How did Jieyang Gong Xue develop?

During the period of Song Gaozong and Zhao Gou in the Southern Song Dynasty, 1 140 set up Jieyang County. In order to educate the people, Jieyang Gong Xue was soon ordered to be built. Jieyang is located in the southeast of Guangdong, where there are vast and fertile Rongjiang alluvial plains and coastal sedimentary plains, and it is the birthplace of Chaoshan culture. Rongjiang has beautiful scenery and convenient water transportation. As early as the Tang Dynasty, Jieyang had become a famous trading port connecting ports with neighboring countries. Song Gaozong's construction of Gong Xue in Jieyang is not only due to the political consideration of educating people, but also related to his own cultural accomplishment. Good at calligraphy, good at cursive script, free and easy brushwork, natural and smooth, won the charm of Jin people.

Song Gaozong's calligraphy influenced the calligraphy circles in the Southern Song Dynasty, and also injected vitality into the tradition of Gong Xuejiao in Jieyang.

At that time, Jieyang Gong Xue trained a large number of talents for the Southern Song government. According to the Records of Jieyang County, from 1 140 to 1247, there were Weng Yuquan, Lin Dashou, Zheng Guohan, Chen Shi, Lin Shaojian, Wang Zhongxing, Chen Yinggang, etc. It can be seen that the educational strength of Jieyang Gong Xue at that time and the essence of Confucian culture reflected by it.

Gong Xue in Jieyang experienced 35 repairs, adjustments and expansions of different scales from Song Dynasty to Qing Dynasty. After renovation, reconstruction and expansion in the Qing Dynasty, a three-way architectural pattern was formed with Confucius Temple as the central axis and county schools and supporting facilities in the east and west. The total area is 20020 square meters, second only to the Confucius Temple in Qufu, Shandong.

The last large-scale renovation and expansion of Jieyang Gong Xue was in 1876 in Guangxu period of Qing Dynasty, which was presided over by Xia Xianming, then a magistrate of a county. It lasted for five years and cost nearly twelve thousand silver. This reconstruction has laid the pattern of Jieyang Gong Xue, and the architectural technology has been inherited and developed on the basis of the original Song and Ming buildings, forming an architectural style combining temple and learning.