Abstract
Located in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, the Aofeng Academy was selected one of the twenty-three provincial capital academies in 1733. Many notable Neo-Confucians in the early Qing dynasty, such as Cai Shiyuan, Lan Dingyuan and Lei Hong, graduated from this academy. It also had a close connection with the Haidong Academy in Taiwan and played a significant role in the latter’s development. This thesis, based on the analysis of the process in which the Aofeng Academy was built and took root in Fujian, explains how and why the Fujian Neo-Confucian School, or the Min School, revived in the early eighteenth century. Fujian Governor, Zhang Boxing, took the initiative to build the Aofeng Academy in 1707 to promote Neo-Confucianism. He adopted a wide variety of strategies to achieve this goal, such as (re-)naming the academy and the building within it to claim Fujian Neo-Confucian heritage, organizing curriculums and publishing books to engage students in the study of Neo-Confucian ideas, and cultivating his relations with Fujian gentry families to strengthen the local support. This thesis shows that the official’s collaboration with the local gentry and judicious response to their expectations are instrumental to the success of the Aofeng Academy. It also demonstrates that Zhang Boxing’s and his successors’ sensible responses to the tension between Neo-Confucian learning and the study for civil service examination are crucial to the revival of the Min School in the first half of the eighteenth century.