show how the motives of elite families to pre-serve—or elevate—their status by investing in academies that com-memorated family traditions of learning were complicit with state interests in securing educational resources. Compared with other con-tributions to the commonweal such as building bridges and dams, investments in education had the potential to reap more significant rewards for elite families from an extralocal perspective.12 e activities

12) Of course, the argument could be made that both charitable granaries and charitable estates that were established for the community (and not just one family) were also capable of being represented as local examples of more broadly imagined welfare projects associa-ted with Confucian good government as well as with Neo-Confucian social ideals. See Richard von Glahn, “Community and Welfare: Chu Hsi’s Community Granary in eory and Practice,” in Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China, ed. Conrad Schirokauer and Robert P. Hymes (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1993), 221-54; Linda Walton, “Charitable Estates as an Aspect of Statecraft in Southern Sung China,” in id., 255-79. But I would argue that education occupies a more fundamental position of empire-wide scope than does charity.



were local, but, unlike bridges and dams, the ramifications were empire-wide. Traditions of learning claimed by elite families linked them with a scholarly culture promoted by the state and its institutions of learn-ing, while confirming their status locally. As representatives of local culture, elite families negotiated their own positions vis-à-vis the state, making them vital intermediaries with Mongol government officials on behalf of the local community and thus reinforcing their status and authority within that community. Studies of academies in the Yuan have focused on their incorpora-tion by the Yuan state into a government educational system.13 Just as they adopted Zhu Xi’s thought, Mongol rulers similarly sanctioned the institution of academies so closely identified with Zhu Xi and with the Dao Learning movement as a whole, making them part of the educational edifice of the Yuan state.14 Both broad surveys of academies and the most comprehensive study so far focused on the Yuan distill the institutional history of Yuan academies into a process encapsulated by the term “officialization” ( guanxuehua ).15 Yet this compact explanatory term does not adequately convey the diverse features of academies in the Yuan, nor can it capture the reasons behind the persistence of family academies. ese were supported by private donations of land or money, yet often formally recognized by the Yuan government. Much like their Southern Song counterparts, family academies in the Yuan provided an educational resource for the

13) For a recent example, see Xu Zi , Yuandai shuyuan yanjiu (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian, 2000).14) See, for example, Makino Shūji , “Gendai byōgaku shoin no kibo ni tsuite”

, Aichi daigaku hō bungaku bu ronshū (bungaku bu) 12 (December 1979): 29-55. 15) See especially Xu Zi, chap. 7 and 8. e bibliography of academy studies in China is vast, but a recently published example should suffice to substantiate this summary. e chapter on the Yuan in a general history of academies by Deng Hongbo , the “dean” of academy studies in China, is entitled “e Spread and Officialization of Academies”

. See Deng Hongbo, Zhongguo shuyuan shi (Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 2006 [2004]), chap. 4. Hayashi Tomoharu’s relatively recent study of academy education does not foreground the concept of “officialization” quite as much, but he still uses the term prominently to describe the alignment of official schools and academies in the Yuan (see Shōin kyōiku shi [Tokyo: Gakugei tōshō, 1989], 185-89). In this, Hayashi follows the earlier work by Makino cited above; however, Makino uses a slightly different term with essentially the same implications: | .



community and occupational opportunities for immediate kin or descendants, as illustrated by the Shu family’s association with Guang-ping Academy. After the fall of the Southern Song, circumstances changed dramatically for southern Chinese shi, subjects now of alien rulers, but there were still educational benefits to be derived from family academies, as well as important social and cultural capital to be accrued by investing in family academies that benefited the elite com-munity as a whole. While official recognition of such academies by the Yuan government might be seen to constitute a kind of “officialization,” the top-down perspective reflected in that term obscures the complex dynamics that underpinned the interactions between local elites and Yuan officials. Showing how both family and institutional continuities bridge the Song-Yuan transition, this study of family academies in the Yuan dem-onstrates that, both before and after the restoration of the examination system in 1315, scholarly elite (shidafu ) families were able to use education as a strategy of social survival through their engagement with academies and to sustain a renewed community identity in the context of Mongol rule. Families who preserved and fostered Confu-cian traditions of scholarship by founding or restoring academies in the early Yuan positioned themselves to take advantage of opportunities for official appointments, but equally importantly their support of academies established a claim to leadership in the local elite community. Academies provided both a physical space and an institutional structure that cemented the bonds of the local elite community by creating a place where they engaged in ritual and educational activities identified with literati life.16 Family academies enabled some elite lineages to preserve their status through the Song-Yuan transition and beyond, while others were able to take advantage of the social flux that accom-panied the fall of the Song to lay claim to standing as members of the local elite by supporting academies. Because the Mongol government often formally recognized them, the founding and restoration of fam-ily academies in the Yuan reveals an important dimension of interaction between Mongol rulers and the Chinese elite on the local level.

16) For descriptions of these, see, inter alia, Walton, Academies and Society in Southern Song China, Introduction and chap. 1, passim.



Government recognition of family academies can be seen as a strategic policy on the part of Yuan officials to encourage local support of edu-cation as well as to deflect potential literati resistance to Mongol rule. For local literati, founding or restoring family schools helped to con-firm their status while fostering at the same time an elite community identity independent of the power and authority of the state, a goal that was both more elusive and more compelling under an alien regime. Ultimately, this study suggests a high degree of continuity between the contours of elite identity forged in Southern Song academies through the Yuan. Dao Learning as it evolved from an intellectual to a social movement in the late Southern Song17 provided the backbone of family traditions of learning that were drawn upon to maintain, restore, or enhance local elite status during an era of dynastic upheaval as the Mongol conquest brought the Yuan to power. Dynasties rose and fell, but family traditions of learning eased the way for their bear-ers across dynastic transition. Family academies were both a visible manifestation of the vital link between education and elite status and a representation of potent elite community identity shaped by ongoing tension with the state.

Scholarly Strategies of Survival and Success

Southern Chinese scholars who lived through the Mongol conquest, like Wang Yinglin or Shu Lin’s descendants, could draw on Confucian traditions of loyalism and eremitism to support withdrawal to private scholarly life over service to the new rulers of China.18 For the vast

17) For one view of this, see Peter K. Bol, “Neo-Confucianism and Local Society, Twelfth to Sixteenth Century: A Case Study,” in e Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, ed. Paul Jacov Smith, and Richard von Glahn (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center, 2003), 241-83.18) More than a generation ago, Frederick W. Mote argued that Confucian eremitism in the Yuan was influenced by Song thinkers’ emphasis on a rigid definition of loyalism. See Mote, “Confucian Eremitism in the Yuan Period,” in e Confucian Persuasion, ed. Arthur F. Wright (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1960), 202-40. In her work on loyalism in thirteenth-century China, Jennifer Jay has identified three traditions of Song loyalism: the zhongyi (“loyal and upright”), those who died during or soon after the Mongol conquest; the yimin (“remnant subjects”), those who survived the collapse of the dynasty and subsequent loyalist resistance, but rejected service to the Mongols; and “mar-ginal loyalists,” those whose behavior was often condemned by traditional historians



majority of these men, however, whether to seek office in the Yuan government or to retreat into scholarship was less a matter of active choice between ideals than a practical response to personal circum-stances and limited professional opportunities.19 Whichever path they followed, academies were important institutions in their lives, either as private retreats or as one of the few options for official appointment available to them. These two functions were not mutually exclusive: an academy that may have originated as a retreat for a Southern Song scholar—even a notably “loyalist” scholar, as we shall see—could well provide an avenue to official appointment for his descendants. Before the restoration of the examination system in 1315, appoint-ment as an academy headmaster or a local school instructor was one of two principal routes open to Chinese who sought to hold office under the Yuan, the alternative being appointment as a clerk.20 e

because they accommodated themselves in some way—usually through service—to the Yuan. As Jay points out, the latter two categories—“remnant subjects” and “marginal loyalists,” both survivors rather than martyrs—often overlapped, but were treated differ-ently as they were subject to arbitrary condemnation or approval according to the biases of individual historians. See Jennifer Jay, A Change in Dynasties: Loyalism in irteenth-Century China (Bellingham: Western Washington Univ., 1991), 10-11; 91.19) Paul J. Smith’s study of the Sichuanese refugee diaspora in the late Song and Yuan finds that rather than adopting a moralistic stance of loyalism to the Song, most sought wha-tever office they could, serving the Mongol regime out of family obligation and sheer need. See Smith “Family, Landsmann, and Status-Group Affinity in Refugee Mobility Strategies: e Mongol Invasions and the Diaspora of Sichuanese Elites, 1230-1330,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 52 (1992), 699-700.20) Xiao Qiqing , “Yuandai de ruhu: rushi diwei yanjin shishangde yizhang”

—— , Dongfang wenhua 16.1-2 (1978): 151-78; reprinted in Xiao Qiqing, Yuandaishi xintan (Taibei: Xin wenfeng, 1983), 1-58; especially 25-36 (pagination used is from latter). See also Lao Yan-shuan, “Southern Chinese Scho-lars and Educational Institutions in Early Yuan: Some Preliminary Remarks,” in China Under Mongol Rule, ed. John D. Langlois, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1981), 111. Although Xiao emphasizes the importance of the clerk route (p. 28), along with Lao I stress the educational office route for shi because of its affinity with their customary scholarly professional identity. e path leading from academy headmaster to prefectural or route school instructor was also a familiar one for many Southern Song scholars who sought to secure places for themselves in the official world after the Mongol conquest. e Yuan dianzhang stipulates that an academy headmaster could be promoted to prefectural school professor, which carried the rank of 9b and thus eligibility for further promotion through official ranks (Haiwangcun guji congkan ed., 9.13a). See also Yuanshi

, comp. Song Lian , et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju ed.), 91.2316 for rank of prefectural school professor. In his study of southern Chinese scholars and educational institutions, Lao Yan-shuan documents cases of many who became academy headmasters but declined further appointments, suggesting that they were unwilling to serve the



“profession of education,” nurtured in Southern Song academies, pro-vided good preparation for these school offices and so enabled many shidafu to bridge the Song-Yuan transition successfully.21 Direct state-ments in the sources attest to the important role played by academies in the fortunes of southern Chinese elite families after the Mongol conquest. e epitaph for Cen Xianglong (1261-1305) by Yuan Jue (1266-1327) declares: “When he came of age, he raised up his family by becoming headmaster of High Purity Academy [

]. He was [subsequently] appointed instructor in Hezhou and then in Jiangling.”22 e Cen were a prominent family in Yuyao

(Shaoxing , Jiangzhe), the location of the academy, and according to Yuan Jue, “everyone says that the Cen are good at select-ing sons-in-law.”23 One of these was Huang Shuying (1273-1327) from nearby Cixi on Hangzhou Bay, son of the noted scholar and promoter of Zhu Xi’s thought, Huang Zhen (1213-1280; 1256 jinshi).24 Huang Shuying lodged his family with his in-laws in order to teach their sons, two of whom succeeded in the examina-

Mongols (122-123). Both Smith and Lao cite the case of Huang Ze (1260-1346), a Sichuanese refugee scholar who became headmaster at two academies and then retired to private teaching rather than advance to ranked office (Smith, 699; Lao, 122). In the context of Smith’s study, Huang Ze was an exception, but for Lao, he is one of the many cases he cites of southern Chinese academy headmasters declining further appointment. e difference between these two views may well be due in part to the particular experience of Sichuanese refugees, but I intend to show here that the conditions of “service or retreat” under foreign rule were far more complex than this dichotomy suggests.21) For the rise of an “education elite” in the Southern Song, see Chen Wenyi , You guanxue dao shuyuan: cong zhidu yu linian de hudong kan Songdai jiaoyu de yanbian

: (Taipei: Lianjing, 2004). For background on the Southern Song academy movement, see Walton, Academies and Society in Southern Sung China.22) Yuan Jue, “Jiangling ruxue jiaoshou Cen jun muzhiming” , Qingrong jushi ji (Sibu beiyao [SBBY] ed.), 29.4b. Although Yuan Jue used this epitaph as an opportunity to criticize the Ministry of Personnel for not filling the stipulated number of prefectural instructor posts and thus causing unnecessary hardship for many candidates, Cen Xianglong’s case was an exception. John Dardess translates a portion of this document, focusing on what he calls Yuan Jue’s “stinging attack” on academies. See John Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1983), 40. 23) Yuan Jue, “Jiangling ruxue jiaoshou Cenjun muzhiming,” 29.4b.24) For Huang Shuying, see Yuanren zhuanji ziliao suoyin , comp. Wang Deyi et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987) [hereafter YR], III.1489; for Huang Zhen, SR IV.2870.



tions: in 1318 Cen Liangqing became a jinshi, and so did his younger brother Shigui in 1321.25 Cen Liangqing rose to be academician in the Star of Literature Pavilion (Guizhang ge xueshi

). Arguably, marriage ties with the family of Huang Zhen—and the educational advantages this relationship provided—may have been as important in determining the ultimate success of the Cen as anything else; but at least according to Yuan Jue it all began when Cen Xianglong gained a post as academy headmaster.26 at this strategy was not confined to the south can be glimpsed in a passage found in the Yuanshi biography of the northerner Dong Shixuan (1253-1321), scion of the prominent Gaocheng

(Zhending ) Dong family.27 His biography makes a point similar to Yuan Jue’s claim that Cen Xianglong began his family’s rise by appointment as headmaster at a local academy. Referring to Dong Shixuan’s association with the scholars Yuan Mingshan (1269-1322) and Wu Cheng (1249-1333), and his employment of the renowned Yu Ji’s (1272-1348) father, Yu Ji , as teacher in his family school, the biography states: “[He called up] all the elder Confucians and ‘remnant scholars’ of western Sichuan by offering them academy emoluments, so that they would be able to transmit their learning” , , .28 In addition to appointment as academy headmaster or instructor offer-ing a potential route to office, academies also aided in the preservation of privilege for those designated “Confucian households” (ruhu ),

25) Yuan Jue, “Jiangling ruxue jiaoshou Cenjun muzhiming,” 29.4b. For both Cen Liangq-ing and his brother, see YR I.449.26) ere are very few Cen who can be traced in the Song, and none from Yuyao, so it seems likely that what we are seeing here is the rise of a new family through a tradition of Confucian education that began only in the early Yuan but is consistent with what Southern Song elite families did to perpetuate their status after the Mongol conquest.27) For Dong Shixuan, see YR III.1601.28) Yuanshi, 156.3678. Yu Ji’s father and the rest of his family are treated in Smith, “Fam-ily, Landsmann, and Status-Group Affinity in Refugee Mobility Strategies,” especially p. 678. Smith also cites the example of Heaven Gate Academy in Cili zhou (Li

, Huguang), established by the Tian family, whose ancestors had migrated there from Sichuan generations before the Mongol conquest (pp. 681-82). e Wang brothers, scholars who had fled from Sichuan to Cili at the end of the Song, became teachers for the Tian, who then contributed to the construction of Heaven Gate Academy so that the Wangs would have a place to teach and that “everyone in the community would have a chance to listen.”



a status assigned by the Yuan state to elite families with a tradition of scholarship or office-holding. In the north, Confucian scholars, along with Buddhist and Daoist clergy, took an examination in 1238 to determine their status and thus their entitlement to social privileges and economic benefits.29 After the conquest of the south, northern Chinese were again subjected to examinations to confirm their Confu-cian household status. By contrast, the attribution of Confucian household status to south-ern Chinese was based solely on the reports of local authorities verify-ing their Song backgrounds. Beginning in 1277, those who could lay claim to academic or official credentials were registered as Confucian households. Although status was not rigidly fixed at first, after the census of 1290 these registers became permanent, in effect creating a kind of caste hierarchy at odds with the relative social fluidity of the Song.30 In other words, families classified as Confucian households based on their standing at the end of the Song were entitled to retain that status irrespective of future academic or official accomplishments. e benefits of this status were primarily economic: avoidance of ser-vice levies and a stipend that entitled school students to two meals a day and supplemented the needs of elder scholars who lacked another means of support.31 In turn, the only requirement to retain status as a

29) For background on this, see Abe Takeo , “Gendai chishikijin to kakyo” , in Abe Takeo, Gendaishi no kenkyū (Tokyo: Sōbunsha,

1972), especially 5-14.30) Xiao, 14-15. Certainly there were informal means of literati self-identification and exclusiveness in the Southern Song, but I would argue, as Xiao suggests, that the forma-lity of state regulation created a more rigid kind of classification. Robert Hymes has summarized some of Xiao’s article in “Marriage, Descent Groups, and the Localist Strat-egy in Sung and Yuan Fu-chou,” in Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, ed. Patricia B. Ebrey and James Watson (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1986), 107-9. See also documents in Miaoxue dianli , ed. Wang Ting (Hangzhou: Zhe-jiang guji chubanshe, 1992), 3.56-63. e extant version of this anonymous work was recovered from the Yongle dadian and contains 80 items relating to Confucian education between 1237 and 1301. For a recent study of this text, see Miya Noriko , Mongoru jidai no shuppan bunka (Nagoya: Nagoya daigaku shuppankai, 2006), chap. 6. Xiao also notes examples of genuine degree-holding individuals who for one reason or another did not make it into the register of Confucian households (p. 16).31) Xiao, 19. For ruhu exemption from service levies, see Miaoxue dianli, 1.9; 2.42; for stipends, see 1.21-22. e resources for stipends came largely from school funds, based on school land income, and from “tribute scholar estates” (gongshi zhuang ). See Tongzhi tiaoge jiaozhu , annot. Fang Linggui (Beijing: Zhonghua



Confucian household was relatively modest: to keep one member of a family in attendance at a local official school or to maintain a family school, which could be as informal as instruction by a father or elder brother.32 Founding, restoring, or otherwise supporting an academy would therefore have been an effective strategy for southern Chinese families to retain status as a Confucian household as well as to expand opportunities for official appointment. Not surprisingly, then, we find many southern Chinese elite families restoring or establishing academies in the last decades of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century.

From Eremitism to Examination Success: Stone Gorge and Blue Mountain

To gain a sense of how the relationship between academies and family fortunes took shape, we might begin by viewing the Song-Yuan tran-sition through the experiences of a prominent late Southern Song scholar-official, Fang Fengchen (1221-1291), and his kin at Stone Gorge (Shixia ) Academy, located in his home county of Chun’an (Jiande , Jiangzhe).33 Although he placed first in the 1250 palace examination, Fang Fengchen’s political career was marred by conflicts with the notorious Southern Song chief councilor Jia Sidao . Even after Jia’s fall from power and Fang’s promotion to a high post in the central government, he declined to serve and retired to lecture at Stone Gorge Academy, which was granted a name plaque from the court in 1271.34 Just after the Mongol conquest of the area, in 1278, one of Fang Fengchen’s sons, Liang , was named headmaster (shanzhang ) by a Jurchen official,35 and collectively his sons donated two qing (about 28 acres) of fields to support the

shuju, 2001), 5.210-12. The amounts differed according to place and number of students (Xiao, 19). Confucian households, however, were not exempt from land or commercial taxes, although they were exempt from the head tax (Xiao, 21). 32) Xiao, 18; Miaoxue dianli, 1.18; 1.56.33) For Fang Fengchen, see SR I.81-83.34) Mou Yan “Chongxiu Shixia shuyuan ji” (1310), in Jiaofeng waiji ed. Fang Zhong (SKQS zhenben ed.), 3.33a.35) Mou Yan, 3.33a.



academy.36 Although it is unclear which came first—the headmaster appointment or the donation of land—based on evidence from elsewhere it is reasonable to speculate that the headmaster appointment rewarded the sons’ donation of land to the academy established by their father. Were there other material incentives that encouraged families to contribute their own lands to academy support, as Fang Fengchen’s sons did? During the Yuan, unlike the Song, privately donated school lands did not avoid taxation, so Fang Fengchen’s sons would not have donated land to support Stone Gorge Academy for the purpose of gaining relief from the land tax.37 But donating it to the academy could well have been a means of protecting land from predatory monasteries and pow-erful families who might seek to usurp it, especially in the volatile conditions of dynastic change.38 Judging from estimates of landhold-ing in Jiangnan during the Song and Yuan, the amount of land donated to Stone Gorge Academy by Fang Fengchen’s sons was substantial. If the average family farm was between 30 and 40 mu , then the land the Fang brothers gave to the academy was equivalent to six or seven farms.39 The Fang family was evidently wealthy enough simply to donate this amount of land to the support of Stone Gorge Academy, or doing so was at least worth the benefit of protection from usurpation. It could also be advantageous for descendants to make an allotment of land for academy support if it meant that they would be rewarded with an appointment as academy headmaster, as one of Fang Fengchen’s sons was. In fact, comments by writers of academy inscriptions criticiz-ing the donation of land to academies in order to obtain appointment as headmaster (or another office) suggest that this was a relatively com-mon practice. In his inscription on White Sands (Baisha ) Academy

36) Wang Yingwu , “Shixia shuyuan zengtian ji” (1310), in Jiaofeng waiji, 3.31a.37) See, for example, Yu Ji , Daoyuan xuegu lu (SBCK ed.), 8.8b, where he states that land donated to Blue Mountain Academy was not exempt from official tax assessment. See also Xu Zi, 107-8.38) is was a chronic problem, even in more stable times. See, for example, Buddhist usurpation of academy land in Walton, 101.39) See Li Bozhong, “Was ere a Fourteenth-Century Turning Point? Population, Land, Technology, and Farm Management,” in e Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, 165.



(Ji’an, Jiangxi), Liu Yueshen (b. 1260) praised the allotment of land to the academy by its founder, Zhang Wen , contrasting his motives with those of contemporaries:

Wenxian [ZhangWen] invited famous teachers to lecture and seek the learning of the worthies, so that in the future the empire would have cultivated talents. In this way, the ancient and the present are one. In antiquity, fields were entirely [allocated according to the] well-field [system]. erefore, it was unheard of for local schools to have fields. Now Wenxian allots arable fields to the academy so that the annual income in taxes will enable complete support of the teachers and students. is is something that did not exist in antiquity. In recent times certain academies have been endowed with fields, but those who allot the fields do it with the intention of heading the academy in order to obtain a summons to office, with successive promotions in rank and with the salary that can be anticipated. But Wenxian does not plan for himself; rather, his intentions extend to his lineage and community, together with their sons and descendants in the distant future. In this way, his actions differ from those of his contemporaries. In the future, in order that wise men come to continue the founder’s will, and the fields and the academy not be impoverished, [the property] must not be usurped by powerful families or destroyed by those in authority. In this, it also differs from those of recent times, but no one knows it.40

From Liu Yueshen’s point of view, the self-interest that motivates some donors of land to academies sullies their contributions. He contrasts the altruism of Zhang Wen with the prevalent practices of the time, revealing to us that in the eyes of his contemporaries donations of land to academies carried a reasonable expectation of appointment as headmaster, one path to office. An inscription on Way Creek (Daoxi

) Academy by the Sichuan émigré scholar, Xie Duan (1279-1340), expressed similar criticism, also in contrast to those associated with the academy he commemorates:

40) Liu Yueshen, Shenzhai ji (SKQS ed.), 5.32a-b.



Formerly, when I was Erudite in the Directorate of Education, the commanderies and districts sent forward documentation for establishing academies to the Directorate, which then forwarded them to the Academy of Worthies, and finally to the Ministry of Rites. Certain funded them in order to gain office, certain erected them in order to replace service levies, then they were approved or not. Only this academy’s establishment is entirely without such a motive, and therefore has nothing to do with [the pursuit of ] rank and profit. 41

.

In addition to its utility as a path to office and the degree of scholarly recognition conferred by the title, there was a modest salary attached to the post of headmaster. Although headmaster salaries varied depend-ing on time, place, and circumstance, according to the Miaoxue dianli

, in 1287 the monthly salary for a headmaster—at the time there were two per circuit (dao , e.g., Zhedong dao, Fujian dao)—was three shi (a little over eight bushels) of rice and three liang of paper currency.42 How did this compare with other salaries and what was its real value in the economy of the time? According to one source, the monthly grain requirement for an adult was three dou (about 4/5 of a bushel),43 so the headmaster grain stipend would provide for at least ten adults. e portion of salary paid in paper currency, three-liang, could buy about one adult’s monthly grain provision.44 Using the salary stipulated for headmasters in 1287 as a rough guide, then, we can estimate that the headmaster’s income would provide minimum support for a household of a size equivalent to ten adults or more. Comparison with salaries for other educational posts, both ranked and unranked, puts the salary for headmasters, whose position was unranked, at about the middle range.45 Although school officials’ salaries

41) [Jiajing] Huguang tujing zhishu , comp. Xue Gang , ed. Wu Tingju [Riben cang Zhongguo hanjian difangzhi congshu ed.], 7.81a. For Xie Duan, see YR IV.2024; see also Smith, 702.42) Miaoxue dianli, 2.32. For the use of liang, a weight of silver, as a measure for paper currency, see Richard von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000-1700 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1996), 58-60.43) Yuanshi 96.2476; Xu, Yuandai shuyuan yanjiu, 82. A child’s needs were calculated at about one half that of an adult.44) Xu, 82.45) Xu, 83.



as a whole were low in comparison with even county level administra-tors, still, appointment as headmaster at an academy officially recog-nized by the Yuan government could provide a minimum level of support for an extended household, and thus may have been seen as a valuable source of income for impoverished shi. In the case of the Fang family, if they were indeed fairly wealthy landowners (as suggested by the amount of land donated to Stone Gorge Academy), the meager salary that accompanied appointment as a headmaster would not have provided a financial incentive for the Fang brothers to donate land, but scholarly recognition as headmaster and the opportunity to protect their land by donating it to the academy would have been advantageous for them. Beyond whatever financial or political considerations may have motivated the heirs of Fang Fengchen to support it, Stone Gorge was a school that provided local education, and not just for the Fang. Modeled on Zhu Xi’s Wuyi Academy in northwestern Fujian, Stone Gorge offered regular lectures and examinations on the classics and histories as well as on such texts as Zhu Xi’s Tongjian gangmu

, Zhu and Lu Zuqian’s Jinsi lu , and Zhang Shi’s “Western Inscription” .46 Upon the death of Fang Fengchen in 1291, his younger brother Fengzhen , a 1262 jinshi, took over the lecture seat at Stone Gorge, evidence of the family claim to this academy.47 e academy continued its educational activities in this way through at least the end of the thirteenth century, and then ceased to operate apparently because the income from the land allotted by Fang’s sons was insufficient to maintain it.48 But Stone Gorge Academy still had a substantial enough presence in the local community that in 1309, when the Chun’an darughachi Aijudin renewed the county school, he determined that Stone Gorge Academy should be revived as well.49 He exhorted local elders to lead efforts to renew it, with the result that the fields used to support the academy were

46) Mou Yan, 3.33b.47) Song Yuan xue’an [SYXA] (SBBY ed.), ed. Huang Zongxi , Quan Zuwang et al., 82.15a.48) Wang Yingwu, 3.31a; Mou Yan, 3.33b.49) For the role of the darughachi in local government and society, see Elizabeth Endicott-West, Mongolian Rule in China: Local Administration in the Yuan Dynasty (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard Univ. Press, 1989).



expanded and the ritual implements and sacrificial images were replaced.50 e author of an inscription written in 1310 to commemorate the increased support for the academy said that it was the duty of worthies and officials to support scholars, but “Can those who would be shi not know how to support themselves?”51 Although he did not reveal the exact amount of the added support, he did say that the income was inscribed on the back of the stone, “so that those who come will not forget the labors of the local gentlemen (dafu ).”52 Here and elsewhere, government officials depended on contributions from local elite families to support education, which was viewed as a collaborative undertaking. For their part, local elite families saw this as an opportunity to confirm their leadership in local society and per-haps to obtain at least a low-level appointment as academy headmaster or other local educational post. e Fang family’s investment in education paid off. In 1330 Fang Fengchen’s grandson Daojun earned a jinshi degree and was appointed junior compiler in the Hanlin Academy (Hanlin bianxiu

, rank 8a-6b), followed by a series of regional offices and ending as vice-director of the Jiangxi Branch Secretariat (xingsheng yuanwailang , rank 6b).53 Within two generations, then, the descendants of Fang Fengchen had moved from their ancestor’s loyalist eremitism to degree-taking and office-holding success under Mongol rule. e final notice of Stone Gorge Academy in the Yuan records the installation of a statue of Fang Fengchen in 1332, when 42 students at the academy, including the author of the commemorative inscription, a local man named Xu Chijing , carried out the school rites (shecai )54 to announce the erection of the statue:

50) Wang Yingwu, 3.31b; Mou Yan, 3.33b. For Aijudin, see YR IV.2206.51) Wang Yingwu, 3.32a.52) Wang Yingwu, 3.32b.53) For Fang Daojun, see YR I.70. is source says he was Fang Fengchen’s great-grandson; but according to Xiao, he was the son of Dong , Fengchen’s son. Ryô Kin Gen denki sakuin comp. Umehara Kaoru and Kinugawa Tsuyoshi

(Kyoto: Kyoto Univ. Institute for Humanistic Studies, 1972), 7 (#85), lists Dong as Fengchen’s son, so Daojun must be Fengchen’s grandson.54) More commonly shicai (or ). ese were rites performed by students to vener-ate Confucius and his disciples when first entering the school. e offerings presented by the students were vegetarian, hence the name. For a detailed description of these rites as



… For the three hundred years of the Song, the spiritual power [ling ] of this district’s mountains and rivers was boundless, [but] only the master [Fang Fengchen] attained first place in the examinations. us there is no one in the world to compare with him! is was sufficient to make him renowned, but peo-ple did not know his steadfast and upright nature. Because he did not get along with the prime minister at the time, he returned home and established the academy in order to take up teaching. In exactly the same spirit as White Deer Grotto, [the academy] expounded the yili learning of the enlightened mas-ter, Master Zhu. Its contributions have continued for over a hundred years with-out interruption. As for examination degrees and ranks, they are not discussed: when students ascend the master’s hall and chant his writings in the midst of the gorge’s lush mountains and clear waters, they are at one with the Way.55

ey may not have discussed examination degrees, but the students were certainly studying for them, as demonstrated by the success of Fang Daojun, followed shortly after by the erection of a statue of his grandfather at Stone Gorge Academy.56 What began as a scholar’s study continued as an academy through the investment of family resources and state recognition of their financial contributions by the official appointment of descendants as headmasters. e academy took on its final form as a state-sponsored official institution that prepared students for examinations and venerated the scholar ancestor whose descendants were supporting the academy. ere is no small irony in the history of this academy from the 1270s into the 1330s: whereas Fang Fengchen and his brothers were closely associated with a group of Song loyalists in the late thirteenth cen-

carried out in the Southern Song at Zhu Xi’s Cangzhou Retreat , see Zhu Xi, Zhuzi wenji (Congshu jicheng ed.), 13.479-80.55) Xu Chijing, “Li Jiaofeng xiansheng suxiang ji” Jiaofeng waiji 3.34b-35a. For Xu, see YR II.912.56) Along with the new statue of Fang Fengchen, some building renovations and additions were also undertaken at this time through the cooperative efforts of Chinese and non-Han local officials. Liu Pengshou (1273-1336; 1315 jinshi) was Chun’an magistrate together with Busu buqa , and they cooperated to complete the rebuilding which had been begun by the previous county head, Soro . For Liu, see YR III.1850; I cannot identify either Busu buqa or Soro.



tury,57 his sons cooperated with non-Han local officials in maintaining the academy and his grandson passed the examinations and was appointed to office in the Yuan government. But the Fang were not exceptional. However much individuals may have expressed their loy-alty to the Song at the time of the conquest, many families soon accom-modated themselves to the new regime. Preserving traditions of family learning that entitled them to the status of Confucian household, southern Chinese elite families supported academies and thereby main-tained social status while receiving modest economic benefits. Accom-modation of these goals served a useful purpose for local government officials, who encouraged such academic enterprises—even to the extent of installing an image of a Southern Song loyalist at Stone Gorge Academy. Fang Daojun’s 1330 jinshi degree is cited by Xiao Qiqing as an example of the successful results produced by the educational strategy employed by southern Chinese elite families after the Mongol con-quest.58 Stressing continuity over discontinuity, Xiao’s exhaustive study of Yuan examination records and the family backgrounds of degree takers leads him to conclude that a substantial number of Jiangnan shidafu families were able to survive the vicissitudes of dynastic change and foreign conquest by preserving traditions of family learning.59 Once the examination system was revived, even with quotas that favored Mongols, Central Asians, and northern Chinese, the Jiangnan shidafu still managed to restore themselves to positions of academic achieve-ment and official standing. Although Xiao mentions academies only briefly in connection with the requirements for Confucian household status, family schools or academies were important both for the main-tenance of that status and to sustain a tradition of education with the expectation that the connection between learning and political office would once again be restored, as it was (however modestly) in 1315.

57) Jay, 166.58) Xiao Qiqing, “Yuanchao keju yu Jiangnan shidafuzhi yanxu”

, in Yuanshi luncong , ed. Zhongguo Songshi yanjiu huibian, vol.7 (Nanchang: Jiangxi jiaoyu, 1999), 9. See also Xiao Qiqing, “Yuantong

yuannian jinshilu jiaozhu” , Shihuo yuekan 13 (1983), 72-90, 147-62. 59) Xiao Qiqing refers to “family traditions of learning” (jiaxue chuantong ) as one of the main reasons why the sons of Confucian households did well in the examinations. See Xiao, “Yuandai de ruhu,” 36.



A vivid example of educational strategies associated with family academies that led to examination success can be seen in the records of Blue Mountain (Lanshan ) Academy at Yiyang (Xinzhou

, Jiangzhe).60 Much like Fang Fengchen who retired to Stone Gorge after the fall of the Southern Song, Zhang Qingbi , a 1268 jinshi, became an eremite at Blue Mountain Academy, which he founded in 1281.61 Zhang was the first headmaster there, and he was succeeded by his disciple Yang Yinggui (b. 1243) who, like Zhang, had been a student at the Song Imperial University.62 Zhang’s descendant, Chunren , succeeded at the jinshi in 1321; and in 1332 both Chunren and his younger brother gave land to support the academy.63 A descendant of another disciple of Qingbi (and the claimed kin of the Fang of Stone Gorge Academy), Fang Hui (1227-1307), obtained his jinshi in 1327, the same year that Chunren’s son passed the local examination.64 is serial examination success was celebrated in an inscription on Blue Mountain Academy penned by by Yu Ji, who stated that “all this was produced by the legacy of inherited teaching” [ ].65 As in the case of the the Fang of Stone Gorge, here was an academy founded by an eremite scholar avoiding service after the end of the Song which provided not only a position for his disciple, but also education for his descendants, one of whom obtained a jinshi degree after the restoration of the examination system. A decade later, he and his brother donated land to the academy, in effect adapt-ing the earlier pattern—land donation tied to official appointment, in the case of the Fang—to conditions following the reinstitution of the examinations. Cheng Duanli (1271-1348) commemorated the completion of Blue Mountain Academy’s restoration in 1340, describing its plentiful resources and making the case for examination preparation

60) Yu Ji, “Lanshan shuyuan ji” , Yuan Shujun Yu Wenjing gong Daoyuan xuegu lu (facsimile of 1911 Shuben ed., Taibei: Taiwan Huawen shuju, 1968), 8.7b-10a.61) For Zhang Qingbi, see YR II.1156. He had been appointed to offices in Fujian, inclu-ding an educational post (jiaoshou), before the fall of the Song. 62) For Yang, see YR III.1566.63) Yu Ji, 8.8b.64) Ibid.65) Ibid.



as the purpose of academy education since the examinations had adopted the values espoused by thinkers of the Dao Learning tradition.66

Ancestral Academies and Daoxue

Unlike the studies of eremite, loyalist scholars that were transformed into academies in the early Yuan, other family schools that became academies in the late Southern Song or early Yuan were inspired by the desire of descendants to commemorate an ancestor’s association with Dao Learning scholars. In this way, they laid claim to a scholarly legacy that confirmed their academic standing in the local elite community and also provided an educational resource benefiting their own lineage along with others in the community. Zhuyi Academy in Xiangtan (Huguang) was established in the late Southern Song by Zhong Zhen , a student of Zhu Xi, with an endowment of 500 mu (about 70 acres) as a place for him to lecture.67 He also honored his father, Ruyu , who had been headmaster at South Marchmount

Academy, and his father’s teacher, Zhang Shi , by erecting a shrine to them at the academy.68 Zhong Zhen requested a name plaque from the court, but the land was usurped by “powerful families” and the academy was destroyed, probably in the waning days of the Song. In 1294, Zhong Ruyu’s third generation descendant, Mengli

, restored it, allocating money to buy 1000 mu of land to support it.69 Cheng Jufu’s (1249-1318) inscription on this academy begins with the declaration that “Today’s academies are the family schools [jiashu ] of the ree Ages.”70 Jie Xisi (1274-1344),

66) Cheng Duanli, Weizhai ji (Siming congshu ed.), 5.1a-3b. Peter Bol has translated a portion of this inscription that elaborates on the latter point. See “Examinations and Orthodoxies: 1070 and 1313 Compared,” in Culture and State in Chinese History: Conventions, Accommodations, and Critiques, ed. eodore Huters, R. Bin Wong, and Pauline Yu (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997), 47-48.67) Cheng Jufu , “Zhuyi shuyuan ji” , Cheng Xuelou ji (Yuandai zhenben jihuikan ed., Taibei: Taiwan National Central Library, 1970,), 12.8b; see also Walton, 143. For Zhong Zhen, see SR V.4202.68) For Zhong Ruyu, see SR V.4204.69) For Zhong Mengli, see SYXA: supp., 71.66b-67a.70) Cheng Jufu, “Zhuyi shuyuan ji,” 12.8a. Unlike most commemorative inscriptions, this one also mentions the assignment of ru households to Zhuyi Academy (9a), information that can be found in gazetteer records but not usually in the celebratory texts of academy



future academician in the Star of Literature Pavilion at the Yuan court, became headmaster.71 Benefiting from its substantial allotment of land, the restored academy was an expansive institution, altogether several hundred bays (jian ), with materials provided entirely by Zhong Mengli, who held an educational office in Binzhou’s Yizhang

county, south of Xiangtan.72 Judging from the narrative order of Cheng Jufu’s inscription, this low-level post was taken up by Zhong Mengli after his contributions to the restoration of the academy, following the pattern seen elsewhere.73 e retreat of the Southern Song scholar Liu Yanghao at Shangrao’s White Stone (Baishi ) Mountain (Xinzhou , Jiangzhe) was transformed into an academy by his grandson, Liu Guang

(1276-1327), sometime in the early Yuan.74 Sources tell us that he did this to honor his grandfather and to venerate both Zhu Xi and Huang Gan, who was his grandfather’s teacher. Liu Guang, a jinshi of the Yanyou era (1314-1320), also established charitable institutions to support students who studied at White Stone Academy.75 Because the date the academy was founded is unknown, we cannot tell whether Liu Guang’s support of education through commemorating his grand-father’s scholarly association with Daoxue thinkers preceded his exam-ination success or not. e court bestowed a banner to recognize his contributions to local education, and he was then appointed to office, culminating in a position as junior compiler in the Hanlin Academy.76 In this case, the jinshi degree alone would have entitled Liu Guang to an office, but it more likely would have been a local or regional office

inscriptions. For example, ru households assigned to Compassion Lake [Cihu ] Academy in Cixi county (Mingzhou/Qingyuan fu) numbered 61, according to Yuan Jue, Yanyou Siming zhi (Song Yuan difangzhi congshu [SYDFCS] ed.), 14.38a.71) Cheng Jufu, 12.8b.72) Cheng Jufu, 12.8b-9a. For background on the Star of Literature Pavilion, see Cambridge History of China, vol. 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), 553-56. For Jie Xisi, see YR III.1385-87. 73) Cheng Jufu, 12.9a.74) For the academy, see Yuan Jue, “Baishi shuyuan ji” , Qingrong jushi ji, 18.5b-6b. For Liu Yanghao, see SR V.3990; for Liu Guang, see YR III.1772; see also his funerary inscription by Wu Cheng, “You yuan zhengshilang Hanlin bianxiu Liu jun muzhi ming” , Wu Wenzheng ji (SKQS ed.), 77.1a-3a.75) SYXA: supp. 63.26b-27a. 76) SYXA: supp. 63.27a. is is the only source that mentions Liu Guang’s degree; it is not mentioned in his funerary inscription by Wu Cheng, although this office is (77.2a-b).



without the special recognition by the court of his contributions to local education. Around 1300 Chen Doulong dedicated Hundred Meter Creek Academy in his native Wenzhou’s Rui’an county to honor his father’s scholarly legacy and association with Daoxue thinkers:

One day he [Chen Doulong] came from afar to request an inscription, saying: “e academy is my private school… When young my deceased father Jade Cliff [Chen Tianze] was a student of Ye Cai, an important disciple of Zhu Xi who studied with Li Fangzi. is is the origin of the lecturing and studying transmit-ted here. Building the academy is a means of continuing my father’s legacy.”…As soon as the academy was completed, a Hall was built where they offered sacrifices to the Former Sage and Worthies as customary. To the east of the Ceremonial Hall there was a room for sacrifices toYe Cai and Li Fangzi as well as his deceased father, Jade Cliff.77

Chen Doulong was a paragon of a filial son, so much so that he was called “Filial Son Chen” [Chen xiaozi ] by his biographer, Hu Changru .78 Building Hundred Meter Creek Academy and enshrining his father and his father’s teachers there was the culmination of a series of filial acts, which also included his mother. Chen Doulong’s first appointment as headmaster at Zonghui Academy in Wenzhou’s Leqing county came about because the Wenzhou Confucian school intendant had heard about Doulong’s devoted care of his ill father and attention to his funeral and interment, and so

77) He Menggui , “Baizhangxi shuyuan” , in Qianzhai ji (SKQS zhenben ed.), 9.18b-21a. For He Menggui, see SR II.1283, YR I.350; Chen Tianzi, SR 3.2550; Chen Doulong, SR III.2547, YR II.1314. ere is considerable confusion about native place here, hence some uncertainty about the academy’s location. SR places Tianzi in Hangzhou’s Changhua county, and YR places Doulong there as well. But SR places Doulong in Wenzhou’s Rui’an county. Based on the source stating that the Wenzhou Confucian school intendant appointed Doulong to Zonghui Academy there, so that he could attend his father’s illness and death (see below), it would seem that Wenzhou was their native place, and thus the site of the academy.78) Hu Changru, “Chen Xiaozi zhuan” , Guochao wenlei (SBCK chubian ed.), 69.765-67.



rewarded him with this post. When he was about to take up office, however, Doulong suddenly learned that his birth mother, who had left before he was a year old,79 was living in Qiantang , so he relinquished his appointment and went to find her. He built the academy after he returned home with his mother. In this case, there is no notice of official status for Chen Doulong beyond the post of headmaster, but there is evidence nonetheless of the academy as a family institution that provided occupation for him and reflected the scholarly standing of his family in the community, as it was a place for “local colleagues to lecture and study.”80

Family academies varied greatly in their size and in the amount of their resources, depending largely on the wealth of the families who supported them. Hundred Meter Creek was likely quite modest. On the other hand, judging from its landholdings, along with its library and collection of ritual paraphernalia, Du Islet Academy in Cixi

(Qingyuan , Jiangzhe) was a major local institution. In 1309 a local man, Tong Jin , built a charitable school on an island in Du Lake and donated land to support it.81 e site of the school was the former residence and study of his grandfather, Tong Juyi

(1223 jinshi), a follower of Yang Jian (1141-1226), the foremost disciple of Lu Jiuyuan and a native of Cixi.82 Tong Jin’s son Gui (fl. ca.1325?) contributed additional mountain land; and in 1336 the school was given a name plaque as Du Islet Academy.83 Sun Yuanmeng (1291-1375), a native of nearby Yin county, who had been headmaster at Compassion Lake Academy in Cixi, came to be headmaster here.84 When Tong Jin originally built the

79) His biographer does not provide details as to why she left.80) He Menggui, “Baizhangxi shuyuan ji,” 9.19a.81) Zhizheng Siming xuzhi , comp. Wang Yuangong (SYDFCS ed.), 8.9b-10a. For Tong Jin, see YR III.1436. 82) For Tong Juyi, see SR IV.2784.83) For Tong Gui, see YR III.1436. e late-Yuan poet Cen Anqing’s (1286-1355) collected works include two poems sending off Du Islet Academy headmasters, so we know that the academy continued to exist until his times at least. See Cen Anqing, “Song Duzhou shanzhang Liu Gongfu” and “Song Duzhou Yinshan gui Tiantai” , in Kaolao shanren shiji (SKQS zhenben ed.), xia, 5b-6b; 7a-b. I cannot identify either of these individuals.84) For Sun, see YR II.875. is reference only mentions that he was headmaster at Com-passion Lake Academy; but the Qing author Quan Zuwang says that he was also headmaster at Du Islet. See SYXA 74.17a.



charitable school, according to one source, it was over 100 “pillars” (ying ) in size and supported by four qing (about 56 acres) of “fertile fields.”85 e local history compiled in 1342, shortly after the official founding of Du Islet Academy, specifies a total of 60 bays of buildings, plus two platforms (zuo ).86 e largest of the individual buildings was the shrine to local masters: Tong Juyi, his sons Zhong and Hong

; Cao Hanyan , a disciple of Tong Juyi and headmaster at both Compassion Lake and Du Islet Academies;87 the well-known scholar Huang Zhen; and Yan Wei (jinshi of the Shaoxi era [1190-95]), a student of Tong Juyi.88 Yang Jian had his own individual shrine.89 e 1342 gazetteer provides a detailed list of ritual implements held by the academy, divided by categories of copper, iron, pewter, bamboo, and wood.90 It also includes a comprehensive library catalogue, both printing blocks and books: 12 plates (ban ) of the Yuanshi Mengzhai Xiaojing ; 23 plates of the Gengzhi tu ; Four Books, 20 volumes; Six Classics, 30 volumes; Tongjian , 20 volumes; Shiji , 30 volumes; Hanwen , 10 volumes; Liuwen , 10 volumes; Huangshi richao , 50 volumes; and Cihu wenji

, 10 volumes.91 e first set of printing blocks is for Yuan Fu’s (1214 optimus) writings on the Classic of Filial Piety, which

85) SYXA 74.26b. A pillar is equivalent to a bay (jian).86) Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 8.10a-11a. According to this source, the lands attached to Du Islet Academy are still about four qing (about 56 acres), but only about one qing is “fields,” the remainder consisting of a small amount (only eight mu) of uncultivated land, and about three qing of “mountain land,” the total corresponding to the amount donated by the founder’s son. Additional income in the form of grain is recorded as 588 shi.87) Yanyou Siming zhi, 14.33b and 36a, says that Cao was chosen to be headmaster of Compassion Lake, but that the post was taken by Gui Yingkui , whom I cannot identify. Gui is a prominent surname in Cixi, and Gui Wanrong (1196 jinshi ) was, along with Tong Juyi, one of the main local disciples of Yang Jian as well as the author of the famous collection of legal cases, Tangyin bishi . For Gui Wanrong, see SR III.1937.88) Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 8.10b. For Zhong, see SYXA 74.26b (an alternative character for his name, , with the same pronunciation, is given there); for Hong, see SYXA 74.26b: supp.74.73a; for Cao Hanyan, see SYXA 74.27a; for Huang Zhen, see SR IV.2870; for Yan Wei, see SYXA 74.27a.89) Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 8.10a.90) Ibid., 8.11a-11b.91) Ibid., 8.11b-12a.



are no longer extant.92 e second set is a work by Lou Shu (1090-1162), a series of illustrations on rice cultivation and silk weav-ing that he commissioned when he was magistrate of Yuqian county in Hangzhou.93 Like Yuan Fu, Lou Shu belonged to a prominent local elite family that produced many jinshi, some of whom were appointed to high offices in the central government during the South-ern Song.94 e volumes in the academy library also include the stan-dard classics and histories (Sima Guang and Sima Qian); and for literary resources, the writings of the Tang guwen prose masters, Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan. e other two works are by local authors: Huang Zhen’s reading diary, Huangshi richao, and the collected works of Yang Jian, Cihu wenji. Given the substantial collection of books held by Du Islet, and its foundation as a charitable school, it must have been a significant educational resource for the community, while it also functioned as a shrine to venerate local scholars tied to one branch of the Dao Learning movement. Like Du Islet, East Lake (Donghu ) Academy in Qingyuan’s Yin county also began as a family charitable school.95 Two brothers, Lu Jujing and Lu Sicheng , began to build the school in 1325 to fulfill the aspirations of their father, Lu Tianyou , who had wanted to set up a charitable school to teach local people.96 e sons donated a modest 160 mu of land to support it, and when it was completed in 1328, Zhedong Commander (shuai ) Wang Duzhong

92) is work is likely the same as the one listed in the literary catalogue of the dynastic history as Xiaojing shuo by Yuan Fu. See Songshi , comp. Toghto et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju ed.), 202.506793) For this, see Linda Walton, “Kinship, Status, and Marriage in Song China: A Study of the Lou Lineage of Ningbo, c. 1050-1250,” Journal of Asian History 18.1 (1984), 45, and Roslyn Lee Hammers, “e Production of Good Government: Images of Agrarian Labor in Southern Song (1127-1279) and Yuan (1272/79-1368) China” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2002).94) For Yuan Fu’s role in the Southern Song academy movement elsewhere, see Walton, Academies and Society in Southern Song China, 56-60.95) Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 8.13a; the heading here refers to the school as East Lake Cha-ritable School (Donghu yixue ). 96) SYXA: supp. 49.237b. See also Cheng Duanxue , “Donghu shuyuan ji”

, in Jizhai ji (Siming congshu ed.), 4.1a-2b; this inscription is also reproduced in Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 8.13a-b. ere are minor textual differences between the two versions.



(1278-1341) named it East Lake Academy.97 ey had first erected a shrine to Zhu Xi, and by the time the school was completed there was also a shrine to ten local worthies, headed by the local scholar Chen He (1100 jinshi).98 Magistrate Ruan Shenzhi appointed local men to teach there, and an inscription by local scholar Cheng Duanxue (1321 jinshi) commemorating the academy’s completion was inscribed on a stone erected in 1330.99 Known along with his brother Duanli for his writings on education, Cheng took the opportunity of lauding the Lu family to criticize the lack of financial support for schools on the part of the wealthy, promote the value of local schools, and espouse an egalitarian ideal of education:

I say that these days people contribute much of their wealth to support expenditures for buildings that revere the Buddhists and Daoists in order to enrich their land and increase their profits. Today the Lu family does not reach to [the level of ] middle property [holders] and yet they are able to expend their strength to aid their countrymen. eir intentions cannot [be considered to] be like the vulgar practices of the times… e learning of antiquity and the present is not different, yet [the present] does not equal antiquity. If one considers the reasons, in ancient times, twenty-five-households had two schools and the various levels, from neighborhood to capital, all had schools; whether noble or lowly, all were able to study. [But] in today’s prefecture and county schools and academies, those who do not belong to the shi do not enter, and the farmers, craftsmen, and merchants have no place to study. In antiquity, from the elementary stages of learning to the most advanced educa-tion the proper ordering of younger and older, eating and resting, activity and repose, there was nothing that was not learned. ose who had been educated at home all emerged as the foundation of ordering the state and regulating the people.100

97) Cheng Duanxue, “Donghu shuyuan ji,” 4.1b. For Wang, see YR I.201-3.98) SR III.2433. Chen He was a political opponent of both Cai Jing and Qin Gui whose reputation only began to be resuscitated during the reign of Xiaozong (r.1163-1189).99) For Ruan, see YR I.611; for Cheng, see YR III.1432.100) Cheng Duanxue, “Donghu shuyuan ji,” 4.1b-2a.



Cheng makes two main points here: that the model of antiquity linked schooling to each level of community and state, and that social distinctions did not determine who became educated. To be sure, his argument that the home is the place to cultivate learning echoes the emphasis on the family as the source of values and education in his fellow Yin native Wang Yinglin’s inscription on Guangping Academy, written more than fifty years earlier. But Cheng also promotes the idea of education for those outside the shi class, suggesting that the values taught in schools need to be transmitted to those who are not part of the elite—not so much contradicting Wang Yinglin as modifying his message by expressing a Mencian ideal of human capacity for, and response to, education that resonated with Dao Learning ideals as well. A far more distant ancestor was invoked by Wu Cheng , the chronicler of Wucheng Academy. e academy was established around 1300 by the Zeng of Yongfeng (Ji’an , Jiangxi), the putative descendants of Confucius’ disciple Zengzi. According to Wu Cheng, the academy’s name was taken from Zengzi’s original home; and both the Zeng of Yongfeng and those of Nanfeng were his descendants and thus related to each other:101

According to the Shiji biography of Confucius’ followers, Zeng Can was a person from South Wucheng. Among his descendants some moved from the state of Lu to Jiangnan; this is why for generations the Zeng of Nanfeng have consid-ered themselves to be the descendants of Zengzi. It is the same for the Zeng of Yongfeng. Now, the Zeng of Wucheng flourished in Lu, and after a thousand and several hundreds of years the Zeng of Nanfeng also began to flourish. e Zeng of Nanfeng flourished in the Song. After another several decades, the Zeng of Yongfeng followed suit. Both brothers entered the Hanlin Academy. eir father was the former jinshi and Song investigating censor, later Yuan Confucian school intendant. Because of his sons’ high rank, the father was ennobled as Earl of Wucheng Commandery. ereupon, they established an academy where they enshrined the Former Sage and Former Teacher [Confucius] as well as their deceased father, in order to accommodate the members of their clan who came to study. e head of the Hanlin Academy notified the Academy of Worthies, which forwarded [the demand] to the emperor; the court gave its approval, so that those

101) Wu Cheng, “Wucheng shuyuan ji” , in Wu Wenzheng ji, 36.14b-16a; for this reference, see 36.15a.



among the Zeng who were of ru status and of worthy character were invited to direct education at the academy.102

e brothers who founded Wucheng Academy were Zeng Deyu (b. 1273) and Zeng Xunshen (1282-1330), and their father

was Zeng Xiyan (1262 jinshi).103 Wu Cheng seems to make a distinction among different Zeng households by indicating that not all were ru. We know the names at least of Xiyan’s father and his grandsons, so we can trace this family over four generations, from the late Southern Song through the latter part of the Yuan.104 Beyond this, even though we cannot directly connect the founders of Wucheng Academy to them, it is likely that Wu Cheng’s reference to the distinguished lineage of the Yongfeng Zeng reflects, at least in part, the accomplishments of the descent line of Zeng Yangui (1124-1201), residents of Yongfeng county who took degrees, held office, and married their daughters to jinshi.105 In his inscription on the academy, Wu Cheng criticizes other academies of the time as lacking substance and existing in name only, in contrast with Wucheng which “above transmits the Daotong and below continues the [Zeng] ancestral legacy.”106 In Wu Cheng’s mind, the two purposes were

102) Wu Cheng, “Wucheng shuyuan ji,” 36.15a-b.103) For Deyu, see YR III.1396; for Xunshen, YR III.1395; for Xiyan, YR III.1394-95.104) See Zeng Xunshen’s funerary inscription by Yu Ji, “Zeng Xunchu muzhiming”

, in Daoyuan xuegu lu (SKCS ed.), 19.2b-8a; for ancestry, 19.6b. Umehara and Kinugawa, Ryō Kin Gen denki sakuin, #2128, p.146, mistakenly identifies this funerary inscription with the younger brother, Zeng Deyu.105) For Yangui, see SR IV.2828. Zhou Bida’s (1126-1204) funerary inscription for Yangui details the degree-taking and office-holding of both his ancestors and his descendants, including marriages of daughters and granddaughters to jinshi. See Zhou Bida, “Zeng digonglang muzhiming” , Wenzhong ji (SKQS ed.), 74.1a-3a, especially 2a-3a. Zeng Xiyan and his sons may represent a branch of this lineage that flowered in the late Song and Yuan.106) Wu Cheng, “Wucheng shuyuan ji,” 36.15b.



intertwined in the academy: ancestral veneration and transmission of the Way.

Academies and Pathways to Office

Descendants of teachers who were not themselves disciples of Dao Learning scholars also founded academies to honor their ancestors and in that way lay claim to an inherited tradition of learning that confirmed their place in local society and often yielded appointment to office. Sometimes appointments bypassed the post of headmaster and went directly to the position of prefectural professor. us, Brocade River (Jinjiang ) Academy in Anren county (Raozhou, Jiangzhe) was founded by Ni Tang in 1288 at the place where his father Ni Jie had lectured during the Song.107 After Ni Tang requested a name plaque for the school, he was appointed Nankang Confucian school professor, and eventually reached a post of Edict Attendant in the Hanlin Academy (Hanlin daizhi , 5a or 5b). When in 1296 he requested Wang Gou (1245-1310) to write an inscription for the academy, he said that Brocade River Academy was originally the Ni family school.108 Wang Gou describes the landscape and scenery of the school’s setting and the education of the shi that takes place there, linking the rise of the Ni lineage to the cultural unification of north and south after 1276 and to the promotion of education by the Yuan court through the deputing of representatives to seek out “venerable Classicists” (chongru ) and “remnant eremites” ( yiyi

) in Jiang, Huai, Min, and Guang.109 He concludes by recalling the famous academies that rose in the Tang and flourished in the Song and associating them with the veneration of literary culture under the Yuan as reflected in the recognition of the Ni family’s Brocade River

107) Jiangxi tongzhi (1881 ed.), 82.26a; Tianxia shuyuan zongzhi (Taibei: Guangwen shuju, 1974 [original preface 1702]), 5.53b. See also Chen Gujia

and Deng Hongbo Zhongguo shuyuan zhidu yanjiu (Hangzhou: Zhejiang jiaoyu chubanshe, 1997), 2; Li Caidong , Jiangxi gudai shuyuan yanjiu (Nanchang: Jiangxi jiaoyu chubanshe, 1993), 256-58. For Ni Tang, see YR II.836. I cannot identify Ni Jie.108) For Wang Gou, see YR I.126; for the inscription, see Tianxia shuyuan zongzhi, 5.54a-55a.109) Tianxia shuyuan zongzhi, 5.54b-55a.



Academy and the elevation of its founder to a relatively high office in the Mongol government. According to the inscription narrative, Ni Tang’s founding of an academy in the early Yuan, based on an inherited tradition of learning modeled by his father and on what he claims to have been a private family school, led to his appointment as a Confucian school professor and subsequent elevation to a position in the Hanlin Academy, following a pattern we can discern elsewhere in the early Yuan among the Jiangnan literati. Families who made contributions to local education through the founding or expansion of an academy were sometimes rewarded with official appointments unrelated to education or to examination success. Tortoise Creek (Aoxi ) Academy in Le’an (Fuzhou , Jiangxi) was established in 1300 by a local man, Xia Youlan (1270-1312), a student of Wu Cheng.110 Eleven years later, the academy received a name plaque, and the following year the court appointed officials to administer it.111 When Ayurbarwada (Renzong, r. 1311-1320) ascended the throne, he bestowed on Youlan an imperial proc-lamation appointing him vice-prefect (tongzhi , rank 6a-7a) of Huichang (Ganzhou , Jiangxi). Youlan returned home from this post after only a month because of illness, but his son, Zhixue

took up his father’s dual legacy: to maintain support for the academy, and to claim his father’s appointment.112 According to Wu Cheng’s inscription for this academy, “the buildings and lands were entirely the property of the Xia family.”113 e property was not inconsiderable: 500 mu (about 70 acres) with an annual income of 200 shi (540 bushels) of rice.

110) For Wu Cheng, see David Gedalecia, A Solitary Crane in a Spring Grove (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000). For the academy, see Wu Cheng, “Le’an xian Aoxi shuyuan ji” , Wu Wenzheng gong ji (1756 printed ed.), 23.30a-32b. For Xia, see YR II.860. 111) Although there are no dates given, Wu Cheng also wrote a preface sending off Tortoise Creek headmaster Wang Nanshu to the north, in which he praised Wang’s accom-plishments while in office there for over three years (Wu Cheng, “Song Aoxi shuyuan shanzhang Wang jun beishang xu” , Wu Wenzheng ji, 27.14a-15b; see also Xu Zi, 86). I cannot identify Wang Nanshu. 112) Wu Cheng, “Le’an xian Aoxi shuyuan ji,” 23.31a.113) Ibid., 23.32a.



e Xia also had some claim to prior local prominence, having served as military officers in Le’an for several generations during the Song.114 Probably in recognition of this local military role, at the beginning of the Yuan Xia Youlan’s father, Jie (1248-1293), had been given the hereditary military rank of baihu and appointed military judge (zhenfu , rank 5a) in Le’an.115 We see here a family with a local military role during the Song, recognized in the early Yuan with mili-tary rank and office, and in the following generation making an invest-ment in local education that is rewarded with a prefectural post outside their native place. ough the vice-prefect appointment was officially a lower rank than Xia Youlan’s father’s military rank, it may have offered a different—and more desirable—kind of prestige for a southern Chi-nese elite family under the Yuan: a civil post outside their native place that would expand their realm of social and political connections.116

Just south of Dongting Lake in Yiyang (Tianlin , Huguang), Qing Islet (Qingzhou ) Academy was built on an island in the middle of the Zi River. It was established in 1301 by Liu Lütai to fulfill his father’s wishes; Lütai allotted over 360 mu of land to support it, and when Qing Islet Academy was officially recognized by the court, he was made headmaster. 117 After Lütai died in office as magistrate of Tongdao (Jingzhou , Huguang) in 1340, his sons continued family support of the academy, including a grant of 10,000 strings of cash and 200 mu of land, in addition to

114) See Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen, 245; 322 n. 53.115) YR II.859.116) However, Xia affinal ties, to the extent known, remained close to home. Xia Youlan’s sister Shuming married the son of Confucian School Intendant Tan Wensen

from nearby Yihuang , and their son was betrothed to a Tan woman. See her funerary record by Wu Cheng, “Yihuang Tan Yu qi Xiashi muzhi” , Wu Wenzheng ji 75.15b. e funerary inscription for their father by Wu Cheng, “Le’an Xia zhenfu muzhiming” , Wu Wenzheng ji, 73.7b relates that Xia Youlan’s other sister married a man surnamed Zhan , and according to Xia Youlan’s funerary inscription, also by Wu Cheng (“Yuanzhang shizuolang Ganzhou lu tongzhi Huichang zhou shi Xia hou muzhiming” , Wu Wenzheng ji, 74.9b), “tribute scholar” ( ) Zhan was invited to teach at the academy, so it is likely that his sister’s marriage was a product of this academic tie and, in that sense at least, close to home (though it is unclear who Zhan was or where he came from).117) Liu Yueshen, “Zhongxiu Qingzhou shuyuan ji” , in Shenzhai wenji

(Yuandai zhenben wenji huikan, Taibei: National Central Library, 1970), 6.16a-17a. For Liu Lütai, see YR III.1855.



restoring 100 mu that had been stolen. e headmaster at the time was Kang Zhen , a student of Liu Yueshen, author of an inscription to commemorate this restoration and expansion.118 Xu Youren

(1287-1364) also wrote an inscription for this occasion, noting that there had been eleven headmasters up to the present Kang Zhen:

Kang Zhen first prepared the reasons to request an inscription. I consider that when the ancients created things they always [had inscriptions] written to emphasize the origins and to exhort posterity. How much more [important] when it is something great like this! By this means Lütai advanced to office. At first it wasn’t written about [because] he didn’t want to make known his own efforts. [But] how can there be continuity [without a record]? at this was not done for forty years—is this not to be regarded as truly inadequate?119

.

Xu Youren, in other words, is clear that Lütai’s founding of the academy and naming as headmaster led to his appointment as magistrate of Tongdao. e pattern already seen is repeated in the case of Qing Islet Academy: an individual establishes an academy to recognize his father’s scholarship or commitment to learning and becomes headmaster, then receives a modest (though ranked) official appointment; in the next generation, family members contribute more support. In this case, Lütai’s sons

118) Liu Yueshen, “Chongxiu Qingzhou shuyuan ji,” 6.16b. For Kang Zhen, see YR II.1042. Kang was from Taihe in Jizhou , and Liu E (1290-1364), a marriage relative of Kang Zhen from nearby Yongfeng , wrote a funerary inscription for Kang’s sixth generation ancestor at Kang’s request. See Liu E, “Kang Guihua fujun mubiao chushi”

, Weishi ji (SKQS ed.), 3.14a-16a. Kang Zhen was also a student of Wu Cheng, who wrote a funerary inscription for Kang Ruisun (1268-1327) from Taihe , who may have been a relative of Kang Zhen. For Ruisun, see YR II.1044 (the only source is Wu Cheng, “Gu jushi Kang jun xiangke muzhiming”

, Wu Wenzheng ji, 83.1a-4a.)119) Xu Youren, “Qingzhou shuyuan ji” , in Zhizheng ji (SKQS ed.), 36.10b-13a; for this passage, see 36.11a-b (the character is written without the water radical in the text). For a brief discussion of the writing of academy commemorative inscriptions as a ritual act, see Linda Walton, “Academy Landscapes and the Ritualization of Cultural Memory in China Under the Mongols,” in Performance and Appropriation: Profane Rituals in Gardens and Landscapes, ed. Michel Conan (Washington, D.C.: Dumbar-ton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard Univ. Press, 2007), 154-56.



donated both money and land to Qing Islet Academy, but since there are no biographical sources on them beyond this, we do not know if they were rewarded for this with any official post(s). Far more common than military or political offices awarded to families who invested in education were unranked or low-level educational posts at the academies they supported, which still conferred some degree of social and cultural prestige. Weng Islet (Wengzhou

) Academy, located in the Zhoushan archipelago off the coast of Mingzhou, began in the late Southern Song as a family school founded by Ying You , a 1223 jinshi who became assistant civil councillor of state (canzhi zhengshi , 2b) in the late 1240s.120 Song emperor Lizong bestowed a name tablet on the school, probably in conjunction with Ying You’s elevation to this high post at court. Ying You was the nephew of Ying Su (1193 jinshi), whose former residence was the foundation for the school.121 Weng Islet Academy educated both agnatic and affinal kin, but apparently was not open to those outside the Ying lineage and their affines, at least until the Yuan.122 In the early Yuan, Ying Xiangsun , a grandson of Ying Su, was appointed headmaster.123 Because the resources for the academy were insufficient, in 1295 Xiangsun led his relatives to allocate their own property to it, and “made the income and expenditures [a] public [asset] to be used as capital for teaching and support.”124 Ying Yisun

, another grandson of Ying Su, was a 1262 jinshi and may have been among the relatives that Xiangsun led to support the academy.125 Weng Islet was a family school transformed into an academy in the early Yuan, with the reciprocal exchange of family property to support

120) For Weng Islet Academy, see the references in successive local histories:Dade Chang-guo zhou tuzhi (SYDFCS ed.), 2.10a-13a; Yanyou Siming zhi, 14.24b; Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 8.5b-7b. For Ying You, see SR V.4093. 121) For Ying Su, see SR V.4092.122) Dade Changguo zhou tuzhi, 2.10b.123) For Ying Xiangsun, see SR V.4096 and YR V.2008. His biography merely says that “he resided at home and did not hold office.”124) Dade Changguo zhou tuzhi, 2.10b. is donation of land was commemorated in an inscription by Feng Fujing , assistant prefect and editor of the Dade Changguo zhou tuzhi (1298). For the inscription, see ibid., 2.10b-12b. Feng was from Tongchuan in Sichuan and had previously held the post of Qingyuan prefectural school assistant professor.125) For Ying Yisun, see SR V.4096.



the school and the appointment of a family member as headmaster, plus recognition in the community. Only after the beginning of the Yuan did it become an official academy, simultaneously providing local educational resources for the Yuan state and a potential foothold in the official world for the Ying family. A very brief biographical notice in the 1298 local history suggests that members of the Ying lineage may have benefited beyond the headmaster post at Weng Islet Academy. Ying Shi , identified also as a descendant of Ying Su, was appointed to the office of assistant pacification commissioner (anfu fushi

) of Hainan in 1295, the same year that Ying Xiangsun became headmaster. 126 After its destruction by a typhoon in 1307, Weng Islet Academy was rebuilt in 1320 at the direction of Assistant Prefect Gan Wenchuan

(1276-1353).127 Gan oversaw the rebuilding of the rites hall and the main gate, and further improvements were made by the headmaster and the prefect in the mid-1330s. A separate shrine had been established for Zhu Xi when Weng Islet Academy was first restored in 1295, and according to Feng Fujing’s inscription, the school followed the rules of Zhu Xi’s White Deer Grotto Academy.128 In 1338 a shrine was added for Ying You, his uncle Su, and his nephew Xiangsun.129 At an unknown date Buransi (?) , a Tangut who had taken up residence in Tiantai and had passed the local examination, was appointed headmaster at Weng Islet Academy.130 Finally, in 1340, headmaster Cao Xingzhi again renovated the academy and Ying Kuiweng from Tiantai , who stated that he was a descendant of Ying Su and a long-time resident of Yin county, wrote an inscription to commemorate the event.131

126) Dade Changguo zhou tuzhi, 6.4a.127) Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 8.5b; for Gan, see YR I.21-22. A 1315 jinshi, Gan was involved with several academies: he was headmaster at Raozhou’s Compassion Lake (Cihu ) Academy, and as Minister of Rites he wrote the calligraphy for a 1350 inscription on Wenzheng Academy in Suzhou (for the latter, see Wudu wencui xuji , ed. Qian Gu [SKQS zhenben ed.], 13.13a).128) For the shrine to Zhu Xi, see Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 8.5b; for the White Deer Grotto reference, see Feng Fujing’s inscription in Dade Changguo zhou tuzhi, 2.10b129) Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 8.5b.130) YR I.11.131) Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 8.6b; for Cao, see YR II.1188. Cao was also from Tiantai, according to Ying Kuiweng’s inscription (8.6a), and is listed in the same local history as



Although not a family academy in exactly the same way as the ones already described, the history of Huian Academy was closely associated with the local Wang family, one of the most prominent official families in Huizhou , who had produced three jinshi in the Northern Song and nineteen in the Southern Song.132 Dedicated to Zhu Xi, Huian Academy was established during the early Yuan in Zhu’s registered native place, Huizhou’s Wuyuan county.133 Accord-ing to Liu Guan’s account, when Zhedong Surveillance Vice-Commis-sioner Lu Zhi founded the academy in 1289, Wang Yuangui

(1233-1290) returned home and asked to take over supervision of it, in part because his sons and younger brothers would be able to study in it.134 is was approved, but Wang Yuangui’s tenure was brief because he died within the year. His elder brother Yuanlong (1265 jinshi) had become magistrate in Wuyuan county in 1275 as a result of his military leadership in the disturbances that occurred at the time of the Southern Song collapse, and after the Mongol conquest he was appointed vice prefect of Huizhou.135 Both Yuangui and Yuanlong were known for their local military prowess and for charitable works, playing precisely the kind of role that Robert Hymes describes for the local elite in Song-period Fuzhou.136 In fact, at least one source credits Wang

holding the post of provost (xuelu ) for Qingyuan Route (Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 2.4a). 132) For social historical background on Huizhou, see Harriet T. Zurndorfer, “e Hsin-an ta-tsu chih and the Development of Chinese Gentry Society 800-1600,” T’oung Pao 77 (1981): 154-215; concerning the Wuyuan Wang, see 182-83. 133) See the inscription by Liu Guan , “Wuyuan zhou chongjian Hui’an shuyuan ji”

, in Liu daizhi wenji (SBCK ed. reproducing a Yuan Zhiyuan-era [1341-68] ed. held by the Jiangyin Miushi yifengtang ), 15.15b-18b.134) For Lu Zhi, see YR III.1961-2; for Wang Yuangui, see YR I.578. e editors of the Tianxia shuyuan zhi, p. 215, simply state that Wang Yuangui established the academy, even though the source they include is the inscription by Liu Guan. 135) For Wang Yuanlong, see YR I.579. For this reference, see Yuanlong’s biography by Hong Yanzu , “Huizhou lu zhizhong Wang gong Yuanlong zhuan”

, in Xin’an wenxian zhi , ed. Cheng Minzheng (SKQS ed.), 85.23b-24b. 136) See Hong Yanzu, “Huizhou lu zhizhong Wang gong Yuanlong zhuan,” 85.24a-b, where an inscription by Cheng Jufu is cited concerning the restoration of a local temple through the efforts of the two brothers; see also Fang Hui , “Raozhou lu zhizhong Wang gong Yuangui muzhiming” , in Xin’an wenxian zhi, 85.24b-29a.



Yuangui himself with the establishment of Huian Academy, and it is possible that the inspiration came from him, Lu Zhi’s role being to provide official approbation or sponsorship.137 In post-Mongol conquest Huizhou, Yuanlong and Yuangui served as local officials (Yuanlong as Huizhou vice prefect and Yuangui as Wuyuan magistrate138), so that their local authority was more than social and economic—it was also political. Although the prohibition of appointment to one’s own native place had already weakened during the Southern Song, after the Mongol conquest it appears to have been more common for local elites who had exercised leadership in the community to be appointed to a local official post, usually in tandem with a non-Han official. is was a pragmatic strategy on the part of the Yuan government, making use of the expertise and local knowledge of former Song elites. e collaboration with the northerner Lu Zhi that produced Huian Academy highlights the continued role of the Wuyuan Wang as a local elite family after the Mongol conquest. Following its destruction by fire in 1314, Huian Academy was restored by Yuangui’s descendants Liangchen and Lianghou

.139 The son of Yuangui’s brother Yuanlong, Liangchen was made Yuangui’s heir at the age of three sui.140 He gained office through the yin privilege and held a series of county-level posts before being appointed investigating censor for the Jiangnan region by special decree

137) Fang Hui, “Raozhou lu zhizhong Wang gong Yuangui muzhiming,” 85.25a; 27b. Fang Hui compares Wang Yuangui’s efforts as district magistrate with those of Huizhou Prefect Han Bu , who established Huizhou’s Purple Sun Academy in 1246/7, also dedicated to Zhu Xi. e editors of Tianxia shuyuan zhi, 4.7a, simply state that Wang Yuangui established the academy, even though the source they include is the inscription by Liu Guan, who attributes the founding to Lu Zhi.138) Fang Hui, “Raozhou lu zhizhong Wang gong Yuangui muzhiming,” 85.26b. Liu Guan refers to Wang Yuangui as Raozhou vice-prefect (zhizhong ) and says that he returned home on leave when he asked to take over the academy. Fang Hui, however, states that he was appointed but became ill before he could take up the post, so it seems likely that illness caused him to return home and become involved with the academy.139) Liu Guan, “Wuyuan zhou chongjian Huian shuyuan ji,” 15.17a. For Wang Liangchen, see YR I.584; there is no reference for Lianghou. 140) See Yuangui’s funerary inscription by Fang Hui, “Raozhou lu zhizhong Wang gong Yuangui muzhiming,” 85.24b-29a; for this reference, see 85.28b. is same source also says that Lianghou was the child of Yuangui’s wife née Zhan , which I understand to mean that Yuangui was not his biological father, and therefore that he adopted Liangchen as his heir.



in 1299.141 is was a particularly impressive appointment, given that these positions were mostly filled by Mongols; but he offended some superiors and was demoted, and left office to return home.142 Lianghou also held regional offices, but has no independent biography.143 e role of Wang Yuangui and his descendants at Hui’an Academy differs from other cases cited here in that the Wangs obviously managed to perpetuate their status through the Yuan transition and were appointed to office well before their engagement with the academy. Adding to their military reputation, the outstanding prominence of Wang Yuan-gui and his brother as degree-holders in the Song likely made them useful allies for the new regime and formidable potential challengers who needed to be drawn into positions of local power. Notwithstanding their political and military positions, it was still advantageous for the Wangs to renew their scholarly credentials and confirm their place in local society through engagement with Huian Academy over at least two generations.

Family Academies in the North

e founding of family academies was confined neither to the south nor to Chinese families; but those in the north for which we have records tended to be founded after office-holding or military success. To be sure, this is not true in every case presented here, and, conversely, there are also cases in the south corresponding to this pattern: the association of the Huizhou Wangs with Huian Academy, for example, came after they held office, exhibited military prowess, and engaged in charitable works. ere was nonetheless a tendency for office-hold-ing or military success to precede the establishment of family academies

141) Wang Youfeng , “Wang Yushi Liangchen zhuan” , in Xin’an wenxian zhi, 79.28a-b.142) Wang Youfeng, “Wang Yushi Liangchen zhuan,” 79.28b. For the post of investigating censor, see Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1985), 145-46 (#795). 143) Fang Hui, “Raozhou lu zhizhong Wang gong Yuangui muzhiming,” 85.28b, identifies him as Jiangdong intendant for cotton cultivation (mumian tiju ), and then Yangzhou intendant for millitary colonies (yingtian tiju ). Liu Guan, “Huizhou lu chongjian Huian shuyuan ji,” 15.17a, calls him Fujian commissioner for salt distribution (du zhuanyun yanshi ).



in the north, and this tendency may be attributable to the very different social and political circumstances that prevailed there, such that it was important to gain recognition for cultural accomplishments by contributing to community education after having held office, rather than to found an academy to gain office. Li Mountain (Lishan ) Academy at Puzhou (Yuncheng

, Zhongshu sheng) suggests that even Mongol families adopted the strategy of founding academies in order to perpetuate family tradi-tions of learning, hence status as members of a scholarly and profes-sional elite. is academy was founded probably sometime in the 1290s by Cino’a (d. after 1318), a Mongol of the distinguished Baya’ud

clan, who was known by the epithet, Master Li-Mountain.144 His grandfather Qutugsi was killed in battle in 1255 after the extermination of the Jurchen Jin state, and his father Qosan held offices in the south after the fall of the Song.145 Cino’a’s biography in the Yuanshi says that “after he retired to Pu, he amassed myriad volumes of books at a Former Worthies Shrine Hall he built at the foot of Li Mountain. He provided 100 mu of his own land to support it, inviting teachers to teach the local sons.”146 Cino’a established the school, according to the account by Cheng Jufu, not only to teach local peo-ple but also to provide for them in times of need. A doctor was appointed at the academy to treat students and local people, and stu-dents practiced archery and military techniques during their leisure time, so the academy had a broad range of practical and charitable functions.147 ree generations of this Mongol family are cited in the inscription by Cheng Jufu as acting in a way completely consistent with southern Chinese elite families who supported local education by founding academies and engaged in local charitable works beyond schools. Li Mountain Academy also appears to have had a more prac-

144) Cheng Jufu, “Lishan shuyuan ji” , in Cheng Xuelou ji (Yuandai zhenben wenji huikan ed., Taibei: Taiwan National Central Library, 1970), 12.13b-14b. For Cino’a, see YR IV.2334.145) For Qutugsi and Qosan, see YR IV.2580, 2559.146) Yuan shi, 134.3259.147) Cheng Jufu, “Lishan shuyuan ji,” 12.14a. e appointment of a doctor at Li Mountain Academy may well reflect the relatively high level of official attention paid to medicine under Mongol rule. See Reiko Shinno, “Promoting Medicine in the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368): An Aspect of Mongol Rule in China,” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2002).



tical orientation than most, providing medical aid and training in military skills along with classical scholarship. Known for his recruitment of southern Chinese scholars on behalf of Qubilai in 1286, Cheng Jufu certainly had interests of his own at stake in touting the scholarly accomplishments of an illustrious Mon-gol family.148 He also commemorated Dong’an Academy in Shandong, named for the northerner Xie Jiexiang and completed in 1315.149 Beginning in 1285, Jiexiang held a series of offices and was eventually promoted to Hanlin expositor-in-waiting (shijiang xueshi

, rank 2b). When he returned home at the end of his career, he used his own resources to set up the academy near his residence. Around the time Jiexiang retired and built the academy, Khaishan (Wuzong, r. 1308-1311) decreed that noble ranks were to be conferred on both ancestors and descendants of officials of the fifth rank and above.150 Jiexiang’s father and grandfather were ennobled, and Jiexiang requested a funerary inscription to announce it. Yao Sui’s (1238-1313) funerary inscription for Jiexiang’s father, Xi (1228-1308), identifies the earliest ancestor as Yuan (1089-1142), whose household was in Zhending and included twelve sons.151 Yuan’s own funerary inscription says that he was from Bao’an on the northwestern frontier and fought the Jurchen under the banner of general Han Shizhong (1089-1151).152 His military career took him to Zhenjiang , where he served as commander-in-chief (du zhihui shi ), and where he was eventually buried. e discrepancies in geographical origins reflected in these two accounts are likely the

148) On Cheng Jufu’s southern tour and his role as Confucian adviser to Qubilai, see Sun Kekuan , Yuandai Han wenhua zhi huodong (Taibei: Taiwan Zhonghua shuju, 1968), 347-351.149) For Xie, see YR III.1624; for Cheng’s inscription, see Cheng Jufu, “Dong’an shuyuan ji” , in Cheng Xuelou ji, 13.16b-17b.150) For background on this, see e Cambridge History of China, vol. 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368, ed. Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), 507-8.151) Yao Sui, “Zeng shaozhong dafu qingche duwei Bohai junhou Xie gong fendao bei”

, Mu’an ji (SKQS ed.), 25.1a-4b. For biographical sources on Xie Yuan, see also SR IV.3282.152) Zhou Fu , “Song gu Baoxinjun jiedushi shiwei xinjun majun duyuhou Xie gong shendao beiming” , Duzhai qian-dao bian (SKQS ed.), 28.1a-4a.



product of the ongoing warfare in north China with the Jurchen invasions, and like many other northerners after the fall of the Northern Song, Yuan was buried in the south.153 What happened to this family during the Jin and Southern Song? According to Yao Sui, Xi’s great-grandfather earned a jinshi under the Jin, and his grandfather, the youngest of five sons, became Silk Brocade Office supervisor at the end of the Jin.154 When the Jin collapsed, Xi’s father fled to Gaoyuan (Shandong) from Zhending. In 1238, when Ögödei (Taizong, r.1229-1241) proclaimed the examinations for scholars, the family was granted a banner for their gate adorned with the phrase “Righteous Scholars.”155 According to Cheng Jufu:

I remark that for generations the Xie lineage established themselves by means of Confucian scholarship. Throughout the Song and Jin eras many were named jinshi. eir library included over 10,000 volumes of books, and there was no book that Jiexiang had not read. In 1276, when an edict ordered to examine all the scholars of the empire, he was at the head [of those] selected, and by this means he advanced to office.156

Cheng thus depicts the Xie, who had survived the Jin conquest of the north and the Mongol conquest of both north and south, as a family with a substantial scholarly legacy. Cheng Jufu’s reference to the extensive library held by the Xie and to Jiexiang’s intense reading—both no doubt exaggerated—leads directly to Jiexiang’s official recognition and career success. Building an academy, as he did when he retired from office, was a manifestation of the family’s scholarly standing in

153) e author of his funerary inscription, Zhou Fu (1135-1177), was from Jinan and moved to Dantu, near Danyang, where Xie Yuan was buried.154) Yao Sui, 25.2a.155) Yao Sui, 25.2a-3a. Xi’s father and Xi himself were both married to Fan women, and Xi’s wife was the daughter of a vice director of the Treasury Bureau (jinxingbu yuanwai-lang ). She is described as learned in the classics and histories and having received instruction from her mother on these as well as on the Biographies of Virtuous Women. Yao Sui (25.3a) says that even their affinal relatives praised the filiality and harmoniousness of the Xie..156) Cheng Jufu, “Dong’an shuyuan ji,” 13.17a.



the community, as well as of their official status in the empire. But apart from Xie Jiexiang himself, until Khaishan’s call for the conferral of noble ranks on the ancestors of high-ranking officials there is little evidence that the Xie had any particular claim to the inheritance of a scholarly legacy—in fact, with the exception of Yao Sui’s reference to Jiexiang’s grandfather having earned a jinshi degree under the Jin, all the Xie forebears who can be identified as belonging to this lineage achieved whatever success they did through military posts. What the evidence does reveal is that Xie Jiexiang was able to elevate his ances-tors through his own success, and that, in contrast to other examples (primarily in Jiangnan), Dong’an Academy was in fact a product of, rather than a means to, academic and official success. Still, the exam-ple of Xie Jiexiang and Dong’an Academy reinforces the connection between academies and family status, as Dong’an Academy was a showplace of the Xie family’s scholarly accomplishments and of its elite status. Like many family academies in the south, West Luo in Henan, near Luoyang, began as a charitable school.157 It was established by Xue Youliang following the death of his father, Xue Xuan

(d. 1271), who had retired home to teach after holding local educational and other regional posts and then declining further appointments.158 When this charitable school came to the attention of the Directorate of Education in 1314, it gained official recognition as West Luo Academy and a headmaster was appointed by the govern-ment.159 At the time of the transformation of the charitable school into an academy, the founder, Xue Youliang, held a post as Hanlin auxiliary academician (Hanlin zhixueshi ).160 Unlike his father, whose official career was modest and short-lived, Youliang held office for over fifty years, at least according to Cheng Jufu’s account in his

157) See inscriptions by Cheng Jufu, “Luoxi shuyuan bei” , in Cheng Wenhai (Jufu), Xuelou ji (SKQS ed.), 22.1a-2b, and by Yuan Jue, “Xiluo shuyuan ji”

, in Qingrong jushi ji, 18.3a-3b.158) For Xue Youliang, see YR IV.2016; for Xue Xuan, see YR IV.2012.159) Cheng Jufu, “Luoxi shuyuan bei,” 22.1b.160) According to Hucker, p.158, in the Song the rank of this office was 3b, but in the Yuan the rank is unclear.



commemorative inscription on the academy.161 Rather than being a means to gain official appointment, the founding of West Luo Academy appears to have been a way of recognizing the scholarly contributions of Xue Youliang’s father, whose abilities had brought him to the attention of Yelü Chucai (1190-1244), Chinggis Qaghan’s advisor, who first appointed him to a local educational post.162 e site of the academy at a place where scholars of the Jin and early Yuan era such as Yang Huan (1186-1255), Yao Shu (1201-1278), and Yuan Haowen (1190-1274) had lectured, and associations with the Yiluo tradition of the Northern Song, made it a place resonant with a classicist tradition connecting the Northern Song with the Yuan.163 Recognition of this academy on the eve of the restoration of the civil service examinations was a timely act on the part of the Yuan court, but it also served the interests of the Xue family in draw-ing attention to their ancestor and smoothing the way for their progeny in the future by declaring the family’s scholarly status and community leadership in a way that supported state interests in education. A family academy in Zhending, founded in the mid-1340s and commemorated by Zhending native Su Tianjue (1294-1352), attests to the fact that it was not just prominent families who recognized the prospects for advancement through supporting an academy:

Jade Township Academy in Xinle county, Yongshou canton, was established by the brothers of the Zhao family to instruct students who came there. At the beginning, the Zhao family had only a moderate amount of property. e father was filial and brotherly and worked hard on the land, and at the same time penetrated the doctrines of yin-yang and the Five Phases. e mother also was worthy and intelligent, and she invited teachers to instruct her sons. After a while,

161) Cheng Jufu, “Luoxi shuyuan bei,” 22.2b. is is the primary biographical source for Youliang.162) Cheng Jufu, “Xue Yongzhai xiangsheng mubei” ,” in Xuelou ji, 9.2a.163) Cheng Jufu, “Luoxi shuyuan bei,” 22.1a-b. is site is also associated with much earlier figures, including the mythic flood-tamer Yu , as well as the Northern Song official Luo Shi (1029-1101), known for his skill at water control (SR IV.4273). See Yuan Jue, “Xiluo shuyuan ji,” 18.3a. To add to these resonances, when Xue Youliang expanded the academy, he purchased the former site of Sima Guang’s Solitary Pleasure Garden (Dule yuan ), where he then built a Five Worthies Hall (Cheng Jufu, “Luoxi shuyuan bei,” 22.1b).



those in the neighborhood who came to study were many, the school building was no longer adequate, so they began to allot family wealth to rebuild the academy.164

Despite having only a “moderate” amount of property, the Zhao managed to support the building of quite an extensive academy totaling fifty “pillars,” and they allotted 300 mu of land in a neighboring township to support the students and teachers.165 Notable here is the role of the mother, who clearly played a crucial role in her family’s education. When Jade Township Academy was completed in 1347, Investigating Censor Yang Junmin (like Su a Zhending native) recognized it as an academy and local officials thereupon remitted the labor services.166 After it was reported to the court, the appointment of school officials was requested. At the conclusion of the inscription, Su tells us that the elder brother, Shu , held the post of Kaiyuan Route

(Liaoning ) instructor (jiaoshou ), while the younger one, Yuan , was an eremite scholar.167 Like the sons of Fang Fengchen in the early Yuan, the elder brother probably acquired his post in recognition of the family’s contribution to local education. Here we can clearly see the benefits that accrued to families who established academies: remission of labor services and appointment to an educational office. Reflecting the concerns of an experienced government official, Su Tianjue’s inscription elaborates on the importance of these families’ efforts for the good of the state (guojia ):

Today the country is prosperous and peaceful, the laws and regulations are complete and extensive, it is only lamented that human talents are insufficient. Now, the central kingdom arose from the teachings of the sages and worthies, it was produced by using rites and music; it is what people from far and near model themselves after. Even though Xinle is said to be a small county, it is near the heart

164) Su Tianjue, “Xinle xian Bili shuyuan ji” , Zixi wengao (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997). 2.32-33.165) Ibid., 2.33.166) Ibid. For Yang, see YR III.1552. He eventually became chancellor of the Directorate of Education (guozi jijiu).167) Su Tianjue, 2.34. I cannot locate any other biographical information on these brothers.



of the metropolitan area. With the atmosphere of the mountains and rivers pure and clear, and the glorious civilizing influence of the court, how can there not be heroes to come out and be employed in the present age? And how could the estab-lishment of an academy be spoken of carelessly? Indeed, to improve customs and education and purify human hearts and minds, clarify rites and justice to be gen-erous to the country folks, there is nothing more important than that… If there are not families who read books and love justice, then who will know what to consider as important? Alas, today there are cultivated lands lined up together that annually harvest 10,000 zhong [of grain], but at the end of the year, [their owners] do not allot even a single cash, rather than accepting to establish schools and produce scholars in order to transform their locality!168

Su contrasts the stinginess of wealthy people with the devotion to education of the Zhao family, and points out the particular value of education in a small county. Zhao Shu’s appointment as a regional instructor took him to a more distant location in Liaoning, where the court presumably sought to transform customs through education.

e Roles of Affinal Relatives at Family Academies

Su’s mention of the Zhao mother’s role in educating her sons—she is also credited with inviting teachers to the school—is a rare reference to the engagement of mothers or wives in academy founding and support.169 Although unusual, there are examples that cite the role of

168) Su Tianjue, 2.33-34. A zhong is a measure of grain equal to one shi , four dou , or about 3.78 bushels (see Chūgoku shakai keizai shi go’i , ed. Hoshi Ayao [Tokyo: Tōyō bunko, 1966], 205). “Ten thousand zhong,” of course, does not mean more than a very large amount.169) Another reference to women relates to Cheng Duanli’s family. e landscape painter Wang Mian , a student of Wu Cheng, invited Cheng Duanli to teach his sons and siblings and established Jiangdong Academy in Jiankang as a school for them: “e students were [numerous] like clouds. If the clothing and food were insufficient, all contributed to the master [Wang]. When Cheng Duanli’s wife died, her daughter Ruji

donated her cosmetic boxes to support it.” See SYXA: supp., 87.13a; YR I.92 (Wang Mian).



affinal relatives in building academies, both north and south. At an academy established probably in the 1340s in Zhending’s Huolu

county, the family of the founder’s mother provided essential support:

Taihang Academy was established by Directorate of Education Assistant Reader Gao Jian… His late father… desired to erect a temple for sacrifices, but he died before it could be done. When the mourning was completed, Jian’s mother’s family donated grain and cloth they had accumulated to build the academy, and the ritual hall, the verandas and corridors, dormitories, kitchen and storehouse, everything was completed.170

Yu Ji’s inscription on Zhang Cliff Academy in Wanzai county (Yuanzhou , Jiangxi) relates a case in which affinal relatives also took on primary financial and other responsibility for an academy:171

ousand-Cliffs Zhang, the former Linjiang Confucian School Professor, had been living for generations in Capturing-Prosperity township in Wanzai county, Yichun commandery. He had acquired a lush landscape of mountains, waters, springs, and rocks, and in the south had built a pavilion on a terrace and a garden with a pond that stretched over several li… What is known as the Zhang Cliff Academy is located on the foothills of the mountain. ere is a Ritual Hall to revere the Former Sage, with a gate and covered walkways. ere is also a shrine for sacrifices to the Six Gentlemen, Zhou [Dunyi], the Cheng [brothers], Zhang [Zai], Shao [Yong], and Sima [Guang]. ere is a multistoried tower to store the books of the sages and worthies, and a hall to honor teachers and give lectures. And there are four dormitories to house students, as well as a kitchen, a storehouse, and all the implements necessary to supply their needs... When Master ousand-Cliffs died, his descendants went out to hold office in the capital and could not enjoy leisure here for forty years. Rong Nanxiang from [neighboring] Pingxiang county married a Zhang, the granddaughter of

170) Wei Su, “Taihang shuyuan xianxianci ji” , Shuoxuezhai gao (SKQS ed.), 2.33b.

171) Yu Ji, “Chongxiu Zhangyan shuyuan ji” , Yuan Shujun Yu Wenjing gong Daoyuan xuegu lu (Taiwan Huawen shuju ed.), 29.7b-9a. e beginning of Yu’s inscription locates Capturing Prosperity Village in both Yichun and Wanzai counties, which I take to mean that it must lie along the border between the two. However, in the remainder of the inscription, he refers only to Yichun county, while the Tianxia shuyuan zongzhi, 7.54a-55a, records the site as Wanzai county only.



ousand-Cliffs. ey had a son, Yuesun, who when he grew up established a granary for his kin and requested his maternal uncles [to donate] farmland. He wished to follow the old model of the academy and add to its buildings in order to invite teachers and select colleagues who would lead his clansmen and the local youths to go study there. e maternal uncles said: this is our intention too. So, in the spring of 1335, Yuesun assembled workers and had them restore the site, replacing what was rotted to make it solid, decorating what was gloomy to make it resplendent, and he allotted fertile fields to support it. His uncles also contrib-uted mountain land to gather fuel and a garden to plant vegetables. In a few months it was all completed… The pavilions and halls of the Southern Mountain Zhang are plentiful; but Yuesun alone put first the matter of the academy. Observing where his ambitions lie, he can truly be said to know what is fundamental.172

Yu Ji located the site of Zhang Cliff Academy between Mount Heng to the west, where Marchmount Hill Academy was, and Mount Lu to the east, where White Deer Grotto Academy was, and he noted that the rules of both academies, as well as the ideas of Zhang Shi and Zhu Xi, were all influential at Zhang Cliff. Finally, he claimed that “since the [Zhang] Cliff school appeared, the name of the Zhang and Rong families is known throughout the empire” ,

.173 Despite Yu Ji’s claim, there is no historical documentation for any of the people associated with Zhang Cliff Academy, beginning with ousand-Cliffs Zhang himself. However, if we assume a historical basis for Yu’s account, the example of Zhang Cliff Academy provides additional evidence of a scholar holding a local educational post whose

172) Yu Ji, “Chongxiu Zhangyan shuyuan ji,” 29.7b-8a. 173) Yu Ji, 29.8b-9a.



descendants drew on his legacy to build an academy. e dating is unclear. Yu Ji mentions that Zhao Wen (1239-1315) wrote an inscription celebrating the beauty of the landscape and the Zhang family’s extensive buildings, so we can surmise from this that the acad-emy’s origins date to before 1315.174 ere is no indication, at the time of its restoration in 1335, that the academy had been formally recognized by the court, even though Yu Ji was an important court official and could presumably have promoted it. ough there are hints of maternal and affinal family ties playing a role in the support of academies elsewhere, this is an unusually clear case of the direct support of maternal relatives, the Rong in this case, who profited no doubt from their association with the Zhang. e Zhang appear to have been wealthy and prominent at the time the academy was built, and ou-sand-Cliff Zhang’s position as Confucian school professor may well have been a result of his investment in the academy, but the sources are lacking to confirm this. By the time of the academy’s restoration in 1335, the Rong evidently were the ones with the financial resources to rebuild it, and they in turn were able to draw on the scholarly pres-tige associated with their affinal kin, the Zhang.

Hu Bingwen and Clarifying Classics Academy

For some individuals and families, academies became the centerpiece of their livelihood and position in local society rather than a path to office. e relationship between the family of Hu Bingwen (1250-1333) and Clarifying Classics (Mingjing ) Academy is illustrative. Clarifying Classics, named for the Tang classics degree, was founded by Hu Dian , fourteenth generation descendant of Hu Changyi , to commemorate the mingjing degree that Chan-gyi earned in the late Tang.175 In the biographical notice for Hu Bingwen’s grandfather, Hu Shikui, , the Song Yuan xue’an relates that the lineage was known as the “Mingjing Hu.”176 Hu Dian, his

174) I have not been able to locate this inscription, assuming it is still extant, in the elec-tronic SKQS edition of Zhao Wen’s collected works, Qingshan ji .175) See Wu Cheng, “Mingjing shuyuan ji” , Wu Wenzheng ji, 37.6a-8b. 176) SYXA: supp., 89.1a-b.



younger brother Cheng , and their uncle Bingwen collaborated in setting up the academy in 1310 at the site of their ancestor’s study at Kaochuan in Wuyuan (Huizhou). Like the two sons of Fang Fengchen who donated land to support Stone Gorge Academy and the sons of Liu Lütai who supported Qingzhou, the Hu brothers donated land to support Clarifying Classics: Dian gave three qing (about forty-two acres), and Cheng, fiftymu (about seven acres).177 When the academy was completed in 1312, Bingwen was put in charge of educational affairs (zhu jiaoshi ) there by the prefect. Hu Bingwen’s career typifies the professional educator path followed by many scholars of his time.178 A student of Zhu Xi’s school, he was (like his father) a scholar of the Changes who wrote extensively on that text as well as on Zhu Xi’s ideas. 179 He first held office in 1288 as instructor ( jiaoyu , unranked) in Jiangning (Jiqing , Jiangzhe), then in 1301 he became rector (xuezheng , unranked) at the Xinzhou prefectural school, and finally he was appointed headmaster of Xinzhou’s Unified Way (Daoyi ) Academy. When his nephews donated land to establish Clarifying Classics Academy, Bingwen’s experience and scholarly reputation made him a logical choice to oversee teaching there.180 e seriousness with which he

177) According to Wu Cheng’s inscription (undated, but likely written around the time the academy was established), Cheng donated only fifty mu (37.7a). A later inscription (1335), written by the headmaster at the time, records the substantially larger amount of one qing. See Tong Wen , “Mingjing shuyuan zhanxuetian bei” , Yunfeng Hu xiansheng wenji (Beijing tushuguan guji zhenben congkan ed.), fulu , 4b. However, since a letter from Hu Bingwen to Wu Cheng also states fifty mu, this seems to be the accurate amount. See Hu Bingwen,“Yu Caolu Wu xiansheng shu” , Yunfeng ji (SKQS ed.), 1.3b.178) YR II.808.179) Bingwen’s father Douyuan (1224-1295) studied the Changes with a descendant of Zhu Xi and was said to have had 300 followers. He was also known to have aided his kin (SR II.1585; SYXA 89.1a). Biographical sources for Douyuan’s father, Shikui , indicate that the family originally came from the Jiangnan Li lineage in Tang or pre-Tang times but were forced to flee from their home and take a new surname, Hu. During the following generation Changyi obtained the mingjing degree. Douyuan’s funerary inscription gives us his grandfather’s name (Shikui’s father), and the names of his grand-sons, so altogether we can trace at least five consecutive generations of this scholarly lineage, from the early Southern Song through the Yuan. See Umehara and Kinugawa, p. 84 (#1222).180) e position of headmaster was not set up at first. See Tong Wen, 4b, which details deliberations in the Ministry of Rites about the need for a headmaster at Mingjing Acad-emy.



approached his job can be seen in the exchanges he had with Chen Li (1252-1334), a follower of Zhu Xi from Huizhou’s Xiuning

county whom Bingwen commissioned to read examination essays produced by students at the academy.181

Hu Bingwen’s collected works contain a dedicatory ode (shangliang wen ) he wrote in 1310 when the building of the academy began.182 is type of ode was presented at the erection of the ridge-pole of a new building; the format was an initial poem followed by six stanzas entitled east, west, south, north, above, and below. In Hu Bingwen’s ode, each stanza is identified with a classic: east, Changes; west, Documents; south, Odes; north, Rites; above, Music; and below, Spring and Autumn Annals. ere is also a record of twenty-two greetings given to guests invited for the opening lecture of the academy.183 Nearly half of the twenty-two individuals can be identified, and in most cases either an association with Hu Bingwen or a reputation for scholarly achievements can be established.184 From the public nature

181) For Chen Li, see YR II.1301-2; for references to these exchanges, see Liu Hsiang-kwang, “Education and Society: e Development of Public and Private Institutions in Hui-chou, 960-1800” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1996), 262-63.182) Hu Bingwen, “Mingjing shuyuan dacheng dian shangliang wen”

, Yunfeng ji, 6.1a-3a.183) Hu Bingwen, Yunfeng ji, 6.5a-14b.184) Zhao Liangfu (1247-1318) served as magistrate at Jintan in 1285, close to the time that Hu Bingwen held office as instructor (1288) in adjacent Jiangning , so their ties may have originated then (YR II.1733). Zhao was from Anyang in the north, and Xu Youren, a fellow Anyang native and affinal relative, wrote his funerary inscription (Zhizheng ji, 52.10a-14b). Dai Yu and his younger brothers Wei and Jiong were local men who owned an extensive book collection, representing Wuyuan’s scholarly culture (YR IV.2061). Jiang Lei , a 1271 jinshi from Wuyuan, held office at the beginning of the Yuan as local Hui’an Academy headmaster (YR I.331). Cheng Yan

from Dexing (Raozhou ) had exchanged lectures with Hu Bingwen (YR III.1418).e local scholar Cheng Zhifang (1251-1325) did not hold office and resided at home; he was especially conversant with the Changes (YR III.1426). Jiang Kai

was a local man who “did not seek to advance in office” (YR I.330). Jiang was friends with Wang Yanchang (1261-1338), who also did not seek to hold office and in his “apparel, actions, words, and deportment was still a Song man” (YR I.585). Fang Ze

(1290-1328) was from Shaoxing, but little else is known about him (YR I.63). Somewhat puzzling is the case of Zhang Zhihan (1243-1296), who was from Handan (Zhongshu sheng ) and had attained the office of Hanlin expositor-in-waiting ( ), but clearly could not have attended the opening lecture (YR II.1110-1111). ere is no obvious link to Hu Bingwen or the academy in Zhang’s biography or in the greeting itself. Since I cannot identify half of the individuals greeted, and have dates for only some of those I can identify, it is possible that others besides Zhang



of the celebration of the school’s founding and from other evidence about students coming to Clarifying Classics Academy, it is clear that, although the Hu founded it, the academy was for the community, not simply the Hu and their descendants. By establishing it, however, the Hu were broadcasting to the local community their ability to support an academy as well as their own scholarly credentials. Hu Bingwen’s collected works also contain a letter to Wu Cheng, written by Bingwen on behalf of his nephew Dian, requesting Wu Cheng to write an inscription for the academy, which he did.185 Another letter from Bingwen sent directly to Wu, written after Dian’s death, reveals some details that give us a more intimate view of the academy’s operation.186 is letter must have been written in the early 1320s, since Bingwen says that it has been ten years since the academy was completed. After lamenting the death of the founder, Dian (but also making clear that the academy was a joint effort between uncle and nephew), Bingwen spells out some of the financial arrangements at the academy. Two-thirds of the land income was allotted to the spring and autumn sacrifices, and one-third to the headmaster’s salary.187 Bingwen refers to the opening of a charitable school ( yixue ), creating too heavy a burden for the headmaster to continue to serve as teacher (xundao ), so these two roles were separated. He also tells us that the land donated by Dian’s brother Cheng was specifically allocated to the support of the primary school. He hints at financial problems at the school, saying that they were due to the fact that its founding students of means had not come to register and he himself had not paid enough attention to balancing income and expenditures. Perhaps in an effort to justify or exonerate himself, he then talks about how hard he works as headmaster, and elaborates on the progress he has made (or not made) on his scholarly work. Ultimately, though, he proclaims the importance of the work he has done at the academy as the way his life will be judged: “If it is only the academy, that one

were greeted in absentia (or posthumously?), as a formal recognition of scholarly endeavors or some connection with the Hu and/or Wuyuan. Or it may be that this reference is to a different Zhang Zhihan.185) Hu Bingwen, “Dai zuzi Dian shang Caolu Wu xiansheng qiu ji Mingjing shuyuan shu” , Yunfeng ji 1.1a-3a.186) Hu Bingwen, “Yu Caolu Wu xiansheng shu” , Yunfeng ji, 1.3a-6a.187) Ibid., 1.3b.



thing, then I can die without regret.”188 After praising Wu Cheng’s learning, Bingwen turns rather abruptly to more prosaic matters related to the effects of his nephew’s death: “As fate would have it, Dian’s household has to take up the service levy, and there is no regulation that would allow them to avoid it.”189 Since he then moves on to his own love of learning, the statement about Dian’s household seems almost like an aside. Could Bingwen have been indirectly asking for Wu Cheng’s help to reinstate Dian’s family as a Confucian household exempt from service obligations, even though Dian’s death seems to have eliminated the direct affiliation with the academy and thus their ru status? e perspective we can glean from Hu Bingwen’s letter, unlike the formal commemorative inscriptions, is one in which the academy appears to be a family economic enterprise—with economic benefits and demands—operating in the community and to a certain extent dependent on community good will as well as the support of paying students. e academy provided both a livelihood and an occupation for Hu Bingwen, and it is evident from the details of its opening, as well as the substantial support dedicated to seasonal school sacrifices, that Clarifying Classics Academy was also an important community institution that served the interests of the local shi by providing educa-tion and a focus of ritual performance that solidified their identification with scholarly culture.190 Considering that Wuyuan, the site of the academy, was also the home of the Wang, who were so closely associ-

188) Ibid., 1.5a. Lao Yan-shuan translates portions of this letter to contrast the dedication of academy headmasters with their less hardworking colleagues who were public school instructors. See Lao, 118. Lao’s overall argument may be supported, but in this instance I would read Hu’s description of his hard work as an attempt to impress Wu Cheng (as his discussion of his studies may also be), rather than as evidence of the realities of this position. 189) Hu Bingwen, 1.5b.190) Another example: When Heaven’s Gate Academy in Cili zhou was completed, “the Wang and Tian, together with the literati and the people of the community, held the vegetarian sacrifices to the Former Sage and Former Teacher” (Yu Ji, “Cili zhou Tianmen shuyuan ji” , Daoyuan xuegu lu, 9.1b). After recognizing the Wang brothers’ talents as teachers, the Tian, who were previously distinguished by their military prowess (Smith, 681, n. 45), supported the integration of the scholarly Wang brothers into the local community in Cili zhou and thereby laid claim to their own academic credentials among the local shi. is reference to the celebration of the seasonal sacrifices at Heaven’s Gate Academy also testifies to the importance of academies as sites for the



ated with Huian Academy there around the same time that the Hu were building Clarifying Classics, we can envision a complex com-munity of shi involved with academies in that county: some of them had military and political backgrounds (the Wang) and some of them (the Hu) achieved status through their scholarly credentials and con-nections—such as Hu Bingwen with Wu Cheng. Despite financial struggles, and beyond its value for the community, the legacy of Clar-ifying Classics Academy was substantial for the Hu lineage: it was twice restored in the Ming by their descendants.191

Family Academies in the Late Yuan

roughout the Yuan families continued to use the founding of academies as a way to perpetuate or elevate their status and to establish themselves in office, even in the final years of Mongol rule. Near the very end of the dynasty, in 1361, Wei Su (1303-1372) wrote an inscription commemorating Imperial Ridge (Huanggang ) Academy in Hangzhou, built in 1345 but officially recognized with a name plaque and the appointment of a headmaster only in 1358. Imperial Ridge Academy was established by Jia Zhizhong and his younger brother Yongzhong to carry out the wishes of their father, Jia Lin :

Fifty li to the east in Hangzhou’s Haining is Imperial Ridge. It was the residence of the Jia family. Jia Lin, zi Zhongli, a canton elder, heard his descendants chanting a poem by Feng Yingwang [Feng Dao ] praising the Yanshan Dou family’s success in taking degrees. He told his middle son, Zhizhong: “‘To teach my sons in a proper way’ is my simple desire. But I am old, I cannot do it. Are you and the others able to do it for me?” Zhizhong took up the order and set up land to the east of Imperial Ridge.192

bonding of the shi community through ritual performances that connected them with the intellectual and cultural sources of their literati tradition. 191) Tianxia shuyuan zongzhi, 4.9b.192) Wei Su, “Hangzhou lu Huang’gang shuyuan ji” , in Wei Taipu yunlin xuji (1913 Wuxing Liu family Jiayetang printed ed.), 1.11b. For Jia Zhizhong, see YR III.1636. “To teach my sons in a proper way” is a direct quote from Feng Dao’s poem. e poem refers to Dou Yujun and his five sons, who were renowned for building a charitable school with an extensive library during the Five Dynasties period. See the Songshi biography of Dou Yi , one of the sons, for a reference



Buildings, books, and ritual implements were provided, along with the substantial amount of 800 mu of fields to support the academy, and teachers were invited, though Jia Lin was in charge of the school. Liu Ji (1311-1375; 1333 jinshi), who was assistant Confucian school intendant in Jiangzhe around this time, still referred to it as a “charitable school”:

e Jia are a great household of Haining, and Xixian [Jia Zhizhong] is most generous. He considered how many of the local youth did not have access to schooling, or were poor and not able on their own to get a teacher and study. So he constructed a building, bought land, and invited famous Confucians to be teachers, so that all the talents of the locality and the youths of the neighborhood came to study. All the necessities were entirely provided by the Jia family.193

Speaking no doubt in his capacity as a regional educational official, Liu Ji goes on to say that because the government schools are overburdened, private efforts by families such as the Jia are something that officials should accept with gratitude. He also stresses the charitable aspect of the Jia’s contribution to local education, suggesting that people

to the poem (263.9094). e phrase lingchun dangui , lit. “extraordinary cedrela and fragrant osmanthus,” alludes to the elderly father and successful sons.193) Liu Ji, “Haining zhou Jia Xijian yishu shi xu” , in Chengyi bo wenji (Guoxue jiben congshu ed.), 5.106. For Liu Ji, see YR III.1788. A similar preface to a poem on a charitable school follows this one and reveals a somewhat different economic perspective on another charitable school. In 1351 Saban (YR IV.2587), a “person of the Western regions,” approached Liu Ji, who was at that time no longer an educational official, but in charge of bandit and pirate suppression in Jiangzhe (see Hok-lam Chan, “Liu Chi,” in Dictionary of Ming Biography, ed. L. Carrington Goodrich and Fang Chao-ying [New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1976], 932), about aiding a charitable school begun by his father (Liu Ji, “Shaban zizhong xing yishu shi xu”

,” Chengyi bo wenji, 5.106-7). Liu’s response was that there were already plenty of schools in Hangzhou, so why was there a need to add to them? Saban replied that this school was different from the official schools, and also that the learning he intended to promote was different from what was taught in those schools.



without the resources to hire their own teachers could attend Imperial Ridge Academy. is comment recalls Cheng Duanxue’s point about those who were not shi being unable to attend most local schools and academies, unlike East Lake Academy. But it is not clear that Liu Ji is referring to anyone outside the shi, since he describes those whom Jia Zhizhong intended to help as lacking access to schools or being poor, conditions that could have pertained to shi. Still, both these commen-taries suggest that the lines dividing social categories were blurry or blurring; and despite the writers’ promotion of an egalitarian view of schooling, by supporting family academies many shi were in fact likely struggling to define more sharply the distinction between themselves and others. When official recognition was granted in 1358, Jia Zhizhong was appointed headmaster. In the context of the times, however, becoming headmaster at an academy founded by the family was not a route to office: within a decade of the dynasty’s end, it was more likely a way to demonstrate loyalty and support for the Yuan and to garner local recognition by supporting education. By the time Wei Su wrote his inscription, Zhizhong already held the prestige military title of commandant (xiaowei ) and the post of assistant prefect (panguan

) in Xuzhou (Bianliang , Henan). His elder brother Yuanzhong was pacification commissioner and commander in chief of Zhedong ( jiejiangjun Zhedong dao xuanweishi

), a high military rank. Wei Su makes the point that the Jia brothers both had military skills, and that the military and civil should not be seen as two separate things. He also describes the location of Haining as a site of coastal defense, and thus of great importance in the waning days of the Yuan. In his celebration of this family charitable school which became an academy a bare decade before the fall of the Yuan, Wei echoes Wang Yinglin’s commemoration of the family school of Shu Lin, which was transformed into an academy in the final years of the Southern Song. Illuminating Good (Mingshan ) Academy194 in Songyang

(Chuzhou , Jiangzhe) provides an example of a family

194) e name of the academy is drawn from a passage in the Zhongyong: , , .



academy based on a shrine to a scholar ancestor, restored and transformed into a community institution by someone unrelated, who was then appointed headmaster in the final years of the Yuan.195 e site of the residence of Ye Fashan of the Tang during the Song, it became a family school where his descendant Ye Zhen taught.196 At the end of the Song, the Ye requested that it become an academy, but by the beginning of the Yuan all but the name had disappeared. In 1284 a local student of the Imperial University, Xiao Zideng

, renewed the shrine at Ye Fashan’s former residence, and in 1287 he was appointed headmaster of the restored academy by the Branch Secretariat. Over the next few decades, Mingshan Academy was expanded by government officials, and in 1324 Xiao returned to oversee it and contributed to its rebuilding.197 Since Songyang was poor, and there was only a 60 mu allotment of land to support the academy, government support was withdrawn and the academy declined until the appointment of a new headmaster, Xue Yi , in 1359:

He was also from this county, so he took it as his responsibility to rebuild what was in ruin. He first allocated his own wealth to buy wood and stones and hire carpenters. ose among the shi who loved justice all were happy to support the undertaking… Before this, those who were registered as shi were forty-five; but those whose households had been cut off [from registration as shi] were many. [Xue] visited their lineages, and those who were able to follow the profession of ru were thereupon able to continue without being cut off. e shi who had land to allot to aid [it] were reported to the authorities and their position was restored.198

195) Wu Shidao , “Mingshan shuyuan ji” , Wu libu wenji (Xu Jinhua congshu ed.), 12.6a-7a; Wang Hui , “Mingshan shuyuan ji” , Wang zhongwen ji (SKQS ed.), 10.17a-19a.196) SR IV.3238. On Ye Fashan, who was famous as a thaumaturge rather than a scholar, see Russell Kirkland, “Tales of aumaturgy: T’ang Accounts of the Wonder-Worker Yeh Fa-shan,” Monumenta Serica 40 (1992): 47-86.197) Wu Shidao, 12.6b.198) Wang Hui, 10.18a-b. Hoshi Ayao (referencing Abe, Gendaishi no kenkyū, 156, 161) describes the term as “refugee households being returned to their original registration”. See Chūgoku shakai keizaishi go’i (zoku hen) ( ) (Tokyo: Kōbundō, 1975), 142. I understand this to be as a result of the turmoil of being uprooted during the fall of the Song.



is straightforward account of the restoration of Illuminating Good Academy at the very end of the Yuan reveals the benefits local shi derived from supporting the academy: those who had lost their status as ru households—assuming that this is what “registered as shi” refers to—were able to restore that status if they agreed to donate land to the academy. Headmaster Xue, a local man, acted as an intermediary with the government to accomplish this. Considering the case of Hu Dian, whose household appears to have lost its ruhu status upon Dian’s death (perhaps because the link to the academy was thus severed), this passage similarly suggests that ruhu as a legal category was less fixed than it would seem from official sources, assuming a household’s ruhu status could indeed be taken away and restored as described here. We can speculate that the households who had lost their ruhu status did not continue their required connection with schooling, and so, when Headmaster Xue drew them into affiliation with the academy by do -nating land they were able to have their status restored. Founded as a family school, then an academy in the Song-Yuan transition (1270s-1280s), by the latter part of the Yuan Illuminating Good Academy was clearly a community enterprise that was at the same time recognized by the state and viewed as the responsibility and domain of local shi, some of whose identity and interests were materially, as well as symbolically, dependent on it.

Continuities: Academies through the Song-Yuan-Ming Transition

ere is some evidence that certain family academies established in the late Song or Yuan can be traced into the Ming. e Hu family’s Illuminating Classics Academy in Huizhou’s Wuyuan county, just cited, is one example. Likewise, Huizhou’s metropolitan county, She , was home to the Bao lineage, one of the great lineages of Huizhou. e Bao were involved with academies in the Song: Bao Shousun (b.1250) founded an academy in the late Southern Song.199 Around 1330 his descendant Yuankang (1309-1352) built Teacher Mountain (Shishan ) Academy for the local scholar Zheng Yu

199) For Bao Shousun, see YR III.2004; see also Liu Hsiang-kwang, 109-110.



(1298-1358), who taught the sons of the Bao lineage.200 Zheng Yu was invited to lecture by other families in neighboring Chun’an county, where they also built him a school (shutang ).201 Hu Bingwen’s expression of concern about attendance at Clarifying Classics Academy indicates that there was competition for students among schools; similarly, competition for teachers appears to have fueled the construction of academies by some families. Zheng Yu’s itinerant teaching career suggests such competition among elite families for talents who would be able to educate their sons. Zheng Yu was a popular teacher who moved from place to place in response to offers of patronage from wealthy families: he was domiciled with the Xu family of Chun’an for a total of 18 years,202 so Teacher Mountain Academy was only one of the places where he taught. As indicated by the Bao’s relationship with him,203 one important motive for constructing academies was to attract a good teacher. A stock phrase in academy inscriptions refers to “inviting famous teachers,” whose presence will enhance the local reputation of the family who supports the academy as well as provide an educational resource by lecturing to local students and scholars. Bao Yuankang’s nephews, Shen and Jun , were both students of Zheng Yu, and Shen became headmaster of Teacher Mountain Academy at the end of the Yuan.204 The academy was restored after the founding of the Ming, in 1380, but it was in the home village of the Zheng lineage, who took it over, as it were.205 is would suggest a decline in the status of the Bao, or a rise in that of the Zheng, or perhaps both. e Zheng line who laid claim to Zheng Yu’s legacy in the early Ming apparently had acquired the resources to support an academy dedicated to their

200) Wang Kekuan , “Shishan xiansheng Zheng gong xingzhuang” , Shishan yiwen fulu (SKQS ed.), 3b-4a. For Yuankang, see YR III.2002;

for Zheng Yu, YR III.1916-1917.201) Wang Kekuan, 5b-6b.202) Ibid., 6b.203) Zheng Yu’s funerary inscription for Bao Yuankang mentions not only his building Teacher Mountain Academy for him, but also community charitable activities. See Zheng Yu, “Bao Zhongan mubiao” , Shishan ji (SKQS ed.), 5a-b, 7a. 204) YR III.2001.205) Tang Guifang , “Yijian Shishan shuyuan yin” , Baiyun ji

(SKQS ed.), 5.23b-24b.



scholarly ancestor, whose family in the Yuan seemingly did not have the wealth to build their own school. Records of other family academies founded in the Song, restored in the Yuan, and restored again in the Ming testify both to the importance of academies as a family strategy to claim literati status and to their role in the institutional continuity of lineages through the Song-Yuan-Ming transition. Although the evidence is sparse, Southern Fragrance (Nanxun ) Academy in Taihe county (Ji’an, Jiangxi) was founded during the Song by Xiao Xingshu and restored in the Ming by his descendant Xiao Anheng .206 ere is no extant record of this academy in the Yuan, but at least the remains must still have existed, or there was some recollection of it that persisted in the historical memory of the Xiao lineage from the Song through the Yuan and into the Ming. e Peach Spring Xiao, for their part, traced their residence in the Peach Spring ward of the county to an ancestor who was appointed to office in Taihe in 1126 and “on leaving office decided to make his home in scenic Peach Spring Ward.”207 In his detailed study of Taihe county, John Dardess gives a brief history of the Peach Spring Xiao as one of the dominant lineages of the county during the Ming.208 He quotes the preface to their genealogy, which describes them as both wealthy and attentive to education and ritual observances, making them a model lineage in which the households live close together and “recitations from the schoolroom can be heard from dawn to dark, with the senior males teaching and the juniors learning.”209

206) See Jiangxi tongzhi (1881 ed.), 81.36a, for the Song reference. e Tianxia shuyuan zongzhi records that it was “built by the Ming Shitai Xiao and Liu Dongyuan (Ziyan)

lectured in it” (8.39a). e same source (8.39b-40b) includes a Ming inscrip-tion on the academy by Liang Qian (1366-1418), a local scholar who was executed on a trumped-up charge, despite having the fellow Taihe native and Grand Secretary Yang Shiqi (1365-1444) as his patron. For this, see John W. Dardess, A Ming Society: T’ai-ho County, Kiangsi, in the Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1996), 184-85. For Yang, see also Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1535-38.207) Dardess, A Ming Society, 56. 208) Ibid., 56-58. Dardess points out that this ward was also often referred to as Stone Terrace (p. 10), the name used by Liang Qian. He mentions Southern Fragrance Academy, but describes it as a primary school (p. 57). I see no evidence, though, that this academy had only that specific function.209) Dardess, A Ming Society, 57-58.



Another Taihe academy that began in the Southern Song likewise continued throughout the Song-Yuan-Ming transition. Mount Pu

Academy originated as a charitable family school (yishu ), probably at the end of the Southern Song. It was founded by Yan Su

(d. 1278), an authority on the Changes, and expanded as an academy in 1305 by his son Yan Yongfu (1238-1322).210 Yan Su’s scholarship was recognized by Jiang Wanli (1198-1274) and Ma Tingluan (1222-1289), who recommended him for appointment as proofreader in the Palace Library (bishusheng jiaokan

, unranked), but he did not take it up.211 The Yan family had resided in Taihe, the site of the academy, for generations.212 A funerary tablet for Yan Su composed by Jie Xisi quotes Su’s great-grandson Youkai relating the family genealogy since they left Fengxiang in the northwest (Shaanxi) at the end of the Tang.213 Youkai claims that since they arrived in Taihe the Yan had begun to “relinquish arms and serve literary learning,” and that they had belonged to the degree- and office-holding elite from the time of his ancestor Zhen , who earned a jinshi degree in 1042 and held office as Chang-zhou prefectural judge (tuiguan ).214

Yan Yongfu managed the charitable school that was the foundation of Mount Pu Academy, and both were open to students from the community as well as the Yan family itself.215 We know that Yan Yongfu held office as magistrate of Gao’an county (Ruizhou ) in northern Jiangxi, but we cannot tell whether or not this appointment

210) For Yan Su, see SR V.4298-9. He was the author of a work entitled Hengshan Yishuo. For the academy, see “Pushan shuyuan ji” , in Liu Jiangsun

, Yangwuzhai ji (SKCS ed.), 15.21b-25a. For Yan Yongfu, see YR IV.2106.211) SYXA: supp., biefu , 2.60a; see also Wu Cheng, “Congshilang Ruizhou lu Gao’an xianyin Yan jun muzhiming” , in Wu Wenzheng ji, 86.2b.212) Liu Jiangsun, “Pushan shuyuan ji,” 15.25a.213) Jie Xisi, “Yan xiansheng bei” , Jie Xisi quanji (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985), 7.382. 214) Jie Xisi, “Yan xiansheng bei,” 7.382. Since no Yan other than Yan Su are listed in SR as residing in Taihe, these claims cannot be verified, though there is no reason to doubt the veracity of this account, especially since it is so specific as to name, degree date, and office.215) Wu Cheng, “Congshilang Ruizhou lu Gao’an xianyin Yan jun muzhiming,” 86.3a. This reference specifically refers to the charitable school, but surely also applied to the academy as well.



came after his establishment of Mount Pu Academy. In his funerary inscription for Yongfu, Wu Cheng relates the extensive philanthropic activities carried out by him and his family locally, again reflecting the kind of community charity characteristic of the local elites described by Hymes: building bridges, a Daoist abbey, and a Buddhist temple, “providing medicine for those who need it, coffins for those who can-not afford to bury their dead, support for the abandoned children of poor families, and grain for those who are starving”

, , , .216 e academy was only one among many of the Yan family’s philanthropic projects, just as Yijing studies were complemented by study of Buddhist and Daoist books.217 Wu Cheng apparently did not find the academy even worthy of mention by name in his otherwise detailed funerary inscription, although he did record that the Yan built a private chari-table school “to teach and nurture kin and community.”218

According to Liu Jiangsun’s (b.1257) inscription on Mount Pu Academy, the Yan family’s educational philanthropy was a response to local needs:

Jiangxi is a place where the literary spirit flourishes, and Luling commandery is even more so. But we had not heard that, like in other routes, academies were being established and [their official recognition] requested. In 1305 the Hall of Repose of the Former Sage at the Yan Family Mount Pu Academy, in Taihe pre-fecture, Jizhou Route, was completed…From then on, the lecture hall and dormitories were expanded over the years and months, and the walls surrounding the kitchen and bath were in good order and well-finished…is was all built by Yan Yongfu. His family had not much surplus, but he generously used all his strength to accomplish this. erefore, it was considered by all as even more difficult! When the academy was completed, the entire process was reported to the authorities, it was approved, and an inscription was requested.219

216) Ibid., 86.4a-5a.217) Ibid., 86.3b-4a.218) Ibid., 86.3a.219) Liu Jiangsun, “Pushan shuyuan ji,” 15.22a-b.



A Ming record states that within twenty years after its founding the academy was destroyed by fire, and that it remained abandoned for about sixty years until it was restored by a descendant of Yan Yongfu in the early Ming, a testimony to the importance attached to the academy as a family institution over generations and even across dynastic changes.220

Paulownia Spring (Tongyuan ) Academy across the provincial border in Guixi county (Xinzhou, Jiangzhe) was also a Song academy restored in the Yuan and again in the Ming by descendants of the same lineage. Gao Keyang , a seventh-generation descendant of a Tang official, established the academy at the former residence of his ancestor and taught both the sons of the Gao lineage and others in the community there.221 During the Yuan, Gao Huifu allocated fields to support the academy, but it was destroyed at the end of the Yuan. Again, the fourteenth-generation descendant Gao Jichang

restored it around 1430, and in 1603 the prefect renewed its oper-ation and requested that Gao descendant Shaoxian take up ritual duties at the shrine. is is a spare sketch, but we can flesh it out with the reasonable assumption that there was a shrine dedicated to the Tang ancestor of the Gao, even though the academy was open to the community and, at least by the late Ming, seen as coming under the purview of the local government. Sacrifices at the shrine, however, were undertaken as the responsibility of the Gao lineage, recognizing their dedication to promoting education both for their kin and for the community of elite lineages.

Conclusion

is study has sought to recover a portion of “the terra incognita of the Yuan” and fill in some of the “historiographical black hole”222 between the Song and Ming by exposing both social and institutional continuities perceptible in the motives behind, and the histories of, family academies

220) Tianxia shuyuan zongzhi, 8.38b.221) Ibid., 8.10b. See also Walton, 135-36.222) “Problematizing the Song-Yuan-Ming Transition,” in e Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, 1.



from the late Song through the Yuan. e examples presented here suggest a geographically widespread pattern of behavior produced by assumptions people made about the relationship between Confucian educational values, academies, and the promotion of family fortunes throughout the Yuan. Beyond appointments as academy headmaster offering a means for individuals to advance their careers and the fortunes of their families, the founding or renewal of academies by families and lineages provided opportunities for their descendants to climb the ladder of success both before and after the restoration of the examinations. Often founded to commemorate a scholarly ancestor or to fulfill a father’s aspirations, family academies in the Yuan were a community resource where education took place and where locally prominent lineages displayed their culture, their charity, and their wealth. Families whose heritage was military, or who held military posts, used their association with academies to lay claim to cultural credentials as shi. Although it is well known that academies became part of the state educational apparatus during the Yuan, many were first established as family schools and only later appropriated by the state. Yet appropriation, in this case, meant simply that the state formally recognized them as academies and appointed headmasters. Quite often, an appointment as headmaster rewarded the donation of property necessary for the support of an academy, reflecting the reciprocity of the relationship between the shi community and the Yuan government. Both Han and non-Han officials sought resources for education from the local elite community; and as much as the academies provided a cultural space for the negotiation of elite identity, that identity was directly tied to the kind of education that took place there. Famous teachers were invited to lecture, libraries were assembled, examination essays were written and graded, and students read, listened, wrote, and discussed. Although the specifics are not as clearly outlined as we might wish, there are sufficient clues as to what education meant in the academies to know that families and lineages built them to educate their sons as well as to compete with others through charitable acts in the community and display their cultural accomplishments. In these multiple ways, through academies families and lineages contributed to the construc-tion of a community identity that persisted across the boundaries of



the Song-Yuan transition. Among the family academies surveyed here, only relatively few have records that trace them from the late Song through the Yuan and into the early Ming. But what evidence we do have suggests that family academies continued to provide a key setting for the negotiation of elite identity during the dynastic shift from Yuan to Ming as they had during the transition from Song to Yuan. Conclusive demonstration of this awaits further systematic study of these institutions across the Song, Yuan, and Ming periods.



Appendix: Table of Family Academies Cited

ACADEMY DATE PLACEBlue Mountain 1281 Yiyang, Xinzhou, JiangzheBrocade River 1288 Anren, Raozhou, JiangzheClarifying Classics 1310-1312 Wuyuan, Huizhou, JiangzheDong’an 1315 Bohai, Ji’nanlu, ZhongshushengDu Islet 1309 [1336] Cixi, Qingyuan, JiangzheEast Lake 1328 Yin, Qingyuan, JiangzheGuangping 1275 Fenghua, Qingyuan, JiangzheHeaven Gate ca.1305? Cilizhou, Li, HuguangHuian 1289 Wuyuan, Huizhou, JiangzheHundred Meter Creek ca.1275 Rui’an, Wenzhou, JiangzheIlluminating Good 1287 Songyang, Chuzhou, JiangzheImperial Ridge 1345 Hangzhou, JiangzheLi Mountain Ca.1290s Puzhou,Yuncheng, ZhongshushengMount Pu 1305 Taihe, Ji’an, JiangxiMountain Hall 1275-94 Nan’an lu, JiangxiPaulwonia Spring ? Guixi, Xinzhou, JiangzhePure Austerity 1341-68 Taihe, Ji’an, JiangxiQing Islet 1301 Yiyang, Tianlin, HuguangStone Gorge 1278 [1309] Chun’an, Jiande, JiangzheSouthern Fragrance ? Taihe, Ji’an, JiangxiTaihang ? Huolu,Zhending, ZhongshushengTeacher Mountain Ca.1330 She, Huizhou, JiangzheTortoise Creek 1300 Le’an, Fuzhou, JiangxiWall Township 1344-47 Xinle,Zhending, ZhongshushengWay Creek Before 1340 Liyang, Lizhou, HuguangWeng Islet 1295-96 Changguo, Qingyuan, JiangzheWest Luo 1314 Luoyang, HenanWhite Sands 1275-94 Jishui, Ji’an, JiangxiWhite Stone 1300-1325 Shangrao, Xinzhou, JiangzheWucheng 1317 Yongfeng, Ji’an, JiangxiZhang Cliffs Before 1315 [1335] Wanzai, Yuanzhou, JiangxiZhuyi 1294 Xiangtan, Tianlin, Huguang


Family Fortunes in the Song-Yuan Transition: Academies and Chinese Elite Strategies for Success

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