Six Records of a Floating Life - Shen Fu
Apr. 24th, 2010 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crystal_sun396A continuation? Addition? Six Records is slowly becoming one of my favorite books ever. Who'd' a' thunk it?
An excerpt from the INTRODUCTION for the Drumknotts and Alfreds and ... Iantos? of fiction.
If Shen Fu was a failure in so many ways, much of his failure was related to the class from which he came – the yamen private secretary. The secretaries in a yamen - a government office – were failures almost by definition
The origin of the profession of yahmen secretary lay in two uniquely Chinese administrative practices. The first was a rule against assigning magistrates to their home districts. Throughout the post-feudal Chinese dynasties this was a standard means of attempting to ensure that officials administered their districts honestly, unswayed by local loyalties or favourites.
The second practice arose from the Chinese determination that government officials should be scholars first and bureaucrats second. One of the largest empires in the history of the world was administered by a small group of men who, prior to their first assignment, had not had the slightest training in administration, and who knew more about the poetry of a thousand years before than the y did about tax law.
The typical Chinese magistrate, therefore, found himself in a district of which he had little personal knowledge – indeed, he might be woefully ignorant even of the local dialect of the language – and with only the slightest acquaintance with the complex laws and customs by which he was supposed to carry out his manifold responsibilities. He needed help, and he found it in the private secretary.
Literary and technically skilled, the private secretary was the magistrate's link between the scholarly ethics and the practical realities of Imperial Chinese government. T'ung-tsu Ch'ü (Local Government in China Under the Ch'ing, Harvard University Press, 1962) divides the secretaries into seven categories of specialists: law, tax administration, tax collection, registration of documents, correspondence, preparation of documents, and book-keeping. It is nowhere stated clearly in the Six Records, but Shen Fu seems to have specialized in law, the most prestigious of the seven.
The secretaries prepared almost every document a magistrate saw. They recommended decisions for him, handled virtually all his official correspondence, helped organize court sessions, and drafted replies in his behalf to official queries about his actions, actions which probably had been recommended by themselves in the first place. The quality of his secretaries could make or break a magistrate's career; they were very powerful.
They were also very unofficial. Except for one brief and unsuccessful experiment, the Ch'ing Dynasty never officially recognized their existence. They were the employees of the magistrate – not of the government – recruited by him and paid out of his personal funds. They were well paid – Chü estimates they were the only members of a yamen staff able to support themselves on their salaries – and well – respected. Whenever Shen Fu records going to work for a magistrates, he describes himself as being 'invited' to take the position; this is not an affectation. Once employed, the secretaries were far more than servants; resignation in protest was far from uncommon and, as noted above, Shen Fu himself seems to have done it at least once.
Who were private secretaries, and where did they come from? Since they were well educated – they had to be in order to do their jobs – most had, on one or more occasions, taken the examinations which were the natural culmination of the educational system of the day. If they passed those examinations – and some of course did – they would have become officials themselves, rather than secretaries. We are talking, therefore, about a group of men who had either denied, or had been denied, entrance to the scholar-official class; men who had studied for the highest posts and failed to attain even the lowest.
It must have been a painful situation. Raised in the traditions of China's greatest poets and administrators, they were forced to live the only life their world offered them – itinerant and temporary employees, their only domain the shadowy world of yamen clerks, their only power that derived from the patron, towards whom it would have been only natural to feel a certain amount of jealousy.
An excerpt from the INTRODUCTION for the Drumknotts and Alfreds and ... Iantos? of fiction.
If Shen Fu was a failure in so many ways, much of his failure was related to the class from which he came – the yamen private secretary. The secretaries in a yamen - a government office – were failures almost by definition
The origin of the profession of yahmen secretary lay in two uniquely Chinese administrative practices. The first was a rule against assigning magistrates to their home districts. Throughout the post-feudal Chinese dynasties this was a standard means of attempting to ensure that officials administered their districts honestly, unswayed by local loyalties or favourites.
The second practice arose from the Chinese determination that government officials should be scholars first and bureaucrats second. One of the largest empires in the history of the world was administered by a small group of men who, prior to their first assignment, had not had the slightest training in administration, and who knew more about the poetry of a thousand years before than the y did about tax law.
The typical Chinese magistrate, therefore, found himself in a district of which he had little personal knowledge – indeed, he might be woefully ignorant even of the local dialect of the language – and with only the slightest acquaintance with the complex laws and customs by which he was supposed to carry out his manifold responsibilities. He needed help, and he found it in the private secretary.
Literary and technically skilled, the private secretary was the magistrate's link between the scholarly ethics and the practical realities of Imperial Chinese government. T'ung-tsu Ch'ü (Local Government in China Under the Ch'ing, Harvard University Press, 1962) divides the secretaries into seven categories of specialists: law, tax administration, tax collection, registration of documents, correspondence, preparation of documents, and book-keeping. It is nowhere stated clearly in the Six Records, but Shen Fu seems to have specialized in law, the most prestigious of the seven.
The secretaries prepared almost every document a magistrate saw. They recommended decisions for him, handled virtually all his official correspondence, helped organize court sessions, and drafted replies in his behalf to official queries about his actions, actions which probably had been recommended by themselves in the first place. The quality of his secretaries could make or break a magistrate's career; they were very powerful.
They were also very unofficial. Except for one brief and unsuccessful experiment, the Ch'ing Dynasty never officially recognized their existence. They were the employees of the magistrate – not of the government – recruited by him and paid out of his personal funds. They were well paid – Chü estimates they were the only members of a yamen staff able to support themselves on their salaries – and well – respected. Whenever Shen Fu records going to work for a magistrates, he describes himself as being 'invited' to take the position; this is not an affectation. Once employed, the secretaries were far more than servants; resignation in protest was far from uncommon and, as noted above, Shen Fu himself seems to have done it at least once.
Who were private secretaries, and where did they come from? Since they were well educated – they had to be in order to do their jobs – most had, on one or more occasions, taken the examinations which were the natural culmination of the educational system of the day. If they passed those examinations – and some of course did – they would have become officials themselves, rather than secretaries. We are talking, therefore, about a group of men who had either denied, or had been denied, entrance to the scholar-official class; men who had studied for the highest posts and failed to attain even the lowest.
It must have been a painful situation. Raised in the traditions of China's greatest poets and administrators, they were forced to live the only life their world offered them – itinerant and temporary employees, their only domain the shadowy world of yamen clerks, their only power that derived from the patron, towards whom it would have been only natural to feel a certain amount of jealousy.
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Date: 2010-04-24 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 02:50 am (UTC)It'd be nice ot know why the experiment hadn't worked.
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Date: 2010-04-25 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 02:44 pm (UTC)