申論題

A. Reading Comprehension: (20 points) Please read the following passage by Jinping Wang (In the Wake of The Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China, 1200-1600, pp.15-16) and answer the questions in English.
 "The year 1127 marked a watershed in Chinese history. In the century that followed the Jurchen conquest of the Northern Song, China was divided, with the south under the Southern Song and north under the non-Chinese rule of the Jin dynasty. In the past few decades, historians of middle-period China have enthusiastically responded to the influential hypothesis proposed by [Robert] Hymes and Robert Hartwell, which posits that there was a localist shift in the Song literati after 1127. According to this hypothesis, the Southern Song literati developed new locally oriented strategies and self-definition as well as new patterns of elite life and elite-state relations that continued in southern China down to the Qing dynasty. In demonstrating how political office continued to be appreciated as an indication of the literati's place in the Southern Song, Beverly Bossler recognized the localist shift but emphasizes that the change was gradual and more continuous than disruptive in the Northern and Southern Song periods. In his recent work, Hymes stresses that in the Southern Song, the sons of prominent familiesboth those who had not yet achieved office and those who had reached high office-adopted this localist strategy, but he cautions us not to misunderstand the 'localist strategy' construct as 'dissociation from the state or the complete abandonment of national-level aspirations by Southern Song elites."

Question 1: What is Bossler's response to the hypothesis posted by Hymes and Hartwell?