Liu Yizheng

Born and educated under the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), Liu passed the first level of the imperial civil service examination a few years before its abolition in 1905.

[2] In the early 1900s his mentor the philologist Miao Quansun (繆荃蓀; 1844–1919) put him in charge of writing a textbook on Chinese national history that had been commissioned by the reformist high official Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909).

[2] Liu's Brief Account of the Past (Lidai shilue 歷代史略), an adaptation of Japanese historian Naka Michiyo's (那珂通世; 1851–1908) General History of China (Shina tsūshi 支那通史), was published in Nanjing by a government press in 1902.

[3] After a two-month visit to Meiji Japan in 1902 during which he was impressed by the new Japanese education system, Liu used his new textbook to teach history in schools that had been created as part of the late Qing "New Policies" (Xinzheng 新政, 1901–1911).

[8] Though Liu's scholarship is usually viewed as conservative, his book laid the foundation for a discussion of China as a cultural entity rather than a racial one as was common at the time.