Relief services for the aged in Hunan and Hubei during the Ming and Qing dynasties

Focused on the Hunan and Hubei areas during the Ming and Qing dynasties, this paper provides a discussion on the relief services for the aged. With an emphasis on the quota and object of the aged who needs to be relieved, the constructional scale of the relief houses and the operation patterns of the institutions, it reveals the gap between the ideal and the reality, the policies and the implementation, the philosophy of the philanthropy and the limit of the government budget. __________ Translated from Wuhan University Journal (Humanity and Social Science Edition), 2004: 3