Late Qing Reforms and Expanding Elite Power

The Liu family's connections to late Qing educational reforms had early beginnings. In 1897, Yan Xiu, an eminent scholar with ties to Kang Youwei's reform party, was appointed as Guizhou's educational commissioner.

Arriving in Guiyang, Yan established the Statecraft School (Jingshi xuetang), the first Guizhou educational institution to introduce Western elements into its curriculum.^[61] Only a select group of forty talented students was enrolled in the new school; among them was Liu Xianzhi, Liu Xianshi's younger brother. In the following years, Liu Guanli's program of inviting prominent scholars to lecture in Xingyi schools also brought leading reformers into contact with the Liu family.^[62] Despite Xingyi's peripheral location, these educational contacts kept the Lius well informed of the reform programs emerging in the provincial capital. The Lius quickly realized that these programs were creating new arenas for expanding elite power, and they moved to confirm and enhance their own local leadership by introducing these reforms into the Xingyi area.

The Lius' own participation in reform activities began with locally implementing the modern educational system mandated by the court to replace the civil service examination system in 1905. Liu Guanli actively promoted educational reform, but due to his ill health (he died in 1908) his son, Liu Xianshi, acted as the effective head of the family in these matters. Thus, although Liu Guanli supported the establishment of a Xingyi educational promotion office (quanxuesuo ) to oversee the county's educational revitalization, Liu Xianshi actually took the lead by serving as its general manager. Many of Liu Xianshi's efforts in this post were directed toward setting up modern schools in accordance with new educational directives. The private academy originally founded by the Lius was converted into an upper-level primary school (gaodeng xiaoxue ). At the same time, Liu assisted in establishing about twenty lower-level primary schools within Xingyi and others in surrounding counties. Finally, Liu Xianshi was also involved in founding other educational institutions, such as a girls' school, a teacher training institute, a military school, and a public reading room.^[63]

The Lius also continued to foster their patron-client relations with other Xingyi families by encouraging and supporting the education of their sons. The Lius paid special attention to promising students, helping them attend the higher-level professional or technical schools that were beginning to be established in Guiyang, and the family even provided stipends to help more than twenty students seek advanced education in Japan.^[64] Among these students was He Yingqin, the scion of a prominent Xingyi family who would later gain fame as a Guomindang general and Nationalist China's minister of war. He's military education in Japan was supported by Liu Xianshi, and his tics to the Liu family were later enhanced by marriage to Liu Xianshi's niece.^[65] Naturally, as in their previous efforts, the Lius did not fail to insure that the younger generation of their own family would also benefit from these new educational opportunities. For example, Liu Xianshi's younger brother Liu Xianzhi, his eldest son Liu Gangwu, and a nephew

Wang Boqun (the grandson of Wang Peixian) were among a number of family members sent to pursue higher education in Japan.^[66]

Although concentrating on education, Liu Guanli and Liu Xianshi also responded quickly to other types of elite reform. In the economic field, Liu Guanli supported a proposal for constructing a Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan railroad and encouraged Liu Xianshi to set up forestry companies. In politics, Liu Xianshi headed a Xingyi association to prepare for local self-government. In support of social reforms, Liu Xianshi even helped establish a society for the elimination of footbinding.^[67] In regard to the content of their activities, the Lius remained imitators rather than innovators. All the reforms the Lius introduced into Xingyi followed precedents established in the provincial capital. Still, their role in diffusing reform programs belies the usual perception that late Qing reforms were the preserve of urban elites in more advanced core areas.

One important result of the Lius' participation in reform activities was the enhancement of their reputation with and connections to members of the emerging provincial, and even national, reformist elite. The Lius' efforts to bring eminent scholars from Guiyang to Xingyi continued, in this period, to help the Lius establish personal relations with members of the provincial elite. Liu Guanli's reputation in educational affairs had already been established, and Liu Xianshi's assumption of leadership in reform activities helped him gain the respect of Guizhou's educational and constitutionalist leaders in his own right. Equally important were the contacts made by the younger members of the Liu family while attending new schools in Guiyang or higher institutions abroad. For example, while attending the Statecraft School in Guiyang, Liu Xianzhi's teachers were Guizhou's most prominent educators, and many of his classmates were the children of Guiyang's eminent families. After going to Japan, Liu Xianzhi entered the circle of reformers that gathered around Liang Qichao, and he even served for a time as Liang's aide. Upon completing his education in Japan, Liu was invited to take up a position on the Yunnan governor-general's staff.^[68] By achieving this post Liu Xianzhi illustrates the opportunities for elite advancement that many found in the new educational system. At the same time, the contacts he made while pursuing his education also contributed to his family's broader social connections at provincial and national levels.

The most telling sign of the social standing the Liu family had achieved in the first decade of the twentieth century was the marriage of Liu Xianshi's daughter to the son of Tang Eryong, a provincial degree holder (juren ) and the scion of one of Guizhou's eminent families.^[69] As the founder and head of Guizhou's provincial educational association, Tang Eryong was the single most powerful man in Guizhou educational circles and a leading member of the provincial reformist elite. The matchmaker who arranged the Tang-

Liu marriage had some reason to boast that it marked "the reach of Tang Eryong's power out into the province and the advance of Liu Xianshi's power toward the center."^[70]

Even though reform programs became the main focus of the Lius' public activities in the last years of the Qing, they did not abandon their local military concerns. Indeed one of the Lius' educational projects, their military school at Xingyi, helped bolster the family's military power by training a cadre of officers for Liu Xianshi's local military force. No matter how pressing his other activities, Liu Xianshi also continued to inspect his troops regularly and insure their loyalty by personal attention to their needs.^[71] Even after the death of his father in 1908 Liu Xianshi did not give up his military post but rather moved his battalion headquarters into the family residence so he could continue to oversee its affairs while in mourning.^[72] In terms of the Lius' total influence, however, their educational and other reform activities, not their military power, projected the family into a wider social and political arena. Although Xingyi county remained the Lius' main power base, this base stood at the center of an emerging network of elite relations that prepared the family for a new outward extension of power during the 1911 Revolution.