Write any essay from one of three topics
Answer one of the following questions in your essay. You should incorporate your answers into a coherent, original argument, and analyze the evidence from the primary source material (Liang Qichao, Sun Yat-sen, Lu Xun short stories, etc.) that supports your argument, in addition to secondary source material from Harrison and Schoppa. No sources outside the assigned readings are necessary.
Your essay should be five pages in length, double-spaced. Remember to document all non-original ideas in your essay, by means of using quotations with footnotes.
- What did the term “the people” mean to Liang Qichao, Sun Yat-sen, and Lu Xun? How did it differ from the Confucian view of “the people”?
- Whatwasthemeaningof“
beingaliterati”(or“ passingtheexamination”) inthelate imperial China? How might it affect a person’s life? Consider the cases of failure as well as success in the characters created by Lu Xun. In what ways were the literati related to and different from the modern intelligentsia? - The1911Revolutionhasbeenseenby
manyasafailure. Basedonyourreadingof the story of Lu Xun’s short stories, discuss how the failure was understood by different social groups: conservative local elites, the May Fourth intellectuals, and ordinary people. What was Lu Xun’s solution to the failure of 1911? How might we understand the May Fourth Movement in terms of this solution?
Solution Preview
In conventional terms “being a literati” means an educated individual that has interest in literature. Scholar-officials are also referred to as “Literati” or scholar-bureaucrats. These were government officials and politicians who were appointed by the Emperor of China, to carry out the daily political obligations in 1912, from the Han dynasty up to the Qing dynasty. The officials appointed for these tasks were scholar-gentry that had academic degrees acquired from excelling in the imperial examinations. These ‘Literati’ were schooled in Confucian and calligraphy and ruled the local life and government of China until the middle of the 20th Century. The scholar-officials were a court-centered activity for the most part of Imperial Chinese history. They remained relevant until the beginning of the Song dynasty. The ‘local elites’ continued being relevant and playing a role in the government, but most of their scholarships were created outside the court by the local elites.
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