page_title: Society and culture of the Han dynasty
section_title: Gentry scholars and officials
hierarchical_section_title: Society and culture of the Han dynasty / Social class / Gentry scholars and officials
caption_attribution_description: English: Jade door knocker, Xinping (left); jade horse and rider (Zhouling) and winged jade lion (Xinzhuang); Western Han dynasty
context_page_description: The Han dynasty was a period of Ancient China divided into the Western Han and Eastern Han periods, when the capital cities were located at Chang'an and Luoyang, respectively. It was founded by Emperor Gaozu of Han and briefly interrupted by the regime of Wang Mang who usurped the throne from a child Han emperor.
  The Han dynasty was an age of great economic, technological, cultural, and social progress in China. Its society was governed by an emperor who shared power with an official bureaucracy and semi-feudal nobility. Its laws, customs, literature, and education were largely guided by the philosophy and ethical system of Confucianism, yet the influence of Legalism and Daoism could still be seen. Members of the scholarly-gentry class who aspired to hold public office were required to receive a Confucian-based education. A new synthetic ideology of Han Confucianism was created when the scholar Dong Zhongshu united the Confucian canon allegedly edited by Kongzi, or Confucius, with cosmological cycles of yin and yang and the Chinese five elements.
context_section_description: Those who served in government had a privileged position in Han society that was just one tier below the nobles (yet some high officials were also ennobled and had fiefs). They could not be arrested for crimes unless permission was granted by the emperor. However, when officials were arrested, they were imprisoned and fettered like commoners. Their punishments in court also had to gain the approval of the emperor. Officials were not exempt from execution, yet they were often given a chance to commit suicide as a dignified alternative. The most senior posts were the Three Excellencies—excluding the Grand Tutor, a post that was irregularly occupied. The individual titles and functions of the Three Excellencies changed from Western to Eastern Han. However, their annual salaries remained at 10,000 dan (石) of grain, largely commuted to payments in coin cash and luxury items like silk. Below them were the Nine Ministers, each of whom headed a major government bureau and earned 2,000 bushels a year. The lowest-paid government employees made Equivalent to 100 bushels annually. It was thought that wealthy officials would be less tempted by bribes. Therefore, in the beginning of the dynasty, having a total assessed taxable wealth of one hundred thousand coins was a prerequisite for holding office. This was reduced to forty thousand coins in 142 BCE, yet from Emperor Wu's reign onwards this policy was no longer enforced.
  Starting in Western Han was a system of recommendation where local officials submitted proposals to the capital on which of their subordinates were worthy candidates for holding office; this created a patron-client relationship between former superiors and successful nominees to higher office. With the enhanced prestige of the consort clan under Empress Dowager Dou (d. 97 CE), a succession of regents from her clan and others amassed a large number of clients whose chances of promotion hinged on the political survival of the empress dowager's clan, which was often short-lived. Aside from patron-client relationships, one could use family connections to secure office. Patricia Ebrey writes that in the Western Han, access to public office and promotion through social mobility were open to a larger segment of the populace than in Eastern Han. A third of the two hundred and fifty-two Eastern Han government officials who had biographies in the Book of Later Han were sons or grandsons of officials, while a fifth came from prominent provincial families or had ancestors who had served as officials. For forty-six of the one hundred and ten years between 86 and 196 CE, at least one post of the Three Excellencies was occupied by a member of either the Yuan or Yang clan.
  Many central government officials also began their careers as subordinate officers for commandery-level administrations. There are only rare cases (i.e. involving military merit during rebellions of late Eastern Han) when subordinate officers of county-level administrations advanced to the level of central government. Even if one secured an office by these means, an official was still expected to be competent, thus a formal education became the hallmark of those aspiring to fill public office. In addition to private tutoring, the Imperial University was established in 124 BCE which then accommodated only fifty pupils, but by the 2nd century CE the student body had reached about thirty thousand. These students could be appointed by the emperor to various government posts according to their examination grades.
  Despite a decline in social mobility for those of less prominent clans, the local elites became far more integrated into a nationwide upper class social structure during the Eastern Han period, thus expanding the classification of who belonged to the upper class. The emerging gentry class—which became fully consolidated during the Eastern Han—consisted of unemployed scholars, teachers, students, and government officials. These men, although geographically separated and mired in local activities, started to view themselves as participants in wider national af
caption: A Western-Han jade-carved door knocker with designs of Chinese dragons (and two other jade figurines)
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