The Civilization Consciousness and Imagination Landscape of Guangdong in the Late Ch’ing Dynasty and the Early Republic of China: A Case Study of Guangdong Education Museum

Abstract

After the “restoration” of Guangdong Province in 1912, the government has been working hard to construct an advanced and civilized city image of Guangdong Province. In October of the same year, the Guangdong Education Museum, which is located in the Department of Education of Guangdong Province, opened in a hurry, trying to inspire a new chapter in the understanding of Chinese civilization with educational models. This paper attempts to explore the cultural relationship between the exhibition mode, exhibition logic, social activities, human cognition, and urban space through a case study of the development of the regional museum. On the one hand, the development of its form paradigm has gone through the superposition of the texts and practical experience of the construction of the Oriental Learning and Education Museum, the exhibition of educational products in 1904, the Nanyang Business Association in 1910, the Guangdong Education Conference, etc., and various related museum experience and cultural behaviors have been highlighted, forming a standardized exhibition of Educational Museum; on the other hand, Zhong Rongguang and others have created an exhibition of Educational Museum in the social activities of “model province”, Guangdong Education Museum, as an important cultural index of Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong Province, constituted an important landscape of the metropolis in the early Republic of China, thus shaping and influencing the social and cultural space tone of Guangzhou after the 1920s. includes: Thinking of Guangdong as a model province, with the status and financial resources of Guangdong, combined with business conditions, the opening of the people’s mind, so as to get rid of the bad habits of arrogance, fight bravely and ruthlessly, and draw their minds and talents, to rejuvenate the industry and strive for the prosperity of the country, which must be effective within a few years. (Research Office of History of the Republic of China, Institute of Modern History, & Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 1982, pp. 351-352)