| dc.description.abstract | The theme of this research focuses on a famous official of Ming Dynasty Xiang Qiao and dig deeper into his life story, his career of a government official, his ideas on the Neo-Confucianism of the Ming Dynasty, and how he rule with caring for the people and high morality for himself. Xiang Qiao used his ideas on Neo-Confucianism on how to rule, make policies and proved that Neo-Confucianism was not only a philosophy of mentality which was far away from the society. Through this research, we can not only get a further understanding on the Confucian school of idealist philosophy Ming dynasty Neo-Confucianism, the bureaucracy, the ideas and activities of the intellectuals, and the situation of the successor of Yang-ming School in the Ming Dynasty, but can also probe into the events in middle stage of Ming Dynasty, local governments, military events, taxes, the imperial examination and the policy on religion of the Ming Dynasty.
Xiang Qiao didn’t show his work to the public easily, it was not until his late life that his work was collected and be published. Xiang Qiao had been an officer to many local governments that he transfer from places to places so there weren’t many pupils when he gave lectures, and his ideas didn’t really form a school of his own in the history. But generally speaking, he advocated the ideas of Zhu Xi. Working in the south for a long period of time, Xiang Qiao was close to the disciples of Yang-Ming School, so his ideas of Neo-Confucianism was greatly influenced by the mainstream thinking of Yang- Ming School. Therefore, Xiang Qiao used Wnag Shoou-ren’s Yang- Ming School method to make up the deficiency of the ways to study that Zhu Xi promoted. He emphasized ”learning to seek for the lost mind” as the foundation of his ideas and formed an ideology of his own.
The way Xiang Qiao ruled when being a government official was based on his idea of “learning to seek for the lost mind”. And he was praised for his conscientious management, lofty love for the civilian, care for the sick and the poor, frugality, and the preventions of the deceits. Also he corrected the defects of the tax system so people were allowed to live in peace. Xiang Qiao also won honor for crippling the local bandits and various military achievements. Many policies he brought up such as Cultivation and coast defense all helped to reform the long corrupted local government.
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