Chapter 49 Section 11 The Emperor Kangxi who Enjoyed Reading

After Shenzong, the Ming Dynasty fell into a slump, faced with internal and external troubles, and peasant uprisings surged like clouds and clouds, and was finally overthrown by the peasant uprising army led by Li Zicheng.Soon, the Manchu army rising in the Northeast took the opportunity to march southward. With the majestic momentum of sweeping thousands of troops, they wiped out the remnants of the Ming Dynasty, unified China, and established the Qing Dynasty. The Manchu rulers of the Qing Dynasty carefully learned the lessons of the Ming Dynasty's demise, paid great attention to royal family education, and extensively recruited learned Han scholars to serve as teachers in the palace, and focused on strengthening the Han culture of the crown prince.For example, the founding emperor of the Qing Dynasty, Shunzhi Emperor Aixinjueluo Fulin, after entering the Central Plains, he promoted culture and education, respected Confucianism, set up clan officials and daily lecture officials, and ordered civil servants to compile "Zhizheng Yaolan" and "Fan Xinghengyan" , "Essential Words for Encouraging Kindness", "Warning the Heart" and so on.He not only boldly promoted the policy of Sinicization of the Manchus, but also boldly learned from the Western missionary Tang Ruowang, calling him "Mafa" (that is, grandpa) in Manchu, and bestowing on him the title of "Teacher Tongxuan".It is a pity that Fulin's life was short, and he died of smallpox at the age of 24.

Fulin's successor emperor is Xuanye [yeye].Xuan Ye was eight years old when he became the throne.For his education, his grandmother has been responsible.Later, he recalled: "Remembering from a young age, I lost my parents [huhu] early, and inherited my grandmother's knees for 30 years, and brought up the teachings, so that it was established." Emperor Kangxi, the holy patriarch, began to read and write at the age of five. He was eager to learn all his life, and he always took pleasure in reading.His literary and martial arts can be compared with Han Wu, Tang Zong, Song Zu, etc. in the feudal society of China, and he can be called a generation of promising emperors.

The study place of Emperor Kangxi was mainly in the South Study Room.The study room was originally a place for officials and eunuchs to study and study, but before the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, it was called the place where Confucian officials were on duty in the palace.Kangxi continued to use the old name, and built the South Study Room and the Upper Study Room in the Forbidden City.The upper study room is where the prince studied with his master, while the south study room is where the Hanlin who were in the inner court served the emperor with poetry, calligraphy and painting.Before the 16th year of Kangxi (1677 A.D.), he used the South Study Room as his study. In June of the 16th year, Confucian officials began to pay.The South Study Room played a very important role in Emperor Kangxi's learning and writing, reading history and classics, absorbing the experience and lessons of the previous dynasty, accepting the long cultural tradition of the Han nationality and learning western natural science knowledge.

Kangxi's study went through three stages: enlightenment, formal schooling and independent achievements.The enlightenment education, like the traditional Baofu education, was carried out under the care and guidance of the eunuchs, mainly learning literacy.Qing nobles learned both Chinese and Manchu languages, and Kangxi's learning was no exception.He started to learn to read at the age of five, using two languages, Han and Manchu.Formal learning began in the ninth year of Kangxi's reign when the Jingyan Ri Lecture was held, but the Jing Yan Ri Lecture was limited to lectures.Because he was eager to learn, this kind of formal teaching could not satisfy his desire for knowledge, so he asked Hanlin to enter the South Study Room, pay attention to the meaning of the text, and guide him to practice calligraphy.There are many civil servants working in the South Study Room, all of whom are bachelors with outstanding talents and learning. Among them, Zhang Ying, a lecturer of the Imperial Academy, and Gao Shiqi, a poor scholar from Zhejiang living in Beijing, are the most able to guide him in his studies.Secondly, Chen Tingjing, Wang Shizhen [zhenzhen], Li Guangdi, Wang Hongxu, Zhu Yizun, Fang Bao, Shen Quan, Xiong Cilu and other well-known and well-educated people at that time were all in the South Study Room and served as teachers of Emperor Kangxi.He not only studied classics and history assiduously in the South Study Room, but also never stopped studying during the intervals of southern inspections, northern hunting and even marching and fighting.During a tour to the south, the boat berthed at Yanziji, and he lit a lamp and read until three drums late at night.The accompanying lecturer Gao Shiqi was afraid that he would be exhausted and asked him to "take less care of himself". Not only did he not rest, but he said that it had become natural for him to read books for pleasure since he was five years old.

Emperor Kangxi's learning content was extensive, and the courses he studied at the beginning were only popular enlightenment readings.It was not until the age of 17 that he formally studied the Four Books and Five Classics.All the Four Books and Five Classics that he has studied are compiled and published by the Book Repair Office of Wuying Temple, such as "Lecture Notes of Shangshu", "Lecture Notes of Yijing", "Explanations of the Book of Poetry", "Explanations of the Spring and Autumn Period", "Explanations of the Four Books". Righteousness, Jingyan Lectures, etc.In addition, there are 176 volumes of poems and essays written by him.As for Western natural sciences, astronomy, geography, mathematics, medicine, etc. are all involved, and some are quite insightful.Chinese scholars Xiong Cilu, Ye Fangai [ai Ai], Li Guangdi, etc. taught him natural science, and foreign missionaries included Nan Huairen, Bai Jin, Zhang Cheng, Tang Ruowang, etc.

Because of his uninterrupted study during his 60 years in power, he has achieved unprecedented academic achievements among emperors in Chinese feudal society.It is mainly reflected in the following aspects: First, it re-established the dominant position of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism in social ideology, organized the compilation of "Zhuzi Quanshu" and "Xing Li Jingyi", and applied the ideological principles of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism to Political practice played a major role in stabilizing the feudal rule of the Qing Dynasty; second, he organized and edited a large-scale series of astronomy, mathematics, and music theory "Law and Calendar Origin". The third is to organize the translation of some western natural science works, such as Euclid's "Elements of Geometry", Batis's "Practical and Theoretical Geometry", and also edited "Proportional Explanation", More than a dozen Manchu and Chinese mathematics books such as "Measuring High and Far Instruments", "Eight-line Table Roots", "Borrowing Roots and Algorithms", restored the mathematics teaching that was interrupted in the Yuan Dynasty; the fourth was to organize an unprecedented national map survey, and Organized the drawing of the "Huang Yu Pan Pan Map", which was a major event in the history of world geography; fifth, organized the compilation of the influential calligraphy "Kangxi Dictionary", the dictionary "Peiwen Yunfu", and the class book "Yuanjian Class Letters", "A Collection of Ancient and Modern Books", a collection of poems "Quan Tang Poems", a encyclopedia of botany "Guang Qun Fang Pu", a history book "History of Ming Dynasty", etc.According to relevant statistics, with the organization and support of Kangxi, a large number of books were compiled during his reign, including six types of records, hadith, one type of imperial poetry, three types of rules, four types of strategies, There are nine kinds of Confucian classics, four kinds of historiography, two kinds of calligraphy, four kinds of geology, ten kinds of astronomical laws and calculations, seven kinds of books, nine kinds of general collections, and four kinds of compilations.

Emperor Kangxi has accumulated rich experience in learning and self-cultivation during his decades of study, and also accumulated a lot of experience in educating princes and grandchildren. In order to pass on these experiences to future generations of the royal family, he personally wrote "Ting Xun Motto" ", and later became the tutoring materials for the Aixinjueluo royal family and princes and nobles.