摘要
By quoting “The rites do not go down to the common folk, and punishments do not go up to the great officials,” Fu Sinian (1896–1950) discussed the class distinction in Confucian culture. Because Confucian classics were losing their practical power to guide the daily lives of the lower classes, the local society was left with a void at the ruling, ideological, and cultural levels, or what Fu referred to as “the unstable layer of Confucian culture.” When exploring the “unstable layer,” we must first admit that we do not know the “locale” well enough. If we start from a different perspective, our view of many things would probably change. There were many linking figures between the local society and the national stage, who spread the activities and information from the core area to the local area, thus changing the ideological atmosphere of the local society. Yet regarding the way information and knowledge flew, there was an upward diffusion force in addition to the top-down penetration. There was perhaps an omnipresent “signaling mechanism” at work in the silent local community. If we focus only on the overall historical framework, we tend to ignore the plurality and uniqueness of local societies, but we should not be confined to local views either, and the two should be viewed circumferentially and repeatedly in order to enrich our vision of research.