Schools of modern ancient prose in China. Zeng Guofan, a representative figure, was named after Xiangxiang, Hunan. Zeng Guofan originally believed in and advocated Tongcheng School's ancient prose, but his articles were different from Tongcheng School's "light and simple" style. Zeng Guofan's compilation of Hundred Rules of Classic Miscellaneous Annotations supplements the defect of Yao Nai's Gu Zi Bian that he abandoned the classics and history, and expands the origin of Tongcheng School's ancient literature, which is very accessible. However, there are few taboos in writing, and even odd use makes the article stretch with momentum and rich content. More importantly, influenced by the ideological trend of the times, the "Jing" was added to the righteousness, textual research and rhetoric advertised by Tongcheng School, which made the ancient prose more reflective of the realistic political and social problems and became practical and useful. This makes the ancient prose of Tongcheng School free from the cramped and slow narrow world and develop in time.

Zeng Guofan began to use the so-called "famous ministers" of "tongzhi zhongxing", and the shogunate recruited talented people and called on Tongcheng School to adhere to Neo-Confucianism and orthodoxy, so that Tongcheng School's ancient prose was revived for a while. In order to meet the needs of the times, he further emphasized "Jing", compared the four subjects of righteousness, examination, ci and Jing with Confucius' four subjects of morality, literature, speech and politics, and put forward some suggestions to correct the deficiency of Tongcheng school's ancient prose, including expanding the tradition of ancient prose from eight schools to the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, advocating the compatibility of parallel prose, and advocating "magnificent, magnificent and powerful" his own article "compound words. These changes from the theory of ancient prose to the practice of creation made Tongcheng School enter a new stage, which was later called "Xiangxiang School".

Under Zeng Guofan, Zhang Yuzhao, Wu Rulun, Li Shuchang and Xue Fucheng were called the four disciples. They have been in the development period of the so-called "Tongzhi Zhongxing" Westernization Movement, and their thoughts and practices are closely related to Westernization. Although their articles have their own achievements, especially the biography of Tongcheng School by Zhang and Wu, which is highly praised by Tongcheng School, their old ideas and old article patterns are hard to surpass their predecessors. What they really bring to Tongcheng's writing are some argumentative essays and overseas travel notes that reflect new ideas, especially the latter, which has formed a major feature of Xiangxiang School's writing with novelty and slightly changed writing style. Such as Wandering Salt, Brighton, Xue Fucheng's View of Paris Oil Painting and White Haikou Summer Resort, all convey their form and spirit with simple and fluent pen and ink, and attract people with exotic and novel scenery. Xue Fucheng's "Looking at Oil Paintings in Paris" is a well-known masterpiece. It vividly shows the complicated pictures with vivid pens and is very good at contrast and rendering.