Cooperation and Tension-Revisiting Local Activism.pdf

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43Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 73.1 (2013): 43–82

Cooperation and Tension:Revisiting Local Activism in the Southern Song Dynasty

SUKHEE LEERutgers University

Lou Yue 樓鑰 (1137–1213), who left the most extensive records about Mingzhou 明州 (modern-day Ningbo 寧波) in the Southern

Song (1127–1279), proudly referred a few times to his native place as a “righteous prefecture” (yijun 義郡).1 In one case Lou uses the expres-sion when praising the continual production of filial sons in Cixi 慈谿 county. In two other places, he uses the term to highlight Mingzhou’s custom, by which, we are told, local magnates were playing leading roles in swiftly taking care of the welfare of their neighbors. According to him, “community solidarity was held to be so important [in Mingzhou] that people treated each other in order of one’s age regardless of one’s office-holding background” 鄉誼最重, 薦紳韋布, 序必以齒.2

I would like to thank Peter Bol, Alexander Akin, Alice W. Cheang, and the two anon-ymous reviewers for HJAS for their critical reading of the manuscript and constructive suggestions.

1 See Lou Yue, “Cixi xian Dong xiaozi miao ji” 慈溪縣董孝子廟記, in Quan Song wen 全宋文 [hereafter QSW], 360 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe; Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 2006), 265:5976.9; “Fuwenge xueshi xuanfeng dafu zhishi zeng tejin Wang gong xingzhuang” 敷文閣學士宣奉大夫致仕贈特進汪公行狀, in QSW, 265:5980.183; “Shi yushi zuo chaoqing dafu zhimige zhishi Wang gong xingzhuang” 侍御史左朝請大夫直秘閣致仕王公行狀, in QSW, 265:5982.209. Among all the Song literary collections included in the Siku quanshu 四庫全書 (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1983–86), no other author uses this word to describe his hometown.

2 Lou Yue, “Yizhuang ji” 義莊記, in Yanyou Siming zhi 延祐四明志, Song Yuan fangzhi

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One of the most important trade ports of the Southern Song, Min-gzhou prefecture—composed of the six counties of Yin 鄞, Fenghua 奉化, Cixi, Dinghai 定海, Xiangshan 象山, and Changguo 昌國—was known for the political success of its elite families, the affluence of its local literati community, and its commercial prosperity.3 Tak-ing Lou’s words at face value, we might conclude that moral customs flourished in Mingzhou in his day, with those who played a leading role in promulgating these customs consciously prioritizing their own sense of social order over the hierarchies imposed by the state. How-ever, many preeminent families in Mingzhou did not actively contrib-ute, at least not financially, to building the basic social infrastructure of their locale.4 This poses a problem. Unless we are to dismiss Lou Yue’s remarks as a hyperbolic idealization of his locale and its leaders, how do we explain this seeming contradiction? What would an explanation tell us about Mingzhou local society at the time? Did the Mingzhou elites simply show varying degrees of interest toward different types of local projects? These questions hold broad implications for our under-standing of the local activism of the period.

congkan edition (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1990; printed 2006), 14.43a. The QSW only has a version of this inscription that is significantly shorter and does not contain the infor-mation discussed here; QSW, 265:5971.68–69.

3 Roughly speaking, there were two types of elites in Song local society: the literati elite who would recognize each other as shi 士, and the nonliterati elite whose source of power ranged from landholding to commercial activities to direct control over local law enforce-ment. The boundary between these two types of elites was porous, yet contemporaries made a distinction between them. In the voluminous writings of Lou Yue and Yuan Xie 袁燮 (1144–1224), such expressions as “lofty lineage” (wangzu 望族), “renowned lineage” (wenzu 聞族), “eminent lineage” (mingzu 名族), and “well-known surname” (zhu xing 著姓) are reserved for those families that had produced at least a few jinshi degree holders or high-ranking officials, whereas terms like “great families” (jushi 巨室) invariably describe powerful families that had not been fully “gentrified.” The former group constitutes the upper crust of the literati elite, whereas the latter includes a wider range of “influential households” (xingshi hu 形勢戶). In view of this difference, I will consider the literati and other types of elites separately in this article, although I will use “local elites” as a generic term for the two categories combined, especially when a source does not specify which type of elite is being referred to. For this reason, I disagree with Robert P. Hymes’s asser-tion that his seven different types of elite were largely “coterminous” with the shi. See his Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern and Southern Song (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 8–10, 53. For an overview of the socioeconomic and regional diversity of local elites, see Joseph Esherick and Mary Rankin, “Introduction,” in Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance, ed. Joseph W. Esherick and Mary Backus Rankin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 7–24.

4 Hymes notes that the elites of Fuzhou were selective in their local activism; States-men and Gentlemen, p. 150.

Southern Song Local Activism Revisited 45

The Southern Song witnessed an upsurge of communal efforts in local society, through which people organized themselves to meet chal-lenges that were coming from within and outside their local society, under the leadership of members of the local elites who acted indepen-dently of the formal bureaucratic apparatus. In many cases, these efforts were labeled yi 義, conventionally translated as “righteous(ness).”5 According to Hong Mai’s 洪邁 (1123–1202) contemporary definition, yi, as in the compounds “charitable estates” (yitian 義田) and “char-itable service” (yiyi 義役), means “sharing with other people” (yu zhong gongzhi 與衆共之).6 Conrad Schirokauer and Robert Hymes argue that in the Southern Song the term yi was increasingly used to refer to social action in the nebulous realm between family and state.7 Although these communal efforts originated in local initiatives, given that they belonged to a realm “between family and state,” it would be natural to expect varying degrees of participation of family and state in these communal efforts. However, the question of how the state (that is, government), particularly as represented by its local officials, under-stood and participated in this realm has been scarcely touched by exist-ing scholarship.8 Below, I shall first examine Mingzhou’s official schools (zhou-xian xue 州縣學), the community drinking ceremony (xiang yinjiu li 鄉飲酒禮), and such voluntary self-help institutions as the commu-nity charitable estate (xiangqu yitian 鄉曲義田), all of which were established for the literati elite. I will then analyze the charitable ser-vice (yiyi), which was created in response to the chronic problem of

5 The word yi has a wide range of meanings, and “righteous” may not be the best term to capture the historical nuances of the word in the context of these local communal proj-ects. Depending on the context, English-language scholarship has variously used “chari-table,” “duty,” and “voluntary” when referring to local programs.

6 “Renwu yi yi wei ming” 人物以義爲名, in Rongzhai suibi 容齋隨筆 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1978), p. 105.

7 Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Schirokauer, “Introduction,” in Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China, ed. Hymes and Schirokauer (Berke-ley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 54–55.

8 In defining what I mean by the state, I have benefited from Quentin Skinner’s lec-ture, “What is the State? The Question that ‘Will Not Go Away,’” presented at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, on December 3, 2008. Skinner classifies four rival trends in defining the state within the modern European intellectual tradition. One of them, represented by Jeremy Bentham and now largely used as a commonsensical defi-nition, is to identify the state with the government. For the same lecture, delivered at the University of Cambridge, December 24, 2007, see http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media.

http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media

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village labor services (zhiyi 職役), which affected the lives of a great number of nonliterati elite. In all these institutions, which were the loci of community building, we can see both cooperation and tension between the local government (that is, government at the prefectural and county levels) and elite families. By showing the active role taken by the state in the aforemen-tioned areas, I will demonstrate that, far from emerging after the state had retreated from local activity, the local activism of the Southern Song, especially in affluent regions, was the product of the converging interests of the state and local elites. I will also highlight that each party had a different set of priorities in its sponsorship of local projects, and argue that contending visions of local elite social responsibilities were being articulated in this period.

Official Schools in Local SocietyAny attempt to understand the literati community in Mingzhou should begin with a careful examination of the official schools. In general, the expansion of the official school system in the late Northern Song helped to foster the growth of local literati communities.9 In Ming-zhou, given the continued investment in official schools by both the local government and local elites and the relatively late appearance of private academies (shuyuan 書院), official schools must have occupied a place of central importance in its literati society.10

9 For the impact of the late Northern Song official school system on the expansion of the literati population, see Kondō Kazunari 近藤一成, “Sai Kei no kakyo·gakkō seisaku” 蔡京の科挙・学校政策, Tōyōshi kenkyū 東洋史研究 53.1 (1994): 45–46. See also Richard Davis, Court and Family in Sung China, 960–1279: Bureaucratic Success and Kinship Fortunes for the Shih of Ming-chou (Durham: Duke University Press, 1986), pp. 25–26.

10 The establishment of major private academies in Mingzhou began in the thirteenth century. Danshan 丹山 Academy was built between 1218 and 1221; see Zhejiang tongzhi 浙江通志, Siku quanshu edition, 27.14b. Yongdong 甬東 Academy between 1228 and 1233; Zhizheng Siming xuzhi 至正四明續志, Song Yuan fangzhi congkan edition, 8.12b. Weng-zhou 翁洲 Academy between 1241 and 1252; Dade Changguo tuzhi 大德昌國圖志, Song Yuan fangzhi congkan edition, 2.10b–12b. Longjin 龍津 Academy in 1260; Ren Shilin 任士林 (1253–1309), “Chongjian Wen gong shuyuan ji” 重建文公書院記, in Quan Yuan wen 全元文 (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 2001), 18:582.381. Dengying 登瀛 Academy between 1265 and 1274; Zhejiang tongzhi, 27.11a. Cihu 慈湖 Academy in 1271; Yanyou Si ming zhi, 14.29b–37b. Daishan 岱山 Academy in 1273; Yanyou Siming zhi, 14.25a–29b. Guang-ping 廣平 Academy in 1275; Wang Yinglin 王應麟 (1223–1296), “Guangping shuyuan ji” 廣平書院記, in QSW, 354:8201.300–301. For the crucial role of local official schools in


“When people talk about prefectural schools (junpan 郡泮),” wrote the editor of the Kaiqing Siming xuzhi 開慶四明續志, the Mingzhou prefectural gazetteer completed in 1259, “they invariably point to Zhang-zhou 漳州 [in Fujian] and Mingzhou. Whereas Zhangzhou is known for its abundant school finances, Mingzhou is famous for its magnificent school buildings.”11 Although this gazetteer tends toward the boast-ful in reckoning its prefect’s administrative accomplishments,12 the editor’s laudatory remarks appear to have a foundation. Writing about forty years earlier, Ye Xiufa 葉秀發 (1161–1230), an instructor at the Mingzhou prefectural school, also proudly noted that the school was second only to the Imperial University in the financial support it gave to students.13 The impressive presence created by the physical grandeur of the official school and the richness of its endowment undoubtedly con-tributed to the excellent track record of Mingzhou’s sons in the exami-nations during the Southern Song period.14 Evidence is available that Mingzhou literati families assumed lead-ership roles in projects related to local official schools. Lin Wei 林暐, said to be among the richest property owners in the entire prefec-ture, donated hundreds of strings of cash to make possible a rough

“transforming” local society, see Fang Chengfeng 方誠逢, “Tonghui zhi di: xianxue yu Songmo Yuanchu Jiading difang shehui de zhixu” 統會之地: 縣學與宋末元初嘉定地方社會的秩序, Xin shixue 新史學 16.3 (2005); Yamaguchi Tomoya 山口智哉, “Sōdai chihō toshi ni okeru kyōiku shinkō jigyō to zaichi eri–to: Shōkō Shinsōken o jirei to shite” 宋代地方都市における教育振興事業と在地エリート: 紹興新昌県を事例として, Hikaku toshi shi kenkyū 比較都市史研究 25.2 (December 2006).

11 Kaiqing Siming xuzhi 開慶四明續志, Song Yuan fangzhi congkan edition, 1.6a.12 The value of the Kaiqing Siming xuzhi as an historical source for studying the history

of Southern Song Mingzhou cannot be overstated. The editors of Siku quanshu were ini-tially skeptical about the appropriateness of its title of “gazetteer” because the work focuses on Wu Qian’s 吳潛 administrative achievements and his literary writings on Ming zhou. Ultimately they endorsed the book’s contents, however. See Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 四库全书总目提要 (Haikou: Hainan chubanshe, 1999), pp. 373–74. Wu Qian’s achievement in Mingzhou was repeatedly celebrated in later years by the editors of gazetteers as well as local literati writers. See Jiajing Ningbo fuzhi 嘉靖寧波府志, 1522 edition held at the Harvard-Yenching Library, 20.18a–37b; Quan Zuwang 全祖望 (1705–1755), “Zaiba Siming Baoqing Kaiqing er zhi” 再跋四明寶慶開慶二志, in Quan Zuwang ji huijiao jizhu 全祖望集彙校集注 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2000), p. 1479.

13 “Jiading qinian ji” 嘉定七年記, in Gao Yutai 高于泰, in Jingzhi lu 敬止錄, Beijing tushuguan guji zhenben congkan edition, juan 15. This work has no pagination. The origi-nal title of this inscription remains unclear. See QSW, 301:6877.286.

14 Mingzhou produced as many as 746 jinshi during the Southern Song, nearly six times its total number during the Northern Song. This rate of success was surpassed only by Fuzhou 福州, Fujian circuit; and Wenzhou 溫州, Zhedong circuit 兩浙東路.

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reconstruction of the prefectural school as it had appeared in the early days of the Southern Song. He also contributed one hundred mu of land to board residential students at the school.15 In 1186, Wang Dayou 汪大猷 (1120–1200), an eminent statesman and a member of the influ-ential Wang family of Yin county, together with Shi Mida 史彌大 (jin-shi 1169), the eldest son of Shi Hao 史浩 (1106–1194), led the way for other literati to contribute to the school’s renovation. County schools were even more conspicuous in their reliance on elite participation.16 When the Hall of the Former Sages at the Yin county school was rebuilt in 1220, donations from local literati amounted to 4,100 strings, more than double the cash received from the prefectural government and the commission of the ever-normal granary (changping si 常平司). The actual construction work was also overseen by a local literatus, Wang Ji 王機. Six years later, literati again chipped in with five hundred strings for a major reconstruction of the school, this time chiefly financed by the prefectural government.17 In Cixi county, Chen Gongda 陳公達 helped to finance the renovation of the county school between 1177 and 1184.18 In Fenghua county, Wang Ji 汪伋 (1148–1218) led another thirty-two literati, including Dong Ansi 董安嗣 and Xu Rusong 徐如松, in constructing some forty bays of school buildings in 1196.19 When the county school of Dinghai was renovated by a magistrate in 1204, two local men, Hu Daren 胡大任 and Huang Junzhong 黃君中, contributed their land to expand the school site.20 The renovation of the Changguo county school in 1224 seems to have been aided by contributions from local literati as well,21

15 Yuan Xie, “Ba Lin hucao die” 跋林戶曹帖, in QSW, 281:6371.149; Baoqing Siming zhi 寶慶四明志 [hereafter BQSMZ], Song Yuan fangzhi congkan edition, 2.4a. See also Lin’s biography in BQSMZ, 8.31a.

16 Kawakami Kyōji’s 川上恭司 broad survey of the creation and renovation of county schools across the Song empire bears out this point, although it clearly shows that local literati funded the creation of local official schools during the Northern Song. See “Sōdai no toshi to kyōiku: shūgengaku o chūshin to shite” 宋代の都市と教育: 州県学を中心として, in Chūgoku kinsei no toshi to bunka 中国近世の都市と文化, ed. Umehara Kaoru 梅原郁 (Kyōto: Kyōto daigaku jinbun kagaku kenkyūjo, 1984), pp. 361–75.

17 BQSMZ, 12.7b–8a. Unfortunately, the names of the important donors for each proj-ect are not provided.

18 BQSMZ, 16.9a.19 Lou Yue, “Fenghua xianxue ji” 奉化縣學記, in QSW, 264:5966.370–71.20 BQSMZ, 18.9a–b.21 Yuan Xie, “Changguo xian ruxue ji” 昌國縣儒學記, in Dade Changguo tuzhi, 2.1a–2a.


and local literati also participated in the reconstruction of the Confu-cian Temple in 1247.22 These donors were undoubtedly from wealthy local families. What is interesting, however, is that, with the notable exceptions of Wang Dayou and Shi Mida, most of them were from relatively unknown or fledgling literati families. Lin Wei, Wang Ji 汪伋, Wang Ji 王機, Dong Ansi, Xu Rusong, Chen Gongda, Hu Daren, and Huang Junzhong were not jinshi degree holders, neither at the time of their donations nor lat-er.23 In other words, the leading role in donating to county schools was not played by already prominent local families. Although further infor-mation on most of these people is lacking, the cases of Lin Wei and Wang Ji 汪伋 afford a context for understanding their investment in schools. The Lins immigrated to Yin at the end of the Five Dynasties, and by the beginning of the Southern Song, they had forged solid connec-tions with other prominent local families. They enjoyed marriage ties with the Yuans 袁, the family of the famous Neo-Confucian scholar Yuan Xie 袁燮 (1144–1224); the funerary inscription of a grandson of Lin Wei, Lin Shuo 林碩 (1133–1206), was written by Lou Yue; and Lin Shuo was also close with Yang Jian 楊簡 (1141–1226) and Yuan Xie.24 The Lins’ efforts to gentrify themselves finally bore fruit in Lin Wei’s great-grandson’s generation, when the family began to produce jinshi degree holders.25 Wang Ji’s 汪伋 family began to rise only in the early Southern Song, having by then acquired tremendous wealth by means that are unclear. Wang Ji obtained an honorary rank through dona-tions to the government, as did his father, and he became a disciple of

22 Wang Yinglin, “Changguo xian chongxiu Dachengdian ji” 昌國縣重建大成殿記, in Dade Changguo tuzhi, 2.3b–4a.

23 No further information on Chen Gongda, Hu Daren, and Huang Junzhong can be gathered, but my search through the Siku quanshu suggests that none of them passed the jinshi examination.

24 Lin Ying 林潁, the grandson of Lin Wei, was a son-in-law of Yuan Xie’s grandfather, Yuan Jiong 袁坰. See Yuan Xie, “Xianzu mubiao” 先祖墓表, in QSW, 281:6384.374. Yang Jian and Yuan Xie wrote Lin Shuo’s tomb record and the record of his conduct, respec-tively. However, these two pieces are not found in the current editions of their literary works, but they are mentioned in Lou Yue, “Lin fujun muzhiming” 林府君墓誌銘, in QSW, 266:6003.133.

25 Lin Shuo’s two sons, Lin Weixiao 林惟孝 and Lin Weizhong 林惟忠, passed the examinations in 1190 and 1202, respectively. Weizhong’s two sons, Lin Zongyi 林宗一 and Lin Wei 林煟, also passed in 1205 and 1250, respectively. BQSMZ, 10.9b–21a.

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the famous Four Mingzhou Masters. By Wang Ji’s son’s generation, the family was producing jinshi degree holders.26 For wealthy, upwardly mobile families like the Lins and the Wangs, donations to local official schools may have been a more attrac-tive route than contributions to more mundane local construction projects. First, official schools offered the most authoritative program for preparing for the examinations. By strengthening their relationship with such schools, those who wished to promote their own advance-ment into literati circles could create a reputation for valuing culture and education and producing sons likely to pass the examinations. Sec-ond, official schools were in themselves an impeccable venue for social networking, enabling students to make friends with members of other influential local families. The role of these literati in supporting local official schools is only a part of the whole picture. The investment made by the Ming-zhou prefectural government far outweighed that of the local elites.27 For example, Lin Wei’s initial contribution provided the impetus for the prefectural school’s reconstruction, but it was through Prefect Qiu Yu’s 仇悆 (d. 1146) effort that the project was completed. According to the commemorative inscription written on the reconstruction, a total of sixty-four hundred strings was spent on the project. Of these, local donations of eight hundred strings, which had been “begged for” (gai 丐) by Prefect Qiu Yu, accounted for only 12.5 percent of the entire

26 Wang Ji’s father, Wang Ruxian 汪汝賢 (1124–1180), obtained an honorary rank for donating his property to support the army in the early Southern Song. Wang Ji himself received an honorary rank for contributing ten thousand hu 斛 of grain and ten thousand strings of money for famine relief. See Shu Lin 舒璘 (1136–1199), “Digonglang Wang gong muzhiming” 迪功郎汪公墓誌銘, in QSW, 260:5853.192–93. For Wang Ji’s close relation-ship with the Four Masters and his sons’ examination success, see Yuan Xie, “Congshilang Wang jun muzhiming” 從仕郎汪君墓誌銘, in QSW, 281:6387.411. The Four Masters are Yang Jian, Wang Ji’s teacher; Yuan Xie, the author of Wang’s tomb inscription; Shen Huan 沈煥 (1139–1191); and Shu Lin, Wang’s brother-in-law.

27 For the prefectural school, see Qiandao Siming tujing 乾道四明圖經, Song Yuan fangzhi congkan edition, 9.5a–8b; BQSMZ, 2.3b–5b; Kaiqing Siming xuzhi, 1.6a–b; QSW, 354:8201.294–96; Jingzhi lu, juan 15. For the Yin county school, see BQSMZ, 12.7b–8b. For the Fenghua county school, see BQSMZ, 14.5b–6b. For the Cixi county school, see BQSMZ, 16.9a–b. For the Dinghai county school, see BQSMZ, 18.9a–b; Yanyou Siming zhi, 14.7b–9a; Jia jing Dinghai xianzhi 嘉靖定海縣志, 6.5b–6a. For the Changguo county school, see Dade Changguo tuzhi, 2.1a–2a; Yanyou Siming zhi, 13.43b–48b; Siming wenx-ian kao 四明文獻考, Beijing tushuguan guji zhenben congkan edition, 256a–57b. For the Xiangshan county school, see BQSMZ, 21.8a–b; Jiajing Xiangshan xianzhi 嘉靖象山縣志, Tianyige cang Mingdai fangzhi xuankan xubian edition (Beijing: Xian zhuang shuju, 2010), 6.1a–b.


expenditure. The remaining 87.5 percent came from an “official trea-sury” (gongtang 公帑).28 Since the prefect was the subject of the entire sentence in which this “treasury” is mentioned, and since the inscrip-tion also notes that he “was able to spare what the treasury had accu-mulated” 能斥其帑藏之積, it is most likely that the treasury being referred to is the prefecture’s rather than the central government’s. Considering that during his term Qiu Yu also used the rice stored in the official treasury for famine relief,29 we may assume that at this time the Mingzhou government was able to handle the financial challenge of reconstructing the prefectural school largely on its own. From the Xiaozong 孝宗 reign (1163–1189) onward, the prefec-tural school was periodically renovated and repaired by a succession of officials. Thirty years after its reconstruction, Prefect Zhang Jin 張津 renovated the school. Following him, Prefect Zhao Bogui 趙伯圭 (1119–1196) “allocated a considerable sum” (da chu minqian 大出緡錢) to renovate the school’s Confucian Temple, Pavilion of Impe-rial Calligraphy, Hall of Examining Antiquity, and Hall of Illuminating Human Relations, as well as student dormitories, gates, and wings.30 In 1186, Prefect Yue Fu 岳甫 spent two thousand strings to spearhead a major renovation. In 1214 Prefect Cheng Tan 程覃 disbursed five thou-sand strings in paper notes to repair the school walls and the examina-tion hall. He also invested in an official brewery administered by the naval forces and used the annual interest payment of twelve hundred strings to provide board for the school’s resident students. In addi-tion, he rented out official land to local people, and out of this income he occasionally supplied three or four hundred strings to the prefec-tural school.31 Between 1224 and 1226, Prefect Qi Shuo 齊碩 and Vice- Prefect 通判 Cai Fan 蔡範 donated two thousand strings and two hundred piculs of rice to reconstruct not only the bridge over the semi-circular pool (pan 泮) in front of the school, but also the school’s bathhouse and kitchen.32 The succeeding prefect, Hu Ju 胡榘, also

28 Li Huang 李璜, “Chongjian zhouxue ji” 重建州學記, in Qiandao Siming tujing, 9.5b.29 Chen Juren 陳居仁 (1129–1197), “Shantang miao ji” 善塘廟記, in Guangxu Fenghua

xianzhi 光緖奉化縣志 Zhongguo fangzhi congshu edition (Taipei: Chengwen chuban-she, 1975), 12.21a.

30 Lou Yue, “Huang bozu taishi chongxian jing wang xingzhuang” 皇伯祖太師崇憲靖王行狀, in QSW, 265:5978.151.

31 Ye Xiufa, “Jiading qinian ji.”32 Tongpan is often translated as controller-general, following Charles Hucker,

Dictionary of Chinese Official Titles (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), p. 555. I

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expended one thousand strings for the school’s renovation, at which point the Mingzhou prefectural school was said to have become the best in the Zhedong circuit.33 The role taken by the local government in maintaining county schools was thus more salient than that of local elites, so much so that some officials even met with subtle criticism for their inordinate con-cern. Between 1269 and 1270, Chen Fuming 陳復明, magistrate of Xiangshan county, rebuilt the Hall of Illuminating Human Relations, the Shrine for Former Confucians, and the Confucian Temple at the county school with a subsidy from Prefect Liu Fu 劉黻 (jinshi 1262). In his commemorative inscription on this occasion, Huang Shui 黃蛻 (jinshi 1247) wrote:

Someone said to me, “The county magistrate is the person who guides and leads (shishuai 師帥) the local people. The transformation [of the people] through education should come first, and dealing with litigation and taxation second. Mr. Chen knows what should be given priority. This act of his ought to be recorded.” I said to him, “True indeed. Nevertheless, transformation through education ought not to be pursued for hypocriti-cal purposes. There are those officials who, confused in their administra-tion of justice and oppressive in their collection of taxes, are not qualified to say anything at all about even a trickle of learning the Way and loving the people. If such a one still says, ‘I honor the former sages and the schools,’ this is nothing but making oneself look good for the sake of one’s reputation and angling for profit. This being the case, who is going to believe it even if one calls him a ‘gentleman’? One who is benevolent in rendering judgments and imposing prison sentences knows how to govern people. . . . One who is benevolent in taxation knows how to nurture people. One who knows how to govern and nurture people surely knows how to educate them. Only when this is so [do we know that] this act of honoring the former sages and the school originates from his genuine mind. Only when this is the case is the deed worth recording.”34

follow Paul Smith in translating it as vice-prefect. See “Shen-tsung’s Reign and the New Policies of Wang An-shih,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 5, part 1, ed. Denis Twitchett and Paul Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 358.

33 BQSMZ, 2.5a.34 “Xiu xuegong ji” 修學宮記, in Minguo Xiangshan xianzhi 民國象山縣志, Zhongguo

fangzhi congshu edition, 32.29b.


This passage suggests that the value placed on education was so strong that some officials prioritized local schools at the expense of other pressing administrative duties, such as making judicial decisions and collecting taxes, for the sake of earning a reputation. In fact, as I show below, an administrator’s handbook advised officials to pay the closest attention to local official schools in their daily governance. In “How to Govern the People” (Linmin 臨民), the second chap-ter of the Zhoulian xulun 晝簾緖論, a manual for county magistrates, Hu Taichu 胡太初 (jinshi 1238) lists four “priorities” (xianwu 先務) for a newly appointed magistrate. Heading the list is “honoring the school” (chong xuexiao 崇學校), followed by “promoting filial piety and brotherly respect” (jiang xiaoti 獎孝悌), “encouraging agriculture and sericulture” (quan nongsang 勸農桑), and “simplifying distinc-tions in authority” (lüe shifen 略勢分).35 “Promoting the school” (xing xuexiao 興學校) was indeed one of seven categories of evaluation used by the circuit intendants of prefectual and county officials. But it came sixth in order, following “promulgation of edicts and [administrative] orders” (xuan zhaoling 宣詔令), “nurturing local customs” (hou fengsu 厚風俗), “encouraging agriculture and sericulture,” “regulating crimi-nal cases and civil lawsuits” (ping yusong 平獄訟), and “properly man-aging finance” (li caifu 理財賦).36 Why then, one asks, did the school come first on Hu Taichu’s list? To a pragmatic local official like Hu, the school was clearly some-thing more than a place of teaching and learning, whether moral or practical. He continues,

The literati are people to whom commoners look up. The local [official] school is a place where governance is discussed (yizheng zhi di 議政之地). After paying a ceremonial visit to schools and performing sacrifices there, one ought to invite and meet the [local] literati . . . and to inquire of them the good and the bad in local customs, and consult with them about successes and failures in governance. He has to nurture them generously and test their learning sincerely. Extol those among them who are upright and excellent, protect those who are implicated in lawsuits, and punish those who insult office holders. Then the literati will be delighted and begin to respect him.37

35 “Linmin,” in Zhoulian xulun, Siku quanshu edition, 1.3b–4a.36 Songshi 宋史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 160.3763.37 “Linmin,” in Zhoulian xulun, 1.3b–4a.

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Hu here mentions neither the ideal aims of education nor its practical functions. Instead, he describes school mainly as a place where local literati participated in governance and officials made connections with their community. In other words, he is suggesting that “honoring the school” was the surest way for a magistrate to listen to, show respect for, and earn the trust of the literati. As the above passages imply, it would have been extremely difficult to govern local society, especially at the county level, without winning the respect and trust of the literati elites. The emphasis on the local official school as a place for “discuss-ing governance” should be considered, I think, primarily in the context of the remarkable increase in the numbers of literati in the Southern Song and in the government’s accommodationist attitude toward their opinion.38 The local official school as a place for “governance” was not a new idea. In his famous “Record of the Cixi County School” 慈谿縣學記, Wang Anshi 王安石 (1021–1086), then the Magistrate of Yin, wrote:

In antiquity . . . the governance of nourishing the elderly, rewarding farmers, honoring worthies, employing the able, testing their skills, and recruiting the competent, on the one hand, and, on the other, events like determining military tactics, offering decapitated heads of the enemy, and interrogating [war] prisoners, all took place at school. . . . Participating in sacrificial cer-emonies to the former sages, the students were taught not to forget whence their learning came; by [being subject to] demotion and eviction, they learned to exert themselves to overcome laziness and eradicate wrong doing. Thus, what the literati saw and heard day and night in school was, without exception, how to govern all countries under heaven. . . . When, one day, they were selected to fill the officials posts in various capacities, their abil-ity and conduct had already been established. The way in which the literati prepare for selection [for employment] is nothing more than what they see and hear every day. It is not something that one becomes able to do only through [special] study and practical training.39

Wang maintained that governance should be practiced at schools, both central and local. Nevertheless, the kind of governance found at

38 See Peter Bol, “Whither the Emperor? Emperor Huizong, the New Policies, and the Tang-Song Transition,” Journal of Sung-Yuan Studies 31 (2001): 131.

39 Wang Anshi, “Cixi xianxue ji,” in Qiandao Siming tujing, 9.10a–b.


his ideal school was very different from what Hu Taichu was talking about. As the above passage makes clear, Wang envisioned the school as an institution in which future bureaucrats trained. Literati should be indoctrinated in “the way with which to govern all under heaven” 所以治天下國家之道. However, at school they were not made into active instruments of “governance” (zheng 政). “Nourishing the elderly, rewarding farmers, honoring worthies, employing the able, testing their skills, and recruiting the competent,” though practiced at school, would essentially remain the tasks of the ruler and officials. In the Southern Song, we see a change in how the purpose and function of the local official school were described. On the reconstruc-tion of the Mingzhou prefectural school, Li Huang wrote:

In antiquity . . . schools were thought to be places where gentlemen (junzi 君子) resided and rites and righteousness originated. Here feudal lords decided their military tactics and dispatched their troops so as to conquer men in distant lands. Literati took their rest here and discussed governance. Officials then examined the suitability of the literati’s opinions and accord-ingly corrected their behavior. . . . This is why schools and official govern-ment were not two distinct entities from the beginning, and why schools at various levels, from family to district to the capital, were established in this manner in the antiquity of the Three Dynasties.40

Like Wang Anshi, Li pointed out that the school in ancient times was where feudal lords would perform ceremonial acts. Now, in contrast, the roles of the literati and local officials were being given new impor-tance. It was not the central government’s directives and policies that a school was supposed to teach its students. On the contrary, officials were asked to consult the literati’s opinion on governance in order to correct their own behavior. Writing in 1251 about the renovation of the Jiading 嘉定 county school, a certain Lin Yingyan 林應炎 gave this idea more explicit articulation: “In the school, the magistrate asks about governance and the literati discuss governance. Is the school not a place of great unification?” 學宮, 其令問政, 士議政, 一大統會之地歟.41 Here again, rather than being understood as agents of the central

40 See n. 28, above.41 “Jiading xian xiuxue ji” 嘉定縣修學記, cited in Fang Chengfeng, “Tonghui zhi

di,” p. 13. For the officials’ perception of the local official school as a place for discussing

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state in local society, local official schools are depicted as channels for local voices to reach the state. This turns Wang’s vision on its head. The increase in both the number of literati and their power in local society was a key factor in drawing the attention of local govern-ment, but also contributing to the development of the literati commu-nity in local society was the dynamic interaction between the state and local elites. Although the government’s school policies accelerated the increase in the literati population during the late Northern Song, in Mingzhou of the Southern Song the remarkable growth of local official schools and the subsequent expansion of the literati community were the result of collaborative efforts between local officials and elites, with the former often playing a more active role than the latter. Moreover, the Mingzhou prefectural government’s role in creating and sustain-ing the literati community extended beyond its investment in official schools.

The Community Ritual and Charitable Estates

During the Song, literati elite envisioned the community drinking cer-emony as a collective ritual that had been transmitted from antiquity and that reaffirmed the existing social hierarchy in a given community while reinforcing the harmony among its constituents. A means of rec-ognizing and promoting the local literati community, this ceremony was organized by local officials, who served as hosts and treated lead-ing local literati as their guests. It came to be widely practiced across the country—but only in the Southern Song,42 precisely when the government, according to some, was significantly withdrawing from local society.43

governance, see also Wang Yan 王炎 (jinshi 1169), “Da Yin xueyu qi” 答陰學諭啓, in QSW, 270:6101.154; Peng Guinian 彭龜年 (1142–1206), “Shang chengxiang lun Liu shiyu budang buwai shu” 上丞相論劉侍御不當補外書, in QSW, 278:6303.237.

42 Yamaguchi Tomoya, “Sōdai kyōinshurei kō: girei kūkan toshite mita ninteki getsugō no ‘ba’” 宋代鄕飮酒禮考: 儀禮空間としてみた人的結合の‘場’, Shigaku kenkyū 史学研究 241 ( July 2003): 77.

43 For classic arguments of the state’s retreat from society during the Southern Song, see Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen; Paul J. Smith, Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry, 1074–1224 (Cambridge: Coun-cil on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991).


In the earlier discourse on this ceremony and its later spread dur-ing the Southern Song, Mingzhou played a central role. It was in Ming-zhou that the ceremony was first practiced in the Southern Song, and there that a detailed record of its practice was made and continually updated through the dynasty. In 1143, responding to the request of a Mingzhou native, Lin Bao 林保 (1079–1149), who was then the direc-tor of a subsection of the Ministry of Justice, the central government ordered that this ceremony be practiced throughout the empire. The specific contents of the now imperially sanctioned ceremony were also drafted by a Mingzhou native, Gao Kang 高閌 (1097–1153), who was at that time the chancellor of the Directorate of Education (guozi jijiu 國子祭酒).44 Conscious of the local history of the community drinking cere-mony in local practice, and eager to share it with other localities, the Mingzhou elites actively promoted the ceremony throughout the country.45 Yet, as I will show, the local government was also dedicated to continuing this trend. The ceremony thus variously attracted the attention of the central government, local officials, and the literati elite, all at the same time. The Southern Song central government’s swift decision to sanc-tion the nationalization of the practice of the ceremony might first be understood in light of its attempt to coopt the local literati commu-nity. But the central government also tried to take advantage of the cer-emony to prevent an abuse, “making a fraudulent claim about one’s

44 BQSMZ, 2.16b–17b. See Zhou Bida 周必大 (1126–1204), “Zuo zhongfeng dafu fuwenge daizhi tejin Lin gong shendaobei” 左中奉大夫敷文閣待制特進林公神道碑, in QSW, 233:5185.22; Songshi 114.2721.

45 Wang Shihui 王時會 (1137–1200) wrote “Xiang yinjiu bianyi” 鄉飲酒辨疑; see Lu You, “Wang Jijia muzhiming” 王季嘉墓誌銘, in QSW, 223:4950.237. Shi Jun 史浚 (1129–1203) practiced the ceremony when he was magistrate of Xinchang 新昌 county; noted in Lou Yue, “Chaoqing dafu Shi jun muzhiming” 朝請大夫史君墓誌銘, in QSW, 266:6000.104. Zhao Rushu 趙如述 (jinshi 1184) practiced it as the magistrate of Qingyuan 慶元 county; Liu Kezhuang 劉克莊 (1187–1269), “Qingyuan xian xiang yinjiu” 慶元縣鄉飲酒, in QSW, 329:7569.128. Zhao Shanxiang 趙善湘 (jinshi 1196) practiced it as the magistrate of Yuyao 餘姚 county; Sun Yingshi 孫應時 (1154–1206), “Yuyao xiang yinjiu yi xu” 餘姚鄉飲酒儀序, in QSW, 290:6590.67–68; Zhao Shantong 趙善潼 (jinshi 1199) practiced it as the magistrate of Fanchang 繁昌 county; Yuan Xie, “Fanchang xiang yin xu” 繁昌鄉飲序, in QSW, 281:6370.126. Wang Ji 王曁 (jinshi 1199) practiced it in Jintan 金壇 county, Zhenjiang 鎭江 prefecture; Liu Zai 劉宰 (1166–1239), “Xiang yinjiu yi xu” 鄉飲酒儀序, in QSW, 300:6838.19. Yang Jian practiced it as the prefect of Wenzhou; see Yama-guchi, “Sōdai kyōinshurei kō,” p. 86.

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native place” (maoguan 冒貫), a widespread practice through which examination candidates hoped to improve their chances by register-ing themselves in less competitive regions. Following Tang Pengju’s 湯鵬擧 (1089–1166) request in 1149, the central government ordered that those who failed to give incontrovertible proof of their native place would be barred from participating in the ceremony, and that those who failed to participate in the ceremony would, in turn, become ineli-gible to take the examinations.46 In Yamaguchi Tomoya’s view, the central government’s need to solidify its control over local literati was the primary motive behind its decision to use the community drinking ceremony in clarifying the eli-gibility for the examinations.47 In a similar vein, Ellen Neskar argues that “the entire structure of these rituals was associated with the gov-ernmental bureaucracy, and they were at least in part designed to reaf-firm and maintain its hierarchical authority on the local level.”48 The central government probably had such an intention in making this move, but it met with criticism because “literati considered [the sys-tem] inconvenient” 士不以爲便. Seven years later, the central gov-ernment promulgated a new order allowing even those who did not participate in the ceremony to sit for the examinations.49 The central government’s attempt to use the ceremony as a means to assert control over examination participation thus proved abortive. What, then, was behind the local government’s commitment to it? Three years after the ceremony was first held in Mingzhou, Prefect Qiu Yu donated 106 mu of his own land so that the rental income from it could be used to defray the cost of the annual performance of the cer-emony.50 The size of this endowment was inscribed on stone in order

46 Li Xinchuan 李心傳, Jianyan yilai xinian yaolu 建炎以來繫年要錄, Congshu jicheng edition, 160.2598; “Xiang yinjiu” 鄉飲酒, in Jianyan yilai chaoye zaji 建炎以來朝野雜記, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2000), 1:13.282; “Xuanju” 選擧, in Song huiyao jigao 宋會要輯稿 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2006), 16.6a. See also Yamaguchi, “Sōdai kyōinshurei kō,” p. 81.

47 Yamaguchi, “Sōdai kyōinshurei kō,” p. 90.48 “The Cult of Worthies: A Study of Shrines Honoring Confucian Local Worthies in

the Sung Dynasty (960–1279)” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1993), p. 408.49 Jianyan yilai xinian yaolu, 172.2836; Jianyan yilai chaoye zaji, 1:13.282.50 Wang Boxiang 王伯庠 (1106–1173), “Qiu daizhi xiang yinjiu zhitian ji” 仇待制鄉飲

酒置田記, in Zhizheng Siming xuzhi, 11.14b. The text clearly says that Qiu Yu donated “his own land” (jitian 己田). He may have simply given land that his office controlled, but it is also possible that he purchased some land in Mingzhou. Qiu served as Mingzhou prefect twice, from 1135 to 1138, and from 1140 to 1141. After retirement he took up perma-


to deter later officials from easily abandoning the ceremony. Nonethe-less, soon after Qiu left office, the rental income from these fields was quickly appropriated and applied to students’ boarding fees, and the ceremony eventually lapsed. It was not resumed until 1169, when Pre-fect Zhang Jin set aside for this purpose 260 mu of paddy field and 249 mu of mountain land (shandi 山地), lands that had been confiscated from residents of Yin and Chang guo counties.51 In 1214, Prefect Cheng Tan entrusted two thousand strings in paper notes to a treasury run by the navy in Dinghai county, and dedi-cated the interest to subsidize expenditures on the ceremony. Despite such efforts, the ceremony was again abandoned after Cheng Tan left his post.52 In 1227, Prefect Hu Ju took the initiative in resuscitating the ceremony and entrusted a local literatus, He Bing 何炳, with canvass-ing the opinions of local leaders about the proper way it should be performed. In this renewed ceremony, it is recorded, fifteen hundred people from all six counties participated.53 Aside from fifty strings donated by one local man, a certain Mr. Li 厲, eight hundred strings were supplied jointly by the prefectural government and the office of the vice-prefect.54 Nineteen years later, in 1246, Prefect Yan Yizhong 顏頤仲 (1188–1262) once again expanded the scale of the ceremony. This time, at the cost of 54,770 strings underwritten by the prefectural trea-sury, the ceremony included three thousand people, led by the main guest Chen Zhuo 陳卓 (1166–1251).55 In 1264, Prefect Li Zengbo 李曾

nent residence in Mingzhou. Qiu donated the land for the ceremony during his second term. Because sojourning officials were allowed to buy official land under auction, it is possible that Qiu Yu stayed on in Mingzhou as a sojourning official between 1138 and 1140 while awaiting his next post and purchased land in Mingzhou before his second term. For a regulation concerning the right of sojourning officials to buy land, see Chikusa Masaaki 竺沙雅章, “Sōdai kanryō no kikyo ni tsuite” 宋代官僚の寄居について, Tōyōshi kenkyū 41.1 ( June 1982): 45.

51 Wang Boxiang, “Zhouxue xubai tian ji” 州學序拜田記, in Qiandao Siming tujing, 9.9a–10a. See also BQSMZ, 2.16b–17a. Around this time, an instructor at the prefectural school, Zheng Genglao 鄭耕老 (1109–1173), played a role in securing the endowed field; see Ye Shi 葉適 (1150–1223), “Fengyilang Zheng gong muzhiming” 奉議郎鄭公墓誌銘, in QSW, 286:6500.193.

52 BQSMZ, 2.17a.53 BQSMZ, 2.17a–b.54 The treasury under the vice-prefect’s control was directly accountable to the Minis-

try of Revenue and the overseer-general of revenues, and thus independent of the regular operating budget of the prefecture. See Kusano Yasushi 草野靖, “Sō no tsūhan to zaisei” 宋の通判と財政, Tōyō shigaku 東洋史学 (1961): 41–57.

55 BQSMZ, 2.17b.

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伯 conducted the ceremony on an even grander scale, and more than three thousand people are said to have attended.56 Sources do not specify whether the “fifteen hundred” or “three thousand men” who attended the ceremonies in 1227 and 1246, respec-tively, were all literati or not. There are, however, three reasons why we may assume that they were considered literati (shi) by the ceremony’s host. First, according to the original account of the ceremony in the Yili 儀禮, guests were supposed to be retired officials, literati, and wor-thy men in the locality (xiangzhong tuishi zhe 鄉中退仕者 and chushi xianzhe 處士賢者). Second, the Southern Song texts describing the ceremony in Mingzhou clearly mention that guests were local literati (xiang zhi shidafu 鄉之士大夫, or xiang dafu shi 鄉大夫士). Finally, Mingzhou’s registered “Confucian households” (ruhu 儒戶)—a label that was purportedly conferred during the Yuan on the descendants of former officials, degree holders, locally renowned literati, and schol-ars—make a total of 3,405, close to the number attending the cere-mony in 1264.57 Practiced on such a scale, the ceremony could survive only with continual financial and administrative support from the local govern-ment. Aside from Mr. Li’s small donation in 1227, which covered about 6 percent of the entire cost, no financial contribution to the ceremony by local people appears to have been recorded.58 As Qiu Yu, Zhang Jin, Cheng Tan, Hu Ju, and Yan Yizhong were all activist officials involved in laying out Mingzhou’s basic institutional infrastructure,59 the cer-emony can be most readily understood as a part of their effort to improve Mingzhou society. Although the ritual grandeur of the cere-

56 Jingzhi lu, juan 13.57 Yili zhushu 儀禮注疏, Siku quanshu edition, 4.1a; BQSMZ, 2.16b; Wang Boxiang,

“Zhouxue xubai tian ji.” Yamaguchi Tomoya also defines the ceremony as a “field” where scholar-officials and local literati gather together. See “Chihō no shidaifu to kyōinshurei” 地方の士大夫と郷飲酒礼, Ajia yūgaku アジア遊学 64 (2004): 91. For the number of Confucian households in Yuan-dynasty Mingzhou, see Yanyou Siming zhi, 13.31b, 13.40b, 13.43a, 13.52b, 14.7a, 14.10b, 14.12a.

58 Southern Song practice was different from that of the Ming dynasty, in which local tithing organizations (lijia 里甲) were mainly responsible for the ceremony’s expense. See Qiu Zhonglin 邱仲麟, “Jinglao shisuo yi jianlao—Mingdai xiang yinjiu li de bianqian ji qi yu difang shehui de hudong” 敬老適所以賤老—–明代鄉飲酒禮的變遷及其與地方社會的互動, Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan 中央研究院歷史語言研究所集刊 76.1 (2005): 21–28.

59 Xu Shidong 徐時棟, Song Yuan Siming liuzhi jiaokan ji 宋元四明六志校勘記, Song Yuan fangzhi congkan edition, 7.1b–18b.


mony may have signified the administration’s success, it may also have marked a first step toward such success by enabling these officials to build firm connections with local magnates. As the number of participants suggests, the ceremony was attended by a wide range of local literati. The only known donor to the cere-mony, Mr. Li, apparently came from a less than prominent family.60 Lou Zi 樓鎡 (1146–1211), an impoverished cousin of Lou Yue, neither held a degree nor had an affiliation with the prefectural school, but reg-ularly participated in the ceremony.61 To men like these, attending the ceremony may have been a way of gaining public recognition of their membership in the larger literati community. At the same time, the cer-emony did attract several key members of influential local families. Wang Boxiang, who wrote two inscriptions commemorating Qiu Yu’s endowment of land—one for the ceremony held when the endowment was first established in 1140, and another for the cere-mony held by Zhang Jin in 1169—is said to have received the torch of upholding Mingzhou’s righteous customs from Wang Siwen 汪思溫 (1077–1157), Lou Yue’s maternal grandfather.62 What was most impor-tant for the incumbent prefects may have been that he was a son of Wang Ciweng 王次翁 (1079–1149), a former vice grand councilor and a lifetime ally of the immensely powerful chief councilor, Qin Gui 秦檜 (1090–1155).63 He Bing, who led the literati in discussing the procedures of the renewed ceremony in 1227, also hailed from a well-established family in Yin county. His grandfather, He Jing 何涇, a jinshi of 1121, had been assistant at the Court of Judicial Revenue. He Bing became the senior compiler of the Jiying Hall and vice director by 1237. The family had marriage ties with the Yangs 楊, a very wealthy family of Yin, which produced at least four jinshi in the Southern Song and was known for

60 The only other occasion on which the Lis of Yin county are mentioned again in Mingzhou sources is the reconstruction of the Penglai Belvedere (Penglaiguan 蓬萊觀). In his commemorative inscription, Lou Yue describes them as a wealthy family of the vil-lage (li zhi jushi 里之巨室). “Wangchunshan Penglai guan ji” 望春山蓬萊觀記, in QSW, 265:5968.24. It remains unclear, however, whether these two sets of Lis belonged to the same family.

61 Lou Yue, “Congxiong Lou fujun muzhiming” 從兄樓府君墓誌銘, in QSW, 266:6005.175.

62 Lou Yue, “Shiyushi zuo chaoqing dafu zhimige zhishi Wang gong xingzhuang,” in QSW, 265:5982.209.

63 See Wang’s biography in BQSMZ, 8.28a–30a.

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its distinguished family school, where the eminent Lou Yue and Yuan Xie studied.64 More interestingly, He Jing wrote the record of conduct (xingzhuang 行狀), the most comprehensive of all epitaph genres usu-ally entrusted to a man close to the deceased, for Lin Bao, who, as men-tioned above, requested that the central government introduce the empirewide practice of the community drinking ceremony.65 Chen Zhuo, who, as the representative of the three thousand guests of the 1246 ceremony, had been honored by Prefect Yan Yizhong as an old master (lao xiansheng 老先生), was a jinshi of 1190 and the son of Chen Juren 陳居仁 (1129–1197), who himself was a renowned statesman and administrative official, and a grandson of Wang Siwen. Chen Zhuo was also the grandson-in-law of Lin Bao’s son Lin Mian 林勉.66 Thus, the families of Lin Bao, He Bing, and Chen Zhuo were all connected. This closely connected local literati group consulted on and participated in the ceremony, and the ceremony reaffirmed the Mingzhou government’s commitment to the literati community. The local government’s readiness and ability to extend aid to literati society is also reflected in the history of Mingzhou’s famous community charitable estate. The community charitable estate was, presumably, a voluntary self-help institution made up of office-holding households (shizu 仕族) in local society and designed to support their descendants. In this sense, it was an extended and collective version of the charitable estates of individual families that were dedicated to aid-ing their own kinsmen. The idea of the community charitable estate was first conceived of and realized by Shi Hao in 1168 during his ten-ure as the prefect of Shaoxing 紹興.67 Inspired by this example, Shen Huan, one of the Four Masters of Mingzhou, asked Shi Hao and Wang Dayou to launch a similar project in their locale and took it upon him-self to solicit other magnates to chip in for the establishment of the endowed fields.68

64 Yuan Fu 袁甫 (jinshi 1214), “Xianwei Yang jun tairuren He shi muzhiming” 縣尉楊君太孺人何氏墓誌銘, in QSW, 324:7442.115.

65 Zhou Bida, “Zuo zhongfeng dafu fuwenge daizhi tejin Lin gong shendaobei,” in QSW, 233:5185.22.

66 Yanyou Siming zhi, 5.17b–18a; Yuan Xie, “Lin taishuren Yuan shi muzhiming” 林太淑人袁氏墓誌銘, in QSW, 282:6389.32.

67 “Yitian” 義田, in Jiatai Kuaiji zhi 嘉泰會稽志, Song Yuan fangzhi congkan edition, 13.18b–19a.

68 Yuan Xie, “Tongpan Shen gong xingzhuang” 通判沈公行狀, in QSW, 281:6381.332.


Under Wang’s leadership, five hundred mu of land were set aside as endowed fields. In 1190, Wang also drafted detailed regulations for the estate.69 After his death, the management was briefly taken on by Lou Yue and then handed over to Gao Wenshan 高文善 (jinshi 1184) and Yuan You 袁槱 (1149–1213). Under Yuan’s skillful management, the estate is said to have become more profitable and to have expanded its beneficence.70 The community charitable estate could not have been established without intimate cooperation among influential local elites. Shi Hao and Wang Dayou had passed the jinshi examination in the same year and had worked closely together in the central government. Shen Huan’s father, Shen Zhu 沈銖 (jinshi 1145), was a friend of Shi Hao and was recommended for office by both Shi and Wang. Shen Huan himself also received political patronage from Shi Hao.71 Lou Yue, who over-saw the estate for a short time, was the nephew of Wang Dayou. Yuan You was the younger brother of the renowned Yuan Xie, Shen Huan’s intellectual ally.72 Moreover, one of the donors of the endowed fields, a Mr. Bian 邊, who became rich through commerce, was an uncle-in-law of Yuan Xie. Compared to the estate in Shaoxing, which was set up by the prefect Shi Hao, the one in Mingzhou certainly owed its creation and perpetuation to a much wider spectrum of literati activism. Emphasizing the voluntary nature of the charitable estate in the Southern Song, Linda Walton has written: “Ostensibly the Sung state recognized its own responsibility for charitable institutions, but in fact in Southern Sung the state had neither the means nor—since its atti-tude toward large and potentially powerful local organizations was necessarily ambivalent—the will to provide support for elite descent groups, however impoverished they might be.”73 Certainly, no pre-modern Chinese state had the ability to take care of all impoverished

69 “Fuwenge xueshi xuanfeng dafu zhishi zeng tejin Wang gong xingzhuang,” in QSW, 265:5980.185; “Bian Yonghe muzhiming” 邊用和墓誌銘, in QSW, 282:6389.21.

70 Lou Yue, “Yizhuang ji,” in Yanyou Siming zhi, 14.43b.71 Liang Gengyao 梁庚堯, “Jiazu hezuo shehui shengwang yu difang gongyi: Song

Yuan Siming xiangqu yitian de yuanqi yu yanbian” 家族合作社會聲望與地方公益: 宋元四明鄉曲義田的源起與演變, in Zhongguo jinshi jiazu yu shehui xueshu yantaohui lunwenji 中國近世家族與社會學述研討會論文集 (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1998), p. 218.

72 Yuan Xie, “Wangdi Mushu muzhiming” 亡弟木叔墓誌銘, in QSW, 282:6389.24–26.73 “Charitable Estates as an Aspect of Statecraft in Southern Sung China,” in Ordering

the World, ed. Hymes and Schirokauer, p. 275.

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elite descent groups. It is also true that the Southern Song government, whether central or local, did not attempt to provide a full-scale alterna-tive to this kind of elite initiative. Still, Walton’s account assumes too much of a dichotomy in the relationship between the state and local organizations, and seriously downplays the crucial role of the state in sustaining organizations like the community charitable estate. Many community-oriented charitable estates were established on the initiative of local officials.74 What is more, the one in Mingzhou was subsidized by local officials from the beginning. Out of the five hundred mu of endowed fields, two hundred mu were donated by the Mingzhou government out of land confiscated from local people some time between 1195 and 1196, during the tenure of Prefect Lin Dazhong 林大中 (1131–1208), meaning that the original amount of endowed land had been about three hundred mu for the first five years. This sub-sidy from the Mingzhou government, which accounted for 40 percent of the total land endowment, must have given the fledgling commu-nity charitable estate a significant financial boost. Later prefects con-tinued to donate money and land to the estate. The prefectural government was also involved in the day-to-day management of the community charitable estate. Each request for aid was to be made to the government, which would investigate its authenticity,75 although some twenty years after the estate’s establish-ment Prefect Cheng Tan allowed requests to be made directly to the nonofficial managers of the estate. Within another forty years, how-ever, the entire community charitable estate came under the direct control of the prefectural school and the income from its endowed field was applied to the upkeep of the students and staff of the school.

74 Besides the Shaoxing estate, a charitable estate designed to help commoners with their marriages and funerals was created in Changguo county upon the initiative of Assis-tant Magistrate Zhao Shanyu 趙善譽 (1143–1189). In Fenghua county, a “charitable gra-nary” (yilin 義廩), which was attached to the county school and proceeds from which were dedicated to subsidizing students’ boarding fees, was set up under the leadership of Magistrate Feng Duofu 馮多福 (jinshi 1193). Modeled after the Mingzhou case, a chari-table estate was established at the Jiankang 建康 prefectural school by its prefect. See Lou Yue, “Chaofenglang zhuguan Yuntaiguan Zhao gong muzhiming” 朝奉郎主管雲臺觀趙公墓誌銘, in QSW, 266:5996.48; Zhou Mian 周勉, “Yilin ji” 義廩記, in Guangxu Feng-hua xianzhi, 8.25b–26a; “Li yizhuang” 立義莊, in Jingding Jiankang zhi 景定建康志, Song Yuan fangzhi congkan edition, 28.25a–26b.

75 Zhou Bida, “Fuwenge zhixueshi xuanfeng dafu zeng tejin Wang gong Dayou shen-dao bei” 敷文閣直學士宣奉大夫贈特進汪公大猷神道碑, in QSW, 233:5184.6; BQSMZ, 11.21a–22a.


In this way, the endowed field of the community charitable estate came to resemble a school’s endowed fields (xuetian 學田) in its function. This new system continued until the Yuan dynasty, when government control became even stricter. Whether the Mingzhou government forcibly appropriated land or the local people voluntarily agreed to hand over control of their land to the prefectural school remains unknown. As Liang Gengyao notes, however, the transfer of control to the official school seems to suggest that the private sector was unable to maintain the estate.76 In other words, even a self-help institution devised by and for literati elites had to rely on local government subsidies to ensure its survival. To sum up, the “literati community” in Southern Song Ming zhou was not sustained by its own efforts alone. Rather, the Mingzhou gov-ernment actively promoted and protected the institutions designed for its maintenance. Especially in the latter half of the dynasty, as the number of officials who shared literati ideals increased, the ideal social order espoused by the local elites converged with that promoted by the local officials. This convergence does not mean a complete overlapping of the two. Though committed to the literati community, local officials never ceased to try to bring under control the unrestrained activities of local elite families. Moreover, one area of persistent discord lay in how local officials and elites envisioned the proper relationship between the local government and the people. I will now examine this issue by looking into the way in which local officials dealt with the relationship between the elites and the rest of society.

Visions of “Righteousness” (yi 義)To support the prefectural school the Mingzhou government took advantage of a situation peculiar to a coastal prefecture: the offshore fisheries, especially in Changguo county, which were an important source of wealth.77 Although the coastline was supposed to be open to common use free of charge, it had long been occupied by power-

76 Nansong de nongcun jingji 南宋的农村经济 (Beijing: Xinsheng chubanshe, 2006), pp. 228–29.

77 For a meticulous analysis of Mingzhou’s fishery system from a fishing industry per-spective, see Furubayashi Morihiro 古林森広, “Sō Gen Settō no engan gyogyō” 宋元浙東の沿岸漁業, Shigaku kenkyū 172 (1986): 21–38.

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ful families, who collected rent from local fishing households. From the time of Prefect Zhao Kai 趙愷 (1174–1189), who began to levy the offshore fishery tax (sha’an qian 砂岸錢) on these powerful families, making them the de facto owners of the fisheries, this illegal practice received a kind of legal sanction. The government applied this money to prefectural finance. As of 1245, the offshore fishery tax amounted to as much as 53,182 strings a year: of these, 30,779 strings (58 percent) went to the prefectural school; 20,003 strings (37 percent) to the pre-fectural government; and 2,400 (5 percent) to the Maritime Military Commission. As the recipient of the largest share of the offshore fish-ery tax, the prefectural school was allowed to choose the “owners” of the fishery (shazhu 砂主). In time, the school came to rely heavily on the proceeds from this tax to subsidize the boarding fees for its resi-dential students. The taxation of offshore fisheries appears to have brought profit to the government and powerful local families alike. The prefectural government gained considerable extra income to augment its finances, while the private households gained official sanction for their propri-etary interest in the fisheries. The “owners” were not merely limited to local magnates of solely commercial background. As Prefect Yan Yizhong noted, many office-holding households (pinguan zhi jia 品官之家) were involved in this business as well. The rents they collected from their tenants in other words were used to support their own sons and brothers studying at the prefectural school. Yan Yizhong discovered that the official sanction of the powerful families’ de facto ownership of the fisheries gave rise to serious injustice in Mingzhou society. First, the “owners” were much more relentless in collecting rents from their “tenants” than they were diligent in pay-ing taxes to the government. Their personal enforcers (zhaoya 爪牙) engaged in the illicit processing of salt (siyan 私鹽) in contravention of the government monopoly and sold their goods to the commoners by force. Those who resisted could be confined in private jails, where they would suffer and even die. These underlings also brought young ruffians (eshao 惡少) and those with criminal records (xingyu 刑餘) under their patronage. In the name of the powerful households that employed them, they terrorized and plundered the local people as they pleased. Although the Mingzhou government made an effort to curb


these excesses,78 the fishery system was not eliminated until some sev-enty years after it had been officially recognized. One of the original rationales for the official recognition of the fishery system was to provide order and security to coastal areas that might otherwise have degenerated into dens of local toughs. Instead, the fisheries came to provide legal protection to abusive local power holders and their lackeys. As a result, “while profit flowed into the [pockets of] private families, [the people’s] resentment fell back onto the government” 利入私室, 怨歸公家. According to Yan Yizhong, the prefectural government was unable to redress this problem, mainly because it derived a goodly amount of additional tax revenue from the system and therefore profited from the status quo. Yan decided to sever once and for all this symbiotic financial link between the powerful families and the government: “As for the damage the offshore fishery does to the people, this is manifested in increasing litigation. How can the prefectural government sit back and watch the coastal people suffering hardships without coming to their rescue, merely because it cannot bear to part with a paltry few tens of thou-sands of strings?” Thus, Yan took the drastic step of abolishing the off-shore fishery tax altogether and permitting local fishermen to use the fishery free of charge. This was well and good, but what was to become of the prefectural school’s annual income? To redress this revenue gap, Yan Yizhong decided that the prefec-tural government should provide the prefectural school with 30,779 strings, the amount of money originally covered by the fishery tax.79 To root out illicit profiteering by powerful families and protect the common people from exploitation, the prefectural government gave up its own source of income to keep the school’s subsidy intact, while still showing its continuing commitment to education. Without a solid financial infrastructure, this degree of liberality on the part of the pre-fectural government would not have been possible.

78 Wang Jie 王介 (1158–1223), Mingzhou prefect from 1211 to 1212, is said to have put an end to the profits made by powerful families from the offshore area. See Zhen Dexiu 眞德秀 (1178–1235), “Song Jiyingdian xiuzhuan Wang gong muzhiming” 宋集英殿修撰王公墓誌銘, in QSW, 314: 7197.199.

79 BQSMZ, “Shinongshan sha’an ji xu bodao zhuchu sha’an” 石弄山砂岸及續撥到諸處砂岸, 2.14a–15b; Liu Kezhuang, “Baoxue Yan shangshu shendaobei” 寶學顏尚書神道碑, in QSW, 331:7616.88.

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The right to exploit the offshore fishery was restored, nonethe-less, to the powerful families eleven years later, during the first year of Prefect Wu Qian’s (1196–1262) term, when, as had been done before, the annual income deriving from the fishery tax was allocated to cover the prefectural school’s boarding expenses and other official uses. The most important reason behind this act of restitution was that the arrangement would help to maintain maritime security, which Wu thought was of the highest priority in the early days of his administra-tion.80 Wu supported the contention of some locals that the abolition of the offshore fishery created a vacuum in local leadership that left the area vulnerable to rampant piracy. Although the source does not tell us exactly who proposed the restitution of the fishery system to the incoming prefect, we may reasonably suppose that the proposal came from parties that stood to benefit from such a decision. At this time, Wu held the fishery to be a legitimate, generations-old business of the powerful local families (dajia shanghu zhi shiye 大家上戶之世業).81 One year later, a number of local residents brought an appeal before Wu Qian, charging the powerful wealthy households with tak-ing advantage of the fishery system and exploiting the poor in the area. This led to a series of lawsuits. By this time, the coastline’s maritime security—Wu’s most pressing concern—had, with the organization of self-defense units under official supervision, ceased to be an issue. Wu now decided to uphold Yan Yizhong’s precedent and abolish the fish-ery system once again. Following Yan, he also ensured that the prefec-tural school’s boarding fees be paid using money transferred from the newly restored official breweries in Changguo and Cixi counties.82 In a memorial to the central government, he also requested the prohibi-tion of the illegal establishment of a private fishery in the market town Jiqi zhen 鮚埼鎭, Fenghua county, to protect the livelihood of the poor (xiao min yishi zhi yuan 小民衣食之源).83

80 The collected memorials of Wu Qian, Xuguogong zouyi 許國公奏議, contain ten memorials on Mingzhou’s administration, five of which are specifically about the issue of maritime security. In the memorial “Qi qian shazu zouqing” 乞蠲砂租奏請, preserved in Kaiqing Siming xuzhi, 8.1b–3b, Wu clearly states that the original purpose of restoring the fishery system was to clean up the sea routes and eliminate plunder by “bandits.”

81 “Tiaozou haidao beiyu liushi” 條奏海道備禦六事, in QSW, 337:7772.198.82 Kaiqing Siming xuzhi, 8.1b–3b; and “ Bang” 榜, in QSW, 337:7772.198.83 “Zou jin sizhi tuanchang yi peizhi bengen xiaomi daozei” 奏禁私置團場以培植本

根消弭盜賊, in QSW, 337:7771.189–90.


The restoration of the fishery eleven years after its first closing, and its abolition yet again just one year later, were dramatic changes in local policy. In his memorial to the central government, Wu stated only that the concern over maritime security, which had been the initial rea-son for the restoration, was no longer relevant. In his proclamation to the local people, however, he unequivocally stated that the fishery sys-tem had been abolished to protect the poor from exploitation by pow-erful families. “Whether to abolish or to restore,” wrote the editor of the Kaiqing Siming xuzhi, “each action has always been based on what the people wanted. [From this,] the people also knew that there was no ulterior motive in his honor’s mind” 或止或行, 悉因民欲. 民亦知公之心無他也.84 True to the gazetteer’s claim, Wu Qian was following the wishes of the people (min 民) in every change of policy. The word min, however, masks the heterogeneity of the “people” and the tensions that existed among them, as well as Wu’s own priorities in addressing their con-cerns. The “people,” of course, did not refer solely to poor commoners. Wu Qian first listened to and sided with those who would benefit from the fishery’s restoration, that is, the powerful wealthy households. But, like Yan Yizhong before him, he ended by making a point of protecting the interests of the poor against the excesses of the powerful families. The powerful families, which often included office-holding house-holds, were not part of the “people” to which Wu and Yan referred in their proclamations and memorials. Different, if not always com-peting, definitions of the “people,” and the implications of these dis-tinctions for “local activism,” are thrown even more sharply into relief when we examine the trajectory of the charitable service (yiyi 義役). The charitable service had its origin in Jinhua county, Wuzhou 婺州 prefecture, in 1149. It was a kind of compact among local people in which the wealthier households would donate money or land to set up an endowment and use its rents to supply income to those in the man-datory village service. The charitable service in general was established for the higher-level positions in village services, and those positions were filled by rotation by upper-grade households responsible for the financial costs of the service. The precedent set by Jinhua was quickly imitated by other prefectures and counties, and, following repeated

84 “Qianfang sha’an” 蠲放砂岸, in Kaiqing Siming xuzhi, 8.1a–b.

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requests from Fan Chengda 范成大 (1126–1193), then the prefect of Chuzhou 處州, the central government ordered that the system be practiced across the country.85 It is said that during his term as the vice-prefect of Wuzhou, Shi Jun witnessed the substantial benefits that this system conferred by preventing socially disruptive disputes over the village service. After retiring to Yin county in 1191, Shi became an ardent advocate of the program. Spearheading a local initiative to organize a charitable ser-vice, he also asked the county magistrate to provide administrative support. According to Shi’s funerary inscription, his community con-tinued to benefit from the charitable service until the date of writing in 1203.86 Gu Yixian 顧義先 (1146–1222), of Xiangfeng 翔鳳 canton in Yin county, was also enthusiastic about launching the charitable service in his locale. He donated land to set up an endowed field for this purpose, after which the local people, without further disagreement, began to take turns, with those owning the most property performing the most important duties.87 Shi Jun and Gu Yixian also facilitated local initiatives in the dredg-ing of Dongqian Lake 東錢湖, one of the largest water control proj-ects taken on by the Mingzhou government. Both men were naturally also active in promoting voluntary organizations dedicated to voicing the interests of their own community. Seen in this light, the charitable service does seem to epitomize the tendency toward local autonomy that, some scholars contend, began in the Southern Song. However, in his thought-provoking studies on the charitable service in the South-ern Song and Yuan dynasties, Itō Masahiko 伊藤正彦 flatly denies its “voluntary” nature. According to Itō, the charitable service did not originate from the bottom up in the initiatives of commoners; it thus differed from the grassroots social associations that formed in early modern Europe and Japan. Instead, it was always created from the top

85 For a classic study of the charitable service, see Sudō Yoshiyuki 周藤吉之, “Nan Sō ni okeru gieki no seiritsu to sono unei: tokuni giekiten ni tsuite” 南宋における義役の成立とその運営: 特に義役田について, in his Sōdai shi kenkyū 宋代史研究 (Tōyō bunko, 1969), pp. 262–304. See also Liang Gengyao, Nansong de nongcun jingji, pp. 223–25. For the court debate concerning the charitable service, see Zhou Yangbo 周扬波, “Nan Song yiyi de libi: yi shetuan wei jiaodu de kaocha” 南宋义役的利弊: 以社团为角度的考察, Song Liao Jin Yuan shi 宋遼金元史 2007.3: 30–31.

86 Lou Yue, “Zhaoqing dafu Shi jun muzhiming,” in QSW, 266:6000.105.87 Yuan Xie, “Xunwulang Jinghu beilu bingma dujian Gu jun Yixian muzhiming” 訓武

郎荊湖北路兵馬都監顧君義先墓誌銘, in QSW, 282:6388.2–3.


down as the result of the active leadership of local literati or local offi-cials. Itō further points out that government support, financial as well as administrative, became indispensable to the continuance of the charitable service over time. On the basis of the “heteronomy” (taritsu-sei 他律性) of the charitable service Itō argues that local activism as a whole was limited in early modern (kinsei 近世) Chinese society.88 It is difficult to dispute Itō’s argument that the role of the prefec-tural government in establishing and maintaining the charitable ser-vice was more essential than has been previously recognized. The Mingzhou case clearly bears out this pattern. Nevertheless, Itō fails to give due consideration to the simple yet significant fact that the idea of the charitable service was first conceived of, and executed by, the non official sector, independent of any government institution. In this regard, we may just as easily understand the leading role taken by lite-rati elites vis-à-vis the state as evidence of local “autonomy” (jiritsu-sei 自律性).89 Significantly, those local officials who tried to redress abuses arising from the program by imposing stricter rules on its implementation rarely questioned the reasons for the program’s exis-tence. Instead, as we shall see, they continued to advocate the values on which the charitable service was founded. From this perspective, we could argue that a social agenda of nonofficial origin had made its way into official recognition. Examining the charitable service from different points of view is not limited to modern scholars. A variety of viewpoints had already emerged in the Southern Song. As Liang Gengyao notes, there was a subtle difference between Jinhua county, where the first charitable ser-vice was formulated and operated by local elites, and Chuzhou, where the program was modified by a local official, Prefect Fan Chengda. Whereas Jinhua’s elites were mainly interested in easing the burden of village service on the county’s wealthy households, Fan Chengda strove to equalize the distribution of the burden among the rich and the poor.

88 See Itō Masahiko, “‘Gieki’: Nan Sō ki ni okeru shakaiteki ketsugō no ichi keitai” ‘義役’: 南宋期における社会的結合の一形態, Shirin 史林 75.5 (1992); “Gendai Kōnan shakai ni okeru gieki·joekihō to sono rekishiteki kiketsu: ryōchō·rikō taisei seiritsu no isso-kumen” 元代江南社会における義役・助役法とその歴史的帰結: 糧長・里甲体制成立の一側面, Nagoya daigaku tōyōshi kenkyū hōkoku 名古屋大学東洋史研究報告 17 (1993).

89 For an analysis from this viewpoint, see Bol, “The Ming Founding in Comparative Perspective,” unpublished manuscript, especially, pp. 18–21.

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Notwithstanding this difference in emphasis, it is not difficult to understand why many of the literati elites were enthusiastic about organizing the charitable service and why this program was welcomed by local officials and ultimately endorsed by the central government. First, there was widespread public resentment against the village ser-vice. According to popular sayings, “people hate their village service more than their enemies” 民之惡役, 甚於寇讐 and “fear village service more than death” 民之畏役, 甚於畏死.90 A voluntary organization would have been welcomed by many residents, because they could now decide for themselves who would serve and how much money they needed to support those on duty. The new program would also have been hailed by local officials, whose duty it was to ensure that the village services under their jurisdiction were carried out. An arrange-ment in which the people themselves became responsible for these services would have relieved the local officials of an administrative bur-den. Huang Zhen 黃震 (1213–1280), a Cixi native, aptly summed up the situation as follows: “The people were freed from disputes [over the service] and the ruination of their families, while the government was exempted from the trouble of allocating the village service every year” 人戶無爭糾廢家之患, 官司免每歲排結之擾.91 Finally, as long as its quota was met, the central government had no reason to be con-cerned about how village services were assigned. About thirty years after its appearance the charitable service met with its first serious critic, in none other than Zhu Xi. Zhu denounced Chuzhou’s practice while serving as the superintendant of the ever-normal granary of Zhedong circuit. Since he is known as a champion of voluntary social programs initiated by local literati, Zhu’s criticism of the charitable service demands our close attention.92 According to him, the unrighteous behavior of wealthy households led to an unfair distribution of responsibility that in turn aggravated existing eco-nomic inequalities.93 As Huang Zhen independently testified, in the

90 Ye Shi, “Ba yiyi” 跋義役, in QSW, 285:6474.204. See also Hu Taichu, “Chaiyi” 差役, in Zhoulian xulun, 1.26.b.

91 “Yiyi chaiyi bang” 義役差役榜, in QSW, 348:8041.83.92 See Bol, “Neo-Confucianism and Local Society, Twelfth to Sixteenth Century: A

Case Study,” in The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, ed. Paul Jakov Smith and Richard von Glahn (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003); Hymes, States-men and Gentlemen, pp. 134–35.

93 “Zou yiyi lihai zhuang” 奏義役利害狀, in Zhu Xi ji, 18.723–24.


absence of government control, the charitable service tended to favor upper-grade households (shanghu 上戶) over middle- and lower-class households.94 To solve these problems, Zhu Xi proposed strengthening gov-ernment supervision over the program instead of guaranteeing more latitude for powerful local elites.95 Did he do this simply because he was working as a commissioned official at the time? Admittedly, in his work as an official he often appeared as an iron-hearted enforcer of state policies. But it is important to note that, in Zhu Xi’s eyes, the fact that a given project was undertaken by local initiative could not be the foremost criterion in deciding whether the project was righteous. He did not identify local autonomy per se with social justice, although he might have thought the former to be the most efficient means for achieving the latter. Zhu in effect was arguing that whenever uncon-ditional local autonomy led to the expansion of the vested interests of local powerful families, the government needed to intervene. Not every local official agreed with Zhu, of course. Men like Hu Taichu, who was less concerned about the realization of social justice from a strictly moral viewpoint than about the practi-cal effectiveness of local administration, tended to gloss over the sever-ity of the abuses. Hu passionately supported the program as it stood. “There was a man in the past,” wrote Hu, “who held authority over the granary. He alone deeply hated the charitable service” 昔有持庾節者, 乃獨深惡義役. The preface of Hu’s book is dated 1235, and the “man who held authority over the granary” is clearly meant to indicate the superintendant of the ever-normal granary at the time—Zhu Xi. Hu accused Zhu of “failing to understand that the charitable service was fundamentally an admirable activity” (buzhi yiyi ben meishi 不知義役本美事). The embezzlement of communal property by wealthy house-holds, a problem I will discuss below, could be easily remedied by

94 “Taizhou Huangyan xian Taiping xiang yiyi ji” 台州黃巖縣太平鄉義役記, in QSW, 348:8052.284.

95 In Zhu’s own words: “The government should appoint the superior guard leader (baozheng 保正) and the assistant leader (fuzheng 副正) to take turns in collecting [rents from] the endowed land. Wealthy households should also be ordered to assume the role of household chief (huzhang 戶長) concurrently. After Chuzhou has made a good start, other prefectures should be ordered to emulate and practice this, so that they may bring about an almost complete change toward a righteous custom (yifeng 義風).” “Zou yiyi lihai zhuang,” in Zhu Xi ji, 18.723–24.

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ordering the perpetrators to pay compensation, he argued. Wherever possible, the charitable service should be encouraged.96 Problems with the charitable labor service were not as simple as Hu believed, however. In the late 1250s, the Mingzhou government dis-covered that the charitable service had been abused in such a way as to favor wealthy households at the expense of the poor. In light of this evi-dence, Prefect Wu Qian harshly criticized Mingzhou’s charitable ser-vice, which had first been introduced by men like Shi Jun and Gu Yixian.

The law of village service in our dynasty is clear and complete. But as time went on and customs deteriorated, and as the people’s nature became las-civious and cunning, the practice of making deceitful calculations arose without restraint. Thereupon, the idea of the charitable service emerged. Its [purported] intention was to redress the abuses of village service. But people did not realize that the “charitable [righteous] service” has become the means by which that which is “extremely unrighteous” (da buyi 大不義) is perpetuated. . . . The poor suffer more severely from it than from mandatory village service.97

Wu Qian’s perception here closely resembles that of Zhu Xi: the char-itable service was exacerbating social inequalities. The problem, Wu surmised, arose from collusion between wealthy households and lower-level clerks. Although those in favor of the charitable service might call for autonomy from government intervention, their self-serving interests thrived in a sordid symbiosis with the interests of men on the lower rungs of government. The spoils of this collabora-tion were garnered at the expense of the state and commoners alike. “Thus, the so-called charitable service,” said Wu, “functions only as a means enabling upper-grade households to evade their assigned vil-lage service. What can be more unrighteous than this?” 故所謂義役者, 特專爲上戶軃避差使之地而已. 不義孰甚焉. The solution Wu prescribed was also similar to that proposed by Zhu Xi. He ordered

96 Hu Taichu, Zhoulian xulun, 1.26.b.97 “Paiyi xingyi shimo” 排役・行移始末, in Kaiqing Siming xuzhi, 7.1b–2a. The degen-

eration of the charitable service into something “unrighteous” (buyi 不義) was also wit-nessed by one of Wu’s contemporaries. In Liu Kezhuang’s view, “The charitable service is nothing but an unrighteous service and the charitable service registry an unrighteous registry” 蓋義役乃不義之役, 義冊乃不義之冊. Cited in Zhou Yangbo, “Nan Song yiyi de libi,” p. 31.


county magistrates to investigate the amount of property belonging to those participating in the service so as to determine the length of each participant’s service, that is, those who own less serve less. The register of the service personnel was to be compiled under heightened govern-mental supervision.98 Wu’s criticism of the abuses of the charitable service also resonates with the way he addressed the issue of maritime patrols conducted by local ships under private ownership (minchuan 民船).99 During the Jiaxi 嘉熙 reign period (1237–1240), the maritime military commis-sion had been ordered to enlist thousands of these private ships in Mingzhou, Taizhou 台州, and Wenzhou and to organize them into ten groups for maritime defense. Of these, about three hundred ships were mobilized each year to guard the coastline of Dinghai, Huaidong 淮東, and Zhenjiang 鎭江. The system was in some ways a maritime version of village service for those who owned ships. Twenty years later, when Wu Qian assumed concurrently the positions of the maritime mili-tary commissioner and Mingzhou prefect, the system had come to be plagued by a series of problems, not unlike those afflicting the manda-tory village service. We are fortunate to have two memorials written by Wu Qian on this issue, one dated 1256 preserved in the Xuguogong zouyi 許國公奏議 (Collected memorials of the Duke of Xu), the other in the Kaiqing Si ming xuzhi, dated the seventh month of 1257.100 In his first memorial, Wu states,

When the ships of Wenzhou and Taizhou were first organized [for mobiliza-tion], there were fixed registers. As time went by, the originally registered ships were either broken up by storms at sea or plundered by bandits. Some ships became dilapidated because [their owners] were poor and did not have the capacity to repair them. Some were sold off to new owners. [Nev-ertheless,] the officials in charge continued to requisition ships on the basis

98 Kaiqing Siming xuzhi, 7.1b–2a. The editor’s introduction to this part clearly shows that he was well aware of Zhu Xi’s criticisms and tried to align his views accordingly.

99 Sogabe Shizuo 曽我部静雄 briefly touches on this issue in his study of the South-ern Song navy in his Sōdai seikeishi no kenkyū 宋代政経史の研究 (Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1974), pp. 265–67.

100 “Zou xing Zhou Xie yichuan zhi ce yi gefang jiang minchuan zhi bi qi bu benren wenzi yi renze” 奏行周燮義船之策以革防江民船之弊乞補本人文資以任責, in QSW, 337:7771.185; “Shengzha” 省剳, in Kaiqing Siming xuzhi, 6.1a–2a.

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of the old registers. Generation after generation, the people, compelled to supply ships, were driven, some to bankruptcy and others to dislocation, from their homes and death. . . . Without asking questions about the size of the ships [the officials] blindly requisitioned ships from everyone in the counties who owned ships. [But] they could not touch those with social influence, power, or the money to negotiate.101

To solve this problem, Wu Qian broadly solicited the literati’s insights, and finally adopted the “charitable-ships policy” presented by Zhou Xie 周燮, a prefectural examination degree holder (caokong jinshi 漕貢進士) from Taizhou. According to Zhou’s proposal, each county would be required to apportion its quota among its constituent can-tons and superior guards (du 都). In that case, every ship owner would have to contribute funds according to the size of his ships in order to provide the relevant equipment to meet the annual quota. Those with ships measuring less than seven to eight chi 尺 (2.2–2.5 meters) in length would not be called upon to mobilize. Most importantly, the system was designed to operate on a voluntary basis independent of an official order from the government. According to the memorial in the collection, Wu Qian gives the impression that he was merely applying a plan proposed by a local lit-eratus from Taizhou to the broader area of Mingzhou, Taizhou, and Wenzhou. In the latter part of the memorial, Wu recommended Zhou Xie to the central government for putting righteousness before prop-erty (shucai haoyi 疎財好義).102 Interestingly, the memorial preserved in the Kaiqing gazetteer does not mention Zhou Xie at all. Perhaps Wu was simply trying to take full credit for this groundbreaking new idea. But in the memorial in the gazetteer the concrete policy described does show interesting differences from Zhou’s original plan. Wu may have developed his own version over time. In the second memorial, the issue of unequal distribution of the burden, in which “only poor and powerless people were called upon to perform their duty” 惟貧而無力者, 則被科調, receives new empha-sis. Unlike Zhou Xie’s proposal, which required that every family own-ing ships support the system, this version varied the burden depending on the size of one’s property. Wu Qian seems to have reasoned that a

101 “Zou xing Zhou Xie yichuan zhi ce,” 3.85.102 “Zou xing Zhou Xie yichuan zhi ce,” 3.85–86.


blind equal allotment would only aggravate existing social inequalities. If this modified policy were implemented, Wu said, “those who had ships would no longer be able to evade their duty, while those who did not own ships would be freed from the worry of the levy” 有船者無倖免之理, 無船者無科抑之患.103 Zhou’s original idea was also modi-fied when it came to articulating the details of the policy. If one supe-rior guard had to provide three ships a year but there were fifty to sixty households that owned ships, the superior guard was required to pro-vide six ships (instead of three) a year. Of these, three would be put into the military service and three would be used for ordinary profit-making enterprises. The annual profits collected from the latter would be used to defray the costs of repair for the three ships on duty, the provision of equipment, and the hiring of ferrymen. In short, although aimed at a fair distribution of the burden, the policy also sought to make the program self-sustaining so as to minimize the economic sac-rifice of the rich. In another memorial, Wu referred to his charitable-ships policy as a “charitable service” (yiyi),104 something that he had previously attacked as “extremely unrighteous” (da buyi). Was Wu, albeit uncon-sciously, contradicting himself? As the son of an influential Neo-Con-fucian educator and himself a literatus,105 he would have been unlikely to repudiate the concept of righteousness, or charity (yi). Though serving as an activist official, Wu was not imposing his own version of social justice on local society. Rather, he was trying to build on the original ideal meaning of “righteousness,” as promoted by the literati, and to extend its application beyond the closed boundary of the litera-ti’s own economic interests. His suppression of part of the elite’s socio-economic interest was intended not to denounce the elite ideal, but to promote and purify it. The same can be said for Zhu Xi. Shi Jun, Gu Yixian, and Zhou Xie can be seen as aligned on one side as proponents of a kind of (semi-)autonomous social order. On

103 Kaiqing Siming xuzhi, 6.1a–2a.104 “Zou xiaoyu haigou fuwei liangmin ji guanfang haidao shiyi” 奏曉諭海寇復爲良民

及關防海道事宜, in QSW, 337:7771.187. In this memorial, Wu claimed authorship of the policy, without mentioning Zhou Xie.

105 His father, Wu Rousheng 吳柔勝 (1154–1224), was the first person to use Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the Four Books in teaching his students at the Imperial University in 1208. He is also said to have given Zhu’s commentaries the highest importance in setting regular essay tests. See Songshi, 400.12148.

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the other side stood Zhu Xi and Wu Qian, reformers interested in pro-mulgating these men’s ideas with adequate governmental supervision. In the social order envisioned by the former group, there was no clear distinction between rich and poor among the people as they stood in relation to the government; instead these men implicitly identified their own interests with those of the entire people. The latter group, in contrast, was keenly aware of the problem of economic inequality among the people. Thus, as officials, they often interposed themselves between the rich and the poor, and they did not hesitate to intervene forcibly in arbitrating between the interests of the two. If yi as envi-sioned by the former group comes closer to Hong Mai’s (1123–1202) definition of the word, “sharing with other people,” the latter’s inter-pretation was more likely to emphasize yi in its original, more strictly moral sense of “righteousness.”106 To my mind, the coexistence of these two different, yet related, visions of yi, rather than the complete triumph of one over the other, was the key to the success of local activ-ism in the Southern Song. Although extant sources do not allow us to gauge the magnitude of state power in the Northern Song, the picture we can piece together from the local sources is inconsistent with either the model of a state power dominating the local level or the model of a largely self-reliant local elite. Government officials did play a role in local construction projects, but they also relied on the financial and managerial assistance of local elites, even when state activism was, presumably, at a peak.107 What distinguishes Southern Song Mingzhou from its Northern Song counterpart is that both local officials and local elites paid more metic-

106 This difference in the meaning of the word yi is also briefly noted by Sudō in his “Nan Sō ni okeru gieki no seiritsu to sono unei,” p. 302 n. 1.

107 For materials showing the local government’s leading role, see Yu Fang 于房, “Xinxiu xue ji” 新修學記, in Chenghua Ningbo junzhi 成化寧波郡志, Beijing tushuguan guji zhenben congkan edition, 21a–b; Shu Dan 舒亶 (1042–1104), “Shuili ji” 水利記, in Qiandao Siming tujing, 10.30b; Zhou E 周鍔 (jinshi 1079), “Fuji yi ji” 鳧磯驛記, in Zhi-zheng Siming xuzhi, 11.6a; Li Kang 李閌, “Xiu Jiujingtang ji” 修九經堂記, in Qiandao Si ming tujing, 9.13a; Feng Ni 馮輗, “Cixi xian xiu xianmen ji” 慈溪縣修縣門記, in Qian-dao Siming tujing, 9.31a. For elite participation in public building projects, see Wang Anshi, “Cixi xianxue ji,” in Qiandao Siming tujing, 9.11b; Wang Yue 王說 (1010–1085), “Siming Cixi xian chongjian erqiao ji” 四明慈谿縣重建二橋記, in Zhi zheng Si ming xuzhi, 11.4a; Zeng Gong 曾鞏 (1019–1083), “Guangdehu ji” 廣德湖記, in Qiandao Siming tujing, 10.25a; Tang Changyan 唐昌言, “Chongjian Xiaoxijiang qiao ji,” 重建小溪江橋記 in QSW, 199:4395.60; Qianlong Fenghua xian zhi 乾隆奉化縣志, 4.25b; and Yang Meng 楊蒙 (jinshi 1085), “Chongxiu Tuoshanyan yinshui ji” 重修它山堰引水記, in Qiandao Siming tujing, 10.33b.


ulous attention to the details of local projects,108 with local officials generally contributing more to improving local infrastructure than did local elites.

ConclusionThis article has examined three areas of local activism that reveal dynamic interactions between the elite community and the local gov-ernment: the building and maintenance of local official schools, the revival and practice of an ancient community ritual, and the organiza-tion and administration of the charitable estates and charitable service. The prefectural and county officials in Mingzhou were enthusiastic about sustaining the Mingzhou community, and they showed this by offering financial support as well as managing and reforming various local projects. In fact, local officials assumed an even larger role than did local elites, including the most prominent elite families.109 Clearly, the rise and spread of local activism during the Southern Song period, at least in Mingzhou, was undergirded by the activism of local govern-ment. What does this fact tell us about Southern Song society? Why did the local government work so hard to support these institutions? As the case of Hu Taichu suggests, it was imperative for local offi-cials to win the minds of leaders within local society, but this situa-tion was by no means unique to the Southern Song. Mencius said, “Governing is not difficult. [It lies in] not offending great families” 爲政不難, 不得罪於巨室. If, as prevailing interpretations tell us, local government was left with anemic budgets and the power of the state was seriously weakened during the Southern Song, must we interpret

108 I have identified sixteen commemorative inscriptions (ji 記) written on public buildings or water control works from Northern Song Mingzhou. Nine of them, listed in n. 107, provide some, albeit sketchy, information about financial administration and man-agement. Materials from the central government are similarly vague. A line in the Song huiyao jigao, for example, reports that as many as 1,980 irrigation facilities were built or repaired in the Liangzhe 兩浙 circuit between 1070 and 1076. See “Shihuo” 食貨, in Song huiyao jigao, 61.69a. Of these, about 152 of them were probably located in Mingzhou, given that there were thirteen prefectures in Liangzhe, and if we assume that the size of each prefecture was more or less the same. However, there is no mention of the scope of each construction or repair project, nor is it stated whether all, or even a majority, of these projects were funded and overseen by the state.

109 Aside from mentioning the financial support provided by Wang Dayou, Shi Mida, and Lin Wei, the sources are silent about other leading elite families of the area, including the imperial Zhao 趙 family.

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as a further sign of the state’s weakening power the fact that local gov-ernment continued to invest in institutions that had originally been established for local elites?110 We can reply in the affirmative only if we find that Mingzhou government was unable to provide other important civic services due to financial restrictions or administrative incompetency. Instead we find that the Mingzhou budget was sound and its officials played a leading role in other areas of local infrastruc-ture building.111 The Ming zhou government’s continued investment in institutions supporting local elites was far from a symptom of desper-ate straits.112 Despite their active stance and their status as agents of the state, local officials did not try to impose a markedly different vision of social order onto local society. Even when officialdom came into direct con-

110 There are two markedly different explanations for the penurious financial situation of local government during the Southern Song. At the one end, Wang Shengduo 汪圣铎 and Bao Weimin 包伟民 emphasize the Southern Song central state’s financial policies, which they say exhausted every conceivable source of tax income, a view shared by such Japanese scholars as Kusano Yasushi, Koiwai Hiromitsu 小岩井弘光, and Yagi Mitsu-yuki 八木充幸. At the other extreme, Hymes argues that the Southern Song central state had virtually no presence in local society, making it difficult to collect even regular taxes. See Wang Shengduo, “Songdai difang caizheng yanjiu” 宋代地方財政研究, Wenshi 文史 27 (1986): 125–32; Bao Weimin, Songdai difang caizheng shi yanjiu 宋代地方財政史研究 (Shang hai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2001), pp. 164–95; Kusano Yasushi, “Sō no tsūhan to zaisei”; Koiwai Hiromitsu, Sōdai heiseishi no kenkyū 宋代兵制史の研究 (Kyūko shoin, 1998), p. 419; Yagi Mitsuyuki, “Nan Sō chihō zaisei no ichi kentō” 南宋地方財政の一検討, Shūkan tōyōgaku 集刊東洋学 44 (1980): 47; Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen, pp. 205–6.

111 For the financial soundness of Mingzhou’s government, see Kim Yŏng-Je 김영제, “Nam Song ŭi chibang chaejŏng e taehaesŏ: Chŏldong-no Kyŏngwŏn-bu (Myŏngju) ŭi chaejŏng suji rŭl chungsim ŭro,” 南宋의 地方財政에 對해서: 浙東路慶元府 (明州) 의 財政收支를 中心으로, Chungguksa yŏngu 中國史硏究 21 (December 2002); “Nam Song chunghugi chibang chaejŏng ŭi ilch’ŭngmyŏn: Kyŏngwŏn-bu ŭi chuse suip kua ‘pu’ chaejŏng ŭi hwaktae kwajŏng ŭl chungsim ŭro” 南宋中後期地方財政의 一側面: 慶元府의 酒稅收入과‘府’財政의 擴大過程을 中心으로, Tongyang sahak yŏngu 東洋史學硏究 85 (December 2003). For a similar revisionist interpretation of Southern Song local finance, see Nagai Chiaki 長井千秋, “Nan Sō jidai Chinkōfu no zaisei shūshi” 南宋時代鎭江府の財政收支, Gifu Shōtoku gakuen daigaku kiyō 岐阜聖德學園大學紀要 (1999). For the Mingzhou government’s administrative and financial leadership in local infrastructure building during the Southern Song, see Sukhee Lee, “Negotiated Power: The State and Elites in 12th-14th Century China” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2009), pp. 91–120.

112 Note that Chen Hongmou 陳宏謀 (1696–1771), arguably the most active provincial governor at the height of Qing state activism in the eighteenth century, was a staunch promoter of the official school system, private academies, and the community drinking ceremony. See William Rowe, Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 382–87, 408–17.


flict with wealthy and powerful families who tried to exploit the poor, it tried to redress such problems by resorting to ideals promoted by the literati themselves. Was local government, one is prompted to ask, working simply as a surrogate of elite activism? Scholars who down-play the state’s active role in local projects have suggested that the activism of local officials must be understood as individual undertak-ings largely independent of the state.113 They emphasize that the activ-ism of these local officials did not originate in orders from the central government, but were instead actuated by social ideals they had cher-ished as literati before becoming officials. Undoubtedly, many local officials who built shrines for former worthies or invested in community schools acted out of their own sense of commitment. But why, then, should they put this sense of commitment into practice only when they worked as officials? The incontrovertible fact that more shrines were built by local officials than by local elites, for example, simply shows that many people were unable or unwilling to realize their personal beliefs without the political and financial backing provided by official posts, that is, without the institu-tional patronage of the state. In addition, the argument that denies the activism of local officials assumes too rigid a view of the state, one that envisions the state as a machine programmed to act in fixed and pre-dictable ways from the top of the hierarchy down to its lowest rung, with important initiatives always coming from the top. Southern Song officials certainly did try to act on the orders from the central govern-ment. One of the reasons why the charitable service came to be widely implemented by local officials across the empire was that it formed one of the criteria on which the central government evaluated local officials’ administrative performance.114 At the same time, the Southern Song state allowed its officials to exercise individual initiative to a certain degree. Fan Chengda intro-duced the charitable service in Chuzhou not because he was told to do

113 Neskar, “The Cult of Former Worthies,” pp. 412–17. For a similar argument, see Sarah Schneewind, Community Schools and the State in Ming China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 61, 76–77, 164. See also Katherine Carlitz, “The Daughter, the Singing-Girl and the Seduction of Suicide,” Nannü 3.1 (2001): 25.

114 It was in 1178 that the charitable service became one of the categories for evaluating the performance of prefectural and county officials. See Liu Yun 刘云 and Diao Peijun 刁培俊, “Nan Song yiyitian de chanquan fenxi” 南宋义役田的产权分析, Shixue yuekan 史学月刊 2009.4: 103.

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so by the central government but because he had personally witnessed its effectiveness in Jinhua. He later persuaded the officials at the central court and the Emperor to promulgate this system across the empire. What is important here is not whether Fan received a specific order from the central government to implement the charitable service, but that his being an official made all this possible. The local government’s commitment to literati values presupposes the emergence of these values on a wide scale. Yet, on a practical level, the local government often set a precedent for the elites in their activ-ism. In most cases, it was not the withdrawal of government, but its presence and cooperation with local elites, that enabled local activism. More importantly, despite close cooperation between the two par-ties, their visions of activism were always in tension. The more active a local official was in promoting literati values, the sharper the ten-sions became, as is readily apparent in the cases of Yan Yizhong, Wu Qian, and Zhu Xi. Unless we investigate the causes for this tension, our understanding of local activism in the Southern Song remains partial at best.

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