|
Research of the Civil Service System of Martial Art Examination (Wu-Chu) in the Ching Dynasty (1644-1901) Abstract Wu-Chu (the civil service system of martial art examination) was also named as Wu-Ke. It was a special subject in ancient Chinese to test marital experts. The Wu-Chu in China started from the Tang Dynasty, Queen Wu, ChengAn 2nd year period of time (702). Until the Ching Dynasty, it had been more than a thousand years of history. However, at the end of the Ching Dynasty, the system was abolished. The related research was not too rich at all. Therefore, this made Wu-Chu system in the Ching Dynasty more worthy to investigate in depth. This research adopted historical research method. The purpose is to investigate the background of civil service system of martial art examination (Wu-chu) in the Ching Dynasty (1644-1901), and to analyze its content, and to examine the names and their further futures of the Din-Chia (first three rank in Wu-Chu final tests.) Further to investigate reasons why Wu-Chu went down finally. While collecting the historical data and analyze the conclusions are as following: 1. The Ching government was approaching in kind toward the Han scholars in order to maintain the country's unity, powerful and prosperous. They provide a channel for people learning martial art to be civil servants. On the other hand, due to frequent war in domestic and from external, strengthened Ching government to emphasize the development of Wu-Chu System. 2. The Wu-Chu System in the Ching Dynasty was consisted by Wu- Tung Test (for junior), Hsiang Test (local test), Hui Test (larger scale) and Tien Test (final test) 4 levels. It adopted the test by different levels that qualified the good ones, the judges were cautiously appointed to be fair and serious in examining. This made the Wu-Chu system in the Ching Dynasty fair and conscientious. 3. Though, the Ching Dynasty was founded through martial arts, and emphasized Wu-Chu to appoint different levels of officials, however, in reality, there are still lots of names from Din-Chia that needed to be verified. On the other hand, the selected martial experts were never had as smooth promotion as experts selected by intellectual test. III - 4. Test contents in Wu-Chu system and actual needs of war at that time were quite different. Hence, the selected martial experts had quite difficult time to become a real expert of military affairs. Plus due to most of the common people had more negative point of views to officials from martial background, and each province also established institutes to train martial experts. Therefore, though at the end of the Ching Dynasty many there were many higher rank officials proposed to change Wu-Chu system, but the long time failures had mad it difficult to find out proper generals to fight with external invasion. Hence, it went to be abolished at last. All in all, stability of any system should be emphasized, however, to be over conservative without invention or revolution will make the result out of the time and away from actual needs of the reality, and finally become history. Hence, the Wu-Chu system is really a mirror as modern national test system for reference. Key Word: The Ching Dynasty, Wu-Chu (civil service system of martial art examination), Din-Chia (first three rank in Wu-Chu final tests)
|