Kaoting Academy 考亭书院

About Kaoting Academy

Zhu Xi settled at Kaoting in his later years and the school he built there was first called Zhulin Jingshe. As numbers of students grew he enlarged it in 1194 and it became known as Cangzhou Jingshe. In 1244, forty-four years after his death, Emperor Lizong of the Southern Song ordered the name changed to Kaoting Shuyuan and granted a plaque, and that name has been used ever since. Zhu Xi spent most of the roughly eight years between 1192 and 1200 teaching and writing here; during this period he completed works including the Mengzi yaolue, the Zhouyi cantongqi kaoyi, the Taiji tongshu yi and the Chuci jizhu, and carried out the final revision and printing of his Collected Commentaries on the Four Books. Pupils who had studied with him at his earlier northern Fujian academies, among them Cai Yuanding, Huang Gan, Ye Weidao and Cai Chen, gathered around him at Kaoting, and the circle became known as the Kaoting school.

What a visitor sees today is largely new work. The reconstruction was finished and the site opened in autumn 2019 on a total of 300 mu, laid out around Daoyuan Hall, Jicheng Hall, the Taiji square and Qingyun Tower, which carry the teaching, sacrificial and library functions of an academy, with a reading garden made up of the Mingli, Quanxue and Boxue courts. The one named older element is a stone memorial archway inscribed Kaoting Shuyuan, put up in 1531 during the Ming Jiajing reign, which stands at the entrance to the complex. Since 2021 Fujian Province and Nanping have run a recurring Kaoting Forum here with the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

What to look for

• The Ming memorial archway of 1531 inscribed Kaoting Shuyuan, the named surviving older structure on the site
• Jicheng Hall, the sacrificial hall of the rebuilt academy, and Daoyuan Hall, its lecture hall
• Qingyun Tower, which takes the library function of the academy, and the Taiji square
• The reading garden formed by the Mingli, Quanxue and Boxue courts
• The setting itself, on Yuzhen Hill above the Mayang stream, which Zhu Xi chose for his final academy

Location & getting there

Getting to Kaoting Academy

Check which interiors and courtyards are accessible. Active places of worship and protected monuments may have different visitor rules.

• Search for 考亭书院 with 南平市 and 建阳区.