Earlier institutions and Zhu Xi's restoration
The site is associated with the Tang scholar Li Bo and a tradition that he kept a white deer while studying there. During the Southern Tang it became the Lushan state school, with teaching and support from educational land. The year 940 marks an important stage in that institutional history. A scholar's retreat, a state school and the later academy represent connected but different phases.
In 1179 Zhu Xi inspected the neglected site while administering Nankang and directed restoration and renewed teaching. Initial repairs were completed the following year. His educational rules connected the academy with his scholarship, lectures and local administrative work, making its institutional program as important as its location.
From classical learning to personal conduct
The academy's rules begin with ethical relationships involving parents and children, rulers and ministers, spouses, generations and friends. They then give a sequence of learning, inquiry, reflection, discrimination and practice. Understanding texts is joined to action rather than presented merely as a timetable or list of courses.
Further sections address self-cultivation, handling affairs and dealing with others. They call for trustworthy speech and conduct, restraint of anger and desire, correction of faults and attention to moral purpose. The concluding explanation places learning in the service of understanding principles, cultivating oneself and extending that work to others. The text directly records the academy's educational aims.
References: [2]
Lectures and later transmission
Zhu Xi invited Lu Jiuyuan to lecture at the academy. Lu discussed the contrast between moral rightness and profit in the Analects, leaving a lecture text associated with the institution. Scholars with differing approaches thus used the same teaching site; lecture texts and later comments provide evidence for their exchanges.
The academy subsequently experienced warfare, decline and rebuilding. Its rules circulated through collected writings, printed editions and use by other educational institutions. Its history therefore involves teaching organizations, transmitted educational texts and a surviving heritage site, connected through periods of change rather than an assumption of uninterrupted operation.