Chapter Eight: The Middle Dynasties

This chapter is a broad survey of the major political, institutional, and cultural developments in China during the Sui through Yuan dynasties. These centuries were a time of major advances in technology, the arts, and literature. It was also a time of major demographic change, the population shifting southward to the Yangzi River area. As you read the chapter, pay particularly close attention to new developments with lasting influence such as demographic changes, the civil service examinations, and the rise of the scholar-gentry class.

The first Sui emperor (#image#) pursued a cautious, frugal policy, enabling the general living standard of China's population to rebound to levels comparable to those at the peak of Han prosperity. His major project was canal building to improve transportation. The first Sui emperor linked the Yellow and Yangzi rivers via a series of interlocking canals. The second Sui emperor extended this network of canals into a system that linked Beijing with the southern city of Hangzhou This expanded canal network was completed in 605 and is known collectively as the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal was China's most important transportation route until well into the Qing dynasty. An important function of the Grand Canal was supplying the capital, usually located in the north, with grain and other produce from the rich farmlands of the lower Yangzi River. The canal enabled supplies to flow into the capital even if sea routes became unusable because of pirates or other danger.

The second Sui emperor managed to undo most of the prosperity the prudent policies of his father had helped cause. Even before work on the Grand Canal had been completed, the second Sui emperor launched several military campaigns into outlying regions and started construction of a system of roads in the north. The emperor drafted many peasants as workers to rebuild and expand a series of fortress walls in the north. Later dynasties eventually linked the walls together to form the now famous Great Wall of China (#image#). Finally, the second Sui emperor moved his capital to Luoyang and there built a vast new palace. The strain of these costly enterprises proved too much for the newly-reunified empire to bear. Serious economic hardship of the peasantry led to rebellions that sprung up in several different places throughout China. Dissidents assassinated the emperor, and a frontier general named #Li Yuan# quickly consolidated power over the remnants of Sui China. He inaugurated a new dynasty, Tang, which lasted from 618 to 907.

In its prime, Tang China was prosperous, powerful, and cosmopolitan. High culture flourished as never before, and today many Chinese look back on the Tang as a cultural golden age. The Tang period is well known for outstanding poets such as Du Fu (712-70), Li Bo (Li Bai) (701-62) and Wang Wei (699-759), to name but a few. The most common poetic form at this time was the "regulated" shi (lüshi 率詩), a poem of eight lines of five or seven characters each, with a strict tonal pattern and rhyme scheme. Requirements of the regulated shi imposed greater technical challenges on Tang poets than even the most complex forms of poetry such as the sonnet imposed on English poets. Tang poets often wrote in a shorter form of regulated shi. From the brush of an expert, these short poems were often masterpieces of suggestiveness and subtlety. Two particularly famous Tang poems, Du Fu's Spring Prospect and Li Bo's Quiet Night Thoughts¹ are *shown here.*

Many Tang poets were famous in their own time and in later dynasties for their love of music, liquor and sex. The following untitled poem by Li Shangyin (813-58) abounds with "shadowy eroticism and obscure metaphors." It also contains what may have been a Buddhist-inspired sense of life's impermanence, all in an attempt to communicate the writer's private vision and mood:

Hopefully you noticed that the last two lines of the poem reflect popular Daoist ideas. In the next poem, Blaming One's Sons, Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian, 365-427) blames his sons for driving him to drink:

Notice that Li suggests his sons' lack of promise is beyond his control in the line, "If such was Heaven's decree." "Heaven's decree" here is tianming, or Mandate of Heaven, the same term we saw in a previous chapter in the context of the Zhou theory of dynastic succession. By the Tang dynasty, the term had become part of common learned discourse, and its meaning extended to matters not directly related to dynastic succession.

The Tang dynasty's early vitality came in part from the institutions it inherited from the preceding Sui dynasty. One example was the "equal field" system of land tenure. In this system, the state owned all agricultural land and distributed it equitably on a per capita basis for each peasant's lifetime. When that person died, the land would go back into the common pool for redistribution. When this system worked well, and it sometimes did, it alleviated peasant distress and prevented exploitation by landlords. On the other hand, such a complex system required a skilled and reasonably honest bureaucracy, probably a rarity in any time or place. When the system began to break down and become corrupt, it caused particularly severe peasant distress.

Another source of the dynasty's vitality was a substantial influx of people, culture and ideas from all over the world. In contrast with later dynasties during which China tended to turn inward, foreign trade flourished during the Tang dynasty. Its capital, Chang'an, was an international city, in which visitors and traders from all parts of Asia and the Middle East resided. Chang'an was home to dozens of different religions (including Christianity, Islam and Judaism), languages, and a wealth of products from all over the world. John E. Wills describes the Tang capital as follows:

Although the imperial capitals of later dynasties were also impressive cities, the Tang capital was probably the most culturally diverse and cosmopolitan of China's great urban centers.

Two of the Tang emperors stand out as particularly distinctive. One is Empress Wu (Wu Zetian--#image#), China's first and only female emperor. It was not uncommon in China's past for women to control government from behind the scenes, often as mothers or lovers of reigning emperors. Wu, however, was the only woman who actually ascended the throne and ruled directly in her own name. In many respects she was an unusually competent ruler, but later Chinese historians portrayed her as the epitome of evil--mainly for being female. By the Tang dynasty, a general consensus that women to involving themselves in government affairs was improper had developed, although there was some room for exceptions. This idea became even stronger in later dynasties, and it is hard to imagine that Wu could have taken the throne during, for example, the Ming dynasty. We examine certain aspects of gender roles in China the final chapter.

Empress Wu's rise to power was gradual and steady. She started out as an official consort of the reigning emperor and gradually came to dominate him. She used her considerable political skill to eliminate real and potential opponents. In general, her opposition was the Tang imperial family (including various princes with estates in the provinces) and other well-entrenched aristocratic families. In Tang times, family status was still the major determinant of personal advancement in government and high society. Nevertheless, the ideal of the scholar-official had become firmly established in the political rhetoric of the time. According to this ideal, those most qualified for office because of scholarly training and personal virtue should serve in office, regardless of family background. Empress Wu sought to weaken the political power of the old aristocratic families. One way she did so was by promoting obscure but talented individuals. As these individuals were dependent on Empress Wu for their positions, they had a stake in the success of her reign. For her part, Empress Wu could claim superior moral authority because she promoted (or claimed to have promoted) officials to office based on the scholar-official ideal. One mechanism for selecting unknown but worthy persons for office was civil service examinations. Empress Wu promoted these examinations, but it was not until the Song dynasty that they become the major avenue for official recruitment.

Claims of occupying the moral high ground notwithstanding, the quest for personal power was the most important consideration in Empress Wu's selection of personnel, and she surrounded herself with some extremely unsavory characters. She was no saint (in Chinese terminology: no sage) and even killed three of her own children to advance her political goals. Still, her rule helped reduce the power of aristocratic families and partially cleared the way for merit to play a greater role in the selection of officials. Wills points out an aspect of Empress Wu's rise to power that we would to well to ponder:

Empress Wu was on the throne for fifteen years, from 690 to 705, although she was the de facto head of the government for several years before formally ascending the throne. Her reign ended in a palace coup that deposed her. She lived a few months longer in retirement before dying an apparently natural death. In her later years, she gathered about herself many handsome young men in a kind of male harem, and apparently her sexual appetite was quite robust. Were a male emperor to gather young women about him in his old age, later historians would likely have praised his good health and stamina. For empress Wu to do the same thing, however, was horrifying to later generations of Confucian historians, who criticized her alleged lust more than murdering her children.

There was some confusion after Empress Wu's ouster, but in 712 a competent member of the Tang imperial house took the throne. He was Emperor Xuanzong, often known as Minghuang ("the Brilliant Emperor"), who ruled until 756. In his early years on the throne, Minghuang restored the power and prestige of the Tang emperors. Many historians regard the former part of Minghuang's reign as the apex of Tang prosperity and cultural achievement. In his old age, however, Minghuang became dependent on sycophant advisors. He also became so enamored of a young concubine that he neglected state affairs. This concubine, Yang Guifei, and her tragic relationship with the Brilliant Emperor later became the subject of songs, poems, dramas and stories. Things reached the point of crisis when An Lushan, a Turkish general in the Tang court's employ, rebelled and drove Minghuang and his court out of the capital. As the emperor and his entourage fled, Yang Guifei became the scapegoat for the disaster, and the emperor's subordinates insisted that she be strangled. Yang Guifei became an important cultural symbol throughout East Asia, representing, among other things, the ability to translate sexual power into political influence (#a Japanese image of her# #Japanese images of Yang and the Tang emperor#). Although the Tang ruling house did survive the rebellion, the dynasty never regained its past prosperity or glory. It steadily declined throughout the ninth century.

During the Tang dynasty, Buddhism became the dominant intellectual and religious force #in China.# We study Buddhism in detail later in the course. Briefly, Buddhism originated in India. Its core teaching consists of four "truths" plus an eight-step method for actualizing those truths. The four truths are 1) Life is suffering; 2) This suffering is caused by desires; 3) To eliminate the suffering, eliminate the desires; 4) There is an eight-step method for eliminating desires. By the time Buddhism arrived in China at the end of the Han dynasty, it had developed into an elaborate religion that included clergy, extensive scripture, many denominations, religious art, and sacred rituals. Buddhism also became enmeshed in politics. During the Tang dynasty, the imperial court patronized #Buddhism# and encouraged its development. In the Song dynasty, Confucianism underwent a revival and regained dominance as state ideology. Despite this Confucian revival, Buddhism remained an important spiritual and intellectual force in China in every dynasty from the Tang onward.

Demography is the study of population dynamics. So far, we have seen major social, political and institutional changes in China from one dynasty to the next. We now pause to take a brief look at a few aspects of *population changes* across the different dynasties. The first trend of which to take note is the major shift in population from the north (Yellow River) of China to the south (Yangzi River). In Han times, the vast majority of China's population, which peaked at around 60 million, was in the north. The south was sparsely populated. During the Tang dynasty, the majority of the population, which peaked at or slightly below Han levels, was still located in the north. In Tang times, there was also massive migration to the south, and this region became a major population center. The Yangzi River area was attractive to many northerners because its warmer, wetter climate could support greater yields from the land. Eventually, the population of the south would grow to a point quite close to the carrying capacity of the land. During the Tang dynasty, though, those who moved south generally enjoyed a higher standard of living than their northern counterparts.

In the Song dynasty we see two important developments. First, the total peak population nearly doubled compared with the Han and Tang dynasties. A major reason for this increase was technological advances in several areas, especially agriculture. Of equal importance was that now most of this much larger population was located in the south, not the north. Of the 120 million peak, only about 45 million people lived in the north, while roughly 75 million lived in the south. The Yangzi River area, in other words, experienced roughly a three-fold increase in its population. These proportions of north-south population distribution remained roughly the same in all later dynasties. The major change was that the total population continued roughly to double with each new major dynasty. From Song times on, the South, especially the lower region of the Yangzi River, became the dominant economic and cultural region of China. The political center of China remained in the north.

Empress Wu was concerned about the increase in population in the south and took some measures to increase the number of government officials there, mainly to facilitate tax collection. Let us see to what extent the total size of government changed with respect to changes in population. Consider the following statistics:

	HAN	TANG	SONG	MING	QING
Total Pop.	60,000,000	60,000,000	120,000,000	200,000,000	425,000,000
Counties	1,180	1,235	1,115	1,385	1,360
Officials	no data	18,000	20,000	no data	20,000

The second row of figures is the total number of "counties" , the smallest official administrative unit in imperial China. The third row of figures is the estimated total number of government officials. Notice that the population doubled from Tang to Song, nearly doubled again from Song to Ming, and more than doubled from Ming to Qing. Significantly, however, the number of counties and the number of government officials remained nearly the same across all the dynasties. The *chart shown here* presents this data as a logarithmically scaled bar graph. Look at the checkered bars (total number of government officials) for the Tang, Song, and Qing dynasties. Their height is virtually identical, indicating no significant increase in government officials as the population grew.

Even in Han times, government officials were terribly busy, especially those stationed in the provinces. From Song times on, how would local and capital officials keep up with collecting taxes, criminal cases, maintenance of roads & canals, and the many other matters for which they were responsible? In fact, it was impossible for government officials to supervise all these things directly because there simply were not enough of them. Local officials, therefore, relied increasingly on unofficial assistants to perform official tasks. In the Song period, a new class, the scholar-gentry class, arose to fill the gap between increased population and a lack of government officials. We examine the scholar-gentry class in more detail below.

Several decades of political instability and division followed the collapse of the Tang dynasty, but it was not long before China was again united under a single dynasty's rule. It was a capable, young general that accomplished this great task, founding the Song dynasty in 960. Although the dynasty lasted until 1279, the Song period is usually subdivided around the year 1127. The period from 960 to 1127 is called the Northern Song. During this period, the dynasty's control extended to most of China's traditional territories. The period from 1127 to 1279 is called the Southern Song because the dynasty lost most of northern China to invading Jurchen armies. The emperor and his court fled south, where they set up a capital at Hangzhou (near Shanghai) and continued to rule over a smaller but still viable Chinese empire.

Throughout the Song period, several warlike, northern "barbarian"⁶ tribes kept up steady military pressure on the imperial government. This military pressure took place despite Chinese armies being larger and better equipped than ever before. Heavy expenditures for military preparations and diplomatic initiatives were unable to stop the dynasty from gradually losing ground to the northern invaders. One reason was that new Chinese military technology passed into the hands of the northern tribesmen nearly as fast as it passed into the hands of Chinese soldiers. Perhaps a more important reason was that internal political stability proved elusive, as intense rivalries between political factions reduced the dynasty's effectiveness in many areas. Factional politics prevented the Song court from pursuing a consistent, unified set of policies. During the early part of the dynasty there was great optimism among Chinese intellectual and political leaders. Many thought that at long last, rulers and ministers working in harmony could effect enlightened, sagely government following ideal Confucian principles. The result of such an accomplishment, they thought, would be an ideal society. One problem, of course, was that different people had different ideas about what this ideal Confucian government should be. Then there was the usual scramble for personal power that takes place in any political system. By the time northern China had been lost, pessimism had replaced the early feeling of optimism.

A reforming minister named Wang Anshi (1021-1086) set much of the political agenda for the dynasty. Wang was a respected scholar of the classics and a famous poet. He came to power in 1073 as Chief Councilor . . .

Even after Wang's death, officials tended to split into factions based on their support for his programs or their opposition to them. Emperors tended to support one side or the other. Typically, a new emperor would throw his support behind whichever faction had been out of power in the previous reign, perhaps as much to establish his independent authority as for reasons of political philosophy. The result was sudden shifts in policy from one reign to the next and a lack of political stability and consistency.

Wang was particularly enamored of the classical text, Rites of Zhou, a ritual text of idealized descriptions of early Zhou dynasty ceremonial, institutions, and proper behavior. The New Policies were in part an attempt to remake China along the lines of the ancient Zhou dynasty. It is important to keep in mind that by the Song dynasty, many intellectuals regarded the early Zhou period as China's true golden age. In Song times, the dominant view of history posited a steady decline from this ideal period in the distant past. Many intellectuals sought a return to what they imagined the early Zhou dynasty to have been like, but they disagreed on how to accomplish this return. Some, like Wang, advocated literally bringing back Zhou-era practices without modification. Many others thought that literal restoration of the ancient past was quixotic and impractical because the world had changed too much since Zhou times. Instead they advocated restoring the spirit of the Zhou dynasty through policies and institutions properly adapted to present circumstances.

Perhaps the most important social-political-intellectual development of the Song dynasty was the expansion of the *civil service examinations.* These examinations tested candidates on their knowledge of classical literature. The general assumption was that the ancient classics were the repository of the highest wisdom and that anyone who had mastered them, therefore, was fit to serve in government. Although some officials had been selected via examinations as early as the Han dynasty, it was not until Song times that examination became the major route to officialdom. The first Song emperor realized that he could enhance his own power by selecting officials regardless of their past background. The reason is that such officials would owe their positions not to any aristocratic status but to the emperor who appointed them. Such officials would therefore be less likely to take a stance opposing the emperor. Although there were always a few idealists to be found among officials in any age, most gave career advancement highest priority. Thus they sought to please the emperor and his circle of top advisors. The examination system represented the triumph of merit over heredity as the ideal principle for selecting officials. Nevertheless, nobody ever seriously questioned the absolute authority of the emperor to select, reject, fire, or discipline any official in the empire. Indeed, starting with the Song dynasty, imperial despotism increased because the old aristocratic families no longer served as a check on the absolute power of the "Son of Heaven" (emperor).

The basic structure of the civil service exams consisted of three levels. The first level of exam took place in each county. It was an extremely difficult exam that few passed. Those who did pass were eligible to sit for the middle level of exam, held at the prefectural capital. This second level of exam was even more difficult than the first, with only about one in a hundred passing. Those who passed it were theoretically eligible to become government officials. In fact, however, competition for official posts was so intense that for all practical purposes one had to pass the third level of exam, which was held in the imperial capital. This exam was still more demanding than the previous two. Those who passed would eventually be able to secure appointment as low-ranking government officials, at least until the Qing dynasty. In Qing times, passers of even this highest exam were too numerous for all to work as officials, and the Qing government created large-scale scholarly projects in an attempt to keep level-three exam passers employed.

The situation was actually more complicated than described here, especially during Ming and Qing times, because there were numerous special exams and qualifying exams beyond those of the three basic levels--but these details need not concern us here. We should also mention that there was a series of military exams in addition to the civil service exams, but the civil exams were always more prestigious than those that led to military careers. The military and civil examinations were open to nearly any male physically and intellectually qualified to take them. Women did not take the exams and almost never served as government officials. (Note that it would therefore not be accurate to say that the civil service exams were open to nearly anyone in Chinese society.)

What would a candidate need to do in order possibly to pass the lowest exam? Miyazaki Ichisada describes the core education of a boy aspiring to sit for the exams:

In fact, considerably longer than six years was required just to memorize the basic texts, and many boys started the task well before their eighth year. After these basic texts had all been committed to memory, there were still other books with which prospective candidates had to be familiar, although not to the point of complete memorization. To put things in perspective, the paperback text of the full English translation of the Analects comes to roughly 160 pages of small print. Imagine having to memorize it. Remember that the Analects is the shortest book on the above list. Perhaps you thought it was hard having to read this book and remember the major points!

Becoming a government official was the ultimate honor in Chinese society, and it was also a way to get rich. With few exceptions, passing the exams was the way to become a government official in the Song dynasty and later. These exams were a terrible ordeal, with slim chances of passing any particular round. This situation naturally led to instances of cheating and dishonesty. Bringing information into the exam, of course, was a basic cheating technique. Some cheaters, for example, made *shirts with key passages* from the classics sewn into the inside in very small letters. Having someone take the exam for someone else under a false name or looking at another candidate's paper were other forms of cheating. For those who had the money, the most effective technique was passing a generous bribe, or rather "gift," to the person doing the grading.

As different methods of cheating developed, countermeasures also developed to combat them. The examination halls were locked and scrupulously guarded. Candidates removed their clothes upon registering. Scribes sometimes recopied all the exam papers and coded them with numbers to prevent graders from identifying papers based on the name or style of handwriting. Candidates often took their exams while locked into *small individual cells.* If many candidates had nearly identical answers, exam officials assumed they had parroted them from some commercial exam guide (widely available but illegal), and they rejected all such answers out of hand. So strict were the rules prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving the exam compound until the test was over (higher level exams lasted several days) that certain unusual problems could develop. For example, "if a candidate died in the middle of an examination, the officials were presented with an annoying problem. The latch bar on the Great Gate was tightly closed and sealed, and since it was absolutely never opened ahead of schedule, beleaguered administrators had no alternative but to wrap the body in straw and throw it over the wall."⁹ With several thousand candidates all under great stress from years of intense study and the pressure of the occasion, it is no surprise that one or two might not make it through alive.

What did serious scholars think of this examination system? At first glance it might seem that they would be delighted that excellence in scholarship had become the basis for social mobility. In fact, however, many serious scholars disliked the examinations, claiming that they perverted true learning. The great Song scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200), himself a passer of the highest exam at an early age said:

The close association between exam passing and political and economic power tended to poison and debase true learning, at least from the point of view of serious, idealistic scholars.

In our own society, many types of work require a college degree, and someone fully qualified to do a particular job but lacking that official certification might not even be considered for it. Many who enroll colleges and universities, therefore, think of those institutions as trade schools, not as places for intellectual development. Exams, credit hours, required courses, obsession with grades, and so forth often contribute to the cheapening of university education, at least from the standpoint of scholarship and the pursuit of learning. Suppose we modified one of Ye's sentences slightly to read "A healthy society cannot come about when people study not for the purpose of gaining wisdom and knowledge but for the purpose of obtaining a salary." Would you agree?

The stress, strain and degradation of the examination process often took a heavy toll on one's physical and mental health. Popular writer Pu Songling (1640-1715), who failed repeatedly to pass the second exam, wrote of the "seven transformations of a candidate:"

There were many benefits to passing the exams other than the possibility of becoming a government official. Passing only the lowest exam, for example, carried with it several advantages. First, passers gained prestige and fame in their localities both for themselves and their families. The law entitled them to wear special robes, and ordinary passers by on the street were required to treat these "uniformed" exam passers with special courtesy. There were also economic benefits. Although circumstances differed from dynasty to dynasty, exam passers were usually exempt from taxes and labor service. Sometimes this exemption extended to the entire household. Finally, exam passers enjoyed protection against questioning under torture (a common procedure) if suspected of a crime. For those who did make it all the way to officialdom, one can imagine that many had a very high regard for themselves.

(Incidentally, the Kingdom of Korea adopted Chinese style civil service examinations, which continued until the start of the twentieth century. And there are a small number of people today, mostly older men it seems, who enjoy taking these exams as a competitive sport.)

Turning to the broader intellectual world of the Song dynasty, a resurgent Confucianism displaced Buddhism as the most important scholarly tradition. The influence of Buddhism, however, was not insignificant. Indeed, the type of Confucianism that eventually came to dominate the Song intellectual world reflected a strong influence of Buddhist ideas. This new Song-era Confucianism, which we study in some detail later, is often called *Neo-Confucianism,* and it may be thought of as a synthesis of Confucian and Buddhist ideas. The two most important figures associated with Neo-Confucianism were Cheng Yi (1033-1108) and Zhu Xi (#image#). Neo-Confucianism featured sophisticated metaphysical doctrines that sought to explain the workings of the cosmos and the connections between these workings and human moral principles. During their own lifetimes, the teachings of Cheng and Zhu were in official disfavor owing to factional politics. Soon after Zhu's death, however, his Confucianism, which drew heavily on the ideas of Cheng, became the official interpretation for the civil service exams. This situation continued into the twentieth century and is quite ironic in light of Zhu's personal dislike of the examinations.

Recall from the earlier section on demographics that the total population doubled from the Tang dynasty to the Song dynasty. Recall also that the total number of government administrative units ("counties" or the functional equivalent, "districts" increased only slightly, as did the total number of government officials. There were three major levels of local government. First, all of China was divided into eighteen provinces, each administered by a governor. Provinces were further subdivided into prefectures, each administered by a prefect. The prefectures were then divided into counties and districts. Counties and districts each contained numerous villages and perhaps towns and cities. Villages had an informal governance structure but were not part of the official administration.

There was only one government official, with a budget sufficient to hire a small staff, in charge of an entire county. This official--let us call him a "county magistrate" --bore personal responsibility for the timely collection and remission of taxes. All police and judicial functions were his responsibility, and it was his duty to maintain law and order at all times. Furthermore, the county magistrate was in charge of maintaining roads, post stations, irrigation systems (if applicable) and a host of other things. County magistrates were commonly known as the "father and mother official" because their duties included such a wide range of important matters. In a remote area, the population of a county might be only a few tens of thousands. Densely populated counties might have as many as 200,000 inhabitants; the average size was around 100,000 in Qing times. County magistrates rotated from one county to another about every four or five years, so just as he settled into his job, he would have to move. Furthermore, as a rule, county magistrates were stationed far away from their home areas. Because of the several different languages in China, it was not uncommon for a magistrate to be unable to speak the local language. All magistrates could speak with other officials, whatever their place of origin, because preparation for the exams forced everyone to learn a standard "officials' language." Communication with ordinary people in the counties under their charge, however, was often very difficult. The bottom line is that county magistrates worked under so many disabilities that they were unable to do their jobs without substantial assistance from local people.¹³

Even in the Tang dynasty, county magistrates relied on the help of major local families. In the Song dynasty the gap between the county magistrates' responsibilities and the means they had to carry them out was so great that a new social class arose to fill the void. Known as the gentry class or scholar-gentry class, its rise was an important change in Chinese society. It was a Song dynasty development. There was no gentry class before the Song dynasty, at least not in the sense that we are using the term here. Once established, the scholar-gentry class remained an important part of Chinese society into the twentieth century. The members of the gentry class were not government officials. They were important, powerful people in their local areas who assisted the county magistrate by performing certain governmental functions for him. These functions included tax collection, organization of labor crews for maintenance of roads, bridges, irrigation systems and other such structures, mediating minor disputes, and punishing minor criminals. Of these functions, the most important was tax collection. Scholar-gentry did not put in this extra work just for the good of society. They expected to profit from it. One way they profited was by collecting more taxes than the official amount and pocketing some or all of the difference. As long as the amount they collected was not too far above the official amount, the magistrate and peasants alike generally had no complaints. Because the magistrate depended on members of the local gentry, they often had considerable clout in influencing his decisions.

The base of power of the scholar-gentry class consisted in *two foundations:* 1) wealth, usually as land, and 2) the prestige and benefits that resulted from passing a civil service exam. The typical member of the gentry class had passed the first or second exam. This educational status was usually not enough to become a government official, but it did confer local prestige and important benefits such as exemption from taxes. It was not necessary for every male member of a gentry household to have passed an exam. A single degree holder in the household would usually suffice. The economic base of the scholar-gentry class was land owning. Most of the gentry originated from wealthy local landowners who held large estates. Economic wealth enabled such landowners to allow their sons to study for the exams. Wealthy local households could purchase the best guidebooks and hire the best local teachers to help their sons get a leg up on the competition. If one of these sons did pass, the household would receive tax benefits, which further enhanced its wealth. Notice that wealth, education and political influence were closely interconnected in China, as they were and are in many societies. Although ordinary male peasants technically could sit for the exams, few had the time and resources to undergo the rigorous course of preparation required to have even a fighting chance of passing. Those who passed the civil service exams often came from households that already contained exam-passing members.

Membership in the gentry class, however, was not assured. The scholar-gentry class was not hereditary, nor did it have clearly-defined legal boundaries or membership guidelines. Gentry households could and did decline. If all of a household's sons happened to be lazy or dull, or if even a few of them were, at some point that household might not have an exam passer in it. This situation would lower its prestige and adversely affect its finances, making recovery more difficult. Many such households gradually sank into obscurity while other once-insignificant households gradually rose in prominence. There was no guarantee that elite gentry status would continue into later generations.

During the Song dynasty, the civil service examinations became the central focus of social prestige. This tendency became even stronger during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Family connections, wealth, and official appointment remained terribly important in Song times and later, just as they had been in earlier dynasties. The difference was that in the Song period most Chinese regarded all these other indications of high social status as deriving from academic success as measured by exams. The actual situation, of course, was more complex, since wealth and good family connections increased an individual's chances of success in the exams.

We have already seen the basic structure of the imperial government in the Han dynasty, but we have also seen that China underwent major changes since then. The structure of government in the Song period was quite different from that of the Han dynasty and is summarized in the *diagram shown here.*¹⁴ Notice that below the emperor are three major entities on a roughly equal standing. The function of the Bureau of Military Affairs is obvious. The Council of State consisted of the heads of the three major administrative organs below it, the Department of State Affairs, the Secretariat, and the Chancellery. Depending on the degree to which the emperor was involved in government, the Council of State either carried out the emperor's policies or actually decided policy. Of particular interest is the division of the government responsible for remonstrance, the Bureau of Remonstrance and the Censorate. The officials staffing these agencies were responsible for overseeing the conduct of the other branches of government and reporting corruption and violations of policy to the emperor. At different times, there were even imperial censors, whose job it was to criticize the emperor himself. As one might imagine, most of these imperial censors found that their emperors did remarkably good jobs and were no less than living sages, since more critical appraisals sometimes resulted in problems with the head staying attached to the rest of the body. In theory these remonstrating agencies served as a strong corrective against corruption and other abuses. Sometimes the agencies actually functioned as intended. Often, however, the agencies of remonstrance lacked sufficient imperial support, sufficiently dedicated personnel, and sufficient resources to be effective.

The Secretariat and Chancellery, among other things, functioned to control the flow of information between the general bureaucracy and the upper tier of government. When officials submitted memorials (statements of advice or proposals) to the emperor, as was the prerogative of all officials, the Secretariat checked them for proper form and sometimes decided which ones to pass on. The Chancellery had similar functions, but tended to specialize in sending information from the top tier of government (official orders, etc.) down to the rest of the bureaucracy. Because they regulated the flow of information, these two government agencies could be quite powerful.

The Six Ministries, also known as the Six Boards, supervised the major work of day-to-day government administration. The Six Ministries were: Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, and Works. Their general functions follow from their names, but sometimes it is hard to guess the exact division of duties. For example, it was the Ministry of Rites that handled the empire's foreign affairs because Chinese elites regarded foreign relations as an exercise in the ritual affirmation of China's cultural superiority. Circuit Intendants were central government officials who regularly toured the provinces to make sure that local government affairs were in order.

This structure of government underwent further changes in the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Its core, the Six Ministries, remained the same throughout, however, as did the general divisions of government.

The Southern Song dynasty eventually succumbed to the northern tribes, the strongest of which was the Mongols. The general area of present-day Mongolia was home to several different nomadic tribes that often fought each other. The leader of one of them, Temujin (Chinggis Khan, 1155-1227, #image#), united these tribes in 1206. The result was a Mongol empire that became the #largest land empire# in the history of the world to this day. This empire stretched from Korea to central Europe and included China. The greatest Mongol ruler, Kublai Khan (r. 1260-94), set up his capital in Beijing. When he became emperor of China, he called his dynasty Yuan, which means "origin."

The Mongol regime welcomed foreign adventurers of all kinds into its service but often treated its Chinese subjects with contempt. It was during this time that the famous Venetian merchant Marco Polo made his way to China. He wrote a remarkably accurate description of China for European readers, but most Europeans dismissed his book as full of fanciful and absurd statements. Polo, for example, claimed that "black rocks" dug out of the earth could be burned as fuel. Another outrageous claim was that paper could serve as money. We should remember that China was the world's leader in technology for most of its existence. By comparison, the Europe of Polo's time was so technologically backward that things like burning coal for fuel or using paper money were unimaginable to most of its people. An important if unwelcome Chinese export to Europe during the Yuan dynasty was the bubonic plague. The plague swept through China, vastly reducing its population, and reached Europe via trade routes. There, it became the "Black Death," which raged with particular intensity in 1348-9 and flared up periodically after that.

China's Mongol leaders did not readily adopt Chinese customs and culture. They spoke Mongolian and frequently returned to Mongolia. They were expert warriors but poor administrators, and their vast empire lasted less than a century. By the 1340s, the Yuan dynasty was in trouble in China, pressed by peasant revolts and natural disasters. In the 1360s Mongol factions fought each other in the north. In the south, a commoner named Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-98) conquered the Yangzi River drainage area and set up a dynasty he called Ming ("bright"). He then drove the last Yuan emperor back into the steppes of Mongolia, ending Mongol power in China in 1368.

1. These poems are found in Charles O. Hucker, China's Imperial Past: An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), pp. 240, 248.

6. It was common for Chinese writers to refer to anyone from outside the pale of Chinese culture by one of several terms roughly translatable as "barbarian."

7. Kidder Smith, Jr., Peter K. Bol, Joseph A. Adler, and Don J. Wyatt, Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 43. (Note: Sung = Song; I Ching = Yijing)

8. Ichisada Miyazaki, China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, trans. Conrad Schirokauer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 16.

10. Chu Hsi [Zhu Xi], Learning to Be a Sage: Selections from Conversations of Master Chu, Arranged Topically, trans. Daniel K. Gardner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 17.

13. In discussing the activities of government in premodern China, it is important to avoid using terms like "citizens" and "government services." Today most citizens in developed countries expect certain services from governments in return for their tax payments. In the imperial government of China, the emphasis was on the duties that subjects owed to their emperor, not the benefits "citizens" expected from their government. It is true that government in China provided some important services such as famine relief. In general, however, a person in premodern China would seek to avoid coming into contact with government or receiving most of its "services," like the administration of justice.