264 Part IV: East Asian Civilization
Because the newly appointed bureaucrats regularly managed to turn them-
selves into an aristocracy capable of eclipsing the emperor, Han emperors
began maintaining private secretarial staffs to keep themselves informed. As
this private secretariat slowly expanded into a central executive branch of the
bureaucracy through the Han and Tang dynasties, many of the palace council-
ors were scholars who came from the Hanlin Academy, which had been
founded as a center of revived Confucian studies. This was a critical juncture in
establishing Confucian scholarship as the basis of the future bureaucracy.
A new stage began with the Song dynasty (960–1279). The emperor’s pri-
vate secretariat had continued to grow, with real power in the hands of five to
nine grand councilors who supervised the burgeoning administration. As it
grew it required an expanded pool of educated persons to fill it. The world’s
first civil service system emerged to provide this talent. It was a three-stage pro-
cess. Exams were given every three months at the prefecture level, for which
youths all over China spent years studying, achieving this first degree around
an average age of 24. Those who passed went on to the metropolitan exam in
the capital. If you were good enough to pass that exam, the last stage was a pal-
ace examination, occasionally even administered by the emperor himself.
Every three years about 600 men were granted the most prestigious degree, the
“Presented Scholar” (jinshi [chin-shih]). The average age for passing the second
level was 30, and for passing the third level was 36—not unlike the BA, MA,
and PhD degrees today. The examination system was thoroughly adopted in
605 by the brief Sui dynasty (581–618) and became a central element of the cul-
ture and governance of every ensuing dynasty until the exam system’s abolition
in 1905.
The social significance of these bureaucratic changes was immense. A
whole new elite class emerged, whose philosophy was Confucianism (rujiao [ju
chiao], in Chinese, meaning “the doctrine of the literati”). This elite was com-
posed of two main privileged groups. One was the shen (official-gentry) who
had passed all the exams, acquired degrees, and held government positions.
These men were magistrates with typically county-level government posts,
although the “law of avoidance” stipulated that a magistrate could not serve in
his home county or province and could not even serve in a neighboring county
of someone from the same home province. This was intended to prevent cor-
ruption and nepotism. As the scholar class grew, the number of successful
examinees far outstripped the actual available government posts to be filled;
nevertheless, a classical education continued to be the hallmark of the gentry
class. The other group consisted of learned men shi (shih, scholar-gentry) who
were outside the government, often members of local landowning families.
Handbooks prepared for magistrates recommended gaining the cooperation of
shis in administering local areas, because they were not subject to the law of
avoidance and were the link to common people; “the learned and virtuous
scholars are exactly the ones to rely upon in persuading the people to follow the
instructions of the officials,” wrote one handbook (Chang 1955:32). They