Table of Contents
What is an ancient Chinese scholar?
Shiren (scholars or scholar officials) is the collective term of the ancient Chinese intellectuals, and is also an elite social group unique to ancient China. They learned and spread knowledge; they participated in politics; they carried on and carried forward Chinese traditional culture.
What did Chinese scholars study?
The difficult civil service exam required years of study. Scholars had to master the teachings of Confucius and his followers, the basis of Chinese government for thousands of years. But they also had to be skilled in poetry, calligraphy, and painting.
What was important to Chinese scholars?
Under imperial rule, the scholar elite, whose exemplar was Confucius, directed the moral education of the people; the farmers produced food; the craftsmen made things that were useful; and the merchants promoted luxury goods.
Why was a Chinese scholar official so important?
The Chinese scholar-official held a position at the very top of society because he had prestige, wealth, and power. Which of the following was an important skill for a scholar-official to have?
Who was the scholar elite in ancient China?
Beginning about the fourth century B.C., ancient texts describe Chinese society as divided into four classes: the scholar elite, the landowners and farmers, the craftsmen and artisans, and the merchants and tradesmen. Under imperial rule, the scholar elite, whose exemplar was Confucius,…
What was the art of the Confucian scholar?
[Thus] the art of the Confucian scholar was … inherently duplicitous and was encouraged to be so by the paradoxical demands [that Chinese] society made upon its middlemen.” Beginning in the late tenth century, in the early Northern Song, the government bureaucracy was staffed entirely by scholar-officials chosen through a civil examination system.
What was the role of the officials in ancient China?
The officials ruled the land with the help of local gentry and locally recruited government clerks. Because the governmental superstructure was so thinly spread, it was heavily invested in the Confucian virtue ethic as the binding social force—and when that failed, in the use of harsh punishment—for maintaining stability and order.