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Procursus,
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In regard to social classes, this writing has so far presented three important points:
This restriction was broken in the Chūnqiū 春秋 and Warring States (Zhànguó 战国) periods (periods 4d-4e). Confucius and a number of other people rose from obscurity to great fame or high social position. During the Warring States period, military ability, administration experts, and other intelligence and skills were so urgently needed by the ambitious rulers that numerous commoners were raised to the positions of various ranks of officials.
After Hàn 汉 (period 6) was established and a long stabilized period passed, the social structure tended to gradually return to a institutionalized pattern. When social phenomena were institutionalized, social mobility became harder and harder. Consequently, from the latter part of Hàn, or Eastern Hàn (Dōnghàn 东汉) (period 6d), to the beginning of Táng 唐 (period 12), the social classes again became more or less fixed. Under the institution of méndì 门第 [family status], the upper class tried to keep their acquired status forever. The commoners were excluded from almost every opportunity of social advance.
Historians labeled méndì as feudalism in a different form. But this strange feudalism began to decline when the Táng emperors established the rules that the selection of official candidates and the decision of promotion and the granting of honors or titles to families must all be based on true merits and actual achievements. Thus, the gentry-bureaucracy class was again made open to everyone who had the ambition and determination to enter.
In the past ten centuries or so, the gentry-bureaucracy class had at various times tried to close or to narrow the door of their class Since the most important route of entering their class is the selection system or the official examination, they tried to control it by laying down restrictions to those of the lower classes. They had succeeded to a great extent in doing so.
In Qīng period, for instance, people of low professions, or “outcaste” groups were prohibited from taking part in the imperial examinations. But as far as the qīngbái 清白 people are concerned, the route was quite open. (The term qīngbái [“pure and white”] means a person who himself has never been in any of those disreputable occupations and none of his relatives of the four past generations has either.)
Poverty was to a great extent a barring factor. But if a poor boy really had the talent and the ambition and his parents had the determination, too, he could in great probability eventually wind up in the gentry-bureaucracy class and become the founder of an upper class family. The fact that in every generation there were numerous families dropped from the gentry-bureaucracy class to the commoner’s group, yet the size of the class remained more or less the same throughout many, many generations testifies that the route between the two classes must have been open all the time and the two way traffic must have been busy.
It seems that the most fruitful way of proving the large extent of class mobility in the past would be to examine the stories, poems, essays, dramas, and folk songs lamenting the rise and fall of families, generations, and empires. The observations contained in such literature are always based on again and again repeated facts and therefore they are comparatively reliable. We have quoted before Lǐ Jì’s 李绩 conversation with his brother Lǐ Bì 李弼. The older brother said:
I have seen how Fáng Xuánlíng 房玄龄, Dù Rǔhuì 杜汝晦, and Gāo Jìfǔ 高季辅 worked so hard to establish their great families. They no doubt had the wish that their achievement could be passed down through generations. But too bad their descendants were not their kind of people and their fortunes were ruined after only a short while.
Lǐ Jì was a contemporary of Fáng, Dù, and Gāo. If he had himself seen the rise and fall of these people’s families, it means that the mobility between upper and lower classes was extremely great at that time. It is a common and natural phenomenon that any movement from low to high is hard and that from high to low is easy. So is that movement between the lower and upper classes. Liǔ Pín 柳玭 was right when he said:
All the great families were established by their ancestors through hard work, frugal living, and great virtues such as filial piety and loyalty. In building up a family, it is as hard as climbing up the sky. But when it falls, it falls as easily as the burning of a dry feather.
Liú Yǔxí 刘禹锡, a scholar and an official of early Táng, wrote such a poem (Wūyī Xiàng 乌衣巷):
Wild flowers are flourishing beside the once adorned Zhūquè Bridge 朱雀桥.
The sun in the famed Wūyī Boulevard 乌衣巷 is setting.
Swallows which used to nestle on the front of those glorious Wáng 王 and Xiè 谢 mansions
are flying into houses of common people.
The theme of this poem is that the once glorious Wáng and Xiè families are all gone. In the place of their big mansions are now the common people’s houses. Is not this a fast change? Then what is the use of struggling for the establishment of great families?
Kǒng Shàngrèn’s 孔尚任 (1648-1718) folksong-drama Táohuā Shàn 桃花扇 is full of stories about the rise and fall of dynasties, of great families, and of famed individuals. [For a summary on this web site, click here. —DKJ] In the drama entitled “Rise and Fall in the Words of Fisherman and Woodcutter” (Yú-Qiáo Huà Xīngwáng 渔樵话兴亡) one actor sang about the drastic change which happened to Nánjīng 南京 during the transitional period between Míng and Qīng:
I have seen Jīnlíng 金陵 [old name of Nánjīng] when it was proud of its marble palaces, with rare and beautiful birds singing in the early morning I have seen it with the elaborately built showboats and pavilions on the Qínhuái River 秦淮河 where early all kinds of gorgeous flowers bloomed. But, alas, who would have known that all these have changed and disappeared so fast and so easily?
I have seen with my own eyes how those big families and high officials built their grand red mansions and entertained their big parties, but then, after only a short period, all the buildings collapsed and the parties were gone.
Today’s heaps of broken tiles and bricks are the houses in which I had enjoyed many romantic and luxurious nights. In the past fifty years I have really seen enough rises and falls.
The Wūyī Boulevard (Wūyī Xiàng 乌衣巷) no longer bears the name of Wáng; the Mòchóu Lake 莫愁湖 is filled with the weeping and wailing of ghosts; and the Phoenix Terrace has no more Phoenix, but the nests of owls.
It is hard to give up all the glorious memories but nevertheless, the present situation of the dream is absolutely true. Lest some people still would not recognize such a change of the empire, I have composed this work, Āi Jiāngnán 哀江南 (Lamenting Nánjīng). I am going to sing it with sadness till I am old.
Zhèng Bǎnqiáo 郑板桥, the famous romantic but conscientious scholar of early Qīng, wrote several pieces of cí 词 poetry which belittle the glories of those high class families. One goes:
It is midnight. Stars are shining brightly, flowers bloom heavily, and the candles are burning brilliantly. But the music and singing are still in full swing. They spread out to the air of a far distance. In the morning the sun is already high. But the hall is so cold that the masters are still in rosy dreams, even the parrot is not yet awake. The big homes are decorated and glorified with numerous symbols of high official ranks and special imperial honors.
But, alas, all these may suddenly disappear like the morning fog or noon cloud and the people may wake up to find that the once enviable mansion is covered with cobwebs and bird waste.
Wake up, wake up fast! The spring has gone with the swallows and the autumn is coming with the wild ducks. Frost is closely followed by snow. Before the cold winter is over, buds appear on the plum tree. I admire that all the messages and plans of change that are in the hands of heaven. No human family can make its own selfish determination to hold on one thing or to discard another. Let it be as hard as steel or as strong as brass, at the end it will still be in vain.
(From a collection of Zhèng Bǎnqiáo’s cí.)
My own observation bears testimony to the foregoing quotations. I state in A Chinese Village:
No family in our village has been able to hold the same amount of land for as long as three or four generations. Usually a family works hard and lives frugally until they can begin to buy land. Members of the second generation continue in the same pattern so that more land is added to the family holdings and it becomes well-to-do. Those of the third generation merely enjoy themselves spending much but earning little. No new land is bought and gradually it becomes necessary to begin to sell. In the fourth generation more land is sold until ultimately the family sinks into poverty. This cycle takes even less than a hundred years to run its course. The extravagant members die out, and their children begin again to accumulate property. Having suffered, and being fully acquainted with want, they realize the necessity of hard work and self-denial to repair the family fortune. By this time the original big family is gone and in its place there are several small, poor families. Some of these begin to buy land. Thus the cycle is started again.” (P. 72)
My observation is corroborated by Francis L. K. Hsu. Hsu says:
…yet when one considers all families as being under the same unfavorable conditions, he will have less difficulty in confirming the above observation concerning family vicissitudes.
Furthermore, fluctuations in family fortunes do not pertain only to the peasants. They are also evident among illustrious households of the empire. Some of these households rose to prominence in a few generations. Most of them degenerated very rapidly and fell to commonplace levels in a few generations. Many of them rose and fell within two generations.
(Under the Ancestors’ Shadow by Francis L. K. Hsu, Columbia University Press New York, 1948, p.4.)
Why do families rise and fall? Hsu has an answer to this question. He says:
I found that the behavior exhibited by members of the rising families and those of the falling families were sharply contrasted. The climbers tended to be careful, rational, frugal, industrious and sincere. Those who were declining tended to be vain, impulsive, extravagant, carefree, and arrogant. (P. 7.) [Click here for snarky comment by DKJ.]
A common belief is that after a poor family’s parents and children have made a determination to improve their living conditions and to raise their family’s status, they work hard and live frugally. After a number of years, if there is any improvement, it is a result of the family’s determination. This is logical and true in many cases. There are however cases in which such a conscious determination is lacking, yet the families are rising nevertheless.
We find an explanation for such cases in Hsu’s work. Hsu attributes a great deal of the younger generations’ way of living to the identifications of father and son in the Chinese families. The identification of the two generations has
… the inevitable result that the sons of the rich are as rich as their fathers, and those of the poor are as poor as their fathers. The sons of the rich not only share their father’s wealth but also enjoy their fathers’ power and prestige. The sons of the poor not only share their fathers’ poverty but also partake of their fathers’ humility or lack of position. Like their fathers, the poor sons have to work hard for whatever they receive. With their fathers they have to struggle for their very existence. (P. 10)
As a result, their family’s conditions are improved, or getting better and better. The declining of a rich family is in most cases caused by the younger generations not working hard but living extravagantly. The reason for the younger generations being this way is also the identification of the father and sons two generations.
The sons of the rich find themselves differently situated, (in comparison with the poor ones.) Unlike their fathers, who probably have had to labor to reach their present status, they cannot work for what they receive for fear their parents will lose face. It is an integral part of the latter’s social position that their sons shall not work. Under such conditions the younger men have no productive way of expressing themselves. Like their fathers now, they have only to ask for what they want. In fact, wealth, power, and prestige are showered on them whether they want them or not. (P. 10)
It would be a miracle if they were not be spoiled and the family fortune not ruined.
What are the routes through which families can rise to the upper class? An important one was taking part in and passing the imperial examinations. As repeatedly mentioned before the gentry has been the upper class throughout the imperial centuries of China and that in most of the periods one has to pass one or more of the official examinations and hold a degree of the academic world in order to enter the class. It was not easy, for only a person has prepared himself by studying the classics and histories and by practicing the writing of poems and essays for ten or twenty years could be qualified to take the examination. Then passing it or not is another matter. In many cases a person may have studied thirty or fifty years and have taken the examination numerous times yet still could not have a degree of the middle class, not to say the high class.
The examination route was open to every social group, except slaves and people who had the wrong occupations. In the Qīng period people in wrong occupations were “prostitutes, actors, all musicians who live in Shǎanxī 陜西 province, butchers, and barbers!” (Xuézhèng Quánshū 学政全书眷三十三, p. 1-33.) Certain runners in the yamen (yámén 衙门) were also included in this category of excluded occupations. Since the merchants occupied a low position in traditional China, they had sometimes been excluded. But this was not true in Qīng. On the contrary, the Qīng government established rules so that merchants who were carrying on business outside of their native provinces could have an equal opportunity of taking the examination.
Authorities at different times also tried in many ways to convince people that the examination system was honest and fair for everybody who was legitimate to take it. Let us take the Qīng examination rules as an example.
In Qīng the officials who administered the examinations were selected by the government in great secrecy. When an official was chosen for such a capacity, he would be immediately sent under armed guard to the examination hall which closed its doors as soon as he entered it. He was then allowed absolutely no chance to communicate with the outside. Particularly he was not given any opportunity for corruption. Furthermore, close relatives of the officials administering the examinations were excluded from participating in that examination. There were many cases which needed imperial edicts to settle the question of whether or not such a person should be excluded from an examination on the grounds of kinship relation with the officials administering it. (Kēchǎng Tiáolì 科场条例眷九,十.)
The questions for national and provincial examinations were similarly guarded with great secrecy before they were given out to examinees. First, sets of questions were prepared by the Board of Ceremonies and then sent to the Emperor for personal choice of one or two, depending on the required number for the particular examination. Then the questions were sealed in a box which was given to the examination hall, to be opened by the examination officials only after the doors of the examination hall were closed.
The questions were printed behind closed doors of the civil service examination hall. However, one time several sheets of the printed questions were missing. Immediately all copies were destroyed and new questions were selected and printed.
Then there were very strict rules governing the searching of the examinees when they entered the examination hall and governing their conduct inside of the hall while they were taking the examination. The examinees had to be stripped of all of their clothes and they were searched, Time and again examination dates had to be changed because of unusually cold weather which might cause sickness in such searching processes for the examinees.
[Note: This is not to say that cheating did not sometimes succeed. Modern museums include in their collections lengths of silk covered with tiny characters smuggled into examination halls to provide an aide-mémoire to anxious candidates. —DKJ]
All servants and guards of the examination officials had to be similarly searched with thoroughness before they entered the examination hall. The examination papers were not handed directly to the examination officials who read the papers, but rather handed to an official copyist who would copy the papers in a different type of ink and then each paper was given a number. When the papers reached the official readers, they would not be able to see the names, nor recognize the handwriting.
Even the influence of religion was borrowed to lend strength to the appearance of honesty in the examination system. When the examination was about to begin a rather frightening ceremony was practiced. The heavy doors of the examination hall were closed at sunset and, in dusky darkness, a huge black flag was hoisted to the top of a flag pole which was planted at the center of the huge courtyard inside of the examination hall. The black flag was a traditional religious symbol in Chinese life. It was used to summon the spirits and ghosts together. Then the officials administering the ceremony would say aloud: “You spirits, you spirits, we urge your indulgence and return your gratitude. This is the time.” The time was serious indeed, for it decided the success or failure of the examinees who came with unlimited ambitions and dreams.
Not that cases of dishonesty and corruption did not occur. But, whenever such cases did take place, the government seldom spared severe punishment. The beheading of even a prince of the Manchu royal family in 1858 was a prominent case in connection with corruption concerning the administration of the examination system. (Jing chao xu wen xian tong gao, juan 86, p. 8451. [No characters provided.]) Such strict enforcement of the laws and regulations governing the examination system further strengthened the appearance of its honesty. Even as slanderous a work of fiction against the 19th century officialdom as the Èrshí Nián Mùdǔ Guài Xiànzhuàng 二十年目睹怪现状, “Personal Witness on the Strange Things Happening in the Last-Twenty Years,” admitted that the government was dead serious about the enforcement of honesty in the examinations, although sparing no criticism against occasional cheating and corruption that took place in it.
The frequency of examinations given in the 19th century was another factor tending to convince the people that ample opportunity had been provided for all who were worthy to enter the degree holders group. Local examinations took place every two years, and national examinations every three years. On auspicious occasions, such as the birthday of the Emperor or his living parents, the coronation of the emperor, special national and provincial examinations were given in addition to the regular ones. When there were floods or military disturbances provincial examinations and even national examinations could be postponed so as to facilitate the attendance at examinations by the candidates.
Merely passing the examination and acquiring one of the degrees did not necessarily mean that one has reached the destination of social advancement. One has entered the gentry class, it is true, but not necessarily the upper class.
As has been pointed out before, the gentry was divided into two groups: the upper and the lower. The upper group included only those with the middle and high degrees. It was only these gentry members who formed the upper social leadership. The lower group included those who had only passed the elementary examination and held the lowest degrees. These people also belonged to the gentry, but actually they could enjoy very few of the gentry privileges. Only on rare special occasions were they treated differently. In general, they were the poor people.
Because they were poor, and because they were helpless in earning an independent livelihood, they could not but sometimes do things humiliating to themselves. One who disgraces himself will be looked down upon by others. The formerly mentioned Qīng scholar Zhèng Bǎnqiáo 郑板桥 had many writings reproaching elementary degree holders, or the xiùcái 秀才. Indeed, these poor scholars were not only rebuked by the superior ones of their own class but also not in-frequently ridiculed by the commoners. Many humorous folksongs and folk dramas were written at the expense of the poor xiùcái.
The foregoing is not to be interpreted to say that the elementary degree holders did not belong to the gentry class. They did, legally. Actually, or economically and socially, they were more associated with the commoners than they were with the upper class. To say the best, they were class-marginal people and they frequently crossed the class line back and forth. Some of them eventually advanced to the upper section of the gentry and stayed, while many others personally witnessed as their next generation slipped back to the commoner’s group.
Actually, the upper social class in the past was not solely made up of people who held the higher academic degrees. There were other kinds of worthy people too; and, therefore, the government examination was not the only way to enter the upper class. Indeed, it was Liǔ Pín’s 柳玭 teaching that “all the great families were established by their ancestors through hard work, frugal living and the great virtues of filial piety and loyalty” which had been more widely accepted by the people as a whole. In the former quotation of Francis L. K. Hsu’s discussion on reasons for the rise and fall of families, his observation is that “the climbers tended to be careful, rational, frugal, industrious, and sincere. Those who were declining tended to be vain, impulsive, extravagant, carefree, and arrogant.” Clearly, frugality and industry and the other related good characters paved a way leading the family to prosperity and fame. Such teachings or ideologies filled up considerably large parts of the contents of many traditional literature works and family discipline.
Some may contend that in China the ratio between natural resources and the population is so out of balance that even where all cultivated land is equally distributed among the farmers, the holding per person is less than half an acre, and that the technology of production is backward; and, therefore, it seems questionable that “hard work” and “self-denial” alone can raise families to prosperity.
Such a contention neglects the fact that social distinction is a matter of comparison. When one family is better off than the other, it has the upper hand regardless of the absolute amount of wealth it has. And the standard of prosperity is also a relative thing and it is different in traditional China from that known in another society. If a family had enough to eat and enough to live on, and was loved and respected by others in the same local community, it was an upper family according to the old standard, in spite of the fact that it had only a few acres of land. It wouldn’t be impossible for families to shift from a lower level to a higher level through “hard work” and “self denial”.
Another route of social advancement was the building of matrimonial relations between a lower class family and an upper class family. The general pattern of this route was that a lowly and poor family had an unusually beautiful daughter and this daughter attracted great favor of a high family. The marriage arranged, matrimonial relations were built up. Then it was up to the woman’s relatives to take advantage of the relationship and advance themselves to the upper class. In most cases the relatives did take the advantage and reached a higher class, but only a few of them later admitted the help they received. There were also cases in which a son of a lower class family married a daughter of an upper class family. Such cases were, however, far fewer than cases of the former pattern. And in such cases the son usually had to be a man already in the gentry-bureaucracy world because there had to be some contact to be built upon between himself and a family of the high class.
A specific pattern can be briefly described: A young man with the xiùcái degree got a clerk job in the office of a provincial governor or of a high official. He was brilliant and often showed his great potential. He attracted unusual attention from his boss. The boss spoke of him with his wife and suggested that their daughter be married to the young man. After another period of observation and investigation the young man was taken to the governor’s home for a family dinner. He was introduced to the lady of the family and some way was arranged so that the daughter had also the opportunity to take a look at him. Every party was satisfied, and before long marriage between the young xiùcái and the governor’s daughter followed. After the marriage, the governor did everything possible to enhance the son-in-law’s pulling power. After a sufficient period, both the young man and his relatives entered the high gentry-bureaucracy class.
Of this route there is another pattern. One of two sisters married a man who originally belonged to or later got into the upper class. It has been almost a tradition that a married and fortunate woman likes to help her unmarried and humble sister to get to a better position. So she persuades her husband to use his influence in getting her sister a husband among his class of people. If the sister is already married, she will then influence him to get the sister’s husband a junior but promising position, unless the latter is too low to be lifted up.
Another route of social mobility is when serious social disturbance or war is going on. As has been mentioned previously, in the period of Warring States (period 4e), old social systems were broken. Men who wanted to get into high positions could depend and had to depend on their own achieved merits. Consequently, those who showed talents and accomplished significant records were immediately sought out and put in high positions regardless of family background or class status. Those who could do nothing to defend the country or to strengthen the state were ignored and finally discarded notwithstanding their noble origin. As a result, there was a new class of nobility. Since then, at every time of war for the change of dynasty or for the suppressing of rebellion the extent of social mobility increased considerably. When social disturbances were coming, ambitions people would congratulate each other on the hope that it was time for them to climb up to the upper class.
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