Jingjin Academy

Jingjin Academy

In the seventeenth year of the Guangxu reign, shortly after taking office as the magistrate of Yuxi, Tang Rudong actively promoted the establishment of Jingjin Academy and appointed Huanwen as its headmaster. The academy was initially housed in a private school within the residence of Magistrate Ren. Local students without official academic degrees would regularly—several times a month—submit their essays to the academy for the teachers’ corrections. When they submitted their next batch of writings, they would bring back the corrected versions for further study, and they could ask questions about any difficult points directly at the academy. On one occasion, Magistrate Ren Hanwen was correcting homework late into the night when a spark from the lamp ignited some books and then spread to a wooden wall. Fortunately, family members arrived in time to extinguish the fire, preventing a disaster. To this day, the scorched marks can still be seen on the wooden pillars and east wall of the main hall at the original site.

In the main hall of Jingjin Academy, there once hung a plaque erected by Jiangsu Provincial Educational Commissioner Long in honor of Lady Cao, the mother of Ren Shou. It bore four gold-inked characters in Yan-style semi-cursive script written by You Jinghui: “荻笔春浓” (“Reeds’ Brush in Spring’s Full Bloom”), bold and vigorous, gleaming brilliantly. In 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, this plaque was taken down by the “Anti-Old for New Rebels Team” from Yuxi Township’s Yuxi Street, carried outside to the east wall, and destroyed at the site of the former Yuxi Private Middle School. Jingjin Academy was located on the west side of the mountain gate hall, east of the yamen on North Street in Yuxi Town, Nantong Prefecture. It faced south and consisted of a three-courtyard main structure with side rooms on both sides. The east wall of the front courtyard had a carriage gate leading to the Square of Three Gates, and several century-old cypress trees once stood behind the rear gate (one of which still survives at Yuxi Primary School).

The original site of Jingjin Academy is largely well preserved. Several rooms to the west of the main street-facing storefront have been demolished, leaving only two small rooms on the eastern side, while the western street-front has been replaced with a wall and an iron gate. On the secondary beams and two widened rafters of the main hall’s roof, the iron hooks and brackets used to mount the plaque are still visible. After the imperial examination system was abolished and modern schools were established, Jingjin Academy was succeeded by Yuxi Primary School.

After the Republic of China was founded, Yuxi Jingjin Middle School was established, inheriting the legacy of Jingjin Academy later than Yuxi Primary School did. Jingjin Middle School became the stronghold of the Chinese Communist Party in the Yuxi region and produced a large number of revolutionaries, including Ren Anjia (revolutionary alias: Cen Xuantian). After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Jingjin Middle School was merged into Nantong Middle School. The history of Nantong Middle School, tracing back to Jingjin Academy, spans over a hundred years to this day.