¡¡¡¡IN ancient China, schools were established with the same educational principles, based on the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius, and later on the idealistic philosophy of Zhu Xi of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

¡¡¡¡Such education, with a feudal ethical code at its core, was viewed as a vehicle for turning out Confucian scholars to maintain the old feudal order.

¡¡¡¡But some changes did occur in 1748 when the provincial governor, Weng Zao, and the Shanghai governor, Wang Jian, approached a charity fund run by local landowners with the aim of launching a new college.

¡¡¡¡Named the Shen Jiang College, it served not only as a training centre for candidates for the highest imperial examinations, but also as a missionary school giving lessons in basic Western knowledge such as astronomy, geography and geometry.

¡¡¡¡There was no denying the fact that this college was a great improvement on traditional-style feudal colleges. And Lin Zexu, a Qing Dynasty official renowned as an upright governor for destroying large quantities of opium in Guangdong Province, even wrote a plaque to commemorate the significant progress the college had made in Chinese education.

¡¡¡¡In 1770, it was renamed the Jingye College and experienced a period of rapid growth, both in the size of the schoolhouse and in the number of students. But due to its location, in Nanshi District, an old district with the largest population density in Shanghai, the college was always cramped for space.

¡¡¡¡In 1862, it moved to a new location on what is now Sipailou Lu and which was also the original site of the Confucian Temple.

¡¡¡¡It remained there until it was razed to the ground by Japanese invaders during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-45).

¡¡¡¡Earlier, in 1913, the Jingye College had been turned into an elementary school after the imperial examination system had been permanently annulled with the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. High school courses were added in 1929.

¡¡¡¡New schoolhouses were built after Liberation in 1949 on the college's present site at No. 345 Penglai Lu. The new Huangpu District Education Bureau is also housed in the college.

¡¡¡¡This year marks Jingye's 255th anniversary and Shanghai can celebrate once again the glory and endurance of her oldest school. Vivian Wang