Talons and Teeth: County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty

Talons and Teeth County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty

Law, Society, and Culture in China editors Philip C. C. Huang and Kathryn Bernhardt advisory board William P. Alford, William T. Rowe, Hugh Scogin, Jr., Jonathan Spence, Alexander Woodside

T

he opening of archives on legal case records and judicial administration in China has made possible a new examination of past assumptions about the Chinese justice system. Scholars can now ask where actual legal practice deviated from official and popular conceptualizations and depictions. In the process, they can arrive at a new understanding not only of the legal system, but of state-society relations and the nature of the Chinese social-political system as a whole. Studies of Chinese justice also permit the joining together of social and cultural history. Historians of society and economy, on the one hand, and of mentalities and culture, on the other, have long tended to go their separate ways. Law, however, is a sphere of life in which the two are inseparable. Legal case records contain evidence for both practice and representation. A study of law can tell us about the interconnections between actions and attitudes in ways that segmented studies of each cannot. This series comprises major new studies by the editors themselves, as well as other contributions from a new generation of scholarship, grounded both in the archives and in new theoretical approaches.

Talons and Teeth County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty

Bradly W. Reed

stanford university press, stanford, california

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2000 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America cip data appear at the end of the book

For Ellen and Rachel

Contents

Preface Abbreviations and Conventions

xiii xxi

1

Illicit Bureaucrats

1

2

Clerks

31

3

Families, Friends, and Factions

76

4

Runners

122

5

Illicit Allies and the Magistrate’s Men

160

6

The Economics of Justice

200

7

The Legitimacy of the Indispensable

246

Appendixes A

Administrative Duties of Clerical Offices in the Ba County Yamen

269

B

The Jins of Ba County

271

C

Clerical Agreement on Mutual Support and the Dispensation of Legal Case Assignments

273

D Case Fees and Three Fees Regulations

276

E

Division of Case Jurisdiction

280

F

District Runner Agreement on the Division of Cases

281

x

Contents Notes Works Cited Character List Index

287 299 307 313

Tables and Illustrations

Tables 1 2

Number of Clerks in the Ba County Yamen by Office, 1878–1908

48

Running Fee Payment Schedule for Successive Salt Office Head Clerks

89

3

Personal Affiliations in the Office of Works, ca. 1894

108

4

Statutory Quotas for Runners in Ba County

146

5

Extrastatutory Runners in Ba County

148

6

Landholdings of Statutory Ba County Runners, 1861

153

Figures 1 2 3

Number of Registered Clerks in the Ba County Yamen, 1878–1908

46

Number of Registered Clerks in the Ba County Yamen by Office, 1878–1908

49

Organization of Ba County District Runners

126

Sichuan Province During the Qing Dynasty, with Ba County Highlighted

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Map

Preface

A

s a graduate student, I was initially drawn to county clerks and runners in Qing dynasty China by my discovery of how little anyone actually seemed to know about them. True, they were mentioned in nearly all the scholarly works on local government during the Qing, but only rarely did these citations extend beyond a brief, caricatured description of an undifferentiated mass of corrupt ne’er-do-wells, single-mindedly bent on the pursuit of their own self-interest. Despite the fact that clerks and runners carried out most of the administrative work in the county yamen, there was little or no information available as to who these people actually were, where they came from, how they were organized, or how they went about performing their work in the yamen. The dissertation upon which this book is based began as an attempt to redress this situation. My intent was to get past the simplified representations of clerks and runners as stock villains in order to better understand their role in county government and the part their actions might have played in the relationship between the Qing state and local communities. In the process I wanted to traverse the distance between the statutory norms dictated by the central government in Beijing and daily administrative practice at the local level in order to discover how a local yamen actually operated. I subsequently determined that the best way to accomplish this task was not to provide a comprehensive sketch of county yamens throughout the empire, but rather to render a more detailed account of a single yamen. Before I could begin, however, I first had to confront the problem of sources. Previous studies of local administration under the Qing

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have drawn almost exclusively from three bodies of documentation: county and provincial gazetteers written under the auspices of either the government or local gentry; the collected writings of various officials in the form of handbooks and memoirs; and compendiums of central-level documents including edicts, memorials, and administrative regulations. While these sources are adequate for descriptions of formal structure and official policy, they are of considerably less value in revealing the minutiae of quotidian practice in the yamen. To reach that level of detail, it would be necessary to delve into county government archives. Until quite recently, however, historians have been faced with an egregious lack of precisely this type of source material. In this respect, it is ironic that the historical record of the Qing government is so abundantly rich at the central level and yet so very nearly barren at the level of county government. Although this disparity has been quite frustrating for historians, the fact remains that very few county government archives from the Qing period have survived in more than mere fragments. Prior to the mid-1980s, the only county level archive of any size available to Western scholars was that of Danshui and Xinzhu (Danxin) counties in Taiwan. The Danxin archive has provided scholars such as Mark Allee (1994), David Buxbaum (1971), Dai Yanhui (1979), and Philip Huang (1993, 1996) with a wealth of information on Taiwanese society and the workings of the Qing legal system. But in matters pertaining to the yamen staff, the archive is far too thin to serve as the basis for an in-depth study. Fortunately, in the last decade Western scholars have gained increasing access to the largest and most comprehensive Qing local government archive known to exist in China, the archives of Ba County (baxian) in Sichuan Province. Although supplemented with material from other available archival and published sources, this study draws primarily from material gathered from this unique resource. A brief description of the collection and some of the problems associated with its use is therefore in order. Following the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, the Ba County archive was largely neglected by Republican era county governments until World War II, when the archive was moved to a temple outside the city of Ya’an to protect it from Japanese bombing (Esherick and Ye Wa 1996, 280). Forgotten there for nearly two decades, the mildewed and pest-eaten archive was rediscovered 1953 and moved to the University of Sichuan in the provincial capitol of Chengdu. Although scholars at the university had begun preliminary catalogu-

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ing and transcription of the archive’s 113,000 files (juan), in 1965 the entire collection was moved to the Sichuan Provincial Bureau of Archives (Sichuansheng dang’anguan), where it is presently housed. Preservation, restoration, and microfilming of the damaged and fragile documents, however, did not begin in earnest until 1980. Since then, the archive has been made progressively more available to Western and Chinese scholars alike. Archivists at the Sichuan Archives initially cataloged the Ba County collection by reign periods, each of which they then subdivided into six sections: administration (neizheng); economy (jingji); military (bing); culture and education (jiaoyu); law (sifa); and foreign relations (waijiao). Files relating to the yamen staff are located chiefly within the administrative section of each reign period. These files provide information on a wide variety of issues pertaining to the yamen’s clerks and runners: recruitment and appointment procedures; employment records; personnel reports to superior yamens; dossiers on individual clerks and runners; disciplinary proceedings; intrayamen regulations and procedures; directives from superior yamens; grievances against yamen personnel lodged with the magistrate by local residents; and, above all, case records of disputes among yamen personnel themselves. Although the archive contains administrative files from nearly all of the Qing dynasty’s ten reign periods, the survival of documents from periods prior to the nineteenth century is far too fragmentary to provide the information necessary for a detailed description of administrative practice. The archival survival rate improves considerably in the nineteenth century, however, with by far the richest section being that of the Guangxu reign (1875–1908). This period alone accounts for nearly half of the archive’s 4,500 administrative files (Wang Qing 1988, 10). My initial research was thus based on a sampling of more than 500 files culled from the Guangxu collection during an eighteen-month sojourn in the archive. The count of 500 is somewhat misleading in that not all files are discrete or self-contained. A single dispute, for example, might continue in several individually catalogued files. Conversely, many files contain multiple cases and records; often as many as fifty to eighty discrete items are contained in a single file. Thus, while the sample was not exhaustive, it nevertheless yielded sufficient material to provide a descriptive account of how a county yamen was organized and operated on a daily basis. In order to expand this account beyond the confines of the

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Guangxu period, documents from earlier reign periods were then gathered during a return visit to the archive. Although these files are far fewer and less complete than those of the Guangxu reign, they nevertheless added depth to my initial description without substantially altering it. Thus, while earlier documents reveal differences in areas such as the number of personnel employed or details in the organization of those personnel, the basic patterns of informal practice remained constant. While these documents provide an unprecedented wealth of detail, their use is not without the same sort of difficulties and pitfalls confronting any historian who utilizes local archives. One of these difficulties stems from the highly localized nature of the customary and informal practices this study attempts to apprehend. Information as to yamen structure and procedures, for example, is seldom provided in a comprehensive manner by one or even several documents. Aside from those rare instances where an individual clerk or runner had reason to explain a particular practice to a magistrate, this information usually comes in the form of piecemeal references scattered across a large number of files, often in highly localized idiomatic expressions. Moreover, due to the informal nature of many yamen procedures and the fact that such practices were often in violation of Qing law, statutory descriptions of administrative procedure are of little value as a point of reference. In short, we are dealing here with a form of local knowledge that was never intended for yamen outsiders. As a result, the historian often finds her- or himself in the position of an archaeologist working with bits and pieces of scattered evidence in an attempt to reconstruct a reasonably comprehensible picture of how things worked. In the process, however, one inevitably encounters gaps in the documentary record, which cast at least portions of this picture in frustrating degrees of shadow. A second difficulty in using archival records as an historical source lies in the discursive nature of many documents and the problem of interpreting subjective portrayals of events and individuals. This problem becomes most acute in records of intrayamen disputes and conflicts between yamen staff members and local residents. As in all conflicts brought before a higher authority for resolution, it must be remembered that the testimony given in these disputes is above all a form of representation. What a disputant states is a subjectively constructed version of events fashioned for a particular audi-

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ence—namely, the judge—in order to win a favorable decision. In a Chinese magistrate’s court, the subjective element of testimony was all the more salient because it was frequently not a particular act itself that mattered so much as the magistrate’s perception of the actor’s moral character and intent, as well as the circumstantial context of the act. In some cases, certain objective claims made by an individual can be authenticated through reference to other sources: whether or not a particular person was employed in the yamen at a particular time, or whether an interdivisional agreement on allowable procedures had been produced, for example. In a similar manner, the likelihood that an accused clerk or runner was guilty of charges brought against him may be increased, though by no means proven, by the discovery of multiple instances of similar accusations in the past. But even here, we must avoid assuming that any given representation of events was substantively true. Just because a magistrate decided in favor of one account over another does not in itself establish its veracity. Like all individuals, magistrates were fallible, subject to their own prejudices and interests and, thus, to manipulation as well as simple error. Nor should we privilege our own judgment by assuming that we, removed from events by more than a century, are in any better position to judge the truth than was the presiding magistrate. As tempting as it may be to play amateur sleuth in the archives, the fact remains that the “truth content” of many individual documents, particularly in regard to representations of motive and character, remains beyond our grasp. But whether an account is true or false is ultimately of less importance to us than are the accounts themselves as objects of inquiry. The substantive object of a dispute, the language used by the disputants, and the venue and manner in which a dispute was presented for resolution can all provide useful information. For example, that disputes between runners over the right to collect fees from a specific type of legal case were frequently presented to the magistrate for resolution indicates that fee collection had achieved a degree of customary legitimacy despite its formal illegality. Similarly, that a particular claim or accusation was made in the first place implies that, quite apart from its veracity, it fell within the realm of what the speaker anticipated would be accepted by the magistrate as at least plausible. Regardless of whether or not an individual or group of yamen employees were considered by others as

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honorable men, the fact that such claims to honor and rectitude were made at all is therefore significant in and of itself. Equally significant are the values, either declared or implied, upon which such claims were based and the discursive elements used to express those values. Subjective representations of events and persons were not simply fabricated out of a vacuum. Rather, to be effective they had to conform to culturally conditioned norms and expectations as well as with the dictates of personal interest. By focusing on this aspect of disputes and the representations thereof, we are in position to understand the interplay between culture, ideology, and personal interest upon which the social world of the county yamen was based. It might be argued that the portrait of yamen practice I create in these pages is overly self-contained and without sufficient reference to broader national contexts and historical forces. In mapping out the intricacies of the Ba County yamen, I indeed give scant attention to momentous events such as the intrusion of Western imperialism, the rebellions of the mid-nineteenth century, the Tongzhi Restoration, the New Policy Reforms, or the Rights Recovery Movement, all of which had a decisive impact on the Qing government at both the provincial and central levels. This is not a product of oversight; rather it is due to the simple fact that these events are rarely reflected in archival material at the county level. Despite the influence these events had in shaping the contours of Chinese history and the fate of imperial government in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from the perspective of clerks and runners in the county yamen, they were largely irrelevant to the way things worked. If this gives the impression that local government in many ways operated in isolation from national events, the machinations of the central court, and officially sponsored efforts at political reform, then it is not an inaccurate representation. Many people have given generously of their time and energy to help with this study, and it is both an honor and a pleasure for me to thank them. Herman Ooms, Edward Berenson, Benjamin Elman, Michael Mann, Richard von Glahn, Kathryn Bernhardt, Jonathan Ocko, Jing Junjian, and Hal Kahn all offered valuable insights and suggestions in the preparation of the dissertation. In particular, I would like to thank my dissertation committee chair, Philip Huang, for his advice and encouragement throughout this project. While at UCLA, I also had the good fortune to work with an exceptional group of fellow graduate students including Matthew Sommer, Yasuhiko Karasawa, Christopher Isett, David Wakefield, and Clayton

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Dube. My heartfelt thanks go to all of them for their criticism, comments, and commiseration. I would also like to express my gratitude to Joseph Esherick, Dan Chirot, Bill Rowe, Vivienne Shue, and anonymous readers at Stanford University Press for giving subsequent drafts of the manuscript such a thorough reading and offering much needed advice and guidance. And many thanks as well go to Muriel Bell, Nathan MacBrien, and Alexandria Giardino at Stanford University Press for all their help and direction in shepherding this book through to publication. This study was made possible by a research fellowship from the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Scholarly Communication with the PRC. While working in China, I was helped enormously by the staff at the Sichuan Provincial Archives in Chengdu as well as by Liu Chuanying of the History faculty at the University of Sichuan. I am also indebted to both the Center for Chinese Studies and the History Department at UCLA for their generous support following my return to the United States. Subsequent research and a return to the Ba County archive were funded by two research grants from the University of Virginia. Above all, thanks go to my partner and best friend, Ellen Fuller, for her unflagging support, her wisdom, and her patient efforts to bring clarity to both my thoughts and prose. B.W.R.

Abbreviations and Conventions

Source Abbreviations BXDA Baxian dang’an (Ba County archives). Selections from the archives held at the Sichuan Provincial Bureau of Archives. BXDAHB Baxian dang’an huibian (Selections from the Ba County archives). Beijing: Dang’an chubanshe, 1991. BXNJ “Baxian nongcunjingji zhiyanjiu” (The Peasant Economy of Ba County), in Minguo ershi niandai zhongguodalu tudi wenti ziliao (Materials and the Land Problem in Mainland China in the Republican Era of the 1920s), vol. 54, Wang Guodong ed. Reprint, Zheng Xiao ed., Taipei: Chengwei chubenshe, 1978. BXZ/MG Baxian zhi minguo (Ba County Gazetteer, Republican period, 1939). Reprint, Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 1967. BXZ/TZ Baxian zhi tongzhi (Ba County Gazetteer, Tongzhi period, 1867). BXZXZ Baxian zhi xuanzhu (Selections from the Ba County Gazetteer). Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe, 1989. CD Sichuan daxue dang’an (Sichuan University archives). Selections from Ba County archival transcriptions held at Sichuan University. CFZL Liubu chufenzeli (Disciplinary Regulations of the Six Boards), Guangxu Period 18 (1882). Reprint, Shen Yunlong ed., Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1960. DLCY Duli cunyi (Doubts Remaining After Perusing the Substatutes), Xue Yunsheng, ed., 1905. Taiwan reissue, Huang Tsingchia, ed., 5 vols., Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1970.

xxii

Abbreviations and Conventions

HCJSWB Huangchao jingshi wenbian (Collected Qing Memorials on Statecraft). Taipei: Guofeng chubanshe, 1963. HCJSWXB Huangchao jingshi wenxubian (Supplement to the Collected Qing Memorials on Statecraft). MLS Muling shu (Selected writings of Local Officials), ed. 1868. QCWXTK Qingchao wenxian tongkao (A Compendium of Qing Dynasty Writings). Reprint, Wu Yanwu ed., Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936. QHDSL Qing huidian shili (Collected Statutes and Substatutes of the Qing), ed. 1899. Reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991. SCCZ Qingdai Sichuan Caizheng shiliao (Historical material on Financial Administration in Sichuan during the Qing). Xun Zijian, ed. Reprint, Chengdu: Sichuansheng shehuikexueyuan chubanshe, 1984. SCZC Sichuan tongshi zhangcheng (Regulations of Sichuan Province). Shun Yunlong, ed. Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1977. SCDASL Sichuan dang’an shiliao (Historical material from the Sichuan archives). SKSS Sichuan kuanmu shuomingshu (Introduction to the Taxes of Sichuan), reprint in Jindaishi ziliao, no. 64, Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1987. XZZZXS Xingzheng zizhi xinshu (Collected Materials on Administration). 1667. YLYY Yongli yongyan (Plain Talk on Administrative Matters). Liu Heng. 1827. ZZCG Zhizhe chenggui (Administrative Regulations of Zhejiang Province). 1837. All citations from the Ba County archives in this study will follow the cataloging conventions used by the Sichuan Provincial Archives (Sichuansheng dang’anguan). Numbers following the designation BXDA refer to category, catalogue, and juan. For those files containing multiple and discrete case records, the document number within the file will be appended to the basic citation. Transcriptions of Ba County archival material housed at Sichuan University in Chengdu will be identified as CD. This will then be followed by the conventions used by the university to classify these transcriptions: a name denoting a category of files, another name for the subcategory, and a number indicating the specific file (see glossary for characters used in category and subcategory titles). Where relevant this will be followed by the reign period and year of the file.

Abbreviations and Conventions

xxiii

Date Abbreviations Abbreviations for reign names are as follows: YZ QL JQ DG

Yongzheng Qianlong Jiaqing Daoguang

XF TZ GX XT

Xianfeng Tongzhi Guangxu Xuantong

Weights and Measures The following are the standard English equivalents for Chinese weights and measures given throughout: li  0.31 mile 1 mu  0.16 acre 1 shi  approximately 176 pounds 1 tael (liang)  approximately one ounce of silver 1 qian  0.10 tael 1 fen  0.01 tael 1 wen  single copper coin (cash). Depending on the exchange rate, in nineteenth-century Sichuan 1 silver tael was worth 800–1,800 copper wen.

Translations All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

Virtuous laws and fine intentions are all ruined by treasonous clerks and verminous runners. —Circuit Intendant Du Renshou, ca. 1880

Yunnan

Sichuan Province During the late Qing Dynasty, with Ba County Highlighted.

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he imperial government of the Qing dynasty (1644– 1911) could not have functioned without the clerks and runners of the county yamen. Working under the direct supervision of the county magistrate on the lowest rung of the Qing state’s vast administrative ladder, clerks and runners performed such rudimentary yet critical tasks as the drafting, copying, and filing of documents and records, the recording of cadastral surveys, the registration of deeds and land sales, the acceptance and transmittal of petitions to the magistrate, the posting of official notices and proclamations, the issuance of licenses and permits, and the delivery of communications to and from superior yamens, as well as all the sundry duties associated with the magistrate’s court. In addition to these administrative duties, clerks and runners also served as one of the primary mechanisms for the enforcement of state authority in areas such as arrest and detention, public security, and, of course, the collection of taxes. In this capacity, yamen employees functioned, as the oftquoted phrase put it, as the “talons and teeth” (weiguan zhi zhaoya) of the local magistrate. Despite the pivotal role they played in the administration of the empire, however, Qing officials regarded yamen clerks and runners with open contempt. In striking contrast to the moral character and integrity attributed to officials from the magistrate upward, local clerks and runners were nearly universally reviled as the most cunning and venal of scoundrels. “All the present suffering under Heaven is caused by clerks,” as one nineteenth-century commentator was moved to write. “Their arrogance is greater than that of any official, while gentry and scholars alike acquiesce to their every desire. The

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common people upon whom they feed thus have no redress and can do nothing but die in lonely ditches by the roadside” (HCJSWB 24:8a). Antipathy toward yamen clerks and runners among imperial officials was certainly not a new phenomenon in the Qing. As early as the Song dynasty (960–1279), officials regularly expressed a hostility that was itself deeply rooted in the ideological and social transformations of that era. On the one hand, the steady consolidation and centralization of imperial authority in the post-Tang empire (960– 1911) created a need for more administrative personnel at the county level than ever before. Yet at the same time, office holding itself was becoming increasingly linked to success in the civil service examinations and association with the elite literati culture that those examinations helped engender. Even in the Northern Song (960–1125), neither clerks nor runners were considered to be officials (guan) insofar as that term generally referred to individuals appointed to office by the central government. Clerks and runners were instead recruited locally to perform specific duties in the county yamen and were thus not required to hold a degree before assuming their positions. As a result, an occupational as well as a social fissure developed between officials and members of the yamen staff, a fissure that continued to grow during the remainder of the late imperial period (Lo 1987, 24). The appearance of this fissure was closely tied to the emerging Neo-Confucian orthodoxy in the Song upon which the late imperial social and political order rested. According to this view, political authority was the prerogative of the “superior man” (junzi), whose personal character and moral qualifications for office holding had been recognized by state fiat in the form of an official degree. Clerks and runners, on the other hand, were specialists, administrative laborers whose value rested in their narrowly defined technical expertise and skill. Indeed, it was precisely this utilitarian function and narrowness of competence that disqualified yamen employees from consideration for higher office (Ocko 1983, 133–35, 176). Without the benefit of broad literary training in the Confucian canon and the inculcation of normative social values and political ethics implied thereby, members of the yamen staff were regarded as manifestly unfit for the responsibilities of authority. As the purview of the “small man” (xiaoren), yamen service thus came to be associated with menial, socially degrading forms of labor undertaken only by the destitute or by those who desired to use the proximity to authority to further their wicked and corrupt designs.

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Attitudes such as these, rooted in ideology, training, and social distance, were further compounded by practical problems of administrative dependence and control. For although clerks and runners were regularly vilified as corrupt and self-serving, commentators throughout the late imperial era recognized that they were essential for administrative operations owing to their technical expertise and familiarity with local conditions, customs, and people. With the social and institutional lines between the yamen staff and ranking officials firmly established, the question then became how to maintain control over these “yamen vermin” (yadu) and minimize the leverage they possessed by virtue of their functional position within the administrative structure. The first line of defense in this regard was simply to restrict the number of yamen employees working in any given office or yamen. To this end, the central government established strict quotas and limits on terms of service in the closing decades of the Northern Song. Since clerks and runners were not centrally appointed and thus not subject to the control system of review, sanctions, and rewards imposed on appointed officials, responsibility for the actual supervision and disciplining of yamen employees was placed directly upon the magistrate, who was held personally accountable for instances of wrongdoing on the part of his staff. Reliance on both quotas and the personal authority of the magistrate would remain hallmarks of the statutory control system for the rest of the imperial era. This system was unworkable from the very beginning. The Wang Anshi reform policies of the eleventh century, although failing in many respects, succeeded in vastly expanding the workload of county government by drawing a much larger number of tasks within the ambit of state administration. Thus, while the enforcement of quotas was becoming something of an obsession at the Song court, the actual requirements of county government were forcing magistrates to employ workforces far in excess of those legally stipulated quotas (J. Liu 1967, 331). The disparity between statutory workforce and required labor was only exacerbated in subsequent centuries by demographic growth, the greater socioeconomic complexity of the empire, the declining ratio of local administrative units to population, and the continued absorption by county yamens of many administrative duties previously performed by local communities (Kracke 1953, 47; J. Liu 1967, 318; Skinner 1977, 24). As a result, not only was the magistrate’s already dubious ability to exercise effective

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control over his staff made still more tenuous but also substantive control over many administrative operations fell increasingly to individuals whose very presence in the yamen was a violation of the statutory system. If this state of affairs caused grave concern among officials at the central court, then their misgivings were only increased by the manner in which yamen clerks and runners supported themselves. Provided with little or no compensation for their services by the state, yamen personnel from the Southern Song onward depended instead on the ubiquitous customary fees (lougui, guifei) collected from anyone having business with the yamen, whether voluntary or otherwise. Above all else it was this officially proscribed practice that was responsible for clerks and runners’ reputation for avaricious self-interest and corruption. As nineteenth-century prefect He Gengsheng said of yamen employees, “They only care for profit and know nothing of gratitude or honor. If an official shows them leniency, therefore, it will only give rein to their desires. But if one treats them with severity, they will be filled with dread and awe and cease their nefarious cunning” (MLS 4:30). He Gengsheng’s admonition that state officials adopt the most draconian of measures to protect the emperor’s subjects from the rapaciousness of the state’s own functionaries was by no means an idiosyncratic point of view; similar opinions were regularly expressed by officials at all levels of government in the Qing dynasty. Although acknowledged as administratively necessary, clerks and runners nevertheless remained presumptively corrupt as individuals and beyond the pale of official status both institutionally and ideologically. In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the empire was becoming an altogether different place than it had been when this administrative system was devised. Demographic growth and diversification, commercial expansion, and the progressive monetization of both the economy and tax system were all combining to increase the administrative workload of the county yamen to the point where statutory provisions for manpower and financing were made all but irrelevant. In the face of such pervasive change coupled with a static statutory system, county government could only remain operational by the continued growth of informal methods and personnel that legally should not have existed. In the process, there developed a system of local administration about which the central government had only the vaguest knowledge and over which it exercised even less control.

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Considering the centrality of clerks and runners to local administration under the Qing, we know remarkably little about them. Although they are mentioned briefly in nearly every study of county government, the tendency has been to accept the portrayals of them given by official and elite sources as self-interested and corrupt individuals. But in sharing the biases and pejorative assumptions of these sources, we have tended to share the Qing central government’s ignorance of the informal practices that sustained county government during the Qing. This study attempts to remedy this situation through an examination of the organization and daily practices of yamen clerks and runners in a single locale, Ba County, Sichuan, in the nineteenth century. My use of the term system to describe these informal methods of administration is deliberate. Although they operated outside of the statutory system, and often in direct violation of the legal code, yamen clerks and runners exhibited a remarkably consistent degree of organization and rationalization in the form of internally formulated and enforced rules and procedures. As this implies, my approach here is to examine these practices not simply in terms of their deviation from the statutory norm but also as a fully integrated system of local administration, which becomes visible only by going beyond formal structures and representations. In other words, my concern here is not with how government was supposed to work, but rather with how local administration actually operated. Along with its empirical value, moreover, a detailed examination of the organization and practices of yamen clerks and runners opens the door to a reconsideration of the conceptual frameworks traditionally used to analyze the relationship between the late imperial state and Chinese society.

Past Scholarship Administration and Bureaucracy Until recently, the general trend of Qing administrative studies was to focus on statutory structure, rather than practice, with particular emphasis on institutional methods of imperial control over officials. Rarely, if ever, did these studies venture below the level of the magistrate and his official responsibilities to consider the less formal aspects of local administration or the broader social context within which local government operated (Mayers 1878; Brunnert and

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Hagelstrom 1912; Hsieh 1925; Metzger 1973; S. Wu 1970). The outstanding exception to this pattern was the work of Hsiao Kungch’uan, whose Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, first published in 1960, provided a detailed study of the articulation between government and local society during the Qing dynasty. As his title implies, however, Hsiao’s concern was with mechanisms of state control at the village level. For the most part, he therefore left the county yamen unexamined. It was not until the subsequent publication of Ch’ü T’ung-tsu’s Local Government in China under the Ch’ing, in 1962, that we got our first good look inside the local yamen. Although Ch’ü’s pioneering work remains the indispensable starting point for research in the field, his study is limited by several of the same features that made it such a breakthrough at the time of its publication. Culling from the broadest possible array of central government documents, local gazetteers, administrative handbooks, and the personal memoirs of magistrates and provincial officials, Ch’ü attempted to provide a comprehensive account of local administration throughout the Qing empire. In this attempt he succeeded in providing us with a veritable catalogue of structures, statutes, practices, and anecdotal detail. The shortcoming here, however, is that Ch’ü’s description is on such a broad canvas as to fit everywhere in general and nowhere in particular. A second and more serious limitation of Ch’ü’s work is that despite its richness of detail, his analytical focus remains on what he saw as the dysfunctional aspects and structural irrationalities of the Qing administrative system. Although he devotes a full chapter each to clerks and runners, his concern with them is primarily on how these administrative inadequacies resulted in corruption within their ranks and the impact that corruption had on the magistrate’s effectiveness as an administrator. One result of this is that Ch’ü fails to capture either how clerks and runners were organized in the face of inadequate statutory provisions or how the resulting informal methods of operation hung together to provide a functioning system of local administration. A number of outstanding monographs published since Hsiao and Ch’ü’s works have added enormously to our understanding of local government under the Qing (see, for example, Watt 1972, 1977; Ocko 1983; P. Huang 1985; Rankin 1986; Schoppa 1982, 1989; Min 1989; Zelin 1984). Yet the degree to which these studies give serious attention to the roles played by yamen clerks and runners remains

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negligible. When the yamen staff does make an appearance, it is generally as a parochial interest group whose corrupt activities placed them in conflict with either the magistrate or local communities, or both. Aside from a paucity of primary source material, the lack of scholarly attention given to yamen clerks and runners can be traced in part to the difficulty of fitting them into the Weberian conceptual schema that have so deeply informed studies of Chinese bureaucracy and administration. In this regard, John Watt’s work on the local magistrate and the county yamen in the early Qing period is exemplary (1972, 1977). Watt adds appreciably to the work of Ch’ü T’ung-tsu by highlighting the informal social functions of local government as opposed to its role as part of the formal structure of state authority. According to Watt, the yamen served as a locus of tension between what he views as a secular trend toward political centralization and structural rationalization, on the one side, and the social forces leading to a diversification of local power, on the other (Watt 1972, Chap. 7). As Watt interprets it, the fiscal weakness of the Qing state and the subsequent reliance of local administration on informal sources of revenue were critical to this tension (Watt 1977; see also Zelin 1984, Chap. 2). Because of this reliance, fiscal operations in the yamen retained what Watt refers to as a nonrational, nonbureaucratic nature that left local administration economically dependent on local society, thus blocking the aforementioned trend toward centralization and rationalization of administrative authority. In making these observations, Watt’s gaze remains steadily on the magistrate, whom he describes as being held hostage between these two competing processes of development (Watt 1972, 211). His consideration of yamen clerks and runners is therefore limited to the ways in which they, as a specifically local interest group, both impinged on the magistrate’s role as a representative of state interests and acted as a brake on further administrative rationalization (Watt 1977, 375–76, 384). Watt’s stress on the county yamen’s dependence on informal financing effectively underscores several of the contradictions within the Qing administrative system. His argument is flawed, however, by his identification of the centralizing features of the early Qing state as constituting a secular trend toward a form of Western-style bureaucratic rationalization. Together with the further assumption that functional rationalization takes place only as a result of formal

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structural changes as dictated by the central government, Watt concludes that insufficient financing inevitably led to a failed attempt at creating a structural differentiation between state administration and society (Watt 1977, 375). This may well be true. But in the process of making this claim, he disregards the possibility that late imperial China represented not a failed model of Western development so much as an alternative pattern of bureaucratic government. His delineation of the irrational elements of local administration under the Qing thus tells little about how this particular form of administration operated, how it managed to survive for so long, or how it might have responded to social, political, and economic changes in the later half of the Qing dynasty. At least part of the problem here is the uncritical use of Weberian categories. Weber characterized a modern bureaucratic organization as being both legal and rational (Weber 1978, 956–69; Bendix 1960, 423–30). The organization is rational in that utilitarian administrative duties are clearly tied to specific offices, the functions of which are placed in a well-defined hierarchy of responsibility and authority. Such a system is also legal insofar as this rationalization is based on formally legislated and codified organizational and operational regulations to which all members of the organization can appeal and by which all of their activities as officeholders are delimited and evaluated. Of paramount importance in this regard is that both office and the means of administration with which it is invested are legally separated from the officeholder himself. Unlike patrimonial office holding, office holding within a legal/rational bureaucracy cannot be appropriated as a form of private property. It cannot be bought, sold, inherited, or otherwise disposed of by the individual. Nor does the bureaucratic officeholder derive his income from the perquisites of office as a form of benefice; instead he is compensated for his services by the state in the form of a regular salary. Although not explicitly, Watt refers to this ideal type when he speaks of “formal structures” or “rationalized bureaucratization” within the state administrative system. Although it has been made many times before, I will risk belaboring the point still further by stressing that Weber presented his description of modern bureaucratic administration as an ideal type that, by definition, did not actually exist in its totality in any historical period. To the extent that this ideal type did correspond to a particular geographical and temporal location, it was based on what Weber saw as the trajectory of European, largely German, develop-

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ment in the twentieth century. Both of these points raise a number of difficulties in applying Weber’s concepts to non-Western historical contexts, in general, and the Chinese case, in particular. The first difficulty lies in determining exactly what is meant by bureaucracy in the first place.1 If the term is taken to mean either a style of rule based on official functionaries or a collective term referring to those officials, our discussion would clearly be limited to ranking officeholders appointed by the central government on the basis of their success in the civil service examinations. It was this body of administrative personnel for whom qualifications and assignment to office, promotion, and disciplinary procedure were all formally determined by codified regulations. It was also this group that was, and still is, referred to by the term “official” or “officeholder” (guan) within the Qing system. But if we take bureaucracy more broadly to apply to a form or style of administration, then the lines of demarcation become much less clear. In terms of their functional roles in areas such as tax collection, the maintenance of public order, and the operation of the judicial system, as well as the routine flow of documents, yamen clerks and runners undeniably served as an element of bureaucratic administration. Once we include clerks and runners in our definition of bureaucracy, however, a number of problems arise. In the Weberian scheme of things, a bureaucracy is rationalized to the extent that it depends on formalized regulations both guiding the official’s behavior and serving as a source of authority to which he can appeal. To the extent that these rules have a legal basis, they are codified and enforced by a central government authority. In the context of late imperial China, however, formalized regulation of administrative behavior was restricted to ranking officials and did not extend to the yamen staff at the bottom of the administrative hierarchy. How, then, did this stratum of bureaucratic personnel carry out their business in the yamen? How were these people recruited, organized, and assigned specific duties? How, if at all, were they disciplined? How were disputes among them settled? And upon what criteria were their careers in the yamen based? Such questions lead to the issue of the relationship between administrative practice and the legal statutes designed to guide such practice (i.e., administrative law). In the broadest sense, all law in late imperial China was administrative in that there was no formal separation between the administrative and judicial functions of government. As noted by Leon Vandermeersch, the system of law laid

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out in the penal codes of various dynasties served as an administrative tool designed to maintain public order in the interests of the state (Vandermeersch 1985, 14–15; see also van der Sprenkel 1962, 70). If, on the other hand, we take a more functional approach and define administrative law as a body of codified regulations and guidelines specifically dictating the duties, organization, and requirements of administrative personnel, things look a bit different. The statutes and disciplinary regulations of the Qing contain a large number of quite detailed stipulations pertaining to centrally appointed officials, but beneath the level of magistrate there was very little that could be described as formal administrative law. The reason for this was relatively simple: control over all yamen employees was the personal responsibility of the magistrate. To the extent that codified regulation of this staff did exist, it was found not in the Disciplinary Regulations (Chufenzeli), but rather in the Qing Penal Code, where it took the form of severe punishments for criminal transgressions such as extortion, bribery, embezzlement, and the maltreatment of prisoners. The problem, of course, was that the official quotas were woefully inadequate to meet the needs of local administration and were therefore regularly exceeded by the informal employment of personnel over whom the magistrate had little effective control. Insofar as this extrastatutory body of functionally bureaucratic personnel exercised authority outside of the direct, personal supervision of the magistrate, we must inquire into the relationship between bureaucratic authority and power, as well as the sources of legitimacy that might have sustained this system of administration. Weber viewed authority as a specific instance of power, one in which power, defined as the ability to impose sanctions and deprivations, is legitimized or institutionalized in such a way as to make compliance voluntary (Weber 1978, 212–14; see also Wrong 1995, 35–41). Specifically bureaucratic authority, in Weber’s view, stems from its impersonal and rationalistic basis that separates the person of the officeholder from the authority and functional utility of the office itself (Gerth and Mills 1946, 294–95; Weber 1947, 130–31). At this point the imperial Chinese bureaucracy departed sharply from Weberian typologies. Engaging in the debate as to whether the legitimizing principles of Confucian ideology constituted a form of charismatic, traditional, or legal authority seems unnecessary here. However, it is important to recognize that the magistrate’s authority flowed neither from the utility of his office within the bureau-

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cratic structure nor from his technical skill at discharging his duties. Rather, it flowed from his identification with the highly personal Confucian moral ideals underwriting both the authority of the imperial state, which the magistrate represented in microcosm, and that of the broader stratum of social elites at the local level. Of course this does not mean that such authority, as an instance of legitimized power or domination, was devoid of coercive force simply because of the socioethical context in which it was set. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, legitimizing ideologies mask, and thereby help produce, a misrecognition of coercive power, both on the part of the power holder as well as its subject, by placing it within a cognitive structure or worldview wherein submission to its authority is represented as natural, right, and just (Bourdieu 1990, 123–41; see also Bourdieu 1989). But in contrast to the authority of officials, whatever power yamen personnel held by virtue of their functional position and technical expertise lay outside the realm of legitimately sanctioned authority. As Winston Lo has argued, it was in part the vulnerability of appointed officials and local elites to the functional power of clerks and runners that led to the ideological and social debasement of yamen work by placing its utilitarian function outside the boundaries of Confucian legitimacy (Lo 1987, 24). Corollary to this representation of legitimate authority was the need to control yamen clerks and runners through penal sanctions and the personal supervision of the magistrate to prevent them from using their power in ways that might undermine the paternalistic ideal of the Confucian political order and, thus, the legitimacy of imperial institutions. Yet the span of formal bureaucratic supervision under the Qing was far too narrow to provide for effective control over the large number of clerks and runners actually working in county yamens across the empire. How, then, was the de facto power of yamen personnel exercised? And what, if any, alternative sources of legitimacy were used to sustain this system at the local level? As these questions indicate, the holistic application of Weberian categories to the context of local administration in late imperial China inevitably confronts a number of conceptual contradictions and ambiguities. This does not imply, however, that we need to dispense with Weberian theory altogether in our attempt to understand the workings of local government in late imperial China. On the contrary, Weber provides several very powerful analytic tools that can be utilized quite fruitfully in this context. The following chapters will demonstrate, for example, that the organization, division

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of labor, and procedures of yamen clerks and runners were to a large extent bureaucratically rationalized in the sense that they were based on a body of operational rules to which all yamen employees could appeal. These same rules were also evident in areas of yamen employment such as recruitment, training, jurisdiction, advancement, discipline, and a hierarchical system of rank and authority. Yamen employees, moreover, also established norms of technical competence and behavior in the workplace that, by comparison, were far more rationalized and specific than anything seen in the official bureaucracy. Yet none of these methods of organization or rules of operation were based on codified laws or formal administrative regulations legislated by the central government for the simple reason that no such body of official regulations existed. Yamen rules were instead based on customary procedures that were for the most part formulated and enforced by the yamen clerks and runners themselves. Such practices should not be dismissed simply as deviations from a legally defined and therefore more legitimate norm of administrative behavior. To do so would be to miss the degree to which these practices were integral to daily administrative practice within the county yamen. Whatever central government officials may have felt about them, at the local level these informal regulations served as a form of customary administrative law and were frequently presented as such to the magistrate himself in the course of intrayamen disputes. Within this realm of informal practice, yamen clerks and runners sought to validate their positions and careers by articulating claims to the social and political utility of their role as bureaucratic functionaries and administrative specialists. To the extent that this informal system and its justifications were accepted by successive magistrates, despite the violation of formal statutes, clerks and runners achieved what might be called an illicit legitimacy within the interstices of structural inadequacies and the demands of local administration. In addition to these rationalized and rule-driven elements, however, yamen practice was also defined by decidedly nonrational forms of association such as kinship bonds, patron-client ties, and factional formations. In previous studies of Qing local administration, these associations have not only entirely eclipsed the more rationalized aspects of yamen practice but have also been taken as prima facie evidence of the fundamentally self-regarding and deviant behav-

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ior of clerks and runners. The tendency here has been to view rationalized and particularistic actions in strictly Weberian terms as fundamentally oppositional and mutually exclusive. Insofar as yamen practice developed outside the boundary of formal structure, however, it is possible, even necessary, to set aside this dichotomy. As the following chapters demonstrate, the county yamen operated not only as an administrative institution but also as a social sphere where, in the absence of legally defined administrative norms, action was guided by culturally sanctioned modes of particularistic association and practice. Furthermore, although bonds of kinship and factional formation were frequently used to subvert the system of informal yamen rules and procedures, they were more often used to formulate and enforce those same rules. In these instances, the rational and nonrational elements of yamen practice worked together to produce an integrative system of local administration that was functional as well as durable. By recognizing this interaction, we can better understand aspects of Qing local government that might otherwise remain paradoxical. We will also be in a better position to understand the relationship between the yamen and the local community. State and Society Another reason clerks and runners of the county yamen have received so little attention can be traced to the analytic framework most often employed in studies of late imperial Chinese state and society. Recent work in this area has generally concentrated on the patterns of tension, as well as symbiosis, between the legalistic authority of the state, represented at the county level by both the magistrate and local institutions such as the baojia (mutual responsibility) and village officer systems, and the less formally defined but nonetheless potent social authority of gentry elites (Rankin 1986; Kuhn 1975; Ch’ü 1962; Watt 1972; Esherick and Rankin 1990). Yet regardless of whether this relationship is apprehended as one of conflict, cooperation, or a mixture of the two, the tendency has been to conceptualize the field of local authority and dominance in essentially bipolar terms. In the process, the ambiguous yet critical role of nonelites, such as the yamen staff, in mediating the relationship between state and society has been overlooked. This tendency is clearly exemplified by the ongoing debate as to where the line of demarcation should be drawn between late imperial Chinese state and society. Roughly speaking, past scholarship

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has seen this line move from the magistrate (Hsieh 1925) down to the gentry (Hsiao 1960; Ch’ü 1962) back to the magistrate (Watt 1972) and, finally, back down to a point somewhere between the two (Rankin 1986). How clerks and runners might have fit into these conceptual schema has consequently remained problematic, although the general solution has been simply to place them on one or the other side of the divide and be done with them. Watt, for example, identifies the emergence of the yamen staff in the early years of the Qing as a “dangerously disconnected group, cut off from the officials and secretaries by social and educational barriers and from the rural people by their urban life and work” (Watt 1972, 154). Yet despite his recognition of this essential ambiguity, he nevertheless places clerks and runners firmly in the constellation of local power groups resisting state intervention in local affairs. Watt’s treatment of the yamen staff is based on his conclusion that while clerks and runners belonged to the formal (state) structure of administration, their primary interests remained centered on the informal (societal) function of the yamen insofar as those functions served their personal and localized interests (Watt 1977, 372). Although the issue plays only a small part in her study of elite activism in Zhejiang Province, an opposing view is offered by Mary Rankin, who insists that clerks and runners, despite being residents of the local community, functioned primarily as representatives of the state. Rankin maintains that having carved out a source of profit at the bottom margins of the state apparatus, yamen staff members were fundamentally opposed to the interests of local power groups, especially when those groups sought to undermine the status quo through political reform in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Rankin 1986, 19, 132). In contrast to both Watt and Rankin, a third group of scholars including Prasenjit Duara (1988), Philip Huang (1985), and Philip Kuhn (1975), has begun to consider yamen personnel as a separate and critical fulcrum point between state and society. Kuhn, for example, describes the yamen staff during the late Qing as a distinct and welldefined interest group cut off from both the official bureaucracy and local elites by education, training, and personal interest. This trend, he believes, was not appreciably altered in the republic by the formal incorporation of clerks and runners into the state bureaucracy since they continued to compete with local elites for control over resources to the detriment of state interests (Kuhn 1975, 262, 279). Duara has elaborated on much the same dynamic in his description

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of low-level administrative personnel in the republican period as evolving into what he calls “entrepreneurial state brokers” (1988, 43). Operating outside the range of effective control by the state even as they wielded formal state authority, the proliferation and predatory behavior of these individuals eventually resulted in a pattern of growth that Duara identifies as “state involution,” a process he argues contributed to the delegitimation of the Nationalist government (Duara 1988, Chap. 2). Although Duara and Kuhn are primarily concerned with developments in the Republican era, the potential autonomy of low-level administrative functionaries they describe can be applied to the Qing period as well. If most clerks and runners operated beyond the reach of formal regulatory control and in such numbers as to render personal supervision by the magistrate ineffective, then it stands to reason that they, both individually and as a group, developed a degree of independent power vis-à-vis the state, which they nominally served, and the local community within which they operated. The following chapters will, in fact, supply ample evidence of just this sort of autonomy. The trouble with this approach is that it continues a long-standing tendency in the field to view state and society as dichotomous entities locked in perpetual conflict, often to the point where these structures themselves assume a position of historical agency independent of the individuals and groups that composed them. At its best, this conceptual framework has yielded insightful and frequently provocative work, such as in the recent debates concerning the emergence of a civil society and public sphere in late imperial and Republican era China.2 Yet even here, in the hands of scholars cognizant of the dangers of cross-cultural generalizations, the approach lends itself to the application of analytical constructs developed out of the European experience by assuming a clear separation of cultural, social, and state institutions and practices that did not exist in late imperial China (Rowe 1993). Rather than replicating this tendency by once more attempting to locate clerks and runners somewhere between the state and society dichotomy, it seems much more fruitful to reformulate the conceptual scheme itself. Philip Huang has made a valuable step in this direction in his recent work on civil justice in the Qing dynasty (P. Huang 1993a, 1993b, 1996). Within the Qing justice system, Huang identifies an intermediate sphere of judicial practice, where the formal apparatus of the magistrate’s court interacted with elements of informal

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community mediation to form what he refers to as a “third realm” of local dispute resolution (1996, 110). In this, Huang persuasively argues that despite the Qing Code’s lack of formally constituted civil law, in practice the court and code were nevertheless regularly used by local residents as an avenue of redress in civil disputes. One of the benefits of Huang’s approach is that it forces recognition that late imperial state and society frequently operated not as discrete entities, but rather through areas of overlap and interpenetration. To apprehend this sort of interaction it is necessary to move beyond an examination of formal structures and codified law to consider how these structures and codes worked in the often paradoxical realm that existed between official representation and daily practice. In the following chapters, I build upon this formulation and attempt to push it a bit further. In doing so, I draw upon S. N. Eisenstadt’s concept of free-floating resources. In his work The Political Systems of Empires, Eisenstadt describes these resources as “manpower, economic resources, political support, and cultural identifications [which are] not embedded within or committed beforehand to any primary ascriptive-particularistic groups” (1963, 27). The existence of such free-floating resources serves to create what Eisenstadt refers to as a “reservoir of generalized power” that could be used by different social or occupational groups in the pursuit of varying goals. Eisenstadt incorporates the availability of these resources into his taxonomy of historical empires. Insofar as he describes the availability of free-floating resources as a product of a given sociopolitical structure, his description remains static. This shortcoming has recently been overcome by sociologist Michael Mann in his work on the sources of social power. In Mann’s view, societies are best seen not as unitary or bounded social systems or structures, but rather as “multiple overlapping and intersecting sociospatial networks of power” rooted in ideological, economic, political, and military relations (Mann 1986, 1–2). In addition to revealing themselves through social interaction, these networks of power operate as well through the organizational and institutional means available to individuals and groups in their efforts to achieve human desires. While encompassing Eisenstadt’s notion of free-floating resources, Mann’s work has the benefit of focusing less on structure and more on interaction between individuals, the nature of which is responsive to changes in circumstances over time. Rather than treating late imperial state and society as dichoto-

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mous and juxtaposed structures, whether interpenetrating or oppositional, I approach them instead as nests of socially differentiated institutions, practices, and resources, all of which exhibited varying degrees of monopolistic control and social fixity and were thus subject to varying degrees of appropriation and competition. By resources, I mean those factors, both material and symbolic, from which individuals draw in their daily efforts to secure income, prestige, and a sustainable livelihood. In the context of county government and local authority in late imperial China, these resources were as varied as the control over the material means of administration (records, files, seals, jails, and so forth), organizational and disciplinary control over the yamen staff, access to and strategic use of the magistrate’s court, and the symbolic capital generated by association with either imperial institutions or Confucian ideological orthodoxy. Access to such resources was conditioned by an individual’s physical and functional, as well as symbolic location within specific governmental and societal networks, both formal and informal (e.g., a clerk or runner’s functional indispensability, a magistrate’s position as an appointed official and representative of imperial authority, or the role of local gentry as community leaders and defenders of community interests). Resources, moreover, were rarely unitary in the benefits they might be made to yield by different individuals or groups. If the magistrate’s court served the government as a symbolic font of imperial authority, for example, it also served clerks and runners as a purely economic resource while at the same time providing local residents with an alternative avenue of dispute resolution. Although this approach is considerably hazier and analytically less elegant than the traditional dichotomy of state and society, it nevertheless more closely approximates the untidy realities of social and political relations at the county level in late imperial China. Rather than a neatly defined line of demarcation between state and society across which interaction occurs, we instead see county government as an area of negotiation, exchange, and competition, where informal and formal elements of administration combined with social institutions and customary practices along with personal and group interests to produce highly localized patterns of cooperation as well as conflict. This approach reduces the importance of the traditional dichotomy between agency and structure by reminding us that terms such as state, society, and community are themselves theoretical constructs. Furthermore, although such constructs imply static sets of

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relations and structures, in actuality no such permanence existed. Social and political relations, as well as the practices through which they are realized, are instead in a constant state of flux and change as individuals and groups maneuver to take advantage of newly available resources and strategies. The ability of yamen clerks to gain economic benefit from legal cases or the ability of local elites to influence the operations of the yamen staff are both instances of the use of specific resources by specific groups for particular purposes. The availability of these resources, for individuals as well as for groups, changes in accordance with systemic changes such as population increase, an expansion of commercial economic activity, the level of litigation occasioned by social conflict, and the ability of the government to maintain control over the means of administration. In addition, the approach requires us to focus less on abstracted structures and more directly upon on the historical agents themselves, those individuals and groups of individuals who acted within structured sets of circumstances, expectations, and opportunities even as their actions constantly worked to create, sustain, and modify those same structures. As this suggests, we need to bring a more anthropological perspective to our consideration of local administrative practice than has previously been done. By doing so, we can highlight not only the structures and group interests that have traditionally concerned sociologists, and historical sociologists in particular, but also the ways in which the operation of a given politicaladministrative system unfolded within the context of the culture in which it is located. This is particularly true of yamen practices that have traditionally fallen under the rubric of corruption. Corruption The image of corruption among yamen clerks and runners has been one of the most durable shibboleths in our perceptions of county government under the Qing dynasty. Given the pervasiveness of such images in Qing source material, this is hardly surprising. What is curious is the surprisingly few number of studies that have undertaken to explore this facet of Qing local administration in any depth or detail. At least part of the reason for this is the sheer slipperiness of the concept of corruption and its resistance to precise definition and analysis (see Heidenheimer, Johnston, and LeVine 1989; Roy 1970; Deysine 1980; Theobald 1990). Among European and American social scientists, the general trend during the past century has been away from a view of political or

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administrative corruption as indicative of systemic moral decay to that of corruption as a form of deviant behavior on the part of individual officials (Heidenheimer, Johnston, and LeVine 1989, Intro.).3 Recent scholarship has thus attempted to define corruption by contrasting specific actions with either established laws (legalistic definitions), declared ideals of public office (public office definitions), or public perceptions of official behavior (public interest definitions). At the root of all these efforts and the behavioral models they have produced lies Weber’s idealized notion of rationalized bureaucracy and its separation of private interest from the institutional and social functions of public office. There are a number of problems with this approach, particularly in its applicability to historical and non-Western contexts. To begin with, as Robin Theobald notes, the approach is flawed from the start by an overly precise conception of bureaucratic office holding that fails to take into account the discretionary power of any public officeholder and other such practical elements blocking complete rationalization (Theobald 1990, 11). Along similar lines, James Scott has argued that some form of corruption is, in fact, integral to almost all political systems, an element overlooked by the tendency to give normative value to declared standards of orthodox political conduct (Scott 1972, 4). Scott is one of a number of Western social scientists who have begun to look at corruption not as a degenerative or pathological phenomenon, but rather as a facilitative pattern of behavior (Leff 1964; Leys 1965; Huntington 1968; Nye 1978). Focusing primarily on developing nations in the twentieth century, these scholars have called into question the application of moral as well as behavioral standards to national contexts where such norms either do not exist or have remained only partially internalized. Following Colin Leys’s argument that corrupt actions can often serve positive purposes, Scott suggests that what is often called corruption may in fact represent a channel for the satisfaction of demands without which more formal political and social formations could not survive (Scott 1972, viii). In this regard, regularized patterns of corruption may be seen as an alternative, informal political system operating alongside formally constituted structures and publicly declared norms (Scott 1972, 2). Many of these same trends are evident in the scholarship on corruption in Chinese government as well. Western observers in China during the nineteenth century, for example, saw the payment of

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customary fees (lougui) to local officials and yamen employees alike as indicative of systemic corruption and moral decline (Brenan 1897; Alabaster 1960). Nearly a century later, the noted scholar of imperial Chinese bureaucracy Etienne Balazs echoed this same assumption by regarding corruption as a defining feature of late imperial Chinese society, a view that, he admitted, left him puzzled as to how such a system could have continued to function for so long (Balazs 1965, 68, 73). More recently, scholars have moved away from such broad assumptions to focus attention more narrowly on political and administrative corruption in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), particularly in the post-Mao era of economic reform (Chan and Unger 1982; A. Liu 1983, 1985; Ma 1989; Oi 1989; Myers 1989; Lee 1990; Tang 1996; White 1996). Set within the context of increasingly lax administrative supervision and control on the part of both the Communist Party and the central government, this scholarship has combined an impressive array of methodologies ranging from structuralist and culturalist explanations to economistic analyses such as rational-choice theory and principal-agent/cost-benefit models. Like those arguing for the facilitative aspects of corruption in other national contexts, many of these studies have approached administrative corruption in modern China as a form of rational and economically positive behavior. Gordon White, for example, has concluded that the depoliticization of both the bureaucratic elite as well as of society at large since the death of Mao Zedong has rendered corruption an accepted means of getting ahead in an environment characterized by relative scarcity and increasing commercialization (White 1996, 158). Although these studies have produced valuable insights into the linkage between corruption and economic development in the PRC, similar methodologies have enjoyed only limited success in those few cases where they have been applied to the imperial period (e.g., Marsh 1962; Kiser and Tong 1992). The most persistent problem remains that confronting all scholars of administrative corruption: defining the term corruption itself. Even among those who view corruption as a potentially positive factor in national development, the question of what actually constitutes corruption remains only vaguely or arbitrarily resolved. As Anne Deysine comments in her review of the social science literature on the subject, the Gordian knot of definition has gradually been passed over by most political scientists in favor of an im-

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plicit agreement that everyone seems to know, subjectively at least, what corruption is (Deysine 1980, 448). In the China field this view is represented by James Myers’s claim that despite differences in detail, all definitions of corruption share as a common theme “the notion of deviation by public officials from some standard of rectitude” (Myers 1989, 197). But if this solution has freed political scientists to move on to less intractable aspects of corruption in the modern period, it nevertheless begs questions that should be of central concern to historians: By whose standard of rectitude was corruption measured or assessed by contemporaries and in what instances and by whom were such standards applied? Those few historians who have addressed the issue of yamen corruption in the Qing period have, by and large, been reluctant to confront these questions directly. Ch’ü T’ung-tsu, for example, saw the “deviant” behavior of yamen clerks as at least in part the result of a dissonance between cultural values and social position. “In other words, when one has no legitimate means to secure the desired values—pecuniary reward, career opportunity—owing to one’s unprivileged position, one tends to seek these values by illegitimate means” (Ch’ü 1962, 197; see also J. Liu 1967). To this explanation Ch’ü adds that corruption among yamen personnel might also be examined as a variant form of normative behavior. As in other occupations, if the majority of group members are engaged in specific sorts of activity, then they will exert pressure upon others to conform. “Thus, what the government and the public consider deviant behavior or corruption may be regarded as conformity to the occupationally defined norms of behavior” (1962, 197). But Ch’ü does not pursue the implications of this provocative observation. Maintaining his focus on the dysfunctional elements of Qing bureaucracy at the local level, he instead goes on to replicate the views of his primary sources that endemic corruption among yamen clerks and runners constituted an insurmountable barrier between the people and the imperial government. The obvious but rarely acknowledged problem with this uncritical use of source material was emphasized by Adam Lui’s suggestion that the widespread reputation of yamen employees for corruption is due at least in part to the fact that those who left the historical record—officials, scholars, and elites—were exactly those with both the reasons for and means of castigating them in a public manner. Yet despite this rare insight, Lui then goes on to conform to that same record by describing yamen underlings as “selfish cowards

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(and) petty nuisances of society which the public could not do without but could possibly tolerate” (Lui 1979, 24–25). As described above, the infamous reputation of clerks and runners was, and still is, based primarily on the collection of customary fees from anyone having contact with the yamen. Since the collection of such fees was expressly forbidden by Qing law, and since all clerks and runners relied to a greater or lesser extent upon these fees, it makes a certain amount of sense to conclude that clerks and runners were indeed corrupt. Although this might ring true with our own twentieth-century Western sensibilities in regard to the use of public office for personal gain, it nevertheless relies on a standard, expressed in either strictly legalistic or ethical terms, which is provided to us by the empowered segments of Qing society. Aside from constituting an unwarranted generalization of elite representations and normative standards to all of Chinese society, these broad assumptions as to the venality of clerks and runners presuppose a clear distinction between public and private resources and structures. As this study will demonstrate, however, such a separation did not exist in local administrative practice. Nowhere does this become more clear than in the operations of the magistrate’s court. According to the views of scholars, officials, and emperors throughout the Qing period, the magistrate’s court was manifestly not intended to serve as a venue for the resolution of civil disputes between local residents. The intended purpose of the court, as well as the legal code in general, was to reinforce imperial authority by maintaining the cosmic balance of order and chaos through the judicious assignment of appropriate punishment for specific offenses. In serving this purpose, the magistrate’s court functioned not only as the site of penal sanction but also, and even more importantly, as a ritual center. In this respect, the court, along with all its trappings and language, symbolically represented imperial authority and its disinterested alignment with higher principle and justice, in this case read as the maintenance of the Confucian sociopolitical order. The collection of customary fees by yamen clerks and runners threatened to undermine this legitimizing function of the court by publicly associating the administration of justice with private gain. Even more alarming was the belief regularly expressed by officials and local gentry alike that clerks and runners attempted to further their pecuniary interests by duping local residents into going to court over trivial matters and then forcing them to pay ruinous levels of fees. Such practices, particularly the formal presentation of

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disputes that should ideally be settled amicably through informal mediation, could only result in a disruption of civic harmony. Clerks and runners were thus seen not only as avaricious but also as an active threat to the very basis of the social order upon which both gentry and imperial authority rested. Early Western studies of Qing law accepted these portrayals of yamen clerks and runners almost verbatim. When combined with the widely held view of the Qing Code as an arbitrarily applied and entirely penal instrument of state authority, many scholars concluded that the system was incapable of providing what they considered to be an adequate and fair administration of justice (Ch’ü 1962, 1965; van der Sprenkel 1962; Bodde and Morris 1967; Unger 1976). Received wisdom in this area also held that because of the relentless dunning of fees from anyone even remotely connected to formal legal proceedings, local residents regarded involvement with the yamen court as a ruinous plague to be avoided at all costs. More recent scholarship in this field has begun to challenge many of the Western biases and broad assumptions of these early studies (Alford 1984; Allee 1994; Bernhardt and Huang 1994; Buxbaum 1971; P. Huang 1993a, 1996; Shiga 1974, 1975, 1976; Sommer 1994; Zheng 1988). Most importantly, this new generation has demonstrated that to understand the significance of the Qing legal system, as either a repository for normative social ideals or as an embodiment of state authority, it is necessary to go beyond the formal structure and provisions of the Qing Code to examine how those provisions were utilized in the context of judicial practice. The present study adds to this growing body of knowledge by revealing the centrality of the magistrate’s court, not only to the judicial system but also to many of the yamen’s basic administrative functions. In this respect, the fees collected from legal cases served as a critical source of revenue providing both the personal income necessary to maintain a large staff on a full-time basis, as well as the operational financing for departments and divisions throughout the yamen. Far from constituting a dysfunctional form of corruption, legal case fees often served as the fiscal cornerstone of local administration and, as such, were regularly defended as right and proper before the magistrate himself in the course of intrayamen conflicts. To accept elite and official portrayals of yamen corruption at face value runs the risk of overlooking the crucially important functional role of these extrastatutory and informal practices. My reason for belaboring this point is not to rehabilitate clerks and runners or

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to rescue them from their historical reputation. As the following chapters will amply testify, members of the yamen staff frequently engaged in practices that were considered to be corrupt by even the narrowest of definitions on the part of their contemporaries.4 My purpose, rather, is twofold. First, an effort must be made to distinguish between standard practices that, despite their technical illegality, served to sustain local administrative functions and those more purely extractive or private-regarding acts that deviated from even these informal procedures and norms. Admittedly, the line between the two was often blurred, sometimes purposefully so. But to ignore the distinction altogether merely for the sake of analytic clarity robs the term corruption of any meaningful application. Even more significantly, it also clouds the actual relationship between local government and society and renders the continuation, much less the rationalization, of formally illicit practices incomprehensible. Along these same lines, I also suggest that the portrayal of yamen corruption provided by elite and official sources should itself be made subject to interrogation. Failure to do so inevitably privileges the normative value of elite standards and formal administrative structure and thus blinds us to the essential role played by the informal, extralegal realm of practice. It also prevents us from seeing the ways in which the morally embroidered image of yamen corruption was very much a structured portrayal, based upon and articulated through Confucian discourse. Insofar as that discourse was used to help maintain a particular social and political hierarchy, images of corruption must also be seen as resources utilized in the defense of specific interests and power structures. This does not mean that I am adopting an entirely materialistic view of the role of ideology or ideologically driven discourse. Although such discourse was at times used consciously by certain individuals as a tool to achieve specific ends, ideology needs to be taken much more seriously than a purely materialist approach would suggest. The effectiveness of ideological discourse as a resource in any given interaction depended above all on the degree to which it was accepted as reflective of broader cultural perceptions of what constituted a just society. That such ideologically based definitions of the proper order of things tended to support a particular pattern of dominance and was most often articulated by the privileged elements of the sociopolitical order does not lessen the influence of those definitions in shaping cultural values and expectations at either end of the socioeconomic continuum.

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In other words, ideological values played a critical role in structuring an individual’s perceptions of the social world, his place within that world, and what he saw as the realm of the possible. In contrast to many materialist interpretations of ideology, there is no basis here for an a priori assumption on the part of the historian that the articulation and use of these values in any given instance was necessarily disingenuous or used as a cover for a somehow more real or genuine intent (Bloch 1975, 2). Neither can we assume that lessprivileged members of society did not at times interpret and use elements of these same perceptual categories in creative ways to claim a certain degree of legitimacy and prestige for themselves and their occupations or that these claims were in any way less earnest than those made by social and political elites. In the following chapters, I thus consider portrayals of yamen corruption not as strictly factual accounts, but rather as discursive strategies drawing upon orthodox Confucian concepts. In this light, we will see how stereotypic images were frequently employed as a method of character assassination by clerks and runners themselves in the course of intrayamen disputes. More significantly, we will see that in the process of utilizing these images, yamen employees appropriated elements of Confucian orthodoxy in order to establish their own sets of internalized norms and standards. In this manner a formally illicit stratum of administrative personnel could frame their frequently illegal practices as an honorable occupation and positive contribution to local government and society.

Ba County in the Nineteenth Century Ba County was, and still is, located at the confluence of the Jialing and Yangzi Rivers, in the mountains just off the southeastern edge of the central Sichuan basin. During the Qing dynasty, the county included the city of Chongqing, which served as the county seat (shoushi) as well as that of the Chongqing prefecture (chongqingfu) and the East Sichuan Circuit (chuandongdao). At the founding of the Qing dynasty, the seventy-two districts (li) into which the county had been administratively subdivided during the Ming were collapsed into a mere four: Xicheng, to the west and northwest of Chongqing; Juyi, to the south; Huaishi, to the east and southeast; and Jiangbei, across the Jialing River to the north. Shortly thereafter, these four districts were again divided into twelve subdistricts, also referred to as li. The final change to the administrative boundaries

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within the county came in QL 24 (1759), when the district of Jiangbei was established as a separate jurisdiction as a subprefecture (ting). The remaining three districts (and ten subdistricts) that then comprised Ba County had a total area of slightly more than 3,300 square kilometers (Wei 1991, 393). Officially recognized as an “important post” (yaoque) by the central government, the county carried three of the four criteria used to rate counties throughout the empire: “Frequented,” a center of communication and commerce (chong); “Difficult,” with a great deal of official business (fan); and “Troublesome,” with a violent and crime-prone population (nan) (Zhou Xun 1986, 82).5 Like much of central and southeastern Sichuan, Ba County was a region of rapid social and economic change in the nineteenth century. The county’s population, for example, more than quadrupled during the course of the century, from 218,000 in 1812 to 990,500 in 1910, an increase of roughly 350 percent (Wei 1991, 395). This remarkable growth was fueled primarily by the continuation of in-migration from land-hungry areas of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangdong Provinces that had begun in the eighteenth century. By the Jiaqing period (1796–1821), extraprovincial immigrants accounted for nearly 85 percent of the county’s population (Wei 1991, 383). Throughout the nineteenth century, individuals and families seeking land and refuge from war and natural disasters continued to pour into Ba County. But if many of these nineteenth-century immigrants came looking for land, then what they found upon arrival was a mountainous region where available arable land was already under considerable pressure. In the Yongzheng period (1723–1736), the ratio of arable land to population in Chongqing prefecture as a whole had stood at approximately 20.8 mou per capita. By 1812, resettlement of the region had reduced this ratio to 4.9 mou. By the beginning of the Guangxu reign, continued population growth had shrunk the ratio still further to a mere 1.7 mou per capita, well below the 4 mou that demographer Wang Di has estimated as the minimum required for a sustainable livelihood (cited in Wei 1991, 396). In addition to the staple crops of rice and corn, many households therefore depended on the handicraft production of cotton cloth along with the cashcropping of opium and the illicit production and sale of salt. However, with the notable exception of opium shipped out of Chongqing for distribution in cities along the Yangzi River, there was relatively

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little exchange between the city and its rural hinterland until it was forcibly opened as a treaty port in 1891 (Zelin 1986). Economic and social life in the countryside centered instead on more than eighty periodic market towns (chang), around which were scattered nucleated settlements of one or several households, whose occupants largely worked the land as tenants (Wang Di 1993, 133–39). As in other areas of the empire, population pressure and land hunger brought an escalating degree of social unrest to Ba County in the nineteenth century. Beginning in 1796, White Lotus and other sectarian groups took up arms in association with the sworn brotherhood known as the Guolu, whose predatory banditry had plagued the region since at least the early Qianlong reign (1736–1796) (Kuhn and Mann-Jones 1978, 140). Although the rebellion was quelled by 1804, the Guolu continued to carry out periodic raids on market towns throughout the nineteenth century (A. Liu 1985; Wang Di 1993, 537–43). Just as the Guolu used the proximity of the provincial borders with Guizhou and Yunnan to evade arrest, so, too, did bandits and rebels originating in those provinces occasionally cross over into the area around Ba County. In the spring of 1860, for example, an uprising led by Yunnanese peasants Li Yonghe and Lan Dashun entered the region and began to lay siege to several cities in areas neighboring Ba County (BXZXZ 968). The situation was compounded two years later when Taiping General Shi Dakai launched an offensive into southeast Sichuan from Guizhou (BXZXZ 970; Li Runcong et al. 1985, 87–89). Although both groups were eventually repelled with the aid of gentry-led militia units, the region remained a locus of secret society and bandit activity for the remainder of the dynasty. The dramatic growth of Ba County in the nineteenth century was fueled above all by the increasing importance of Chongqing as an administrative center, a regional transportation hub, and the primary transshipment point for interprovincial trade on the Yangzi River (Wei 1991, Chaps. 2, 5). In the late Ming dynasty, Chongqing had consisted of only eight wards (fang) and two suburban districts (xiang). By the mid-eighteenth century, the city wall contained twenty-nine wards surrounded by twenty-one suburban districts. Along with its growing size, the expanding commercial economy of Chongqing naturally brought with it a large influx of merchants, traders, brokers, bankers, moneylenders, and shop owners from other regions of the empire. In the early nineteenth century, the county

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yamen listed no fewer than 109 extraprovincial merchant guilds and native place associations, the membership of which continued to expand throughout the following decades (Wei 1991, 409). As a rapidly developing urban center, the city also attracted large numbers of laborers and urban poor. These were the dock workers, boat trackers, porters and sedan-chair bearers, peddlers, and beggars, as well as the altogether destitute people occupying the ramshackle sheds clustered along the city wall and riverbanks. Among these underclasses existed a thriving world of secret society and criminal activity dominated by the Elder Brother Society (gelaohui, paoge). Appearing at midcentury as an urban offshoot of the Guolu bandit gangs, the society developed its own distinctive organization and ritual practices and soon took control over most of the transport labor on the Yangzi River as well as brothels, gambling halls, opium dens, and protection rackets throughout the city. By the end of the Qing dynasty, there were at least five society halls (tang) in the city, with an active membership of more than 40,000 (A. Liu 1985; Wei 1991, 426–27). Prior to the late nineteenth century, there was little foreign presence in the county. French Catholic missionaries had succeeded in establishing a church in Chongqing as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, but there was little expansion of such activity for the next 150 years. Following the Treaty of Tianjin in 1860, however, Catholic and Protestant missionaries began work in earnest under the protection of their respective governments. Relations between the missionaries and the native population, however, were seldom tranquil. Chongqing prefecture was, in fact, widely described as a center of virulent antiforeign, and particularly anti-Christian, sentiment. The antipathy toward missionaries was dramatically demonstrated by a series of riots beginning in 1863, when Chongqing residents set fire to a Catholic church that had been built on the grounds of a local temple that had served as the headquarters for the county’s baojia militia units. In 1876, a mob of several thousand, inspired by a similar riot in neighboring Linshui County, attacked and burned churches and a mission hospital across the river from Chongqing in Jiangbei. Yet another riot broke out in 1886, this time in response to the construction of a church by American missionaries on a mountain overlooking the city. Once again, the church was razed and the mission grounds attacked by a mob wielding knives and clubs. When the riot was finally quelled by local troops, twelve missionaries and parishioners were dead with another twenty-

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two mortally wounded (Zhou Yong 1989, 148–53; Li Runcong et al. 1985, 110–22). With the forced establishment of Chongqing as a treaty port in 1891, economic activity and foreign presence increased. At this point commercial expansion began for the first time to penetrate the previously isolated countryside. There is no evidence, however, that any of this resulted in a lessening of banditry, smuggling, or social conflict within the county. Relations between Chinese and foreign residents in particular remained strained. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, there was in fact an increase in the frequency of reports concerning attacks made upon Westerners in the county. Under threat of reprisal from Western powers, the central government responded by making the Ba County yamen responsible for the protection of all foreign residents and their property. The combination of these elements—administrative importance, a burgeoning and diversified population, expanding trade, criminal activity, and foreign presence—made Ba County a particularly hard assignment for magistrates. The difficulty of the post was reflected in the frequency with which Ba County magistrates failed to complete the standard three-year term of assignment. Between XF 2 (1852) and GX 25 (1899), for example, the post was held by no fewer than thirty-three individuals, with many serving only a few months (BXZXZ 369–70).6 But if these features make Ba County unique in some respects, they also make the county an inviting object of study for reasons quite apart from the survival of the Ba County government archives. To begin with, the sheer volume of administrative work for which the county yamen was responsible required resources of funding, manpower, and expertise far beyond those provided by official statutes and quotas. While to some degree this was true for nearly all counties in the empire, in the case of Ba County the response to this situation is given particular salience by the presence of the Chongqing prefect and the East Sichuan Circuit intendant in the same city, quite literally around the corner from the magistrate’s yamen. In addition to these two superior yamens, as a transportation hub, Chongqing was host to a steady stream of visiting senior officials, many of whom subsequently sent reports as to their impressions of the area and its administrators. The presence of so many senior officials meant that the performance of Ba County magistrates was under more or less constant scrutiny. It also meant that local residents and community leaders

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who were dissatisfied with the magistrate, particularly in regard to matters concerning the yamen staff, could quickly take their grievances directly to higher authorities for redress. Yet as we shall see, the proximity of the prefect and circuit intendant did not prevent clerks and runners in the Ba County yamen from regularly violating central government statutes in their daily activities. The fact that this activity took place under the nose of superior officials indicates, first, the impenetrability of county yamen operations to external control and, second, the degree to which “illicit” practice had thereby been established as standard procedure. Informal yamen practices in areas not graced by so many officials undoubtedly played an even greater role. Thus, while the specifics of yamen operations in Ba County may have been unique in many ways, the extrastatutory and informal nature of those operations, as well as the impact those operations had on local communities, were common to county government throughout China. An examination of the clerks and runners of Ba County can thus provide us with our first intimate look at the inner workings of this long ignored, but critically important segment of late imperial Chinese government. It is to the organization, practices, and lives of these people that I now turn.

c h a p t e r t wo

Clerks

I

n the sixth month of GX 27 (1901), the Empress Dowager Ci Xi issued an edict on the need to put an end to the growing influence of yamen clerks at all levels of government if the thencurrent efforts to rectify administrative abuse were to succeed. “The affairs of all yamens great and small are to be managed personally by the officials in charge,” she insisted. “Clerks will be limited to copying and drafting and under no circumstances should they be allowed to supervise matters on their own authority. . . . The abuses [of clerks] must be eradicated. It is therefore ordered that all yamens, great and small, rigorously dismiss all clerks in excess of the statutory limits set by the Board and so eliminate corruption and pacify the people” (BXDA 6.6.111). Three months later, Ba County magistrate Zhang Feng, then halfway through his three-year term, wrote to the Chongqing prefect, describing the difficulties presented by the Empress Dowager’s edict: According to the regulations, the clerks and runners of county yamens are not to exceed eighty persons. However, due to the increase of public affairs in recent years the statutory quota is insufficient and it has therefore been necessary to employ occasional help on a temporary basis. But it is very difficult to get such people to work well since they are neither properly trained nor officially employed. These temporary clerks have therefore been hired on a permanent basis . . . with their names listed on a separate register. At present the total number of these clerks in all the offices of this yamen is 229. . . . None of these individuals are reported to the Board [of Personnel in Beijing], however, since they are all outside the statutory limits. I have now received orders to dismiss all super-numerary personnel and should, of course, respectfully carry out these orders without delay. But because the

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responsibilities of this yamen are so numerous, with foreign affairs increasing daily, if all such clerks were to be expelled immediately and replaced by temporary help as before, not only would official business be hindered but I am afraid that those expelled would create all manner of difficulties. I have repeatedly scrutinized the duties of this yamen and have determined that the nine offices need a minimum of 100 clerks. It is difficult to report any of this to the Board, however, since it would appear that I am violating the regulations. Therefore, in the formal report to be given to you for transmission to Beijing, I will follow the old rules and report only statutory numbers. The actual circumstances, however, will be appended in a separate report to you only. I do not know if this is to be permitted and I therefore humbly ask your grace to judge. (BXDA 6.6.111)1

In setting out this solution to the dilemma posed by the gap between statutory regulations and the necessities of local administration, Magistrate Zhang touched upon one of the fundamental problems of Qing government and at the same time revealed why we have, until now, known so little about how yamen clerks actually operated. Simply put, those at the top of the administrative hierarchy knew very little about the conditions and practices at the bottom. As Ci Xi’s edict indicates, the Qing central government viewed clerks with a good deal of apprehension and suspicion. Armed with a dangerous degree of literacy, knowledge of the law, and access to the means of administration, yet remaining outside the system of sanction and control imposed on centrally appointed officials such as the county magistrate, clerks were regarded, almost by definition, as rapacious individuals whose self-interest and corruption could be held in check only through the most vigilant supervision. Yet despite Beijing’s perception of yamen clerks as corrupt and venal scoundrels, it was nevertheless recognized that they were functionally indispensable. The central government therefore attempted to minimize the negative influence of these “pernicious” individuals by setting quotas on the number of clerks to be employed and by strictly limiting both their tenure and the amount of authority they were allowed. Such matters, as well as the responsibility of the magistrate for enforcing them, were officially codified in the Collected Statutes of the Qing as well as in the Disciplinary Regulations of the Six Boards.2 As Magistrate Zhang’s letter vividly demonstrates, these statutory regulations often had little to do with actual practice. Because present-day treatments of clerks have for the most part relied on

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just this sort of board-level documentation and formal statutory description, our own knowledge of this stratum of personnel has tended to be restricted to the view from the top of the administrative hierarchy. Consequently, it remains extremely rare to find a reference to clerks in the secondary literature that does not echo the official biases and pejorative language of such sources. Clerical work has thus been described as a socially degraded form of state labor service, while the clerks themselves have been portrayed as coming primarily from marginalized social groups and propertyless classes. Moreover, since clerks were not paid a salary by the state, it has been further assumed that those taking such positions relied on various forms of corruption and illicit activities to provide an income adequate to compensate for the stigma supposedly associated with yamen employment.3 Such blanket assumptions drastically oversimplify the backgrounds and motivations of these individuals. As a result, not only have we shared the Qing central government’s ignorance as to how the county yamen was staffed and operated in practice but also we have been prevented from seeing with any clarity the actual role played by clerks in the Qing administrative system. This chapter will attempt to dispel some of the misconceptions surrounding yamen clerks by focusing on several issues raised by Magistrate Zhang: the organization and numbers of clerks; their length of service; the types of personnel employed; and the socioeconomic background of these individuals. In the process, we will touch upon another issue obliquely raised by Zhang Feng, that of clerical work as a full-time occupation, rather than as a form of temporary labor service.

Organization Administrative Structure Clerks in the Ba County yamen were organized into ten offices (fang): personnel (li); granaries (cang); revenue (hu); rites (li); salt (yan); military (bing); punishments (xing); works (gong); receipts and transmissions (chengfa); and documents (jian, jianshi). Aside from the lateral transmission of documents between them, these ten offices operated independently from one another. Each office occupied its own rooms within the yamen grounds and, except for occasional transfers, most clerks spent the entirety of their yamen careers associated exclusively with a single office.

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With the exception of those in both salt and documents, clerks within each office were subdivided into three divisions (ban). Respectively referred to as the qing (clear), qin (diligent), and shen (cautious) divisions, each division served a rotating three-month shift, after which all documents, files, and seals were turned over to the personnel of the succeeding division.4 Clerks were required to reside within the yamen while on duty, and unwarranted absence from the magistrate’s intermittent roll calls or failure to report for duty was grounds for corporeal punishment and dismissal. The ostensible rationale for this system was succinctly given by Magistrate Zhang in his missive to the Chongqing prefect: “Those off duty are thus allowed free time to pursue their livelihood so that public service does not become a burden” (BXDA 6.6.111). As Zhang’s explanation implies, clerical work was not considered to be an occupation, but rather a type of labor service rendered to the state. This conception is evident in recruitment and appointment documents, as well as in central government regulations, where clerical work is specifically referred to as corvée labor service (gongyi) (Ch’ü 1962, 45 n. 74). The servile status of clerks is also reflected by the inability of clerks to leave their positions in the yamen without the magistrate’s prior consent. And finally, the fact that clerks were not paid for their labor indicates the official assumption that all clerks maintained a “usual” line of work to which they would return following their term of service. Leaving aside such stated concerns to alleviate the onerous nature of state labor service, the system had the more practical intent of preventing clerks from becoming a permanently employed, economically dependent, and thereby more thoroughly entrenched group. But in this, as in so many other areas of yamen operations, practice ran somewhat counter to official intentions. Although not paid by the state, clerks did in fact derive a regular income from their work, with the result that many of them regarded yamen employment as their main source of income as well as their primary occupation. Functions and Duties The Qing system’s lack of formal separation between the judicial and administrative functions of government has been well documented by a number of scholars (e.g., Ch’ü 1962, 15–18; van der Sprenkel 1962, 43, 64–65; Watt 1972, 11–22). Attention to this feature of imperial government at the county level has for the most

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part focused on the magistrate’s combined role as both judge and chief administrative officer for the county. What has been less well noted is that this same conflation of function extended to the duties of the various clerical offices within the yamen. As stated in standard appointment papers, yamen clerks were employed for the purposes of “copying and composing documents, the management of public affairs, and the processing of all legal cases.” Although each office was responsible for both administrative and judicial functions, in terms of office routine the two types of labor remained distinct. The distinction was not based on considerations of efficiency, since the same individuals performed both types of duties, but was instead determined by the economics of yamen employment. The bulk of the yamen’s clerical workload was made up of various administrative tasks (chaiwu) such as the copying, filing, and transmission of routine documents, the maintenance of all registers and records, and numerous tasks specific to particular office (see Appendix A). Legal casework (ban’an), on the other hand, entailed the processing of any legal dispute or criminal prosecution deemed to be within the jurisdiction of a given office.5 Casework included the preparation and presentation of petitions from litigants, investigations of the circumstances surrounding disputes and criminal acts, the issuance of summons and warrants, the recording of testimony heard before the magistrate, the custody of stolen goods, and the collection and transference of penalties ordered by the court. The central importance of legal casework stemmed from the fact that unlike administrative duties, which carried little or no economic return, casework involved the collection of fees from all the principals in legal disputes and criminal cases. Such fees not only constituted the primary source of income for individual clerks, they also supplied a major portion of any office’s basic operating budget. Since case fees were often collected beyond customarily sanctioned levels, the control of legal case files also provided opportunities for some of the most lucrative forms of abuse and corruption. Because of this pecuniary aspect, legal casework served as the indispensable basis for most clerical operations, staffing, and methods of organization within the Ba County yamen. In theory, a clerk was not to be assigned a legal case until he had performed one or more administrative tasks (youchai caiyou’an). Furthermore, assignments were to be made on a rotating basis so as to provide all clerks in a given office with equal access to casework and income. In practice, however, the assignment and handling of

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legal cases remained an extremely contentious issue. Despite repeated admonitions from successive magistrates to follow the established procedures of assignment, arguments concerning jurisdictional rights over cases continued to be the most common basis for factionalization and disputes both between and within offices.

Personnel Beyond the provisions made for “assistant clerks” (bangshu) to be hired on a temporary basis, neither the Collected Statutes nor the Disciplinary Regulations of the Six Boards made any distinction among clerks on the basis of type, rank, or function. Regarded by the central government as an undifferentiated pool of labor, all clerks working in the county yamen were expected to abide by the standards laid out by these regulations.6 But as Magistrate Zhang Feng pointed out to the Chongqing prefect, the burdens of administration in the nineteenth century required the employment of personnel well beyond the formal quotas set by the Board of Personnel in Beijing. Moreover, due to the technical nature of clerical work and the consequent need for training, the provisions for the hiring of temporary workers were simply inadequate. If a magistrate were to meet the demands of his post, compromises had to be made to allow for the training and long-term employment of extrastatutory personnel. Within this body of personnel there developed a systematic division of labor, rank, and authority in which the statutes governing quotas, registration, and tenure were applied to only a small group of officially reported and licensed clerks, whose positions had, in the meantime, become much more specialized and privileged than intended by the formal system. Beyond the quotas, and thus beyond the reach of central government regulations, was a much larger body of both informally registered and altogether unregistered clerks. Although technically illegal, it was this level of personnel that carried out most clerical operations in the yamen. Head Clerks The statutory quota for yamen clerks in Ba County was made up of thirteen or fourteen head clerks (dianli, lishu),7 each of whom supervised one or more divisions within a single office.8 The Disciplinary Regulations stipulated that these positions were to be filled by commoners (liangmin) with “clean family backgrounds” (shenjia qingbai) of at least 20 sui 9 who had not previously served in the ya-

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37

men (CFZL 16:1a). Head clerks served for a period of five years, after which they were barred from further service in the yamen.10 Ideally, then, head clerks were to be drawn from local tax-paying families, serve a short period, and then return to their previous occupation. Yet despite this effort to prevent entrenchment by limiting the duration of yamen service, in practice head clerks tended to come from the ranks of those already serving in the yamen. When a head clerkship was made vacant by death, dismissal, or retirement, the magistrate posted a notice at the yamen gates announcing the position and inviting any regular clerk (jingshu, see below) with “a pure heart and good calligraphy who is willing to serve” to proceed to the Office of Appointments. There the candidate gave his age, residence, the names of three generations of patrilineal ancestors, and a declaration that he had not committed any infractions while serving in the yamen. This statement, along with a guarantee of mutual responsibility (baozhuang) from several incumbent head clerks vouching for the candidate’s moral character and technical expertise, was submitted to the magistrate for approval. Following appointment and investiture with a seal of position by the magistrate, the new head clerk was then required to make a personal appearance within one month before the financial commissioner (buzheng shisi) in the provincial capital of Chengdu. Here, the new head clerk was formally granted a license (zhizhao), which was then registered with the Board of Personnel (libu) in Beijing. Failure to make the trip to Chengdu within the allotted period time was regarded as an attempt to illegally extend tenure and thus constituted grounds for immediate dismissal and permanent expulsion from the yamen. Evidence indicates that provincial officials in Sichuan took these regulations quite seriously. Between 1884 and 1899, for example, successive financial commissioners issued an average of eleven directives per year to Ba County magistrates demanding the personal appearance of recently appointed head clerks and threatening action against the magistrate if the clerk in question did not comply immediately (BXDA 6.6.242; 6.6.244; 6.6.255; 6.6.268). The position of head clerk was one of substantial power and authority within the yamen. The head clerk supervised the assignment of administrative duties and legal casework as well as the disbursal of all legal case fees within his division. In this, he was customarily entitled to a higher percentage of cases and fees than were his subordinates (BXDA 6.6.523; 6.6.587). The head clerk also had

38

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the authority to fill vacancies in his division by sponsoring the recruitment of additional clerks. In the case of infractions by subordinates, the head clerk had the power to discipline the errant clerk and record the transgression in the clerk’s file or, for more serious offenses, petition the magistrate for formal dismissal. Although they were invested with a good deal of power, head clerks were also in a position of considerable liability. To begin with, they were financially responsible for the maintenance and repair of the divisional offices as well as for the operating costs of their respective divisions while on duty. In the case of the revenue office, head clerks were also responsible for the taxes to be turned over to the magistrate and were expected to make up any discrepancies between the quota and collected amounts. In addition, head clerks were required to scrutinize the office’s personnel registers upon assuming position and to expel any unauthorized persons working in the division. Finally, the head clerk was ultimately responsible for the actions of all subordinates and was subject to punishment and dismissal if he was found to have been lax in his supervision or to have assigned an “inappropriate” individual to a task (paibutuoren) (BXDA 6.6.280; 6.6.552). If, however, a head clerk managed to finish his five-year term with no recorded infractions, then he became eligible to take part in special examinations held annually in the provincial capital. Success in this examination entitled the former yamen clerk to both official insignia and assignment by the Board of Personnel to a range of low-ranking posts (Ch’ü 1962, 44; QHDSL, 75:965).11 Previous scholars have surmised that this statutory limitation on potential rank had the effect of negating these examinations as a means of entering official service in the Qing dynasty (Watt 1972, 143). By the mid-nineteenth century, formal restrictions were compounded by the increased availability of lower-level degrees for direct purchase, which further reduced a clerk’s chances of ever achieving even a low-ranking office. But even though we have no information as to how many of them actually succeeded in gaining substantive appointment, very rarely did retiring head clerks decline the expense and trouble of application, vetting procedures, and travel to Chengdu to sit for the exam.12 The value of these examinations as a means of status enhancement is reflected as well in the measures taken by the provincial government to both restrict the number of applicants and to eliminate instances of fraud and substitution. In addition to increasingly

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39

elaborate identification procedures, for example, steps were taken to limit the time after retirement during which a head clerk could apply for examination (BXDA 6.6.85; 6.6.463; 6.6.476). The problem, as the provincial treasurer complained in GX 22 (1896), was that whereas in most provinces these examinations were held only every three years, along with the rest of the civil service examinations, in Sichuan they had been administered annually since the beginning of the dynasty by special imperial dispensation. Furthermore, he continued, despite all precautions “out of the seventy-two applicants this last year, only fourteen were actually eligible and out of those only two or three were familiar with proper literary style (wenli). . . . Such numbers make it difficult to locate and employ the genuinely talented” (BXDA 6.6.471). In addition to ordering a more vigorous enforcement of the regulations guarding against fraud, the treasurer went on to direct that clerical exams be limited to every three years to reduce the number of applicants. This attempt at restricting clerical access to degree-holding status apparently failed, however, since retiring head clerks from Ba County continued to request and receive permission to participate in exams on an annual basis. Regular Clerks The main cadre of clerical personnel in the Ba County yamen was composed not of the statutorily legitimate head clerks, but rather of a much larger group I refer to as “regular clerks” (jingshu, jingcheng, chengshu), that is, those individuals described by Magistrate Zhang Feng as being employed on a long-term basis in excess of the quotas. Although regular clerks were at times recruited from among commoners outside the yamen, in most cases they came from the office’s “student clerks” (qingshu, xiaoshu). Nomination and guarantorship for a regular clerkship were provided by either an individual head clerk or, more commonly, a combination of head clerks and incumbent regular clerks. Despite the fact that their presence in the yamen was a violation of central government regulations, regular clerks constituted the backbone of the yamen’s clerical staff. As a result, they occupied a distinctly ambiguous position within the local administrative system. On the one hand, regular clerks were informally enrolled in the office registers with the consent of the magistrate, who submitted a list of their names annually to the Chongqing prefect. On the other hand, regular clerks were neither licensed nor was their pres-

40

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ence in the yamen ever reported to Beijing. Officially they did not exist. Operating as they did outside the quota system, regular clerks also tended to operate outside the ambit of the Disciplinary Regulations. The clearest example of this is in the area of tenure. Previous studies of county government in the Qing have taken it for granted that all yamen clerks were subject to the five-year limitation on tenure and that magistrates who allowed clerks to remain beyond this period were liable for punitive sanctions. Basing their work on the Disciplinary Regulations, Ch’ü and Watt, for example, interpreted the extended tenures of many clerks as further evidence of clerical corruption and the inability of local officials to enforce regulations (Ch’ü 1962, 36–37, 53–55; Watt 1972, 142). In the case of Ba County, however, the five-year rule pertained only to head clerks. Regular clerks, on the other hand, enjoyed virtually life-long tenure. Extended tenure, moreover, was frequently cited by clerks defending themselves against charges of malfeasance as proof of loyal and diligent public service. Such citations generally ranged from twenty to thirty years, though tenures of forty or more years were not uncommon (BXDA 6.6.476; 6.6.537; 6.6.552; 6.6.659). As this suggests, instead of being denounced as a manifestation of clerical corruption, long service and the expertise resulting from such service was positively valued by most magistrates. Unless they advanced to a head clerkship or were dismissed for an egregious violation of regulations, regular clerks tended to remain in position indefinitely. Indeed the most common reason for leaving the post was not expulsion, but retirement due to age, infirmity, or death. Yet even age and illness might not be accepted by a magistrate concerned with a shortage of trained personnel. In GX 28 (1902), for example, regular clerk Zhang Pengcheng, then sixty sui, requested retirement due to failing eyesight and frequent illness after more than thirty years in the Office of Revenue. The magistrate refused Zhang’s request on the grounds that the yamen could not do without his experience and knowledge of administrative affairs (BXDA 6.6.286). Unregistered Clerks In addition to the head clerk and regular clerks, each office utilized an indeterminate number of clerks who were not listed on even the unofficial office register. Depending on their function and standing within a given office, these unregistered clerks were called either “student” or “assistant” clerks. However, all unregistered per-

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sonnel could at times be subsumed under the more ambiguous and, as will be explained momentarily, untranslatable rubric of baishu. Student clerks (xiaoshu, qingshu) were brought into the office by either a head or regular clerk under whom they served for the purpose of training in yamen work (xuexi bangong). Although their names were not entered on the rolls, student clerks nevertheless received the magistrate’s permission to enter yamen service under the supervision of their sponsor as stated on affidavits of guarantorship (BXDA 6.6.286). Student clerks generally worked in a specific office for an indefinite length of time in what amounted to a form of apprenticeship. Citations indicate an average period of roughly ten years, after which the student clerk might be enrolled in the office register as a regular clerk upon the submission of a petition of sponsorship to the magistrate, usually from both the head clerk and several regular clerks, attesting to the candidate’s clerical skills and clean record (e.g., BXDA 6.6.295). Assistant clerks (bangshu) were those individuals mentioned by Magistrate Zhang Feng as being hired temporarily for the purpose of aiding registered clerks during periods of heavy work. In GX 19 (1893), for example, the head and five regular clerks in the revenue office petitioned the magistrate with a request to bring in ten assistant clerks to aid in the processing of the season’s tax receipts (BXDA 6.6.263). Like students, assistant clerks were thus acknowledged by the magistrate even if not formally entered onto the rolls. The category of baishu was much less distinct. In fact, the only unambiguous aspect of the word was its negative implications. The meaning of this term must therefore be differentiated on the basis of who was using it. The term baishu itself literally referred to the lack of red seal affixed to official appointment papers. The implication of extralegality was the same as that seen with other uses of the word bai (white), such as baiqi in reference to unregistered deeds. This negative connotation was reinforced by statutes stipulating that the employment of such personnel was punishable by up to one hundred blows of the heavy bamboo and three years of penal servitude (CFZL 16: 4b–5a; DLCY 50.01). From Beijing’s point of view, all clerks beyond the statutory limits, whether locally referred to as regular, student, or assistant clerk, were baishu by virtue of the fact that they were not officially registered with the Board of Personnel and thus lacked the red seal of certification. Given the Qing central government’s perception of all

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yamen employees as being motivated by a desire for personal gain and thus in need of strict control and supervision, official apprehension in regard to a body of unregistered, unidentified, and therefore unaccountable clerks is understandable. As an acting Ba County magistrate complained in GX 8 (1882): “I was shocked upon my arrival here by the number of baishu carrying out public functions. Such persons persistently connive at treason and violations of the law [zuojian fanke] and there is no way to either investigate them or control their activities” (BXDA 6.6.32). Central government concern in this matter was manifested by repeated orders from the Board of Personnel in the Guangxu period to “list and dismiss” all such unauthorized personnel (e.g., BXDA 6.6.69; 6.6.77; 6.6.99; 6.6.106; 6.6.111). Within the yamen, however, use of the term baishu was more restricted. Here it was generally used as a negative appellation referring to any unregistered clerk working in the yamen without the magistrate’s consent. This usage thus distinguished baishu from acknowledged student, assistant, and regular clerks. In GX 8 (1882), for example, Magistrate Han Jiangwu issued orders for all student and assistant clerks currently in the yamen to be reported to him along with the names of both their senior clerk sponsors and those providing guarantees of mutual responsibility. The use and control of these personnel, he stated, was the responsibility of the head clerk in whose division they were employed. But in every office there are nameless baishu working under head clerks for the purpose of engaging in nefarious practices. If these practices are discovered, however, the blame is placed on the baishu alone while the head clerk is left free to claim he had nothing to do with it. Because there is no information available about these baishu and their sponsors, it is simply impossible to eliminate this form of corruption. (CD Neizheng guanli jiangzheng 2)

Aware as they were of the concerns of and pressures upon the magistrate, yamen clerks reserved the term baishu for those instances where they wished to stigmatize the character of a specific individual. If a clerk referred to an unregistered clerk without negative intent, then the subject was called a “student” or “assistant.”13 If, on the other hand, it was desired to place the individual in the worst possible light, in reports of rule violation or requests for dismissal, for example, then a clerk was referred to as a baishu. In this case the term was usually followed by a list of past criminal acts as further evidence of low moral character.

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Thus, in GX 31 (1905) the head of the receipts and transmissions office reported the following situation to the magistrate: The business of this office is not all that pressing at the moment. Therefore I dare not report falsely in regard to your grace’s recent instructions to list all baishu. In this office there is one such baishu, Shi Bingzhong, who was brought in under the previous head clerk. Shi does not understand public affairs and whenever he is assigned a task he shirks responsibility. He is, in fact, unable to even write characters. Furthermore, he frequently goes to the countryside and extorts money from ignorant villagers by threatening them with involvement in criminal cases. . . . As long as he has nothing going on outside he shows up here, but only in the hope of gaining some advantage. . . . The presence in this office of such a one as this should not be allowed. (BXDA 6.6.292)

Since it is highly doubtful that there was in fact only one such unregistered clerk working in receipts and transmissions at the time, the head clerk’s successful petition was more likely motivated by a desire to capitalize on the magistrate’s wariness in order to rid his division of a troublesome or uncooperative individual recruited by the previous head clerk.14 In this context the term baishu might even be used to impugn the character of regular clerks who were actually registered and who had served in the yamen for many years (BXDA 6.6.287; 6.6.623; 6.6.3403). The term, technically denoting a category of personnel, was thus expanded in usage to connote a generalized moral turpitude, thereby becoming part of the rhetorical arsenal used by clerks in disputes with one another. Scribes Finally, in addition to those clerks working within the ten offices, the Ba County yamen employed a small group of scribes (daishu). Invested with a seal of position and provided with regulation-style forms for legal plaints, scribes were responsible for preparing plaints and petitions for submission to the magistrate on behalf of local residents. As a precaution against the subterfuges of litigation brokers, or pettifoggers (songgun),15 all plaints, regardless of whether they came from literate or illiterate individuals, were required to be written and stamped by a yamen scribe. Toward this end, regulation plaint forms included detailed instructions for the scribe along with warnings of severe punishment if the written text was found to be embellished or based on anything other than a transcription of strictly factual accounts as related orally by the litigants themselves. Unlike other yamen clerks, the selection of scribes was based on

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an examination held upon the arrival of any new magistrate. In the early years of the Guangxu period, the Ba County yamen was staffed with between ten to twelve such licensed scribes (zhengqudaishu) and an equal number of assistant scribes (fuqudaishu). If a licensed scribe retired or died in the interim between examinations, the vacancy was to be filled by one of the assistants (BXDA 6.6.282; 6.6.294). As with all other registered clerks, dossiers were kept on each scribe by the yamen’s Office of Personnel. The use of examinations to select scribes meant, at least in theory, that there could be a complete turnover of personnel with each new magistrate, thus reducing the possibility of entrenchment and corruption. However, many magistrates failed to hold these examinations, which resulted in scribes remaining in position for extended periods and eventually coming to regard the post as their primary occupation. Although established as a means of circumventing local litigation brokers and thereby reducing the number of cases brought before the magistrate, yamen scribes were themselves often the object of suspicion and censure. Along with allegations of extortion and illegal fee collection, magistrates, prefects, and provincial officials throughout the Guangxu period complained of collusion and profiteering on the part of scribes, litigation brokers, and corrupt runners and clerks (e.g., BXDA 6.6.294). In addition to issuing frequent proscriptions of such activity, in the closing years of the nineteenth century, magistrates also responded by gradually reducing the number of scribes invested with official seals. Thus, by 1905 the ranks of licensed scribes working in the Ba County yamen had been reduced from twelve to six (BXDA 6.6.294). Three years later, Sichuan Governor-general Zhao Erxun banned the use of yamen scribes altogether, ordering that local residents would henceforth be allowed to submit plaints on their own (BXDA 6.6.83, reprinted in SCDASL 1 (1983), 25–29).

Numbers In the nineteenth century, few issues of local administration were of more concern to central government officials than what they perceived as the uncontrolled proliferation of extrastatutory clerks in county yamens throughout the empire. The Ci Xi edict to which Magistrate Zhang Feng responded in 1901 was but one of a steady stream of directives and memorials identifying the elimination of supernumerary personnel as a critical precondition for administra-

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tive reform (BXDA 6.6.32; 6.6.67; 6.6.69; 6.6.74; 6.6.105; HCJSWXB juan 22; HCJSWB juan 24). Beijing’s view of the situation was cogently expressed in a GX 30 (1904) memorial from the Board of Military Affairs (bingbu): From Guangxu 26 (1900) onward we have received repeated edicts to dismiss [supernumerary] clerks. However, these have been without effect or implementation. It is thus feared that clerks have become even more entrenched, with the result that they cannot be easily removed. It is further feared that magistrates, being unfamiliar with the area in which they serve, will improperly delegate authority to clerks. Because of unfamiliarity, compromises are made; once compromises are made, clerks will not be dismissed; if clerks are not dismissed, abuses cannot be eliminated and administration cannot be improved. . . . The number of clerks has become enormous and it is therefore imperative that the authority to dismiss [supernumerary personnel] be utilized according to law. If we are to rectify administration and get to the source of corruption, we must begin with clerks. (BXDA 6.6.99)

Given the weight of such concern, reinforced by the threat of demotion or dismissal, it is not surprising that local officials such as Zhang Feng utilized a system of dual reporting that could accommodate Beijing’s anxiety while at the same time providing for the needs of local administration. Unfortunately, we do not as yet have access to the actual office registers that might provide a conclusive answer to the question of how many clerks were actually employed in the Ba County yamen. On the other hand, Zhang Feng was by no means the first Ba County magistrate to use the dual reporting system. In addition to the annual personnel reports destined for Beijing, the Ba County archive also contains the drafts of thirteen “unofficial” reports spanning the Guangxu period. It must be stressed, however, that these unofficial reports do not constitute complete accounts of the total number of clerks working in the yamen. Although all of the head clerks were consistently listed, it is not uncommon to find the names of regular clerks in the records of legal cases and intrayamen disputes that were not included in reports to the Chongqing prefect. Unregistered clerks, regardless of whether or not they were acknowledged by the magistrate as students or assistants, were left out of these reports entirely.16 But although the unofficial reports should not be taken as an accurate count of all yamen clerks, it is nevertheless likely that the total number of clerks working in a given office corresponded proportionately to the number of those listed in these reports. We can,

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Figure 1. Number of Registered Clerks in the Ba County Yamen, 1878–1908

therefore, use these figures to gain a sense of the comparative numbers of clerks in each office and the degree of change within the various offices over the course of the Guangxu period. Furthermore, since the reports are based on those clerks enrolled with the magistrate’s consent, their numbers and the increase therein should also reflect something of the magistrates’ perception of the yamen’s manpower requirements. As shown in Figure 1, the picture emerging from these reports is, as those in Beijing suspected, one of a sharp increase in the number of clerks in the last decades of the nineteenth century. From a low of eighty-nine at the beginning of the Guangxu period, already exceeding the statutory quota by seventy-five persons, the number of registered clerks rose to a peak of 272 in GX 22 (1896), after which it declined and eventually leveled off around 200. The anomalous drop in the numbers for 1901 can be read as the result of Magistrate Zhang Feng’s putative attempt to reduce the numbers of clerks in the yamen. The immediate rise in the following year, however, suggests the futility of Zhang’s efforts. Most provincial and central government officials blamed the

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growth of clerical personnel on corruption, entrenchment, and nepotism as well as on a lamentable lack of vigilance on the part of county magistrates. While these factors undoubtedly played a part, attention must also be given to the effects of the local yamen’s increased administrative burden in the second half of the nineteenth century. As Magistrate Zhang explained the situation to the Chongqing prefect in 1901, the reason the number of clerks had expanded so dramatically was simply that the tasks and responsibilities of local administration had also grown. The increased workload of the Ba County yamen can be traced to a number of factors: population growth; the expansion and differentiation of the commercial economy; increases in the collection of supplementary taxes; administrative reforms in both the post-Taiping and post-Boxer periods; and the opening of Chongqing as a treaty port and the subsequent influx of foreigners. The influence of these factors is suggested by the fact that the increase in clerical personnel seen in Figure 1 is accounted for by the growth of only five of the Ba County yamen’s ten offices, as indicated in Table 1.17 If the figures in Table 1 are displayed graphically (omitting the anomalous figures for 1901), three distinct groups emerge, reflecting the relative administrative burdens within the yamen. The first cluster is made up of clerks from the offices of military, personnel, granary, salt, and documents. Not only were the numbers of clerks employed in these offices relatively few but also they remained nearly constant throughout the period. Those offices in the second group—rites, works, and receipts and transmissions— although beginning the period at nearly the same level as those of the first cluster, quickly rose to significantly higher levels. This rise, particularly in that of rites and receipts and transmissions offices, is accounted for by the greater weight of foreign consular affairs following the opening of Chongqing in 1891, for which the office of rites was responsible, as well as by growth in the volume of documents flowing through the yamen during this period. But as Figure 2 reveals, by far the largest increase in personnel occurred in two offices, revenue and punishments, with the latter experiencing an equally precipitate drop at the turn of the century. That these two offices should have initially employed more clerks than the others is, by itself, not particularly surprising. Public security and taxation were, after all, the chief concerns of any county yamen. By the same token, their growth during the Guangxu period can be attributed to an increased stress on these two aspects of

3 4 4 5 6 4 3 4 6 6 4 5 5

1 1 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 2 2 2 5

24 46 77 83 83 88 76 33 88 82 72 69 66

4 16 17 30 29 27 21 11 20 23 25 24 31

3 3 2 4 4 6 2 3 3 4 4 4 4

6 9 7 8 9 6 6 7 9 9 7 9 7

30 38 65 73 84 83 78 32 55 51 40 39 38

Personnel Granary Revenue Rites Salt Military Punishment 8 29 13 21 23 21 24 9 18 10 12 16 20

Works 6 7 16 25 27 29 26 10 26 25 24 19 22

4 5 4 4 4 3 4 3 4 4 4 4 3

Receipt Document

1989, 97.

s o u r c e s : BXDA 6.6.111; 6.6.312; 6.6.319; 6.6.330; 6.6.333; 6.6.334; 6.6.335; 6.6.338; 6.6.341; 6.6.5174; Li Rongzhong

1878 1882 1892 1895 1896 1897 1899 1901 1902 1903 1905 1906 1908

Year

table 1 Number of Clerks in the Ba County Yamen by Office, 1878–1908

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49

Figure 2. Number of Registered Clerks in the Ba County Yamen by Office, 1878–1908

administration in the last decades of the dynasty. As an example, we can look at the influence upon a single office of one feature of Ba County’s changing circumstances in the second half of the nineteenth century: the growth of Chongqing as a port city. Along with an increase in merchants and traders from other areas of China, the expansion of trade in Chongqing brought with it an influx of foreign nationals to the city and its environs, which often led to conflicts with the Chinese native residents of the area. As described earlier, the county had witnessed the eruption of antiChristian riots in 1863, 1877, and again in 1886, during which a number of foreign missionaries were murdered and the offices of foreign businesses destroyed. Although there is no record of subsequent outbreaks of collective violence on this scale after 1886, tension between local residents and foreigners nevertheless remained high (Li Runcong et al. 1985, 107–27). Conflict of this sort confronted the Ba County yamen with an enormous task in regard to the maintenance of public order, a task which could only have become greater with the opening of Chong-

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qing as a treaty port in 1891. As Magistrate Zhang stated in his report to the Chongqing Prefect in 1901: “In the last few years foreign affairs have increased almost daily. The job of protecting foreigners and their property, as well as that of escorting them, is extremely difficult and requires more personnel than allowed by the statutes” (BXDA 6.6.111). Since the Office of Punishments shared responsibility for all matters in connection with foreign affairs with the Office of Rites, the increased presence of foreign nationals such as missionaries, traders, soldiers, and government representatives would have contributed appreciably to the workload and manpower requirements of that office. To this we must add the expansion of opium use, prostitution, and sundry other forms of “criminal activity” that accompanied Chongqing’s explosive rise in population between the midnineteenth century and the end of the dynasty. The decline in the number of punishment clerks, which began around the turn of the century, was caused not by a decrease in workload, but by the redistribution of responsibilities resulting from the New Policy (xinzheng) reforms in public security organs, the most notable of which was the establishment of a separate police bureau (jingchaju) in 1905 (Stapleton 1993). Even with these reforms, however, the number of clerks in the Office of Punishments remained well above those in all other offices except revenue.18 The increases in the yamen workload presented magistrates with the choice of complying with the statutory limits on personnel or violating these statutes in order to meet the demands of the post. The dual reporting system was one response to this problem. What, then, was the effect of this expansion of personnel on the clerks themselves? Despite the apparent creation of new opportunities for employment and income, it seems that the most significant result was to make work in the affected offices even more competitive than it had already been. Competition within clerical offices was rooted in the aforementioned division between administrative tasks, which carried a relatively small economic return, and legal casework, upon which all clerks relied for income. We have no way of estimating the relative increases in these two types of labor. We can, however, imagine two possible scenarios, both of which would have served to increase competition. If administrative duties outran legal cases, then the result would have been a “scissors effect” on the clerks. For while increased ad-

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ministrative duties would have necessitated an influx of personnel, that same influx would have meant a proportionately smaller number of legal cases for each individual clerk. In this case, the only individuals to profit absolutely would have been the head clerks, since their numbers remained nearly constant and since head clerks received a fixed share of all fees and cases. If, on the other hand, legal cases increased at a faster rate than administrative duties, then it would appear that all clerks stood to profit. But this greater opportunity for income would have been severely undercut by the overall increase in the number of clerks. In order to take advantage of new opportunities, incumbent clerks would have had to limit the influx of new clerks or else restrict access to legal cases. In either instance, the result would have been to increase the pressure on available resources within any given office. The response to these circumstances appears to have been twofold. First, the competition for profitable work led to disputes and factionalization within the offices as clerks maneuvered to protect their positions and sources of income. (Clerical disputes and the basis for factionalization will be discussed further in later chapters.) The second response took the form of an attempt to more tightly control office positions and resources by restricting the entrance of new personnel as well as by imposing a set of informal rules governing yamen operations. Before we can fully understand either of these two responses, it is necessary to take a closer look at where clerks themselves came from and why they took on this supposedly degraded form of work in the first place.

Social Background Previous treatments of yamen clerks have for the most part described them as socially marginal individuals forced by economic necessity to seek employment in the yamen. But other than a shared status as commoners (liangmin), there is little evidence to support the supposition of a uniform class or status group identification among the clerks of Ba County; clerks moved within a social milieu of shifting and highly permeable boundaries between status and occupational groups. Although one finds neither degree holders nor members of elite gentry families assuming such positions, assumptions as to near-universal poverty and lack of resources are nevertheless far too categorical. The fact is that not all clerks were poor or without options. In other words, clerks generally chose to be clerks.

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In intrayamen disputes brought before the magistrate, clerks commonly portrayed themselves as frustrated scholars, individuals who “studied without success in youth and thus forsook the classics for public service” (youduweicheng, qiruconggong). This image of the failed literatus opting for a life of public service in the yamen is redolent throughout clerical petitions. The same image is also reinforced by the frequency of self-styled “students” (wensheng, wentong) among those seeking clerical positions as well as by instances of clerks retiring from service to take up teaching positions in Chongqing (BXDA 6.6.268; 6.6.280; 6.6.552). On the basis of this sort of evidence, it is tempting to conclude that yamen clerks came primarily from families with sufficient resources to finance the preparation necessary for the civil service examination but not enough to either purchase a degree outright or to maintain themselves independently once the attempt at attaining degree-holding status had failed or was no longer economically feasible. In the nineteenth century, population pressure and static examination degree quotas created an expanding pool of such literate men who were forced to seek alternative means of livelihood (Kuhn and Mann-Jones 1978, 111). For these families, struggling on the lower economic margins of elite status, clerical employment offered a means of trading literary skills for immediate income. It must be remembered, however, that this evidence derives from self-characterizations used by clerks in communications with the magistrate. Rather than accurately reflecting the social reality of all clerks, they should instead be seen as elements of orthodox political discourse, representations through which clerks sought to validate themselves and their occupation in the eyes of the magistrate. As such, self-descriptions on the part of clerks could be just as misleading as official characterizations. Clerical work was, in fact, but one of several options available to literate men in Ba County. The most obvious alternative in this respect was that of trade and merchant activity in the port city of Chongqing. In GX 32 (1906), for example, a head clerk in the Office of Receipts and Transmissions requested the enrollment of one Zhou Zhaoxing as a student clerk. Following two futile attempts at passing the prefectural examination, Zhou had tried to establish a trading company but was unsuccessful in the endeavor due to a lack of sufficient capital. Only after failing as both an aspiring official and as an entrepreneur did Zhou contact the head clerk, whom he

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knew from his own home district, in order to secure a position in the yamen (BXDA 6.6.295). Another example is that of regular clerk Zhang Pengcheng, mentioned above as having been denied permission to retire from the revenue office. In GX 16 (1890), Zhang, then forty-eight sui and already with nearly twenty years of clerical service, complained that his required residence within the yamen made it difficult to attend to pressing family affairs and accumulated debts. Zhang’s uncle, meanwhile, had offered him work in the uncle’s trading company, presumably as an accountant. Zhang therefore requested and was granted permission to retire. Three years later, with the business now failing, Zhang’s former colleagues in the Office of Revenue requested his readmission on the grounds that the office was short of trained and knowledgeable personnel. The magistrate granted the request, and Zhang resumed his old position, where he remained for the next nine years. In GX 28 (1902) Zhang Pengcheng again requested permission to retire. In addition to failing health and age, Zhang cited the fact that his son had recently opened a hat and glove shop in the city. His son, however, was currently preparing for the civil service exams and so, with little time to devote to his business, had asked his father to manage it for him. This time, as we have seen, the request was refused (BXDA 6.6.257; 6.6.263; 6.6.286). Zhou Zhaoxing and Zhang Pengcheng provide illustrations of how individuals moved between yamen employment and other pursuits as interest and opportunity dictated (see also BXDA 6.6.286; 6.6.289; 6.6.292). Such cases represent essentially either/or choices; one either took a job as a clerk or pursued a career elsewhere. But occupational movement between the Ba County yamen and the world outside the yamen gates was not always as bipolar as this implies. Such interaction, in fact, offered several advantages for both the yamen and individuals, families, or kin groups with business interests. In addition to the requisite degree of literacy and familiarity with accounting and record-keeping procedures, experienced traders and merchants brought to the yamen an expertise in local commercial and financial matters of obvious concern to local administration. For the merchants, traders, and other entrepreneurs themselves, clerical employment provided not only a steady source of revenue that could be used for investment, to secure loans, or to pay off debts but also a source of influence and information to be applied to

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commercial enterprises (e.g., BXDA 6.6.548). As exemplified by the story of the Zhao brothers, yamen employment could also be used by merchants as an avenue to enhanced status within the community. In GX 19 (1893), Zhao Haishan, the owner of an inn located in Chongqing, became the head clerk of the qin division of the punishments office. Five years later, in GX 24 (1898), his younger brother, Zhao Jingru, followed his example and became the head of the qing division in the same office. That same year, however, Zhao Haishan died of illness seven months before the end of his five-year term as head clerk. Zhao Jingru thereupon petitioned the magistrate, stating that his elder brother had left outstanding debts of more than 900 taels as a result of his various business ventures. Unfortunately, the sale of all the furniture from Zhao Haishan’s inn had yielded only 100 taels and creditors were now pressing his widow and three sons for repayment. Since Haishan had not yet completed his term as head clerk when he died, Zhao Jingru suggested that he himself be allowed to take over his brother’s position when the latter’s division rotated on shift the following month. All the money earned would then be applied to the outstanding loans. The magistrate agreed “so as to come to the aid of a widow and her sons” (BXDA 6.6.710). Three years later, in GX 27 (1901), a forty-year veteran clerk of the punishments office who had recently been dismissed by Zhao Jingru, one Wu Haishan, filed a plaint claiming that both the Zhaos, being merchants without sufficient training or knowledge of public affairs, had deviously purchased their positions with no prior service in the yamen and had, since their installment, proceeded to monopolize legal case assignments and other office affairs. Wu also stated that Zhao Jingru had improperly arranged to have one Wang Shangwu, a fellow merchant and trading partner who had been brought into the office several years previously by Zhao Haishan, take over Haishan’s place as head clerk in GX 24 (1898). Finally, Wu further claimed that Zhao Jingru and Wang Shangwu were secret society members who were conspiring to force out qualified clerks in order to replace them with society brothers and business affiliates (BXDA 6.6.621). Unfortunately, Wu’s allegation regarding secret society infiltration of the yamen cannot be verified. But given the prevalence of secret society activity in the city of Chongqing, particularly on the part of the Elder Brother Society (gelaohui), such a claim is at least plausible. On the other hand, the accusation that both the Zhao brothers had purchased their positions is supported by the fact that

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neither name is listed in personnel reports prior to their sudden appearance as head clerks (BXDA 6.6.333; 6.6.335; 6.6.338). This purchase and the subsequent attempt to hoard legal case assignments, rather than the brothers’ merchant background, seems to have rankled Wu Haishan. As we shall see later in this chapter, incumbent clerks such as Wu often regarded the intrusion of yamen outsiders as a threat to their livelihood. In this instance, however, the magistrate was unmoved by Wu’s allegations. Determining that the accusations of the Zhaos’ buying their way into the office, monopolizing cases, and dismissing innocent clerks were products of Wu’s anger over having himself been dismissed, the magistrate allowed the original dismissal to stand and took no further action against Zhao Jingru or Wang Shangwu (BXDA 6.6.621). Both Zhao Jingru and Wang Shangwu completed their terms in GX 29 (1903), whereupon they requested and received permission to participate in the postservice examinations the following year (BXDA 6.6.482). We do not know how the two men fared in the exam or whether either of them succeeded in their attempt to join the lower ranks of officialdom. But the attempt itself, the route chosen for it, and the magistrate’s acquiescence clearly indicate that clerical employment was more than a refuge of last resort for either destitute scholars or unemployed merchants. As the Zhao brothers demonstrate, clerical service could serve as a step up the local status hierarchy as well as a source of revenue that could be used to finance ventures outside the yamen. What, then, was the economic status of clerks and what bearing did that status have on an individual’s decision to seek employment in the yamen? The classic image of yamen clerks left by eighteenthand nineteenth-century sources is that of impoverishment, with such poverty usually cited as a motivating factor in clerical corruption. As the late-eighteenth-century magistrate Yuan Shouding stated in his memoirs, “Those who actually served in office were poor, and since they enjoyed neither remuneration nor title they conducted illegal activities and extorted money from the people in order to support themselves and their families” (qtd. in Ch’ü 1962, 43). The portrayal of ubiquitous poverty among yamen clerks, although certainly not the implication of corruption, is echoed in the self-representations of the clerks themselves. Parallel with the figure of the clerk-as-scholar is that of the clerk-as-poor-scholar (hanru, hanshi). Protestations of poverty and a reliance upon clerical work for subsistence income run throughout the archival record. Take,

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for example, the case of Zeng Zhangling, a head clerk in the documents office who, in GX 20 (1894), was forced to retire due to an alleged negligence in the performance of his duties. The following year, under a new magistrate, the head clerks of eight offices petitioned for his reinstatement: Zeng Zhangling worked in the documents office for over twenty years without blemish to his record. . . . But Zeng’s mother is very old and ill and his family is poor and without property. While in the office, he relied on his work to provide food and clothing. After his retirement [sic, dismissal], he tried to go into trade but didn’t have sufficient capital to succeed. The documents office is currently short of clerks with an intimate knowledge of public affairs. We therefore humbly beseech your grace to have pity and allow Zeng to resume his position. (BXDA 6.6.271)

The magistrate did not allow Zeng to resume his previous position of head clerk since the position had already been filled. He did, however, permit Zeng to return as a regular clerk pending further investigation into the circumstances of his retirement. A similar but more dramatic representation of poverty comes from a group of six former yamen scribes who, in GX 34 (1908), pleaded with Magistrate Zhang Feng’s successor to restore the customary number of scribes following the gradual reduction of their number by previous magistrates. We are all but poor scholars who formerly served as scribes. But when Magistrate Zhang held examinations [in GX 25] we failed to be re-selected and thus had no choice but to become teachers to make a living. Lately, however, all the schools have changed their curriculum and methods and no longer use the old learning so that we now have no means of supporting ourselves. . . . If we could be employed as scribes once again we would be able to earn enough to feed and clothe our families. . . . Our homes are all poor, our parents aged, and we are completely without means of livelihood. We desire only to abide by the old rules. Yet if we are not allowed to become scribes we all fear we will have no alternative but to write unauthorized plaints for people as pettifoggers [songgun] and thus violate the law. Fortunately, your grace’s virtue and benevolence blankets and protects us all and so we humbly beg you to entrust us with official seals so that we might lawfully carry out public duties. (BXDA 6.6.295)

Unfortunately for these casualties of the turn-of-the-century educational reforms, even the threat of their being forced into a life of crime as litigation brokers was not enough to move the magistrate. Although he agreed to investigate the situation, there is no record that any action was ever taken at that time. As indicated previously,

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Sichuan Governor-general Zhao Erxun officially proscribed the use of yamen scribes later that same year. But even if we accept at face value the claims of poverty by men such as Zeng Zhangling and the unemployed scribes, the historical record is much more ambiguous than such representations might imply. To begin with, the Ba County archive yields occasional anecdotal evidence of considerable wealth, such as the DG 6 (1826) description of a head clerk who maintained no fewer than six concubines at his home in the city (BXDA 6.3.8749). In addition, clerical requests for leaves of absence from the yamen indicate that many clerks were not without property or other economic resources. Aside from the need to care for ailing parents, the most common reasons given for requesting leaves were to preside over family events such as births, weddings, and funerals; to perform ceremonies in clan (zu) ancestral halls; to pay off or to collect business debts; or to otherwise attend to family property or business (jiatian, jiaye). Although many of these requests seem to have been intended to impress the magistrate with the filial nature of the clerk in question, the wherewithal to attend to ritual activities and family enterprises does tend to mitigate the image of the totally indigent clerk. The most compelling evidence of clerical economic resources, however, comes from the fact that the position required payment of an “installation fee” (canfei), ranging between an average of 50 silver taels for regular clerks to as high as 1,000 taels or more for head clerks. This does not imply, of course, that all clerks were well-todo. In fact, men seeking clerical employment or advancement within clerical ranks were often forced to borrow money or sell off family property to cover this considerable outlay of cash (BXDA 6.6.548; 6.6.592; 6.6.604). Furthermore, insofar as an individual regarded yamen employment as his primary source of income, loss of position would undoubtedly have imposed serious hardships. Nevertheless it appears that most clerks took these positions in the first place not simply because they were driven to it by poverty but because clerical work itself offered an attractive livelihood. To see all clerks as poor and all of their income as the result of corruption essentially paints them in the colors offered by the Qing state. It also overlooks the possibility that yamen employment may not have been seen by clerks themselves as a last resort or a quick source of cash, but rather as a viable occupation, a career choice predicated upon the reasonable expectation of long tenure and sustainable income. Alongside the characterization of the clerk as social

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outcast, we thus need to consider an alternate image, the clerk as state employee, i.e., the career clerk.

Office Rules The occupational orientation of Ba County clerks is reflected above all in their attempts to bring a degree of rationalization and structure to their work in the absence of any formal body of administrative law issued by the central government. The reason for this absence is quite simple. According to statute, the vast majority of clerks working in the yamen should not have been there in the first place. With no formal regulations governing their work, Ba County clerks formulated their own sub-rosa system of rules and customary practices designed to regulate such matters as recruitment, advancement, and access to economically remunerative assignments, as well as to guard against official scrutiny by providing for internal sanctions against extreme instances of corruption and abuse. The centrality of this system to daily yamen operations is demonstrated by the fact that its various stipulations were regularly cited by clerks in disputes before the magistrate’s bench, where they were usually accepted as a binding and sufficient basis for judgment. Since most magistrates occupied their post for only a brief period of time and were therefore unfamiliar with what actually constituted customary practice, it was extremely rare for any magistrate to question standard procedure in this regard. In effect, this body of regulations constituted a type of informal administrative law created and enforced by the clerks themselves. The specific focus of these rules was generally an individual office. Clerical petitions to the magistrate, for example, usually cite accused clerks for violating not yamen rules, but office, or even more specifically, divisional regulations (fanggui, bangui). Alleged offenses in such petitions occasionally included acts of corruption and malfeasance carried out upon local residents, but far more often they involved breaches of routine office procedure. Petitioning the magistrate, however, was the last step in instances of rule violation. For the most part, such matters were handled internally among office members. Discipline and Dispute Resolution The first step in enforcing regulations or resolving a dispute within a given office was for all those working in the relevant division to

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discuss the matter. If an individual was deemed to have violated customary procedures, he was censured by his colleagues and a record of the incident was entered in his file (see BXDA 6.6.590). Penalties at this level might include the payment of a fine or, more often, the hosting of a banquet attended by the entire staff of the office. But whatever specific measures were taken, if the individual showed contrition and promised to reform his behavior, the matter was usually dropped and he was allowed to remain working in the office. However, if the dispute could not be resolved at this level, if the errant clerk remained unrepentant in the face of repeated warnings, or, conversely, if an individual felt he had been unjustly treated within his own office, the case might be brought before a mediation council composed of the assembled heads of all clerical offices, which, when requested to do so, would meet at the yamen temple to hear the case and render judgment. The location of this council in the yamen temple is significant. Aside from serving as neutral ground in disputes between offices, the temple’s tutelary deity served as a spiritual counterpart or symbolic proxy for the official presence of the magistrate in much the same way as did the City God in temples throughout China (Feuchtwang 1977, 602). Mediation councils assembled within the temple grounds thus lent proceedings a level of sanctity and legitimacy they might not have had elsewhere. All registered clerks enjoyed the right of appeal to these councils. The authority of the assembly, however, was limited to mediation and censure. It did not have the power to expel formally a regular clerk and remove his name from the register, nor could it strip a head clerk of his position. If such measures were deemed necessary by the council, or if a dispute could not be settled at this level, a plaint was lodged with the magistrate. The collective nature of all such disciplinary and dispute resolution procedures is revealed by the fact that only in extraordinary circumstances were documents submitted to the magistrate under a single name.19 Plaints against head clerks, for example, were most often presented by a group of concerned regular clerks from within the office or division. In petitions requesting the dismissal of an incumbent regular clerk, the head clerk making the request would demonstrate intraoffice support for his actions by including the names of several of his subordinates. Not surprisingly, allegations of the misuse or forgery of names in such documents were also extremely common. In responding to these petitions, magistrates tended to follow the

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recommendations of the petitioners themselves. In cases of alleged rule violation and subsequent requests for dismissal, I have seen no examples where the magistrate’s decision included the application of more severe, unrequested sanctions. This is true even in instances where the alleged misdeeds were a clear violation of the statutes of the Qing Code and thus liable for corporal punishment or penal servitude.20 Disputed claims and conflicts among clerks most often centered on the nonpayment of installation fees, the extortion of additional fees by senior clerks, challenges to requested dismissals, and, above all, the monopolization or misappropriation of legal case assignments. In all these cases, the magistrate served as the ultimate arbitrator, the final, rather than first, level of formal appeal. If the circumstances surrounding the dispute were unclear or if the relevant office regulations were not convincingly stated, then the magistrate might order either the mediation council or a specific office, most often the Office of Personnel, to make further investigations. This was generally followed by a hearing before the magistrate’s bench where disputants and witnesses alike presented testimony and evidence. Here again, final adjudication rarely went beyond the requests made by the principals themselves. The consistency with which magistrates stayed within the recommendations of the petitioning parties is quite remarkable. The process of internal discipline and mediation, moreover, was demanded by most magistrates as a prerequisite to any formal hearing. If a case was presented without a clear account of previous attempts at resolution, magistrates usually remanded it to the mediation council with explicit instructions to investigate the matter and for all concerned to abide by the council’s findings without further disturbance. Given the weight of their own workload, magistrates clearly preferred to leave matters of internal discipline up to the clerks themselves. In this sense the magistrate’s attitude toward clerical disputes resembled similar attitudes toward litigation in general, with a marked preference for informal mediation over formal adjudication. By granting clerks a substantial amount of autonomy in the areas of discipline and dispute settlement, magistrates simultaneously conferred a measure of legitimacy upon clerks as an occupational group capable of self-regulation. The following sections will outline standard practice in regard to nomination, appointment, and advancement by examining those

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areas where disputes most commonly occurred. (Similar procedures in the realm of legal case assignment will be taken up later in Chapter 6.) It should be noted at the outset, however, that what we see here are those instances where the system failed, and the magistrate’s authority was therefore required. What we do not see are the far more frequent cases where rules were enforced, discipline meted out, and conflicts resolved without the magistrate’s intervention or knowledge. Nomination and Appointment New clerks in the Ba County yamen usually began their careers as either student or regular clerks. Despite the stipulations of the Disciplinary Regulations, it remained extremely rare for a yamen outsider to assume the position of head clerk without prior clerical service. The ability to secure a position in the yamen as either an assistant, student, or regular clerk required nomination from several incumbent clerks, most notably that of the division’s head clerk. In addition to being self-nominating, yamen clerks also tended to be self-guaranteeing. Central government statutes requiring that all clerks provide guarantees of identity and mutual responsibility from neighbors and family members in their home districts were apparently ignored with impunity by clerks in Ba County; I have discovered no examples in the archival record of such guarantorship being provided by anyone other than incumbent clerks (for statute cited, see CFZL 16:1a). Although enrollment in the office registers as a regular or even student clerk required the magistrate’s approval, it was very rare for a magistrate to question, much less refuse, a nomination. But if the appointment of new clerks was relatively easy to secure vis-à-vis the magistrate, this did not mean that nominations and appointments always went unchallenged within offices themselves. As previously noted, the authority to sponsor recruits belonged primarily to a division’s head clerk. It was also the head clerk who received payment of the recruit’s installation fee. Although these fees were ostensibly to be used to help defray operating expenses, in practice they frequently remained in the hands of the head clerk as a sort of dues paid in return for his sponsorship (see also Shiga 1974, 8; Dai 1979, 638–39). An economic conflict of interest was thus created between division heads and incumbent regular clerks, who often regarded the induction of new people as a potential infringement on their ability to secure income-producing assignments. The

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result was an almost inherent tension, which frequently erupted into open disputes. In GX 21 (1895), for example, granary clerk Shen Kechang and his elder brother, Shen Fanchang, then serving as head of the same office, were accused by regular clerk Liu Ce of fabricating charges in order to have incumbent clerks dismissed, after which the vacant positions would be filled by their own nominees for a fee of 50 taels each. Apparently unimpressed by Liu’s allegations, the magistrate took no action against either of the brothers. Several months later, Shen Fanchang retired from his position as head clerk and was succeeded by brother Shen Kechang, whereupon Liu Ce once again lodged the same set of accusations. This time, however, the magistrate was sufficiently convinced to order an investigation of the charges by the mediation council. Shen Kechang was subsequently dismissed on the grounds of negligence and the improper control of public affairs (BXDA 6.6.270).21 Since in this instance Liu Ce was himself maneuvering to take over as the head of the granary office, it is possible to read these charges as little more than the machinations of a manipulative aspirant to senior position. Yet the frequency of similar allegations in other offices indicates that such practices on the part of head clerks were not uncommon. As the head of one office was reputed to have once boasted, “Getting a clerk dismissed is not a difficult matter. You can always find someone to replace him” (BXDA 6.6.550; see also 6.6.287; 6.6.623; 6.6.630). But head clerks did not necessarily have to eliminate incumbent clerks in order to sponsor new recruits. More often they simply brought the novice in as an unregistered student or assistant clerk. As we might expect, this practice was also cause for resistance from regular clerks, usually in the form of attempts to curtail the head clerk’s ability to recruit additional clerks at will. It is ironic that in these efforts to restrict access to clerical positions, regular clerks invoked the same statute prohibiting the employment of extrastatutory personnel that they themselves were violating. Nevertheless, the most frequent charge brought against head clerks by their subordinates was that of “extrastatutory recruitment” (lanzhao).22 By using a term lifted from the legal code itself, incumbent clerks clearly intended to elicit a sense of correct procedure and propriety despite the equally clear violation of formal statutes. In this, they relied above all on the magistrate’s cognizance of the fact that yamen practices in regard to staffing differed significantly from the

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quotas set forth by Beijing. But if the yamen’s clerical offices required a workforce in excess of statutory provisions, this did not mean that quotas of some sort were dispensed with altogether by the clerks themselves. In order to set an informal limit on the entrance of new personnel, Ba County clerks commonly informed new magistrates of the number of individuals customarily allowed in each office. It was this figure that was referred to in charges of excessive recruitment as well as cited by magistrates in their annual personnel reports to the Chongqing prefect. In these cases, the issue of recruitment was once again linked to the payment of installation fees. Believing it to be a potent source of corruption, the central government had banned the sale or purchase of clerical office in the early Yongzheng period (1723–1736).23 On the surface of things, Ba County clerks appear to have been quite circumspect in regard to these provisions. The archive yields no documented examples, or even allegations, of any incumbent clerk selling his own position to a yamen outsider. Although in practice the installation fees paid by incoming clerks usually remained in the hands of the head clerk as noted above, in theory they were to be applied to the general operating expenses of the division and were thus not acknowledged as a sale price, at least not openly. The fine distinction made by incumbent clerks here, between an acceptable installation fee and the outright sale of position, depended above all on how the fees themselves were characterized. If the installation of a new clerk gave no cause for quarrel within an office, the payment of fees was never questioned, but was instead accepted as an essential element of yamen procedure and administrative financing, recognized as such by magistrates throughout the Guangxu period. If, on the other hand, recruitment involved the unwarranted dismissal of incumbents, as in the case of the Shen brothers, or the intrusion of untrained yamen outsiders in numbers large enough to pose a threat, fee payment was characteristically described in subsequent plaints as a case of “selling public office for private gain” (maigong, rather than canfei), with an unmistakable intimation of corruption and violation of statute. By thus invoking official statutes, clerks could portray an otherwise common yamen practice as a form of venality. The potential of such charges to cut short a head clerk’s tenure thus acted to limit his power to sponsor recruits. It also meant that in most cases recruitment required a certain amount of finesse and consultation between the head of a division and at least a portion of the office’s

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incumbent regular clerks. Although by no means always effective, this sort of consensus helped to guard against the introduction of disruptive individuals and ensure that novice clerks would abide by the office’s customary procedures. Ranking and Advancement When a clerk began service in a given office, his name was entered into that office’s register, a copy of which was kept in the Office of Personnel for use in the magistrate’s roll calls. All names on these registers were ranked on the basis of seniority. Senior clerks customarily enjoyed privileges over their juniors, such as the custody of files and seals when the head clerk took a leave of absence. Such leaves could at times be quite extensive and frequent. Between GX 26 and 29 (1900–1903), for example, the then-current head of personnel took no fewer than twelve leaves of between one and three months each, with all files being turned over to the senior-ranking regular clerk (BXDA 6.6.289; see also 6.6.301; 6.6.302; 6.6.304). In such instances the senior clerk essentially functioned as a head clerk. In addition to substituting for the head clerk, the top one or two ranking clerks were also left in charge of all divisional affairs in the interim between head clerks. Finally, as we shall see in Chapter 3, senior ranking and extended tenure provided a degree of status and authority that could be critical in disputes with junior clerks. Given the importance of intraoffice ranking, it is not surprising that downgrading an individual’s position on the register was a common form of discipline meted out by head clerks, just as allegations of wrongfully doing so were a standard accusation made against divisional heads by their subordinates. In GX 20 (1894), for example, two regular clerks from the Office of Works lodged a plaint accusing the division head, Wu Bingzhong, of bribing the head of personnel to change the position of their names on the office register, from second to tenth and from fifth to seventh respectively. In responding to the charge, Wu Bingzhong explained that the two clerks had been found guilty of multiple violations of office rules by the previous head clerk, who had leniently chosen to discipline them with a demotion of rank, rather than with a report to the magistrate. The magistrate accepted Wu’s explanation and the matter was dropped (BXDA 6.6.269). The most contentious issue in regard to advancement however, was that of access to the position of head clerk itself. Controlling as he did the assignment of cases, the disbursal of fees, the disciplining

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of subordinate clerks, and the recruitment of new clerks, the head clerk’s position was one of substantial power. Even if a given clerk with senior ranking did not himself wish to become a head clerk, since his employment in the yamen would thus be terminated within five years, the succession of a hostile or unfamiliar individual could have an adverse and possibly devastating effect on his income and career. A good example of the danger to incumbent regular clerks in this respect comes from disputes concerning the fees paid by newly installed head clerks. Like regular clerks, head clerks paid an installation fee (canfei) upon assuming the position. The installation fee for head clerks was substantially higher than that for regular clerks, generally ranging anywhere between 100 to 1,000 silver taels depending on the specific office. In contrast to the installation fees of regular clerks, which remained within the division, that of head clerks was paid to the Office of Personnel, from whence it was to be applied to the general administrative budget of the entire yamen.24 In addition to the installation fee head clerks were also required to front (dian) a fixed sum of money for divisional operations and office repairs. Unlike the installation fee, however, this sum was to be repaid when a head clerk left office by means of a “circulating fee” (liutanyin, tanfei) collected from the incoming head clerk. This fee was paid regardless of whether the outgoing divisional head had been dismissed or had simply reached the end of his term. In cases where an incumbent head clerk died in office, the sum was to be paid to his immediate family members (e.g., BXDA 6.6.272; 6.6.587; 6.6.604; 6.6.710). Although the head clerk was also expected to front any subsequent operating costs beyond this amount, in such cases he was entitled to recoup the amount by collecting an additional fee from all the clerks in his division or by withholding a portion of case fees. Customarily, the responsibility for paying these various fees and operating expenses was strictly separated; regular clerks were not required to reimburse incoming divisional heads for the cost of their installation. Nevertheless, head clerks occasionally used their new authority in attempts to force regular clerks to cover the often considerable expense of their own installation and circulating fees under the rubric of operating expenses. In GX 16 (1890), a regular clerk in the works office, He Yingfu, lodged a plaint stating that he had paid 90 taels as his own installation fee when he began working in the office under a previous head clerk. When this head clerk had retired in GX 14 (1888), he was

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replaced by one Zeng Weicheng. Upon assuming office, however, Zeng had insisted that his own installation fee of 1,000 taels should be treated as an operating expense for which he was entitled to claim reimbursement. Zeng therefore demanded 50 taels from each of the division’s twenty regular clerks and threatened to dismiss anyone who refused. But whatever Zeng Weicheng called it, He Yingfu claimed, he was not actually applying any of this money to office operations: Zeng kept all this money for himself. When I threatened to report him for this he had no choice and reluctantly returned my money. But when I reported for the roll call last month, I discovered that my name had been stricken from the register. I asked others to inquire about this and was told that if I wanted to return I had only to pay the 50 taels. I am poor and since my studies were unsuccessful I rely on work in the office to provide food and clothing for my family. . . . This matter of forcing clerks to pay for his own [Zeng’s] installation fee is clearly something that cannot be tolerated. (BXDA 6.6.550)

Remarkably, the magistrate ordered Zeng Weicheng himself to report on the veracity of He Yingfu’s claims, whereupon Zeng duly presented a list of alleged misdeeds by He Yingfu justifying his dismissal. The magistrate was satisfied and formally expelled He from the yamen. But later that same month a similar charge was brought against Zeng Weicheng by yet another dismissed clerk, Wu Fuchen. Wu Fuchen had been dismissed by Zeng shortly after the latter’s succession to the head clerkship for allegedly arguing over case assignments. Wu had, at the time, petitioned the incumbent magistrate for a hearing on the matter but had been refused. Now, under a new magistrate, he again accused Zeng Weicheng: When Zeng took over he forced me and others to pay an “assistance fee” [bangfei] of 50 taels to cover the cost of his installation fee. The other clerks, being well off and fearing dismissal if they did not comply, paid Zeng. But I am poor and so could not pay. . . . Now Zeng says that if I give him the 50 taels I can return to the office. . . . Zeng is clearly extorting money to pay for his installation fee. Furthermore, Zeng has dismissed no fewer than ten clerks who did not pay and has replaced them with his son, nephew, and other family members. To these outsiders he gives office business that should rightfully serve as the livelihood of honest clerks. (BXDA 6.6.550)

The evident use of kinship networks to control office affairs will be examined in Chapter 3. At this point, however, it is sufficient to note that Wu Yinfu’s attempt at reinstatement failed, although the

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magistrate did order a separate investigation by the personnel office into the allegations of extortion. It would appear, however, that Zeng Weicheng survived the investigation since he did not retire from his post until his term finished three years later. Faced with the threat of such strong-arm tactics on the part of head clerks, it is understandable that regular clerks should have attempted to limit access to this powerful position to fellow clerks from the same office or, better still, the same division, who would most likely be amenable to their interests. In this, Ba County clerks differed markedly from those in other regions of China, where such positions were apparently passed on from one family member to the next. In Taiwan, for example, the inheritability of clerkships was so entrenched that they frequently appeared in family partition documents (fenjiadan), where the position was matched against other items of family property (Dai 1979, 641; see also Watt 1972, 142; Huang Liuhung 1984, 108; Naquin 1976, 72–73).25 In Ba County, such inheritance was extremely rare. Although family members did occasionally succeed one another to head clerkships, in most instances the successor had already served for some time as a regular clerk. The opposition of Ba County clerks to yamen outsiders is evident in the frequent charges of fraud and improper assumption of office (mengcan) lodged against head clerks, most often by regular clerks but at times by the heads of other offices as well. Such charges usually involved allegations of bribing other clerks for support or sponsorship, conspiracy, and factional activity, or the outright forgery of nomination documents. This antipathy to outsiders is well illustrated in clerical attempts to dictate the criteria for head clerk appointment under the guise of customary procedure. As described above, when a head clerkship became vacant the magistrate posted a notice inviting all qualified regular clerks from any office in the yamen to apply. But, as also noted above, the Disciplinary Regulations themselves specifically stipulated that clerical positions were to be filled by those who had not previously served. In Ba County it was thus not unknown for outsiders to obtain the position of head clerk with no prior yamen experience. This was, in fact, the only technically legal way to fill the post. Despite its formal legality, however, the appointment of yamen outsiders was frequently challenged by incumbent regular clerks. The potential conflict posed by this contradiction between statute and customary practice is seen in a petition from nine regular clerks in the qin division of the revenue office in GX 32 (1906):

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The head clerks of our three divisions have always shared in the handling of public matters. Those with little skill or knowledge, however, bring in their followers and family from the outside, people who care for nothing but profit. . . . When this division’s head clerk, Zhou Tingyang, retired, he was replaced by Zhou Yaoxian (unrelated), who unfortunately died in office. Now we have heard that someone by the name of Chen is to take over. We spoke to this Chen and he stated that he is from Changsheng village, where he owns a medicine shop. He has no experience in public affairs and no one in the office knows him. How is it possible for him to supervise the complex operations of this office? . . . At present the qin division has two or three regular clerks who have been here for many years and are capable of serving. We humbly request that the new head clerk be chosen from among the clerks in this division so as to take advantage of their skill and knowledge and avoid a disruption of public affairs. (BXDA 6.6.292)

In this case, the division’s regular clerks not only rejected the intrusion of an untrained outsider but also they insisted that the selection of a new head clerk be restricted to those regular clerks already serving in their own division. In such instances the issue was one of both the technical competence of the individual in question and also his familiarity and interpersonal relationships within the division. Seven years prior to the above petition, for example, all twenty regular clerks in the revenue office’s qin division requested that the replacement for the retiring head clerk come from their own ranks: According to custom, it is only proper that the head clerk should come from this division. The head clerk serves as the leader of the division and good relations with all clerks are essential for the performance of public duties. We fear now that those from other divisions will attempt to steal the position [feican] and, due to jealousy and suspicion, public affairs will be harmed as they have been in the past. (BXDA 6.6.279)

As in most such petitions, the revenue clerks justified their request by alluding to the potential disruption of administrative affairs should an unfamiliar and possibly antagonistic individual be placed in charge of the division. In this instance, however, the magistrate balked at allowing clerks such a high degree of autonomy. “The authority to appoint [head clerks] rests solely with the magistrate,” he proclaimed. “Selection may be made from outside the division, or if desired, from outside the office altogether. Regular clerks will not be permitted to use such pretexts to control office affairs” (BXDA 6.6.279). In the end, the magistrate did indeed go outside the division for the appointment of the new head clerk, selecting instead a regular clerk from the qing division. Yet regardless of the magistrate’s at-

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tempt to exercise at least some degree of control over such matters, the clerks’ capacity for internal management is indicated by the fact that the new appointee was none other than the brother of one of the clerks who had signed the original petition (BXDA 6.6.335). But not all magistrates were so insistent. Most, in fact, were willing to relinquish even nominal control in the interest of maintaining smooth operations and thus preempting time-consuming quarrels. In GX 20 (1894), for example, ten regular clerks from the punishments office petitioned to further restrict the selection process to those with senior ranking within the office. Head clerk Zhang is now to retire and we fear that someone will try to steal the position [feican]. Under previous magistrates such as Guo [Zhang], the head clerks He Bingzhi, Leng Bingtuan, and Liu Zaitian all obtained office in violation of the rules. Because they were unfamiliar with the duties of the office, mistakes and confusion resulted. . . . The responsibilities of this office are extremely complex and important. Customarily, the office’s two head clerks are selected from the three divisions in order to avoid mistakes and animosity. Except for the above listed ten names, all the clerks now serving in the office are new and inexperienced. If we do not report we fear a novice clerk will conspire with unlawful individuals to gain appointment. We therefore request a proclamation from your grace prohibiting the theft of positions. In cases of head clerk vacancies, the incumbent and the senior clerks will select a replacement from the top three ranking regular clerks. (BXDA 6.6.590)

In this and similar cases, the magistrate complied with the request by issuing directives that in effect formalized what the clerks claimed to have been customary practice. Entered into the written record under the magistrate’s seal, procedures that not only violated central government statutes but actually barred appointments made in accordance with those statutes thus took on the force of sanctioned regulations, to be cited as such in subsequent disputes. Although not all features of the informal rule system of yamen clerks achieved this level of legitimation, the issue of head clerk appointments nevertheless offers an outstanding example of how yamen clerks were able to carve out a remarkable degree of occupational autonomy for themselves.

Legitimizing the Illicit Recognition that yamen clerks regarded their work as a full-time occupation is certainly not new. As early as the Song dynasty, imperial officials noted the ability of clerks to remain in position for what

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appeared to be indefinite periods, a practice regarded by contemporaries as still further evidence of the unlawful and corrupt nature of yamen clerks in general. This view had not changed appreciably by Qing times. Far from being valued for their role in administration, with respect to their numbers, their sources of income, and their career orientation within the yamen, most clerks were seen by central government officials as little more than the illegitimate offspring of administrative abuse and laxity in supervision. Despite the opinions of those in Beijing, however, many of these men had invested years of time and effort in achieving positions of rank and authority in a technically demanding form of employment. Having carved out a livelihood on the basis of their indispensability, yamen clerks sought to safeguard that livelihood not only through the imposition of rationalized procedures but also by claiming a modicum of legitimacy and honor for themselves and their work. There was at least some historical basis for such claims. Before the reforms of the Song dynasty began to link office to degree-holding status, clerical posts in the county yamen had often been taken by lower-level aristocrats as a starting point for an official career. Even as the social status of clerical work plummeted in the Song and Ming dynasties, it was not unusual for lower-degree holders and the sons of local notables to take clerical positions as a means of avoiding other, more onerous forms of labor service. It was not, in fact, until the single-whip tax reforms of the late Ming and early Qing had monetized most forms of labor service and combined it with the land tax that clerical service was formally reduced to the status of servile labor (chaiyi) (Watt 1972, 141–42; QCWXTK 21:5045). Even then, yamen clerks continued to reap a certain degree of symbolic capital from the very nature of their work and training. Unlike that of runners, clerical work required literacy. Yamen clerks could therefore associate themselves with the culturally sanctioned notions of rectitude and moral self-cultivation attached to literacy and literary pursuits in general. This linkage was reinforced by the frequent self-representations of clerks as erstwhile students of the Confucian canon. It was also reflected in the intraoffice divisional appellations of qing, qin, and shen, which, during the Song dynasty, had been a standard inscription in government offices exhorting all within to moral behavior (J. Liu 1967, 339). Such representations of clerical work as an honorable occupation were occasionally supported by the comments of local magistrates

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as well. Liu Heng (1776–1841), who while serving as Ba County magistrate from 1825 to 1827 became renowned for his efforts to eliminate yamen corruption, once explained his opinion of clerks in the following terms: The purpose of a clerk is to assist the magistrate in the execution of public affairs. . . . In my opinion, those who concern themselves with public service and the cultivation of morality as clerks not only uphold the law but also accumulate virtue [jide]. . . . For this reason, if a clerk unintentionally makes mistakes, I am usually lenient and forgiving. . . . Although clerks provide a type of labor service [renyi], they nonetheless have a sense of honor [timian] and are therefore completely different from all classes of runners. If nurtured, their virtue will blossom. (YLYY, 11)26

Liu Heng’s comments are all the more trenchant coming from an official widely noted for his high standards of morality and his critical attitude toward yamen employees in general. Similar portrayals of clerks as virtuous individuals penned by clerks themselves run throughout the Ba County archive. In this context, the protestations of poverty we observed earlier can also be read as claims to moral rectitude. If the corrupt are by definition not poor, then the poor, by extension, cannot be corrupt. In the same manner, allusions to classical studies and long years of public service were aimed at validating the clerk as someone who shared a common set of values and ideals with the magistrate himself. Compare, for example, Liu Heng’s comments with the language used by Cai Hongru, a regular clerk in the Office of Revenue who, in GX 13 (1887), petitioned the magistrate regarding abuses on the part of unregistered baishu: As a youth I studied the classics but though my heart was resolute I did not succeed. Thereafter I still had aspirations to serve and so entered public service in the yamen. Whenever I see those who bully the innocent I become enraged. . . . These people have no respect for the law. They do not realize that being a clerk is a means of improving oneself and that one should therefore serve the public and uphold the law. Nor do they see that the yamen is a place for doing good [zaofu], that one should serve people in order to cultivate oneself. . . . They think only of joining together to further their own desires. Their natures are gluttonous and their evil is such as to anger both men and gods. Heaven cannot tolerate them. All the disasters and plagues of recent years are due to these people. Bandits, wars, floods and fires, all stem from their accumulated abuses. . . . The affairs of this office are very important. Though for twenty years I have performed all the difficult tasks assigned me, my house has but two walls. [But] these scoundrels take all the profitable cases for themselves so that in a short time they all have homes of a thousand rooms. (BXDA 6.6.537)

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Aside from his stated fear of catastrophes and natural disasters triggered by cosmic imbalance and the wrath of Heaven, as a longterm clerk, Cai Hongru was probably motivated more prosaically by the threat to his position and income posed by the uncontrolled intrusion of yamen outsiders. By combining orthodox Confucian rhetoric with popular images of corruption, however, clerks such as Cai attempted to create certain distinctions within their ranks. If the yamen was sometimes the refuge of scoundrels motivated by greed, then it was also the workplace of good and honest men who wished only to engage in a life of public service. It is tempting to dismiss the claims of personal honor on the part of yamen clerks as so much window dressing for intrayamen turf wars and as a cover for otherwise corrupt activity. To deny that Confucian rhetoric was often used for precisely these ends would be, at best, naive. Yet by the same token, to reduce the declared ethics of clerks in all instances to a mere front for somehow more genuine ulterior motives denies the power of dominant ideologies such as Confucianism to shape an individual’s perception of the proper order of things, his own place in that order, and his personal standards of ethical behavior. It also overlooks entirely the role played by ideologically driven discourse in sustaining the extralegal and informal system of political administration in which yamen clerks were engaged. In many respects the highly stylized, even ritualized, rhetorical patterns employed by clerks are similar to those found in all official correspondence, as well as in legal plaints submitted to the magistrate’s bench. In these instances, the illocutionary force of the statement stemmed not from the authority of the speaker as an individual, but rather from the authority of the Confucian values with which the speaker aligned himself. In this sense, the substantive content of the statement, as well as the private motives of the speaker, was relatively insignificant. What mattered was the quality of the statement itself as a performative act reflecting the speaker’s personal conformity with the Confucian ideals and values upon which the imperial social and political orders were based. There is no basis here to suspect that these declarations on the part of yamen clerks were any more, or less, sincere than similar claims to moral rectitude made by either appointed officials or local elites, whose identification with orthodox values was substantiated by degree-holding status or social position. But aside from being beyond our ability to determine, whether or not individual clerks sub-

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jectively embraced these values is beside the point. More important here is that informal and often illegal yamen practice was being framed in terms of administrative orthodoxy. Equally significant in this respect is the frequency with which Ba County magistrates appear to have taken protestations of virtue and honesty into consideration when determining whether to expel, retain, or readmit a clerk to yamen service. Like the system of internally defined and enforced rules and procedures, assertions of moral integrity and occupational honor thus worked their way into the fabric of yamen employment. Yet in appropriating these elements of Confucian discourse, yamen clerks were using them, consciously or otherwise, to underwrite a conception of civil service that contrasted sharply with the legitimizing ideals of the Qing state. As articulated by appointed officials and emperors alike, virtuous government was framed in terms of self-effacing devotion to the transcendent values of moral suasion, personal integrity, and disinterested authority in the form of benevolent paternalism. Yamen clerks, on the other hand, professed these same values, but they took the further and decidedly unorthodox step of linking these values to their own functional utility as a means of justifying income and livelihood. In this sense, the representation of impoverished circumstances as being indicative of moral character carried the implication that if such virtue was to be sustained, then it must be rewarded with monetary compensation. According to this formulation, there was no inherent contradiction between political morality and yamen service as an occupation, between virtue and getting paid for one’s honest labors. If this rationale represented a subversion of orthodox doctrine, then at the local level it was nevertheless used by yamen clerks to transform what was legally defined as temporary labor service rendered unto the state into a highly structured, sustainable, and, to some extent, even professionalized occupation. In applying the term profession to clerical employment in nineteenth-century China, I risk broaching a topic of considerable debate within the social sciences. Among sociologists and other scholars who have confronted the issue, there is remarkably little consensus as to how the term should even be defined, or, for that matter, what criteria should be used in the attempt to reach such a definition.27 Yet even though a precise definition of what constitutes a profession remains problematic, the concept is nevertheless useful as a means of differentiating certain occupations and their associated institu-

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tions and practices from others on the basis of internal organization. In this respect, Howard Vollmer and Donald Mills have proposed that profession itself should be conceptualized as an ideal type, that is, as something that does not exist in reality, with the term professionalization used to describe the process whereby a given occupation develops organizational characteristics in the direction of this abstracted ideal. According to Vollmer and Mills, any occupation can thus be placed on a continuum somewhere between the ideal type and completely disorganized forms of occupational livelihood (Vollmer and Mills 1966, vii–viii, 2). This approach has the advantage of helping us make sense out of several salient features of clerical employment that set it apart from other, less-organized occupations in the late Qing while still recognizing the gap between yamen work and occupations that we might more readily identify as professions. Even by the standards of the most inclusive definition, yamen clerks clearly lacked several elements commonly associated with professionalized occupations: a body of abstract theory, acquired through prior formal study, which serves to guide the actions of practitioners in concrete situations; broad community esteem for the profession and the authority of its members; and the formal establishment of a professional organization with legal rights both to control the activities of members and to defend the interests of the profession. In terms of their position along a scale of professionalization, yamen clerks were thus considerably less advanced than other occupational groups in the Qing, such as the academics and evidential scholars of the lower Yangzi region described by Benjamin Elman (Elman 1984, 88–137).28 On the other hand, yamen clerks did exhibit a number of traits that most scholarship agrees to be basic to the concept of professionalization. These include career orientation; expertise and extended periods of training; a self-awareness of the special nature of the occupation; internally defined standards of competence; restrictions on the entrance of new members and the imposition upon members of occupational norms of behavior; disciplinary procedures designed to protect the interests of the group rather than the individual member; and the formulation of a code of ethics articulating the social utility of the occupation. The issue here is not whether we should regard clerks as a professional group. The key point lies instead in the attempt by clerks to establish their work in the county yamen as a legitimate and sustainable occupation. In this sense, the establishment of the struc-

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tures, practices, disciplinary procedures, and professed ethics described in this chapter can be viewed as an attempt by long-term clerical workers to protect both their livelihood and personal sense of honor by disassociating themselves from popular images of yamen employment as either a form of demeaned labor service or as a locus of corrupt behavior. But if many clerks regarded their work as an honorable occupation, then it was nevertheless an occupation that existed only on the margins of legality and certainly beyond the pale of official recognition. To a remarkable extent, yamen clerks were able to fill the resulting lack of formal regulations governing their work on their own initiative. Yet regardless of the efforts to bring some degree of rationalization to the yamen workplace, these efforts remained firmly within the realm of informal practice. Operating as it did within the interstices of local administrative needs and the imperial center’s inability to maintain effective institutional control, the informal and extrastatutory nature of the system meant that the application of rules and standards remained subject to dispute, alternative interpretations, and the threat of intrusion from narrowly self-seeking interests. In this context, the ability to either sustain a career or seek immediate pecuniary rewards required the use of lessrationalized, particularistic forms of support. It is to this more shadowy and ambiguous realm of yamen practice that I now turn.

chapter three

Families, Friends, and Factions

I

n the eleventh month of GX 25 (1900), the Ba County magistrate received a request from a twenty-six-year veteran of the revenue office, head clerk Mu Zezhou, asking for clearance to participate in the special examination for retired head clerks held annually in Chengdu. Mu’s problem, as he described it, was that several years previously he had been dismissed from his position as head clerk as a result of what he claimed to be spurious charges brought against him by several regular clerks. Although he was eventually cleared of the charges and reinstated, Mu feared the affair might now cast doubt on his eligibility to sit for the examination. He therefore sought to clarify his position by explaining the circumstances of his dismissal to the magistrate. When Magistrate Wang [Zhichang] assumed office, many new clerks entered the yamen and the road to corruption was thus opened. Senior and junior clerks alike looked upon the ten offices as tigers. Everything was thrown into confusion and much damage was done. My own office especially was spoken of as a source of business and profit [chenglisou], forcing me to repeatedly pay bribes and join with others to ensure that public affairs did not suffer. Yet never was I negligent in my duties nor did I ever myself reap profit from corrupt actions. But a cabal [anchuan] led by the illicitly recruited clerk [lanshu] Zhang Jianchen fabricated a case charging me with embezzlement. . . . Because of this injustice I was dismissed, thus leaving my home as an empty vessel. With my wife and son weeping bitterly I could do nothing but sit and await death. (BXDA 6.6.476)

Mu Zezhou’s plea is offered here not for the eloquence of his prose, but for the light it sheds on several key aspects of clerical employment in the Ba County yamen. In Chapter 2, I examined the

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internal organization of yamen clerks and the system of informal rules and standardized procedures by which they operated. Mu’s own career in the yamen reflects something of that system. Entering the Office of Revenue as a student clerk in TZ 12 (1873), Mu had steadily advanced through the ranks until, in GX 20 (1894), he was in a position to take over as the head of his division. Four years later, however, Mu was accused of misappropriating tax receipts by a local resident in conjunction with several of his own subordinate clerks (BXDA 6.6.4465). The matter was presented to the mediation council in accordance to standard practice in such matters. Following its deliberation, the council then submitted a recommendation of formal dismissal to the magistrate, who complied by expelling Mu from the yamen. Several months later, with the arrival of a new magistrate, Mu requested and was granted a review of his case and was subsequently reinstated at his previous position of head clerk. But if Mu Zezhou’s career suggests a rationalization of yamen procedures, his plea also indicates several noteworthy departures from such an organizational pattern. Foremost among these is that the entire system depended not on regular state funding and salaries, but on fees collected from local residents, most often in connection with the processing of legal cases.1 As one of the yamen’s largest clerical offices, the Office of Revenue was in charge of a major portion of these cases. In addition, the office also handled the tabulation and collection of taxes, a responsibility which provided revenue clerks with a further source of fees. These two sources of income lay behind the office’s reputation as a “source of business and profit.” By no means all of this income should be considered as equally the result of corruption and abuse. As I discuss in greater detail in later chapters, many of these formally illicit fees customarily served as the fiscal basis for many local administrative operations as well as a source of livelihood for yamen personnel. Still, given the lack of statutory regulations governing the amount and manner in which fees were collected, it is hardly surprising that individuals at times attempted to monopolize access to this source of revenue for purely private purposes. In this regard, the establishment of office regulations and standardized procedures described in Chapter 2 served to protect the livelihood of long-term clerks from the misappropriation of this critical resource. We must remember, however, that this was an informal, sub-rosa system of administrative practice controlled not by higher political authority so much as by clerks themselves. Mu Zezhou’s own

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twenty-six-year career, for example, was an obvious violation of central government statutes on clerical tenure. Further evidence of autonomous regulation on the part of Ba County clerks is seen in Mu Zezhou’s reference to his primary antagonist in the office as a lanshu, a clerk who had been “illicitly” recruited in excess of the quota. But the quota Mu was citing here was not that stipulated by Beijing, since all but three of the revenue office’s eighty-odd clerks were employed illegally. Mu’s reference was instead to the internally defined limit placed upon office recruitment by incumbent clerks. Clerical autonomy in these matters was due in part to the unfamiliarity of successive magistrates with local procedures and customs. Although Mu Zezhou’s dismissal, appeal, reinstatement, and subsequent request for clearance all took place in the space of less than two years, it involved three separate magistrates. With magistrates coming and going at this rate, it is little wonder that yamen clerks were left largely to their own devices with a bare minimum of input from higher authorities. Yet as central to yamen operations as this extrastatutory system was, its very informality and the lack of external control meant that the definition and application of its regulations and procedures was continually subject to manipulation and disputed interpretations. As Mu’s comments indicate, clerical offices were frequently the site of maneuvering, subterfuge, and false accusations, where individuals had to “pay bribes and join with others” simply to survive. As a result, reliance on established rules and practices alone was never sufficient to guarantee the security of one’s position, advancement, or income. It was also necessary to supplement the system of standardized practices with particularistic alliances and personal bonds with other clerks. Regardless of whether a clerk intended to engage in illicit activities, intraoffice politics demanded that he join, to at least some extent, with his fellow clerks for mutual support and assistance. Heavily influenced as it has been by Weberian frameworks and ideal types, past scholarship on the subject has tended to regard the presence of such particularistic associations in an otherwise rationalized bureaucratic structure as a form of dysfunctional deviance from the institutional norm (e.g., see Metzger 1973, Concl.). Hence we have the negative implications of the term nepotism when used to describe familial connections within bureaucratic organizations. Excoriation of such associations was the attitude taken by most Qing dynasty officials as well. Here, however, the attitude was not

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based on an assumed contradiction between particularism and secular organizational principle, but rather on the belief that particularism violated the moral basis of Confucian government by allowing the intrusion of private interest into the public realm. But while differing in rationale, the perception is much the same in either case; private interests and the personalistic associations born of such interests can only serve as the root of corruption and the dysfunctional abuse of authority. An historian, however, should exercise a good deal of caution before applying either set of standards to the context of local government in the Qing dynasty. If, for example, we take the contradiction between rationalized structures and particularistic behavior as irreducible, then we are in effect privileging a developmental trajectory abstracted from that of Western industrialized nations. Within this framework, we are led by force of logic to search for the reasons why the Qing government failed to actually follow this pattern. If, on the other hand, we adopt the standards implicit in either Confucian ideology or formal statutory structures, then we assume that these standards had the same normative force everywhere and that deviations therefrom were universally regarded as corrupt and abusive. Aside from seeing individual behavior as significant only in its relationship to generalized categories and idealized models, neither of these approaches can help us understand the logic of how things actually worked in the yamen on a sustained basis. Nor can they make sense of the apparently paradoxical presence of both rationalized and particularistic elements operating in tandem. Rather than viewing yamen practice in terms of either a conflict between rationalized and nonrationalized elements or its departure from idealized norms, it is more fruitful to approach the yamen from the perspective of the broader cultural norms of Qing society as a whole. In this respect, the metaphor of the yamen as a village is useful. Like the village, the yamen was home to those considered honorable and trustworthy as well as those generally regarded as dishonest and manipulative. The yamen and village both had internal rules and norms of behavior that, although influenced by generalized ideological values, were in their specificity largely self-determined and usually enforced without recourse to external authority. Like the village, the social world of the yamen was founded less on individuals than on associations between individuals, such as those based on kinship, patronage, common interest, or, at times, simple coercion. Like the village, the yamen also witnessed disputes, both trivial

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and major, which could at times divide family members or former friends and allies. When conflicts spilled over into the public arena, where face and reputation were at stake, disputants frequently used the most vituperative of language to portray each other as being of debased character and low moral standing. Furthermore, although disputes in both village and yamen were most often resolved by mediation or private agreement, they also occasionally resulted in an appearance before the more formal authority of the magistrate. In either case, the continued physical proximity of the disputants to each other often produced long-held animosities founded on the memory of perceived wrongs and insults long since past. It is in this sense of the yamen as a social world, as well as an administrative institution, that I examine several types of particularistic associations in the Ba County yamen. Presented in the context of case studies, I demonstrate how networks of kinship, patronclient ties, and factional alliances were formed and how they interacted with each other to form a complex web of conflict and support. Since information about these networks comes primarily from disputes brought before the magistrate, where quotidian practice had ruptured and attempts at mediation failed, we shall also see how these associations were subject to contradictory portrayals as either honorable alliances or deviously concocted conspiracies. In both instances, the venue and mode of conflict resolution underscore the system of informal rules, norms, and values within which these bonds of personal loyalty and obligation operated.

Kinship Evidence of kinship ties among Ba County clerks comes primarily from applications for the position of head clerk, where candidates were required to list three generations of patrilineal ancestors. Cross checked against each other as well as against the personnel reports for the various offices, these documents can be pieced together to provide a basic outline of the relationships between the divisional heads within the yamen. Being restricted to head clerks, however, these application papers can tell us nothing of the kinship networks between head clerks and their subordinates within a given division or, for that matter, among the subordinates themselves. For this, it is necessary to search for explicit identifications of kinship relations made in individual case files. Combining the two sources, we can begin to sketch out at least a few of the Ba County yamen’s more salient kinship groups.

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In the last half of the nineteenth century, the yamen’s clerical staff included a number of common descent groups. Several of these groups held positions in more than one office. Thus we see the Mus in both personnel and revenue (BXDA 6.6.252; 6.6.270; 6.6.280; 6.6.338; 6.6.341; 6.6.476); the Shens in granary and salt (BXDA 6.6.257; 6.6.263; 6.6.270; 6.6.312; 6.6.331); and the Jins in salt, granary, punishments, and personnel (BXDA 6.6.271; 6.6.272; 6.6.312; 6.6.319; 6.6.331; 6.6.421). For the most part, though, kinship groups tended to focus on a single office, such as the Chens in receipts and transmission (BXDA 6.6.263; 6.6.287; 6.6.292; 6.6.630); the Xus, Zengs, and Chens in the Office of Works (BXDA 6.6.250; 6.6.269; 6.6.319; 6.6.331; 6.6.550; 6.6.587); the Hes in personnel (BXDA 6.6.312; 6.6.548); the Hes (unrelated) in punishments (BXDA 6.6.312; 6.6.319); the Pengs in revenue (BXDA 6.6.319; 6.6.331; 6.6.333); the Lis in military (BXDA 6.6.312; 6.6.319; 6.6.3047; 6.6.3404); and the Zengs in documents (BXDA 6.6.271; 6.6.319; 6.6.331). Kinship networks such as these served a variety of purposes. At the most obvious level, kinship could be instrumental in securing the sponsorship necessary for admission to clerical service. Once in an office, relatives could often be counted on for support if a clerk was engaged in a dispute or found himself the subject of accusation. Kinship could also provide connections with other, unrelated incumbent clerks. From the perspective of a senior clerk, the son, brother, uncle, or in-law of a trusted colleague could usually be counted on as a reliable and nonthreatening addition to the office staff. Finally, to the extent that an office was dominated by a single descent group and its assorted allies, the control of resources was made substantially easier. Yet kinship networks also had several factors working against them. Most importantly, unlike other regions of China, in Ba County there was no customary provision for the direct inheritability of clerical office. Recruitment and advancement to senior positions, though possibly facilitated by kinship, were nevertheless subject to the regulations and procedures described in Chapter 2. The driving force behind the creation and enforcement of these regulations was, of course, the opposition of unrelated incumbent clerks to the monopolization of office resources. In other words, clerks could and often did bring members of their descent group into the yamen, but they had to do so in accordance with accepted office practice; attempts to circumvent these rules were one of the more consistent themes of disputes presented to mediation councils and magistrates alike. The tension between the advantages of and opposition to

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common descent groups in the yamen produced a marked ambiguity in how they were represented. On the one hand, in an occupation where the combination of literacy, knowledge of local conditions, and familiarity with yamen procedures was at a premium, kinship could be presented as providing a ready pool of qualified personnel. In presenting nominees for recruitment as student or regular clerks, for example, sponsors commonly cited the past or current employment of a candidate’s kin as prima facie evidence of requisite skill (e.g., BXDA 6.6.281; 6.6.552). Mention of kinship relations could also carry a sense of moral qualification in addition to technical competency. Thus, in GX 25 (1899), a student clerk was advanced to the position of regular clerk in the salt office on the strength of his brother’s putative reputation and many years of honest service. The same sense of technical and moral pedigree is seen in the case of head clerk Zhang Wucheng, who regularly prefaced his reports and petitions to the magistrate with the declaration that his father and grandfather had both had long, blemish-free careers in the yamen (BXDA 6.6.552; 6.6.590). But if kinship was often represented by clerks as proof of competence and character, it could equally well be used to suggest not loyal service, but nepotistic corruption and venality. While fighting for his reinstatement after what he claimed was an unjust dismissal, for example, former head clerk Zeng Zhangling justified his petition in part by claiming that his relatives had been loyally administering public affairs since the time of his grandfather. Zeng’s antagonist in the dispute, on the other hand, cast the Zengs in a strikingly different light. “Beginning with Zeng Zhangling’s grandfather,” he declared, “the Zengs have used their connections and influence to bring three generations of scoundrels into this office, where they have monopolized and obstructed administrative affairs for over twenty years” (BXDA 6.6.271).2 The ability of disgruntled fellow clerks to combine office regulations with this sort of negative representation meant that although kinship networks existed throughout the yamen, the monopolistic control of an office by a single descent group remained rare. In most cases, such control was restricted to the yamen’s smaller offices, where scrutiny and opposition was proportionately less vigorous. But even here, control by one common descent group tended to be short-lived. As related head clerks reached the end of their term and new, unrelated student and regular clerks entered the office, the group’s influence would inevitably begin to wane. To demonstrate

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how these groups were formed and maintained and to understand some of the factors mitigating against their survival, I turn to the Jin clan and their record of yamen employment in the Guangxu period. The Jins of Ba County Our knowledge of the Jin clan3 begins with a common ancestor, one Jin Yongzhi, in the mid-eighteenth century (BXDA 6.6.271; see Appendix B for family tree). Unfortunately, we have no information as to Jin Yongzhi’s residence, occupation, or economic status. Nor do we possess such data in regard to his two sons, Jin Tingsheng and Jin Yuanzhao. It appears, however, that the two brothers went their separate ways after dividing whatever property they may have inherited from their father. For by the early nineteenth century, at least one of Jin Tingsheng’s sons was residing in a village some 100 li from Chongqing, where the family was described as having lived for several generations (BXDA 6.6.272). All of Jin Yuanzhao’s sons, on the other hand, were by then living in the city, where they and their own sons operated a pawnshop (dianpu) and acted as brokers in Chongqing’s burgeoning transport trade (BXDA 6.6.421). Apparently the Jins had met with a fair degree of success in these ventures. By the time Yuanzhao’s grandson, Jin Xuelin, came of age, he was well off enough to support at least two wives and move into a compound in one of the city’s better residential areas (BXDA 6.6.266). Aside from their business activities, various members of the Chongqing branch also began to take clerical positions in the prefectural, circuit intendant, and county yamens located in the city. As described earlier, connections between yamen service and the world of trade and business were not unusual in Ba County. For families with business interests, clerical positions could be used as a ready source of influence, information, and revenue. In this regard it is notable that the first available record of the Chongqing Jins’ employment in the Ba County yamen was in the salt office. Given its responsibilities for all affairs relating to the manufacture, sale, and transport of salt as well as tea and other miscellaneous goods out of the port of Chongqing, the choice of this office was an obvious one for brokers and moneylenders like the Jins. Although the rural Jins appear to have held at least some property, available records suggest that they were considerably less well off than their relatives in the city (BXDA 6.6.272). Thus whereas the Chongqing Jins seemed to use yamen employment as an adjunct to their business concerns, the much smaller rural branch of the clan

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relied on clerical positions for more basic income. Relationships between the two branches were not always cordial. As we shall see, there was a good deal of friction and animosity between individuals and families within the clan. In addition to their economic differences, the two branches also differed in their respective patterns of employment. Both branches began their employment in the Ba County yamen in the Office of Salt. The rural branch, in fact, owed their initial entrance there to the prior employment of one of their urban cousins. But whereas the Chongqing branch soon spread out to a number of other offices to form a web of support and assistance, the rural Jins, with considerably fewer resources, remained exclusively in the salt office. Central as it was to the employment record of both branches, our consideration of the Jin clan thus begins here, in one of the yamen’s smallest offices.4 Jin presence in this office also offers a relatively straightforward example of kinship influence. For a time, Jin control over the salt office’s clerical positions was near total. Yet despite such apparent dominance, factors such as economic pressure, the lack of qualified kin, and intraoffice conflicts between both kin and unrelated individuals worked to limit the ability to sustain this control. The Salt Office: Brothers, Cousins, and In-laws. The Jins’ history of employment in the salt office begins in the mid-nineteenth century with a member of the Chongqing branch, Jin Yuanzhao’s grandson, Jin Zhuoyun. The elder of two brothers and then in his early twenties, Jin Zhuoyun began his career in the early Tongzhi period (1862–1875) by entering the office along with two other newly recruited regular clerks (BXDA 6.6.272).5 Although it required the consent of the presiding head clerk, as a regular clerk, Jin Zhuoyun was entitled to sponsor (bao) additional recruits. By the beginning of the Guangxu reign, he had thus been joined in the salt office by his rural cousin Jin Xianzhang and, soon thereafter, by his own younger brother, Jin Zhuoqi (BXDA 6.6.312).6 With the addition of Jin Zhuoqi, the Jins held all three of the regular clerkships in the salt office. In GX 5 (1879), Jin Zhuoyun himself finally succeeded to the post of head clerk. To fill the vacancy among the office’s regular clerks left by his advancement, he recruited yet another member of the Chongqing Jins, his cousin, Jin Dianxuan (BXDA 6.6.319). With this addition, Jin clan members now occupied all of the office’s registered clerical positions. This situation, however, does not appear to have led to particularly good relations among the cousins and brothers.

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Not long after Jin Zhuoyun assumed the head clerkship, for example, he expelled his brother, Jin Zhuoqi, for allegedly misappropriating documents (BXDA 6.6.523). Shortly before Jin Zhuoyun’s retirement several years later, his cousin Jin Dianxuan also left the office under suspicious circumstances. The vacancy left by Dianxuan’s departure was soon filled by another of the clan’s rural branch, Jin Zhenyuan, the younger brother of then regular clerk Jin Xianzhang (BXDA 6.6.272; 6.6.331).7 In GX 10 (1884), after nearly twenty-five years of employment in the salt office, Jin Zhuoyun completed his five-year term as head clerk at the age of forty-three sui. He then went on to take part in the examination for retired head clerks held annually in Chengdu (BXDA 6.6.463). Placing third in the second rank of candidates (erdeng sanming), he thus became eligible for bureaucratic office as an unclassed official (weiruliu). Although it is unlikely that he ever actually held office, clerical service in the Ba County yamen had nevertheless provided Jin Zhuoyun with a path to higher status other than through literary examination or direct purchase of a degree. Jin Zhuoyun, however, was the last of the Chongqing Jins to serve in the salt office. Upon his retirement the post of head clerk passed to his cousin, Jin Xianzhang, and thereby to the rural branch of the clan, where it would remain for the next ten years. When Jin Xianzhang completed his term as head clerk in GX 15 (1889), he was replaced by his younger brother, Jin Zhenyuan. The retirement, however, had left Jin Zhenyuan as the only remaining member of the clan working as a registered clerk in the salt office. Assuming the head clerkship at the relatively young age of twenty-four sui, moreover, Jin Zhenyuan had no sons of his own old enough to begin yamen service. Following his appointment, he therefore recruited his nephew, Jin Zaiyong, along with the husband of Jin Zaiyong’s elder sister, one Chen Hanbing. Chen Hanbing was a member of a recognized lineage that, by the Guangxu period, had attained a certain level of elite status in Ba County. Although Chen Hanbing himself held no such distinction and appears to have belonged to a rather poverty-stricken branch of the lineage, the Chens boasted at least one living provincial degree holder (juren) as well as several holders of prefectural degrees (gongsheng, linsheng) (BXDA 6.6.279). To the extent that Chen Hanbing derived any prestige from his cousins’ examination success, the marriage to Jin Zhenyuan’s niece would have given the rural Jins a step up in the local hierarchy of status. On the other hand, it must be

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remembered that Chen Hanbing was but a poor relation of his more illustrious cousins. Thus, while he may have provided the Jins with a modicum of social status via affinal ties to an elite lineage, the connection also promised Chen Hanbing the more immediate economic return of clerical employment and income. Initially the trade-off seems to have worked, at least for Chen Hanbing. Not only did he quickly secure a position as a regular clerk in the salt office following his marriage, but when Jin Zhenyuan finished his term as head clerk in GX 20 (1894), it was Chen Hanbing who succeeded him (BXDA 6.6.268). Moreover, Chen’s advancement over several regular clerks with more senior standing does not appear to have caused any conflict within the office. Less than a year after his appointment, however, Chen Hanbing died of illness at the age of thirty sui. Following his death, there ensued a struggle over the succession to the head clerkship that would both demonstrate the limits of clan solidarity and bring the Jins’ thirty-odd years of influence in the salt office to an end. Dispensations, Rules, and Disputes. Several weeks after Chen Hanbing’s death, the first attempt at intervention in the appointment of a new head clerk came in the form of a petition to the Ba County magistrate from several members of the Chen lineage led by juren Chen Bingwen. Kinsman Chen Hanbing, they stated, had only recently been appointed as a head clerk. His untimely death, however, had left his grief-stricken widow, young son, and widowed elder sister too poor to support themselves. They therefore requested that the magistrate make an exception to office rules and come to the aid of the bereaved family by appointing Chen Hanbing’s younger brother, Chen Hanrui, as head clerk. The magistrate, though sympathetic, refused the request (BXDA 6.6.270).8 Ba County magistrates did occasionally make special dispensations to provide for the families of head clerks who died in midterm. This was demonstrated, for example, in Chapter 2 when head clerk Zhao Jingru was permitted to take over the duties of his elder brother who had died while serving as head clerk in another division of the same office (BXDA 6.6.710). But if the family of a deceased head clerk did not have another member currently serving in the yamen, the appointment of an untrained family member was generally restricted to the position of student or, at best, regular clerk (e.g., BXDA 6.6.250). This restriction was based not only on the need for head clerks to

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be acquainted with yamen procedures but also on the fact that while families such as the Jins could often pass on head clerkships to their kin, the position itself was not directly inheritable. As described above, the succession of kin to yamen positions in Ba County operated in tandem with the rules governing senior appointments imposed by incumbent clerks as a means of safeguarding their own careers. In this sense, the succession of family or clan members to vacant head clerkships was contingent upon the observance of customary practices such as the requirement of prior experience and, above all, sponsorship provided by the heads of other offices within the yamen. Chen Hanbing’s younger brother possessed neither of these qualifications. Instead, two days after the Chens submitted their plea, a petition of nomination was offered by twelve head clerks requesting the appointment of one Wang Bingcen to take over as head of the salt office (BXDA 6.6.270). We know very little about Wang Bingcen’s prior career other than that he came from outside the salt office. What is interesting about Wang’s nomination is that the group supporting him was led by Jin Jingxiu, the then-current head of the personnel office and a Chongqing cousin of the now-retired Jin Zhenyuan. Jin Zhenyuan himself later claimed that Jin Jingxiu’s recommendation of Wang was the result of bribery. Contrary to this allegation, it is possible that Jin Jingxiu was not engaging in any illicit activity in this matter. In the Ba County yamen it was, after all, customary for the head of personnel to take the lead in presenting the magistrate with candidates for head clerkships. But, as we shall see, Jin Jingxiu did have somewhat of a reputation in the yamen for accepting bribes in return for manipulating appointment and registry documents. It is also possible that Jin Jingxiu’s support for Wang Bingcen was motivated by an animosity toward the rural Jins as a result of his own Chongqing cousins’ expulsion from the salt office several years earlier and the fact that no Chongqing Jins had subsequently been employed there. But whatever his reasons may have been, Jin Jingxiu’s failure either to back the nomination of Chen Hanrui or to suggest the appointment of Jin Zhenyuan’s nephew, Jin Zaiyong, then working in the salt office as regular clerk, demonstrates that clan members did not always act in concert. At this point, Chen Hangbing’s widow began to mount her own campaign.9 Shortly after Wang Bingcen’s nomination, the widow Chen, herself a natal member of the Jin clan, submitted a plea describ-

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ing her deceased husband’s brief but loyal service in the yamen and lamenting the fact that her son was too young to support the impoverished family. She then requested that since the magistrate had refused the appointment of her husband’s brother, would he not take pity on the family and consider appointing her own younger brother, Jin Zaiyong? After all, she reasoned, Jin Zaiyong was already working in the salt office as a regular clerk, whereas Wang Bingcen was a complete stranger to everyone. The magistrate again expressed his sympathy and awarded the widow sufficient money to purchase a headstone for her husband. The request for appointment, however, was once again denied (BXDA 6.6.270; 6.6.272). The fact that widow Chen submitted this petition to the magistrate at all is remarkable and reveals her as a woman of considerable determination and will. In the Ba County archival record for the Guangxu period, hers is the single instance I have found of a woman attempting to intervene in yamen affairs. But the magistrate’s refusal to honor her request should not necessarily be taken as a gendered response to a woman with the audacity to make a direct request. For by the time widow Chen made her plea, the magistrate had already approved Wang Bingcen’s nomination and sent the file on to the office of the provincial financial commissioner in Chengdu for licensing (BXDA 6.6.270; 6.6.272). What is curious, though, is that the young Jin Zaiyong had not been put forward as a candidate earlier by his retired uncle, Jin Zhenyuan. The reason for this lay in an ongoing economic dispute between Jin Zhenyuan and his cousin, Chen Hanbing’s widow, which was rooted in events taking place in the salt office some thirty years earlier. Families, Fees, and Debts. In order to fully understand the conflict over the head clerkship following the death of Chen Hanbing, it is necessary to return to the early Tongzhi period and the activities of the first Jin to work in the salt office, Jin Zhuoyun. At some point not long after Jin Zhuoyun had entered the office as a regular clerk along with Li Shenzhi and Shen Bingzhong, then head clerk Xin Shunzhong used 160 silver taels of his own money to pay for repairs to the office. Such personal financing of office expenses was not unusual in the Ba County yamen. Although in most cases the expense was recouped through subscriptions levied on regular clerks, meeting costs of this sort was part of the responsibility of any head clerk. In this instance, however, Jin Zhuoyun and his two fellow recruits banded together (pengcan) and refused to make any payment

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table 2 Running Fee Payment Schedule for Successive Salt Office Head Clerks (silver taels) Head clerk Xin Shunzhong, 1864–1869 Li Shenzhi, 1869–1874 Shen Bingzhong, 1874–1879 Jin Zhuoyun, 1879–1884 Jin Xianzhang, 1884–1889 Jin Zhenyuan, 1889–1894 Chen Hanbing, 1894–1895 (died) Wang Bingcen, 1895–

Scheduled payment

Amount paid

160a 140 120 100 80 60 40 20

140 120 100 100 80 unpaid contested

Amount reimbursed 140 120 100 100 80 contested

s o u r c e : BXDA 6.6.272 original debt

a

to Xin Shunzhong. Despite Xin’s periodic efforts to force the issue, the debt he claimed was owed him thus remained unpaid throughout the successive head clerkships of Li, Shen, and Jin Zhuoyun. When Jin Zhuoyun himself retired and was succeeded as head clerk by his rural cousin Jin Xianzhang, the long since retired Xin Shunzhong once again pressed for reimbursement. The result was a dispute between the two Jin cousins over who was responsible for what portion of the debt. Following customary procedures in such matters, the dispute was submitted to the mediation council, which determined that beginning with Xin Shunzhong, each successive head clerk of the salt office was to absorb 20 taels of the total debt, with the remaining amount to be reimbursed by the next head clerk upon assuming office. This practice, known as a “running fee” (liutanyin), was a fairly common method of amortizing extraordinary office expenses in the Ba County yamen. As outlined in Table 2, Li Shenzhi would thus pay Xin 140 taels, Shen Bingzhong would pay Li 120, Jin Zhuoyun would pay Shen 100, and so forth until the entire amount was eliminated (BXDA 6.6.272). As far as the archival evidence indicates, the solution was acceptable to all and the matter was thus dropped.

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According to this arrangement, Jin Xianzhang should have paid his cousin, Jin Zhuoyun, 80 taels upon the latter’s retirement. But rather than paying the stipulated amount, Jin Xianzhang had, for some unknown reason, paid 100, thus throwing the subsequent schedule of payment into confusion. When Jin Xianzhang ended his own term, brother Jin Zhenyuan therefore paid him 80 taels, which in turn meant that upon his retirement, Jin Zhenyuan would himself seek 60 taels from his successor, Chen Hanbing. Two months after Wang Bingcen took over as head clerk following Chen Hanbing’s death, however, then-retired Jin Zhenyuan submitted a plaint against Wang concerning the nonpayment of fees, thereby initiating a case that would drag on for the next seven months. The basis of the plaint, as Jin stated in his first petition, was that when he retired, his successor, Chen Hanbing, should have paid him 60 taels of silver. The problem, according to Jin, was that Chen had at the time claimed not to have enough money to pay the entire sum immediately. Chen had therefore signed a contract agreeing to pay the full amount in installments over the course of several months. But because Chen had died before making even the first installment, Jin argued, it was now the responsibility of the new head clerk, Wang Bingcen, to come up with the full 60 taels. Jin stated that he had come to the city a month previously to settle the matter. Wang, however, had obstinately refused to make any payments, thus leaving Jin with no option but to ask for the magistrate’s attention. The magistrate agreed to look into the matter and ordered the mediation council to once again investigate and report. Jin Zhenyuan was perhaps wary of Wang’s ability to manipulate the opinion of those head clerks on the council who had just recently agreed to support his nomination as head of the salt office. Or, he might have been mistrustful of any council led by his cousin Jin Jingxiu. But whatever the reason was, five days later Jin Zhenyuan submitted an additional plea urging the magistrate to resolve the dispute quickly. “Because Wang Bingcen is now a head clerk in this yamen,” he warned, “his fellow head clerks might find it difficult to judge and report on this affair impartially. . . . I therefore tearfully and most humbly beg your grace’s urgent attention” (BXDA 6.6.272). Disregarding Jin’s plea, the magistrate stated that no further action could be taken without the mediation council’s report and that he would therefore wait until after the approaching new year’s festivities before making his decision.

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When yamen activity resumed after the holiday, the mediation council submitted its report describing the previous agreement concerning the running fee in the salt office. The council then offered a synopsis of the current dispute between Wang Bingcen and Jin Zhenyuan along with their own recommendation for resolution: When Jin Zhuoyun retired [in 1884], he should have received 80 taels, but Jin Xianzhang mistakenly paid him 100 taels instead. This is the source of the present litigation. After Jin Zhenyuan retired [in 1894], he therefore stated that he should be paid 60 taels. Wang Bingcen, however, contends that Jin Zhenyuan should only have paid 60 taels to his older brother (rather than the 80 which he did). Wang further insists that since Chen Hanbing followed Jin Zhenyuan as head clerk, Wang’s own responsibility should only be 20 taels. We therefore advised Jin Zhenyuan that he should not try to recover the amount he overpaid to his brother while at the same time recommending to Wang that Chen’s share should not be counted (since it was never paid). To settle the dispute, Wang Bingcen should thus pay Jin Zhenyuan 40 taels. (BXDA 6.6.272)

The magistrate approved the council’s compromise solution and ordered all parties to abide by his ruling and refrain from lodging any further requests or plaints. Despite the magistrate’s instructions, however, both Wang Bingcen and Jin Zhenyuan continued to lodge plaints and counterplaints, with each claiming that the council’s ruling was unjust and biased in the other’s favor. For his part, Wang Bingcen complained that Jin Zhenyuan’s kinship with Jin Jingxiu had unfairly influenced the council. Wang, in fact, denied that he was liable for any payment to Jin Zhenyuan whatsoever. “How can Jin Zhenyuan dare to press me for 60 taels?” he asked. “I am quite willing to pay the 20 taels I owe as per the rules and previous agreements, but this sum should be paid to Chen Hanbing’s widow so as to avoid any conflict between myself and the Chen lineage [chenzu]” (BXDA 6.6.272). With Jin Zhenyuan repeatedly complaining that Wang was dragging out the dispute in order to force him to pay ever-increasing bills at the inn where he had been staying, the magistrate finally relented and called for a hearing to settle the matter once and for all. After listening to testimony, including Wang’s new claim to have already paid 20 taels of silver to the widow Chen, the magistrate determined that Wang should pay an additional 30 taels to Jin Zhenyuan and that all contracts and agreements made between Jin and Chen Hanbing would henceforth be nullified. If the magistrate thought that he was finally rid of a bothersome

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case, then he was mistaken. Two months after the hearing and with the support of several Chen lineage members, Chen Hanbing’s widow submitted a further plaint against her uncle Jin Zhenyuan alleging that he had not repaid a previous debt to her husband that was unrelated to the office’s running fee. She then insisted that her uncle was now using the occasion of Chen Hanbing’s death and the magistrate’s recent ruling in regard to the running fee in order to evade his responsibility for this unrelated debt and thus cheat her family of their rightful due. She therefore demanded that Jin Zhenyuan be forced to make restitution. Losing some of his former sympathy toward the widow, the magistrate refused her request, citing Wang Bingcen’s previous payment to the Chens as well as his own prior cancellation of all contracts between Chen Hanbing and Jin Zhenyuan. He then concluded with a stern warning to the widow against further disturbing him with any more such trivial matters. The denouement to this story came three days later in the form of yet another plaint from Jin Zhenyuan, who now accused Wang Bingcen and the widow Chen of conspiring to deprive him of his legally determined settlement. In this attempt, he claimed, the two had enlisted the aid of his own “scurrilous nephew,” Jin Ruiting, who had recently been involved with Wang in several extortion schemes. These three were then joined by a marriage relation of the widow, one Chen Zhaochang, along with a local tough by the name of Xiong Zicen.10 Under the pretext of paying him his money, Wang had then invited Jin Zhenyuan to the salt office. Assuming I was to receive my money, I was completely defenseless and without suspicion. But Wang not only intended to cheat me of my money, he also hid widow Chen, Jin Ruiting, Xiong Zicen, and Chen Zhaochang within the office. When I entered, the widow and Jin Ruiting leapt out and grabbed my hair, twisting and pulling and refusing to listen to me. Then Chen and Xiong emerged and proceeded to beat me with a tobacco pipe, striking me about the head, shoulders, back, and chest. The injuries which I suffered as a result have left me bedridden. . . . Wang then forced me to accept [but a portion] of what he owes me. Head clerk Liu of the rites office can testify that I have no money and that this litigation has caused me great hardship. . . . There is nothing I can do but beg your grace to investigate. (BXDA 6.6.272)

Alarmed at the allegations of mayhem within the yamen precincts, the magistrate agreed to investigate the charges and ordered an examination of Jin Zhenyuan’s wounds as well as the apprehension

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and interrogation of Jin Ruiting, Chen Zhaochang, and Xiong Zicen. Unfortunately for us, the file on this case ends at this point. Since Wang Bingcen remained in his position as head of the salt office following this new round of charges, we can only assume that he had been successful in defending himself. In the early months of GX 24 (1898), nearly one and a half years after the alleged assault on Jin Zhenyuan, however, Jin Ruiting and Wang Bingcen were both brought before the magistrate. This time the charge was conspiring to cheat an officially licensed transport company out of a 200 tael settlement won in a previous suit against Jin Ruiting. In return for Wang’s assistance in this affair, Jin later confessed, he had agreed to bring false charges against an otherwise innocent clerk in order to get him dismissed (BXDA 6.6.279). For his part in the transport company scheme, Wang Bingcen was formally expelled from the yamen (BXDA 6.6.597). Yet before departing, he had managed to eliminate all the student and regular clerks in the office who had been recruited by his erstwhile foe, Jin Zhenyuan. Among the victims of the purge was Jin’s nephew, Jin Zaiyong. With Zaiyong’s departure more than three decades of Jin clan involvement in the salt office came to an end.11 The Jin clan’s record thus far provides an example of how a common descent group could gain influence in a single office. It also demonstrates how that influence might dissipate. As mentioned above, the Ba County yamen had no customary provision for the direct inheritance of clerical positions. Nevertheless, once installed as a registered clerk, an individual could use his position to recruit multiple clan or family members who would then begin advancing through the ranks. All the Jins working in the salt office appear to have followed this pattern, eventually reaching a point where they occupied all the registered positions in the office. Even in a small office such as the salt office, however, descent group dominance was difficult to sustain. The most immediate problem was that it required the continued availability of members old enough to assume clerical positions. In the case of the rural Jins, the problem was compounded by the fact that at least some family members had to remain in the countryside to work the family’s holdings. Thus, although the Jins managed to hold onto the salt office’s head clerkship for fifteen years (or three consecutive terms), the period in which they filled all or most of the other positions in the office was much shorter. Ultimately, the attrition of eligible rural Jins resulted in the loss of the head clerkship as well. In this

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context, the nomination and appointment of the in-law Chen Hanbing can be seen as a compromise solution intended to maintain at least some influence in the office. The story of the Jin clan also demonstrates that relatives did not always act in solidarity—popular images of nepotistic control and favoritism notwithstanding. Like most common decent groups, the Jin clan was riven with personal animosities and vendettas, which undermined their ability to sustain influence, or even presence in the salt office. Such animosity was dramatically demonstrated by the physical assault on Jin Zhenyuan by his nephew, his niece, and her own affinal relations, the Chens. In addition, the failure of the rural Jin’s Chongqing cousins to come to their aid indicates the possibility of a long-standing rivalry between the two branches. In fact, following the retirement of Jin Zhuoyun in 1884, no members of the Chongqing branch ever again worked in the salt office, nor did any rural Jins work in the various offices with which their city cousins were associated. As a result, the demise of the rural branch brought with it the eclipse of all Jin clan influence in the salt office. It is also quite possible that by that time the members of the Chongqing branch were simply too busy elsewhere to give much concern to the relatively small salt office. For while the rural Jins demonstrate the development and demise of descent group influence in a single office, the record of the Chongqing branch exemplifies a quite different pattern. Here we find Jins spread out across a number of the yamen’s largest and most influential offices. In addition, rather than spending their entire careers within the confines of a single office, the Chongqing Jins frequently shifted from one office to another. The result was a much more complex pattern of kinship influence than that exhibited in the salt office. Finally, whereas the archival record shows no evidence of any rural Jin’s involvement in alleged malfeasance, members of the Chongqing branch were frequently charged with monopolizing office resources and abusing their influence. As we shall see in the following section, such allegations might have stemmed from the greater number of unrelated clerks in the yamen’s larger offices who viewed Jin influence as a threat. Or they may have been the result of the influence that particular members of the Jin clan wielded as head clerks. But whatever their source or veracity, the following section will demonstrate that to protect themselves against these charges and to further their own interests, individual members of a common descent group might draw upon alternative networks of support, at

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times to the detriment of their descent group’s influence in the yamen. Although the Chongqing Jins held positions in several of the yamen’s clerical offices, their story unfolds primarily in the small but critically important Office of Personnel. The Office of Personnel: Brothers and Bribes While Jin Zhuoyun and his rural cousins were establishing themselves in the salt office, other members of the Chongqing branch were building a tradition of clerical employment in offices dealing with grain (gu), finance (qian), and criminal matters (xingming) (BXDA 6.6.421). Shortly before Jin Zhuoyun finished his term as head of the salt office in GX 10 (1884), for example, his first cousin, Jin Xieyang, had obtained the position of regular clerk in the granary office (BXDA 6.6.246). Following the death of the incumbent head clerk in GX 11 (1885), the twenty-two sui Xieyang advanced to the head clerkship, where he served until his retirement five years later. Unfortunately we have no direct documentation regarding the yamen employment of the rest of Jin Zhuoyun’s generation in the Chongqing branch. But by GX 4 (1878), two of his relatives, brothers Jin Dianyuan and Jin Dianxuan, were both working in separate divisions in the Office of Punishments, then the largest office in the yamen (BXDA 6.6.312). Jin Dianyuan remained in punishments until he retired from his position as regular clerk in GX 18 (1892) in order to care for his ailing mother. The career of his brother, Jin Dianxuan, appears by contrast to have been considerably more colorful. We do not know why Jin Dianxuan left his position in the punishments office. Yet by GX 8 (1882), he had not only left punishments but also had secured work as a regular clerk in the salt office under the head clerkship of his cousin, Jin Zhuoyun (BXDA 6.6.319). Regardless of whether Jin Dianxuan had been dismissed from punishments, as later alleged, or had simply determined that his chances for advancement looked brighter in one of the yamen’s smaller offices, the aid of a head clerk such as his uncle Jin Zhuoyun would have been instrumental in facilitating the transfer. But Jin Dianxuan’s tenure in the salt office was apparently quite short. A scant three years later, in GX 11 (1885), we find him serving as a newly installed head clerk of the Office of Personnel (BXDA 6.6.246). As with his move from punishments to salt, the circumstances surrounding Jin Dianxuan’s transfer out of salt to the Office of Personnel are cloudy. Advancement from the position of regular clerk in one office to that of head clerk in another was not that uncom-

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mon in the Ba County yamen. Notices of vacant head clerkships were, as a matter of course, posted at the yamen gates inviting application from any regular clerk with a clean record serving in the yamen. If a given regular clerk could secure the support necessary for nomination along with the funds required to pay the installation fee, there was no technical obstacle to such a transfer. In this context, Jin Dianxuan may have simply taken advantage of the opportunity to advance his career presented by the death of the presiding head of the personnel office. As we saw in Chapter 2, however, the succession of office outsiders to head clerkships often met with considerable resistance from incumbent regular clerks, who regarded such moves as an infringement upon their chances for advancement. This seems to have been the case with Jin Dianxuan’s move to personnel. Shortly after his installation as head clerk, regular clerk Lu Zhaoqun lodged a plaint accusing him of, among other things, the duplicitous assumption of office (mengcan). Although clearly biased, Lu’s accusations nevertheless shed at least some light on Jin Dianxuan’s transfer to personnel and his subsequent activities there on behalf of his fellow Jins. In his plaint, Lu claimed that Jin Dianxuan had been dismissed from the salt office by his own relative, Jin Zhuoyun, as a result of his opium habit, his lax performance, and his predilection for extended visits to the brothels of Chongqing. When the previous head of the personnel office had died, Lu continued, Jin Dianxuan had either misrepresented himself, forged the necessary nomination papers, or bribed other head clerks into supporting his nomination. In addition to further charging Jin with the embezzlement of legal case fees and hiring prostitutes for late-night debauches in the office following his installation as head clerk, Lu also alleged that Jin had completely disregarded the allowable quotas and recruited his uncle, brother, and cousin in order to monopolize public affairs (bagongshi). “Because I spoke out against this,” Lu now complained, “he developed a hatred towards me which until now I have suffered in silence” (BXDA 6.6.532, reprinted in SCDASL 1[1983], 35). That same day, the magistrate received a plaint from Jin Dianxuan as well, accusing Lu in turn of negligence and resistance to his authority as head clerk. Despite the magistrate’s initial alarm over the possibility of drunken revelry and prostitution in the yamen offices, Jin Dianxuan was eventually cleared of all charges. Lu Zhao-

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qun, on the other hand, was dismissed for dereliction of duty (BXDA 6.6.532). But regardless of the magistrate’s decision in this case, the archival record shows that not all of Lu Zhaoqun’s claims were without substance. It appears, for example, that Jin Dianxuan had indeed used his authority to facilitate the employment of other members of the Chongqing Jins. In GX 11 (1885), he used his position as head of personnel to help secure the selection of his cousin, Jin Xieyang, as head of the granary office (BXDA 6.6.246). Furthermore, by that time Jin Dianxuan had already recruited at least three family and clan members into the personnel office itself: younger brother Jin Dianyang; nephew Jin Zanyao; and cousin Jin Jingxiu (BXDA 6.6.263; 6.6.331).12 By recruiting these relatives, moreover, Jin Dianxuan laid the basis for a continuation of Jin leadership in the office that would last for the next fifteen years. Despite his efforts on behalf of his relatives, however, Jin Dianxuan’s own career and any hopes of following his cousin Jin Zhuoyun into the lower ranks of degree holders were soon cut short. Once again accused of various counts of profligacy by subordinates, he was dismissed in GX 14 (1888) on the grounds that he “is always drunk, frequents opium dens, consorts with prostitutes, and dares to abandon his post to the detriment and obstruction of public affairs” (BXDA 6.6.254). Following the Ba County magistrate’s formal report to the provincial financial commissioner in Chengdu, Jin Dianxuan’s clerical license was revoked, thus disqualifying him from participation in the annual examinations. But Jin Dianxuan’s dubious record and ignominious departure from the yamen do not appear to have had any negative impact on his relatives in the Office of Personnel, nor do allegations as to their own extrastatutory recruitment seem to have clouded their subsequent careers. Upon his dismissal, Jin Dianxuan was replaced as head clerk by his brother Jin Dianyang, then twenty-five sui (BXDA 6.6.244; 6.6.254). Jin Dianyang’s own tenure as head of personnel appears to have been rather unremarkable. The record shows no instances of his involvement in disputes with other clerks or of any charges being brought against him. His efforts to advance the influence of his fellow Jins, furthermore, were limited to promoting his nephew, Jin Zanyao, from student to regular clerk shortly before his retirement as head clerk in GX 19 (1893) (BXDA 6.6.263). Although we have no indication of how he fared in the attempt, Jin Dianyang

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went on to compete in the postservice examinations later that same year (BXDA 6.6.471). When Jin Dianyang retired, the position of head clerk in the Office of Personnel was taken by his fellow Jin Dianxuan recruit and cousin, Jin Jingxiu, age twenty-four sui (BXDA 6.6.267). With Jin Jingxiu, we begin to sense the central position of the personnel office within the Ba County yamen as well as the influence afforded to the head of that office. The Office of Personnel, for example, was responsible for the records on the yamen’s entire clerical staff. All registers, whether formal or informal, listing the clerks employed in the various offices were kept and maintained by the personnel office along with the files and vetting procedures on retired head clerks applying for participation in the examinations. In addition, as we saw in the case of Jin Zhenyuan and Wang Bingcen, intraoffice disputes over ranking and advancement were generally investigated under the supervision of the head of personnel. If a conflict reached the point of an appearance before the magistrate’s bench, it was the Office of Personnel that presided over the hearing and recorded all testimony and evidence. And finally, the head of personnel often led the list of those providing nomination and guarantees of mutual responsibility for new head clerks. All of these functions combined to give the head of the personnel office an extraordinary amount of leverage in yamen affairs, a leverage which Jin Jingxiu was, by all accounts, remarkably proficient at using for his own ends. For unlike that of his cousin and immediate predecessor, Jin Dianyang, Jin Jingxiu’s tenure was marked by numerous allegations of malfeasance from clerks in his own and other offices. To begin with, in GX 20 (1894), little more than a year after his appointment, ten regular clerks from the Office of Revenue submitted a plaint accusing Jin Jingxiu of accepting bribes in return for altering the rank of personnel as they appeared on the various office registers. As a result, they claimed, regular clerks with senior standing were being passed over for selection as new head clerks. Disturbed by the baldfaced manipulation of office rules, the magistrate confirmed that all head clerks should be appointed on the basis of ranking. “To alter the registers as Jin Jingxiu has done amounts to a gross disregard of proper administrative procedures [wangong] if not worse and thus opens the gates of corruption” (BXDA 6.6.590). Yet despite the seriousness with which he regarded the matter, the magistrate’s judgment on Jin was surprisingly light: “Although Jin Jing-

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xiu should be punished severely and without mercy, I will show lenience in this instance provided he immediately sets the registers straight” (BXDA 6.6.590). That same month, in a case to be discussed more fully in the following section, two regular clerks from the works office lodged a similar complaint accusing their own head clerk, Wu Bingzhong, of bribing Jin Jingxiu to alter their positions on the office register. In his response to the charge, Wu stated that the two clerks had been found guilty of repeatedly violating office rules by the previous head clerk, who had chosen to discipline them leniently by arranging with Jin to have their rank altered, rather than reporting them to the magistrate. The magistrate accepted the explanation and no action was taken against either Wu or Jin Jingxiu (BXDA 6.6.269). Two months later, we find Jin Jingxiu, in his investigatory capacity as head of personnel, filing a report on a dispute in the documents office, wherein regular clerk Zeng Zhangling was challenging the succession of one Li Guangting to the head clerkship of that office. Reporting in support of Zeng Zhangling’s allegation, Jin stated that Li Guangting had forged bond documents to obtain the position of head clerk in violation of yamen regulations. Furthermore, he continued, Li was far too young to be head clerk and was in fact barely literate (BXDA 6.6.271). In this case the magistrate was somewhat more suspicious of Jin Jingxiu’s report. If Li was indeed as unskilled and illiterate as Jin claimed, then who had actually been taking care of business in the documents office since his appointment? And, more seriously, why had Jin waited nearly a year after Li’s appointment before coming forward? In the meantime, Li Guangting continued to insist that Zeng and his relatives in the documents office had bribed Jin Jingxiu to file a report that was clearly false and libelous. The case against him was nothing more than an attempt by the Zeng family to continue their control over the office by attacking a loyal public servant who stood in their way (BXDA 6.6.271). Despite his skepticism in regard to Jin Jingxiu’s report, the magistrate remained unconvinced by Li Guangting’s versions of events. Since he was about to leave office, however, the magistrate opted to suspend any decision pending the arrival of his successor. Although we have no record of subsequent deliberation on the affair, there is no evidence that Jin Jingxiu was ever found guilty of filing false and defamatory reports. The following year yet another plaint was made against Jin Jing-

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xiu. This time the charges came from one Liu Ce, a regular clerk in the granary office who was challenging the recent succession of one Zhou Shudao to the office’s head clerkship.13 I was in line to become the head clerk of this office and so I paid the personnel office 100 silver taels. But the head of that office, Jin Jingxiu, received a bribe from a clerk in the Office of Revenue, one Zhou Shudao, to assist Zhou in stealing the post from me [gefang qiangcan]. Furthermore, having cheated me out of my position, Jin then refused to return the 100 taels I had paid him. I pressed both Jin and Zhou for the money but they remained obstinate. Instead Zhou has filed false charges against me. . . . Zhou has even given Jin a further bribe to have my name removed from the office register altogether. (BXDA 6.6.586)

Once again, however, no action was taken against Jin Jingxiu. Liu Ce, on the other hand, was expelled from the yamen as a result of Zhou’s charges. Within the space of one year, Jin Jingxiu had thus been accused of malfeasance on at least four separate occasions. Yet despite the repeated allegations against him, Jin Jingxiu remained in position until his retirement in GX 24 (1898).14 The lack of conviction on any count of corruption, furthermore, entitled him to claim a blemishfree record upon leaving office and thus win qualification to sit for the examinations the following year (BXDA 6.6.475). It could well be that the accusations lodged against Jingxiu by various clerks within the yamen were indeed groundless. Since he was never found guilty of accepting bribes, we might conclude that Jin Jingxiu’s accusers were nothing more than disgruntled junior clerks angling for advancement and that his repeated appearances before the magistrate were simply the price to be paid for a powerful position. But the sheer volume of complaints and the fact that neither his predecessors nor successors were subject to a similar level of accusation suggest an alternate conclusion. Rather than seeing Jin Jingxiu as an unjustly slandered innocent, we might instead regard him as an exceptionally skilled operator adept at trading favors for support from other head clerks. Many head clerks in the yamen were already in Jin Jingxiu’s debt for his aid in securing their appointments. By the time he retired, Jin Jingxiu had provided nomination and guarantees of mutual responsibility for at least five head clerks, including his cousin Jin Zhenyuan’s nemesis in the salt office, Wang Bingcen (BXDA 6.6.267; 6.6.270; 6.6.272).15 This pool of indebtedness was only deepened by the fact that, as head of personnel, Jin Jingxiu was in a position to

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provide further assistance by manipulating office registers and by influencing mediation council investigations. It was this network of loyalties, debts, and payoffs to which Jin Jingxiu’s cousin, Jin Zhenyuan, referred in connection with Wang Bingcen when he lamented that the collective head clerks “might find it difficult to judge and report impartially” (BXDA 6.6.272). Despite all of his machinations, however, a notable feature of Jin Jingxiu’s career is that in none of this maneuvering does he appear to have made any effort to continue Jin clan presence in the yamen. We have already seen, for example, how Jin Jingxiu supported the nomination of Wang Bingcen over his own rural relations in the salt office. In this instance, descent group loyalty seems to have been overridden by other, primarily economic, considerations. Having himself gained entrance into the Office of Personnel via his cousin Jin Dianxuan, Jin Jingxiu did not recruit other Jins from either branch into the office. Although relations between Jin Jingxiu and his successor, Mu Shuxun, were not without friction, Mu’s successor would later allege that Mu had secured his appointment as head clerk in part by agreeing not to take action against any of Jin Jingxiu’s own recruits (BXDA 6.6.637). None of these recruits, however, were Jin clan members. Consequently, when Jin Jingxiu retired in GX 24 (1898), the fifteen-year run of Chongqing Jins in the personnel office came to an abrupt end. The Jin clan was by no means unique in the Ba County yamen. Although in less detail, evidence of similar kinship networks can be found scattered throughout the archival record. Furthermore, we should not assume that because these networks become visible primarily in the context of disputes brought before the magistrate they were always looked upon as nefariously corrupt. In terms of day-today operations, such disputes were, after all, relatively rare. Rather than using these cases to conclude that kinship networks invariably functioned as a corrupt aberration of the norm, we should instead regard them as part of the basic fabric of the yamen’s social world, a part that became noteworthy to contemporaries only when that fabric was torn by conflict. But as prevalent as kinship networks were, they were far from being the only or even the dominant form of interpersonal alliance in the Ba County yamen. We have no way of knowing, for example, why Jin Jingxiu did not use his influence as head of personnel to further Jin presence in his own or other offices. Clearly, however, throughout his career Jin drew upon sources of support beyond that

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offered by his own kinsmen. Alongside kinship relations, this system of patronage and factional alliances constituted one of the fundamental aspects of yamen practice.

Patrons, Factions, and Friends The support networks we saw in connection with Jin Jingxiu were largely restricted to those between himself and the heads of other offices. While such contacts were important to any head clerk, even more fundamental to yamen operations were the networks existing within a given office. We have seen that this purpose was often served by bonds of kinship. We have also seen, however, that kinship was not always a reliable source of assistance in office conflicts. In order to protect one’s position and to secure steady access to income-producing work, it was necessary to form ties with unrelated fellow clerks. In the Ba County yamen such groupings were of two main types: vertical bonds between patrons and clients; and lateral alliances among clerks sharing common interests. Patrons and Clients Clerical employment in the Ba County yamen required nomination and guarantees of mutual responsibility from incumbent clerks. Although petitions of nomination were usually presented to a presiding magistrate collectively by several incumbents, in most cases a recruit began service in the office as an apprentice (tu) of a specific individual. By agreeing to sponsor (bao) the recruit and take responsibility for his actions, the senior clerk created a patron-client bond replete with all the reciprocal obligations of obedience and protection implied therein. Aside from kinship and affinal relations, the contacts, or guanxi, necessary to secure a sponsor in the yamen might be made through recommendations from other clerks, residence in the same village or subdistrict, or any other form of personal association or acquaintance. It could also be based on simple economic interests. Although regular clerks occasionally served as sponsors, the patron-client relationship was most evident with regard to head clerks. By entering the yamen under the direct sponsorship of a head clerk, the recruit was provided not only with employment but also with a powerful patron, who could assure him of a share of legal case assignments as well as come to his aid in intraoffice disputes. Assistance on the part of a patron could even continue after the pa-

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tron had retired, as seen above in Jin Jingxiu’s demand that his successor not bring charges against any of Jin’s own recruits. For the head clerk, the advantages of the arrangement were equally tangible. Given the liability of a head clerk for the actions of all subordinates, it was obviously beneficial to fill the office with those in his debt. In addition, the recruitment of a number of such clients provided the head clerk with a cadre of support to be called upon whenever his authority within the office was challenged or in cases where he himself was accused of malfeasance. As with common descent groups, patron-client ties were portrayed in a number of ways by clerks themselves. Clerks accused of wrongdoing often attempted to exonerate themselves by citing their entrance to yamen service under the sponsorship of a particular senior clerk, whose clean record and implied moral rectitude was, by association, expected to confer a degree of integrity upon the accused. In this respect, declarations of sponsorship served the same validating purpose as claims of long and loyal service on the part of family members. Conversely, patron-client ties could also be used to imply not innocence, but rather a lack of moral character and therefore the likelihood of abusive behavior. One method of stigmatizing the patron-client relationship was to claim that the junior clerk had been recruited in excess of the customary quota (lanzhao). The unmistakable implication in such instances was that the accused was an unqualified scoundrel who had been recruited for the purpose of monopolizing office resources. If the patron had been dismissed or frequently brought up on charges, then mere association was often enough to establish guilt on the part of an accused client. Head clerk Zhang Wucheng thus began his request for the dismissal of a regular clerk in his office with the comment that the two previous head clerks had not only been dismissed but also had been well known throughout the yamen for their skill at violating office rules, thereby suggesting that any clerk recruited by either of them was unfit for duty. In this instance, the regular clerk in question was subsequently dismissed (BXDA 6.6.552). The large number of such accusations to be found in the Ba County archives suggests that attacking the motives of previous head clerks who had served as sponsors was commonly employed by their successors as a means to eliminate troublesome or uncooperative individuals working in the office (e.g., BXDA 6.6.253; 6.6.281; 6.6.292; 6.6.519; 6.6.552; 6.6.623; 6.6.630). The difficulty in defend-

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ing against such charges by a head clerk was demonstrated in GX 27 (1901) when the head of the punishments office, Wang Shangwu, accused regular clerk Wu Haishan of buying his way into the office under a previous head clerk and subsequently engaging in all manner of pernicious behavior. Finding himself dismissed as a result of these charges, Wu insisted that his forty-year service record was both legitimate and without blemish. Wu further alleged that following Wang Shangwu’s dubious assumption of the head clerkship, Wang had recruited no fewer than thirty unregistered individuals in excess of the customary quota and had just recently sold the job of managing the office’s legal case file cabinet to one of his lackeys for 200 silver taels. The magistrate, however, remained unconvinced by these accusations and consequently upheld Wu’s previous dismissal (BXDA 6.6.621).16 Wu Haishan’s mistake in this case was allowing Wang Shangwu to isolate him. With the head clerk accusing him of malfeasance and with none of his colleagues offering support in his defense, Wu’s dismissal became a near foregone conclusion. If a clerk was to avoid falling victim to a hostile head clerk following the dismissal or retirement of his own patron, it was therefore necessary to supplement the patron-client bond with lateral alliances between himself and his fellow clerks. Factions Whereas common descent group or patron-client ties were ambiguous in how they were characterized, portrayals of lateral groupings such as factions (huo, dang, pengcan) were invariably used to suggest conspiracy and the misuse of office for personal gain. Yet despite their negative representation, factions were no less a constant feature of yamen operations than were patronage and kinship networks. Factions within a given office could be formed on a number of bases. Members of a common descent group, for example, might serve as a core to which several unrelated clerks would attach themselves. Alternatively, a senior clerk might assemble a group of clients around himself, and this group would continue to function as a faction even after their common patron had left the scene. Yet another formation was for those entering yamen service around the same time to come together as a cohort. Particularly among those with lengthy careers in the yamen, it was in their common interest to respond collectively to the attempted appropriation of office resources by a new head clerk or to the threats posed by a large influx

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of unfamiliar recruits. Such interest-based factions were often quite transitory and shifting in composition, coming together over a single issue and falling apart over the next. Although each possessed its own internal dynamic, in practice, alliances of kinship, patronage, and factions tended to overlap. Thus, while a smaller office might be dominated for a period of time by a particular common descent group, patron, or faction, office operations were more often defined by a labyrinth of interlocking and potentially conflicting loyalties and interests. Given the complexity and sub-rosa nature of such groupings, it is no surprise that the inner workings of most offices remained opaque even to the most determined of magistrates. Unfortunately, we remain subject to much of this same opacity ourselves. Even in an archive as rich in detail as that of the Ba County yamen, a coherent picture of alliances within a single office is elusive and resistant to detailed documentation. What we have instead is fragmented and inconclusive evidence contained in individual case files. Fortunately, however, we are given an opportunity to see how things worked for a period of time in at least one office due to the survival of several exceptionally complete files on a series of disputes taking place in the Office of Works from GX 19 to 23 (1893–1897). These conflicts, culminating in a protracted dispute between head clerk Wu Bingzhong and senior regular clerk Lu Lixiang, reveal the intricate structure of intraoffice networks and politics. They also demonstrate the fact that these networks and alliances were not static, but instead remained in a state of flux, shifting and reconstituting themselves as the situation demanded. Finally, the mere fact that we have a record of these disputes underscores how the operation of factional or common descent group networks were constrained by a system of office rules, which individual clerks could call upon as a means of redress.

The Office of Works Employing approximately twenty registered clerks and an indeterminate number of students and assistants, in GX 20 (1894) the Office of Works ranked fifth among the Ba County yamen’s ten clerical offices in terms of size. Among the registered members of the office were several who had worked there for extended periods. Beginning his career in the early Tongzhi years, for example, senior-

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ranking regular clerk Xu Zanyuan boasted a service record of more than thirty years. Only slightly junior to Xu were Lu Chunshan and Lu Lixiang (no relation), both of whom had entered the works office prior to the Guangxu period. The works office also employed members of three distinct common descent groups. Although Xu Zanyuan never served as head clerk, his younger brother, Xu Congdian, held the post from 1883 to 1888, during which time he had enrolled his son, Xu Ruitu, as a regular clerk in the office. Not long after Xu Congdian’s retirement, Xu Zanyuan’s own son, Xu Linxian, entered the office as well (BXDA 6.6.250; 6.6.269; 6.6.319; 6.6.331). The Xus, however, were not always favorably disposed to one another. Xu Ruitu, in particular, appears to have frequently taken exception to his Uncle Zanyuan’s authority. The lack of cohesion among the Xus is indicated by the fact that Xu Congdian was succeeded as head clerk not by one of his relatives, but by one Zeng Weicheng, who appears to have been quite industrious in recruiting his own kin. As cited in Chapter 2, Zeng was accused in GX 16 (1890) of expelling regular clerks who refused to pay his extortionate fees and replacing them with his relatives (BXDA 6.6.550). Of the seven or eight clan members Zeng Weicheng was alleged to have recruited, there remained at least four in GX 20 (1894): his son Zeng Ziyun; nephews Zeng Qingzhong and Zeng Qingxu; and their cousin Zeng Mianqi. Of the three common descent groups in the office, the Zengs were the only one to act consistently in support of one another in the course of the dispute between Li Lixiang and Wu Bingzhong. Also working in the office at this time were the remnants of the Chen clan. Beginning in the late Tongzhi period, the Chens had dominated the office under the successive head clerkships of Chen Jiujiang, Chen Zongyu, and his brother Chen Wenbin, Xu Congdian’s immediate predecessor. During that time they had counted at least six additional members as regular clerks. The Chens, moreover, appear to have had marriage ties with senior regular clerk Lu Lixiang. Chen Jiujiang, for example, was himself married to Lu Lixiang’s paternal aunt (BXDA 6.6.587). By GX 20 (1894), however, only two clan members remained working in the office—Chen Binglin and his brother Chen Bingjing. Throughout the disputes described below, the two brothers invariably followed the lead of senior regular clerk Xu Zanyuan. In addition to the ties defined by tenure and common descent

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group affiliation were those less obvious loyalties based on common patronage and factional alliance. Along with members of his clan, Zeng Weicheng had also recruited a number of nonkin into the works office during his tenure as head clerk. Men like Wu Bingzhong, Qu Mingzhang, Jiang Tingqi, and his brother Jiang Hanjiang had all entered yamen service under the tutelage of Zeng Weicheng and, along with Zeng’s nephew Zeng Qingzhong, continued to function as a tight-knit clique following Zeng Weicheng’s retirement. Overlapping somewhat with this group was a second faction led by Xu Zanyuan’s nephew Xu Ruitu. Other members included regular clerks Qu Mingzhang, Jiang Tingqi, Hou Jisheng, and Zeng Ziyun. Entering yamen service at roughly the same time under a number of different sponsors, several members of this faction had ties with other groups within the office. Xu Ruitu, for example, was at least nominally affiliated with his fellow Xus, while Qu Mingzhang, Jiang Tingqi, and Zeng Ziyun were all associated with Zeng Weicheng’s faction. But although much less well defined than the other groups in the office and occasionally finding themselves on the opposite sides of a dispute, these men shared the fact that they were all middle-ranking clerks, who had already invested considerable time in the office. As something of a young Turk faction, they thus shared a common interest in seeing that office positions and resources were not monopolized by either their seniors or newcomers. The potential for conflict within this maze of relationships was demonstrated in GX 19 (1893) less than a month after Zeng Weicheng completed his term as head clerk. In the interim between Zeng’s retirement and the appointment of a successor, senior-ranking regular clerks Xu Zanyuan, Lu Chunshan, and Lu Lixiang, with the support of Chen Bingjing and the number-four-ranking Xu Ruitu, filed a petition complaining that Zeng Weicheng had not turned over the office seal and several files from ongoing legal cases. They further accused Zeng of absconding with more than 160 silver taels in case fees, which should have been distributed within the office. Since Zeng’s successor had not yet been appointed, they explained, it was their responsibility to take charge of these materials and funds pending his replacement. Zeng Weicheng, however, had returned home with the items in question, leaving the senior regular clerks in fear that he intended to put them to illegal use. Despite Zeng’s protest that he had taken the money as repayment for funds he himself had fronted to cover a deficit left by his predecessor, Xu Congdian, the magistrate quickly dispatched two runners to Zeng

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table 3 Personal Affiliations in the Office of Works, ca. 1894 Kin

Xus Xu Zanyuan Xu Ruitu Xu Linxian

Factions

Zeng Weicheng Wu Bingzhong Jiang Tingqi Qu Mingzhang Jiang Hanjiang Zeng Qingzhong

Seniors

Xu Zanyuan Lu Lixiang Lu Chunshan

Zengs

Chens

Zeng Weicheng Zeng Ziyun Zeng Qingzhong Zeng Qingxu Zeng Mianqi

Chen Binglin Chen Bingjing

Xu Ruitu Jiang Tingqi Hou Jisheng Qu Mingzhang Zeng Ziyun

s o u r c e s : BXDA 6.6.250; 6.6.269; 6.6.279; 6.6.319; 6.6.331; 6.6.550; 6.6.587

Weicheng’s home, where the seal, missing files, and silver were recovered (BXDA 6.6.275). Although the incident seems trivial enough, it would have repercussions later on due to the lingering animosity of Zeng’s nephew, regular clerk Zeng Qingzhong. A month or so later, one of Zeng Weicheng’s own recruits, Wu Bingzhong, forty sui, assumed the head clerkship of the works office. With this succession there began a series of accusations, counteraccusations, maneuvers, and deals that would last for at least the next three years. We have no means, of course, of verifying the “truth” of the numerous allegations made by the contending parties in these disputes. Combined with the rhetoric used by the disputants and their supporters in presenting their cases to the magistrate, these allegations and ripostes quickly take on a marked theatrical quality. If it is difficult for us to follow the plot of this performance, then we should remember that it was no less difficult for the various magistrates who were being asked to settle the conflicts. Nevertheless, the form these disputes took, the willingness of successive magistrates to give them a formal hearing, and the paper

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trail left by these hearings all provide us with our best look yet into the political economy of the county yamen. Prelude: Turf Wars Evidence of the conflicts brewing in the works office comes with a dispute mentioned in my discussion of the Jin clan in which senior clerks Lu Chunshan and Xu Ruitu accused head clerk Wu Bingzhong of colluding with Jin Jingxiu in personnel to alter the rank position of their names in the office register. Lu and Xu elaborated this accusation with the claim that prior to becoming head clerk, Wu Bingzhong had forced his daughter-in-law to drown herself in the Yangzi River due to his wife’s jealousy and had, as a result, been dismissed. Finding himself expelled from the yamen on the eve of Zeng Weicheng’s retirement, they continued, Wu then called upon the aid of Zeng Qingzhong, Jiang Tingqi, and Zeng Qingxu not only to get Wu illicitly reinstated but also to have him installed improperly as head clerk (mengcan). Following this coup, the group had then proceeded to hoard all legal casework for themselves. Wu Bingzhong’s response to these charges came several days later with a counterplaint requesting the dismissal of the “cunning and treacherous” Xu Ruitu on the grounds that he consistently fomented litigation, disputed jurisdiction over legal cases, and had, out of sheer spite over Wu’s subsequent remonstrations, conspired with Lu Chunshan to falsely accuse Wu of altering the office registers. The magistrate agreed to open an investigation (BXDA 6.6.269). By the time Wu Bingzhong submitted his petition, however, Xu Ruitu, Lu Chunshan, and the young Chen Bingjing had already attended a banquet at a local restaurant sponsored by senior clerks Xu Zanyuan and Lu Lixiang for the purpose of signing a mutual aid pact and a call for the rectification of office rules (see Appendix C). In highly factionalized or otherwise divided offices, such pacts were a common means of binding individuals to a shared cause. Typically, a copy of the agreement was given to each participant. Once signed, the document could be used as evidence in any subsequent litigation. In this instance, the preamble to the agreement claimed the document’s necessity in order to stop the monopolization of legal casework by Wu Bingzhong’s faction and thus to protect the livelihood of honest clerks. “We all have families who rely on us for food and clothing,” they lamented. “Fearing that those not in [Wu’s] gang [huo] will be denied income, we therefore come together to write this in order to rectify office rules and provide mutual assistance”

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(BXDA 6.6.587). The preamble continued with the promise that if any of the cosignatories were accused by any of Wu Bingzhong’s group, then the cosignatories would come to the accused’s defense and share the expense of any litigation. Faced with the apparent solidarity of these five ranking clerks and the threat of a full investigation into his group’s past activities, Wu Bingzhong, along with faction members Jiang Tingqi and Zeng Qingzhong, consented to add their names to the second portion of the accord stipulating the division of legal case assignments and the procedures for dispute resolution. As a result of Wu’s compliance, all litigation and associated investigations pending between himself and Xu Ruitu were subsequently dropped. The Dispute: Lu Lixiang versus Wu Bingzhong Wu Bingzhong’s first step toward neutralizing the threat the mutual aid pact posed to his position and authority was to coax several of its signatories into his own faction. Then in the closing days of GX 20 (early 1895), five months after the signing of the agreement, a petition of dismissal was lodged against the principal architect of the pact, senior clerk Lu Lixiang, then forty-eight sui. Although submitted under Wu Bingzhong’s name, the petition carried the names of no fewer than fifteen regular clerks, including Zeng Qingzhong, Qu Mingzhang, Jiang Tingqi, and Jiang Hanjiang. In addition to these stalwart members of Wu’s faction, the plaint was also signed by two of Lu Lixiang’s former partners in mutual support, Lu Chunshan and, most surprising of all, Xu Ruitu (BXDA 6.6.587).17 The petitioners claimed that Lu Lixiang had previously worked in the prefectural yamen but had been dismissed on charges of extortion. He had then used his marriage relations with then head clerk Chen Jiujiang to deviously secure a position in the works office of the Ba County yamen. Since then, he had engaged in extortion, shirked his duties, and despite repeated promises to reform himself, continued to gamble, consort with prostitutes, and join with his secret society contacts to entice the sons and daughters of good families into prostitution and other salacious activities. Lu was also charged with having impeded yamen business by continually quarreling over the right to handle legal cases. Clearly, they concluded, a man such as Lu should not be allowed to remain in the office. To bolster these allegations, the petitioners appended an impressive list of past crimes portraying Lu Lixiang as an unrepentant and thoroughly black-hearted rogue. Among the ten counts listed

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were claims that Lu had poisoned his mentor in the prefectural yamen, abducted the wife of a man from the next county and sold her into prostitution, repeatedly been involved in litigation with members of his own family, illegally occupied the property of his brother, and recently abducted the concubine of a local resident in the city. Further adding to the case against Lu Lixiang, Xu Ruitu submitted an independent report explaining his current alliance with Wu Bingzhong despite having previously signed the pact of mutual support with Lu. The pact, Xu declared, was nothing more than a sham perpetrated by Lu in order to cover up his deeds and to trick honest clerks such as Xu into moving against Wu Bingzhong. “Lu Lixiang violates rules even as he claims to uphold them,” he insisted. “All of this has reached a point where Wu Bingzhong and the rest of us are left with no choice but to report him and request his dismissal.” Lu responded to the charges against him by reiterating the alleged drowning of Wu Bingzhong’s daughter-in-law, the dubious circumstances surrounding Wu’s appointment as head clerk, and his subsequent use of cronies and previously dismissed clerks to monopolize legal casework in the office. The charges pending against him, Lu insisted, were the result of his own leadership in formulating the mutual aid pact. Since the signing of the pact, however, Wu Bingzhong had bribed (maihua) Lu’s former allies, Lu Chunshan and Xu Ruitu, in order to get them to speak against him. I have loyally served in this office for many years without a trace of wrongdoing. If I am indeed so unlawful [bufa], why wasn’t I ever accused of being so before I signed the mutual support pact? Obviously this is an instance of spitefully accusing the innocent in order to take revenge.

Noting that, while bothersome, mutual accusations of this sort between clerks must nevertheless be investigated, the magistrate ordered the Office of Personnel to investigate and report upon the matter.18 Following the submission of the personnel office’s report on the matter four months later, Lu Lixiang was called as the defendant [beibing] in a hearing before the magistrate’s bench attended by all twenty registered clerks of the works office. Testimony repeating the previous charges against Lu was offered by Wu Bingzhong and ten regular clerks including Lu Lixiang’s erstwhile allies, Lu Chunshan and Xu Ruitu. In his own defense, Lu Lixiang admitted being dismissed from the prefectural yamen years earlier for making

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“errors in public matters [gongshicuowu zhige]” but maintained that he had been innocent of that, as well as of all subsequent charges.19 With the majority of the office’s regular clerks siding with Wu Bingzhong, and with senior clerk Xu Zanyuan and his own followers remaining silent on the matter, Lu Lixiang’s spirited claims to moral rectitude and loyal yamen service were without effect. The magistrate found Lu guilty as charged and judged him to be “a worthless person who should be immediately expelled from the yamen as requested.” Having successfully isolated and eliminated Lu Lixiang, Wu Bingzhong then focused his attention on another source of possible opposition, Lu Chunshan, cosignatory of the now-discredited mutual aid pact and then the number-two-ranking regular clerk in the works office behind Xu Zanyuan. Just days after the hearing at which Lu Lixiang was dismissed and regardless of Lu Chunshan’s support in those proceedings, Wu requested Lu’s expulsion on the grounds that he had removed several documents from the office, most notably a deed involved in a current land dispute. “Truly this is an example of the obstruction of the law,” Wu declared. “Lu Chunshan is habitually unlawful and continually causes disturbances in both the community and the office itself. . . . We thus have no choice but to ask for his dismissal” (BXDA 6.6.590). While noting that as head clerk Wu Bingzhong was himself responsible for the protection of all documents in the office and would be punished if the missing deed was not recovered within three days, the magistrate granted Wu’s request and formally expelled Lu Chunshan from the yamen. At this point Lu Chunshan disappears from the archival record. Lu Lixiang, on the other hand, proved to be a much more tenacious opponent. Rehabilitation and Reinstatement Beginning in the sixth month of GX 21 (1895), two months after his dismissal, Lu Lixiang began a series of at least seven petitions submitted during the following year requesting a reinvestigation of his case. Lu’s effort at reinstatement highlights several features of clerical employment discussed so far. First, and most obvious, is the process of appeal itself. In Lu Lixiang’s petition we see a consistent citation of standardized regulations and procedures buttressed by repeated claims of long and loyal public service, moral rectitude, and his reliance on yamen employment as the only available means of supporting his family. Failing in his initial attempts to win a rever-

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sal of his dismissal, Lu would present his case, almost verbatim, to three successive magistrates before eventually succeeding. Finally, the success of Lu’s protracted campaign depended not only on office rules and the magistrate’s decision but also on a realignment of factional constituencies and office loyalties. Lu Lixiang’s campaign began with a petition elaborating on the economic basis of Wu Bingzhong’s faction and for the first time revealing Lu’s own brief and reluctant involvement in it. Lu claimed that after Wu Bingzhong’s installment as head clerk, Wu and his chief lieutenant, Zeng Qingzhong, had brought previously dismissed clerks back into the office at a price of 200 silver taels each. The two factional leaders had then compounded their crime by demanding that all incumbent clerks pay the same amount. Those who refused would be denied legal case assignments. Lu’s plaint makes clear that it was this issue, rather than questions concerning his past deeds, that actually lay behind his dispute with Wu Bingzhong. Since the plaint also set the tone and agenda for all those to follow, it deserves to be quoted at length. I myself paid 100 taels [to Wu] but I feared that something bad would happen, especially after seeing how [Zeng] Qingzhong’s influence and corruption were growing. I therefore refused to pay the additional 100 taels and instead demanded that they return what I had already paid. But Wu and Zeng were very clever. While putting me off with promises to pay me later, they illicitly recruited over ten more of their followers, taking all fees and controlling all legal cases in the process. This reached such a point that I and the other top four ranking clerks had no choice but to establish a pact of mutual assistance. . . . Because of all this Zeng Qingzhong developed a grudge against me. He then publicly stated that since I and Xu Zanyuan had previously written a report accusing his uncle, Zeng Weicheng, of not turning over documents upon his retirement, he was not willing to work in the same office as me. [Wu] Bingzhong and [Zeng] Qingzhong then bribed Xu Ruitu and, along with their followers, laid false accusations against me, which resulted in my dismissal. . . . Since then, I have repeatedly demanded that they return my money. They refuse to pay, however, and now claim that since my original petitions said nothing about money I must be lying now. I have been in the works office for over twenty years and have seen six or seven head clerks go by. . . . All the charges made against me are examples of Wu and Zeng’s wolfish poison and slanderous twisting of facts. . . . The reason I never mentioned my payment of money to Wu and Zeng before now is that I feared being implicated in their gang [pengcan], which I knew to be a violation of the law. I have now been dismissed on false charges and my heart is even more troubled. I cannot but beg your grace to have pity and reexamine the circumstances of my dismissal.

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Having himself only recently dismissed Lu Lixiang, the magistrate remained unmoved by Lu’s plea and allowed the dismissal to stand. With the arrival of a new magistrate two months later, Lu Lixiang took the opportunity to again present his case. Although threatening severe punishment if Lu’s claims were found to be in any way false, the new magistrate consented to open an investigation. As soon as the case was reopened, however, nine regular clerks, led by Xu Ruitu, Jiang Tingqi, and several other members of the young Turk faction, submitted a statement recounting the numerous crimes that had led to Lu’s dismissal. “Lu Lixiang is irredeemably wicked,” they concluded. “If he returns to the office there will surely be trouble. We state this not only because he is unlawful and impervious to remonstrations but because his return will interfere with your grace’s benevolent and virtuous administration.” This statement from Xu Ruitu’s faction was accompanied on the same day by a similar report from Wu Bingzhong. But although he echoed the regular clerks’ opinion of Lu’s character, Wu’s statement shows him to be removing himself from the center of the dispute. No longer the chief protagonist in the affair, Wu now portrayed himself almost as a disinterested third party whose only concern was the maintenance of good relations within the office. Upon consulting with the office’s regular clerks as to the possibility of Lu Lixiang’s return, he stated, they had all threatened to resign en masse if Lu was reinstated. “I myself will be leaving this post in a few years and could easily allow Lu to return. But how could I oppose the wishes of the entire office in this way?” The magistrate agreed with Wu’s conclusions and so, despite a last appeal by three of Lu’s brothers who had come to the yamen pleading that he was too poverty-stricken to feed their widowed mother and grandmother, the case was once again closed. Undeterred by failure, however, Lu Lixiang used the opportunity of yet another magistrate’s arrival in Ba County the following month to submit his case for a third time. If Wu Bingzhong’s earlier statement hinted at a softening of his animosity toward Lu, the possibility of rapprochement between Lu Lixiang and Wu Bingzhong was further suggested by the fact that Lu now focused his attention not on Wu, but on Zeng Qingzhong. Although Wu had indeed obtained his post illegally, Lu continued to claim, it was Zeng who had masterminded the scheme. It was also Zeng who was behind the recruitment of dismissed clerks and family members, the subsequent monopolization of legal cases, and Lu’s own dismissal on

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false charges. Wu Bingzhong’s role, Lu implied, was limited to covering up the conspiracy. To achieve that end, Wu Bingzhong had recently stated that he would allow Lu Lixiang to return to the office provided he drop the issue of extorting payments from incumbent clerks. The magistrate agreed that the case was suspicious and ordered a reinvestigation. If Lu had indeed been negotiating his return with Wu Bingzhong, then he also seems to have sought support from his former colleagues Xu Zanyuan and Chen Bingjing, who to that point had refrained from intervening in the affair. Two months after the case was reopened, the senior-ranking Xu Zanyuan, along with Chen Bingjing and Xu’s son, Xu Linxian, submitted a formal request for Lu Lixiang’s reinstatement. In contrast to the previous portrayal of Lu as a scoundrel, he was now cast as an impoverished but loyal public servant whose skill in administrative matters was sorely missed in the office. “We beseeched Wu Bingzhong to allow Lu to return so as to give the office the benefit of his expertise,” they said. “Hereafter, both sides will refrain from reopening this dispute out of spite or anger. . . . We hereby humbly join together in requesting your grace’s mercy in allowing us to offer security for Lu Lixiang’s reinstatement.” The magistrate noted the request and stated that it would be taken into consideration in his forthcoming decision on the matter. Although Lu may have been engineering a comeback by garnering support and coming to terms with Wu Bingzhong, middle-ranking clerks with reason to fear the return of a powerful and quite possibly vengeful senior clerk remained adamantly opposed to Lu’s reinstatement. Led by Xu Ruitu and Jiang Tingqi, the group submitted a petition three days after the request for Lu Lixiang’s reinstatement. After reiterating the case against Lu, they continued with a stridently vituperative attack claiming that Lu had bribed Xu Ruitu’s uncle, the “old and confused” Xu Zanyuan, into backing his return to the office. Lu’s wolfish nature fills the sky and there is no evil he will not commit. He looks upon the rest of us as his fish and meat and we fear him as we do the jackal and the tiger. If he is allowed to return he will surely use his power to seek revenge on us all. Naturally we are much alarmed at this. . . . If he achieves his desire of returning to the office, we are all prepared to retire in order to evade his net. Who can tell what calamities might occur after that? We make this statement not out of any private vendetta but out of concern for public matters and in order to prevent conspiracy and abuse. We can only plead that your grace will investigate this so as to calm our fears and eliminate covetous greed.

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With a large segment of the office’s clerical staff effectively threatening to go on strike, the magistrate assured the petitioners that if Lu Lixiang was indeed the villainous cur they made him out to be, he would naturally not be allowed to return. Clearly the affair required further review. Faced with this last obstacle, Lu Lixiang let go with a flurry of four petitions in the space of little more than one month, insisting upon his innocence and victimization. Lu first stated that he had already settled his differences with Wu Bingzhong and that Wu was now willing to allow his return. Then, after claiming that he had never willingly violated office rules, he continued with an attempt to rectify the previous vilification of his character by proclaiming his poverty, personal honor, and the officially recognized virtue of his household. My grandmother is over ninety sui and my mother over sixty. Both are widowed and have suffered bitterly over the years to maintain their chastity [kushou]. Because of their virtue they were both awarded an imperial certificate of merit [jingbiao] in GX 11 (1885). I now struggle in vain to maintain my household since everyone depends on me alone to provide food and clothing. I served over twenty years in the yamen without a trace of malfeasance. But because I am no longer young, I cannot find any other form of livelihood and so my entire family goes hungry. It is therefore with tearfilled eyes that I beg your grace’s forgiveness and mercy to allow me to return to public service.

Although perhaps not entirely convinced by Lu’s protestations of devotion as a public servant, the magistrate appears to have been sufficiently moved by the citation of imperially recognized virtue in his household to call for another hearing. Thus, sixteen months after his dismissal, Lu Lixiang appeared as the plaintiff before the magistrate’s bench with Wu Bingzhong and Zeng Qingzhong as codefendants. After listening to testimony, the magistrate determined that since the office staff was in general agreement on the matter, Lu should be reinstated at his previous rank on the condition that he “obey all office regulations and refrain from spitefully carrying on any dispute with Zeng Qingzhong.” Denouement Lu Lixiang’s reinstatement did not, however, bring peace and harmony to the Office of Works. Its most salient results were instead a shifting of alliances within the office and the breakup of Xu Ruitu’s faction. No one appears to have followed up on their threat to im-

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mediately retire as a result of Lu’s return, but animosity nevertheless continued. Less than two months after Lu’s formal reinstatement, Xu Ruitu and Qu Mingzhang submitted a plaint once again citing Lu Lixiang for corruption. The real object of their discontent, however, was not Lu Lixiang but Wu Bingzhong, whom they now described as an incompetent illiterate, a venal fool who had betrayed their previous support by accepting the bribes and flattery of Lu Lixiang. The petitioners denied that they had ever given their consent to Lu Lixiang’s return, claiming that Wu Bingzhong had used the occasion of their attendance at a wedding feast to push Lu’s reinstatement through in their absence. “Clearly this is an instance of deceptive reinstatement and treachery,” they stated. To all of this, Wu had added the final insult of demanding that they themselves pay the 100 silver taels of court fees incurred by his litigation with Lu Lixiang. Obviously, they concluded, the situation was deserving of the magistrate’s urgent attention. This broadside was quickly challenged by Wu Bingzhong and his supporters, who now included two members of Xu Ruitu’s splintering faction—Jiang Tingqi and his brother Jiang Hanjiang. Aside from insisting that Lu Lixiang’s reinstatement had been done according to accepted procedures, Wu flatly denied that he was forcing anybody to pay for his court costs. He then went on to accuse Xu Ruitu and the others of being guilty of serious violations of office regulations. Most recently, for example, Xu Ruitu usurped a case that should have been assigned to Jiang Tingqi. When Wu criticized them for this, Xu and Qu Mingzhang then conspired to submit a false and libelous report against him. Adding that Xu Ruitu had threatened to steal case files and then place the blame on Wu if Lu Lixiang was allowed back in the office, Wu Bingzhong then requested an investigation of what he now derisively referred to as Xu Ruitu and Qu Mingzhang’s gang (dang). The file on this episode in the works office ends with the magistrate’s order for an investigation following a final plaint submitted by Xu Ruitu and his dwindling supporters. The plaint accused Wu Bingzhong’s follower, and their own former ally, Jiang Tingqi, of weaseling his way into the office to extort money under Wu’s protection and charging Wu himself with forcing incumbent clerks to pay money in return for legal case assignments. As revealed in separate case files, the litigation between Wu Bingzhong and these junior clerks continued for three months. In the end, Qu Mingzhang was dismissed and placed in the cangue 20 for one month on the

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charge of appropriating public affairs (bachi gongshi). Qu later appealed his expulsion on the grounds that in order to pay Wu’s fees in GX 20 he had been forced to pledge his family property. Now that he had been unjustly dismissed, he had no means of either feeding his family or paying off his creditors. Despite this and subsequent petitions on his behalf from his former colleagues, Qu’s request for reinstatement was refused (BXDA 6.6.592). Denying that he had ever been involved in any sort of extortion ring or other form of factional activity, Wu Bingzhong maintained throughout his dispute with Qu Mingzhang and the rest that he was nothing more than a poor scholar (hanshi) who had relied on loans from close friends and family to pay for his installation fees (BXDA 6.6.592). Once again cleared of all charges against him, Wu retired shortly thereafter with less than a year left in his term as head clerk. The reason he gave for this early retirement was simply “to better care for my aged and sick mother” (BXDA 6.6.277). Wu was replaced as head clerk by his own recruit and supporter in the Lu Lixiang and subsequent litigation, Li Pengcheng (BXDA 6.6.335; 6.6.338). Not long after Wu’s retirement, his collaborator Zeng Qingzhong paid 200 silver taels to the head of the revenue office and transferred there under the name of Zeng Xin’an.21 Xu Ruitu, despite his earlier threats of retirement, appears to have reconciled himself at least temporarily to Lu Lixiang’s presence in the works office. Although we do not know why he eventually left, his name remained in the personnel reports until GX 28 (1902) (BXDA 6.6.338). Wu Bingzhong’s protégé Jiang Tingqi, on the other hand, continued to serve in the office. Surviving a dispute with clerks from the revenue office over legal case jurisdiction in GX 31 (1905), he remained in the works office until at least the end of the Guangxu period in 1908 (BXDA 6.6.335; 6.6.338; 6.6.341; 6.6.343). I close this episode in the Office of Works with a brief return to the indefatigable Lu Lixiang. Following his reinstatement, Lu was joined in the works office by several of his kin. In GX 28 (1902), Lu’s cousin, Lu Guo’en, took over as head of the office. Five years later Lu Guo’en was succeeded by yet another member of the clan, Lu Penglin (BXDA 6.6.341; 6.6.343; 6.6.659). Although never becoming head clerk himself, Lu Lixiang continued to serve as the senior regular clerk in the office following the retirement of Xu Zanyuan in GX 23 (1897). In the final year of the Guangxu period (1908) he became once again embroiled in a dispute. Then nearly sixty sui with a record of more than forty years in the Ba County yamen, Lu requested, and had been granted, the dismissal of one of his own re-

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cruits on grounds of embezzlement, extortion, and opium addiction. Once expelled, however, the former protégé sued Lu for the return of his installation fee, charging that Lu himself had recently stolen several licenses from the office and lodged false charges in order to cover up his crime. The magistrate agreed to look into the matter (BXDA 6.6.659).

Conclusion Particularistic associations in the Ba County yamen were as ambiguous in their function as they were in how they were represented. As the disputes cited throughout this chapter clearly demonstrate, the control of an office by individuals allied by kinship, patronage, or common interest was often used to monopolize resources and thus deprive other clerks of position and valuable work assignments. On the other hand, even for individuals whose subsequent careers were entirely free of such allegations, personal bonds and associations were usually necessary to secure employment in the first place and to advance in rank thereafter. In this respect, particularistic associations in the yamen played much the same role as they did in Qing society at large by embedding the individual in a pattern of broader social relations and sources of support. The intrusion of these otherwise commonplace forms of interpersonal relations into the realm of administrative institutions was regularly castigated by central government officials in the Qing as a violation of Confucian principles and thus as a source of corruption. Likewise, many present-day scholars have viewed particularism as deviating from the organizational norms of a rationalized bureaucracy and, hence, as a particularly dysfunctional form of corrupt behavior. But in the social world of the county yamen, personal bonds of loyalty and obligation did not always imply deviance. In most instances they instead constituted the norm within the formally unregulated realm of local administrative practice. Patronage and kinship, for example, were commonly used in the yamen to ensure the recruitment of capable and compatible staff members (i.e., competent individuals who would not upset the status quo in the office by violating rules or expose the office to investigation through egregious forms of corruption). In the same manner, the collective nature of office and interoffice deliberations meant that lateral alliances, or factions, were frequently required to reach a consensus on office policy and regulations in the first place as well as to enforce them afterward.

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Not surprisingly, the dualistic function of personal associations as either a method of ensuring smooth operations and the continued accessibility of office resources or as a means of monopolizing those resources resulted in a similar duality in how they were represented. We have seen, for example, that kinship and patron-client ties were commonly offered as prima facie evidence of both technical skill and personal character. Within the informal realm of yamen practice, where statutory quotas and penal statutes held little relevance, such positive valuation was linked to and derived its validity from the wider cultural norms and expectations of the society of which the yamen was a part. If, on the other hand, an individual wished to cast doubt on the motives of a particular group, these same forms of association could equally well be portrayed as indicative of abusive intent and moral turpitude. In such cases, attention usually focused on the character of the group’s leader, which by extension imputed a similar character to the group as a whole. The use of rhetoric for this purpose is evident in the level of invective often found in plaints and petitions to the magistrate in the course of intraoffice conflicts. If we took these portrayals at face value, it would be easy—even unavoidable— to conclude that the yamen was indeed entirely populated by scheming villains and rogues. But the function of most of these allegations, Wu Bingzhong’s drowning of his daughter-in-law or Lu Lixiang’s poisoning of his mentor, for example, was not to bring prosecutable charges against the individual in question. Rather, they were meant to undermine the character of that individual prior to the presentation of a substantive allegation that was relatively minor by comparison (e.g., the hoarding of legal case assignments or altering the office ranking of another clerk). The reasoning behind this discursive strategy is clear; in most cases the customary procedures that the substantive charge violated were themselves a violation of statutory law. The most striking feature of these portrayals, however, is that they were offered not by yamen outsiders but by clerks themselves. Here again we find a particular discursive strategy at work. Popular images of yamen corruption provided a readily available and effective means of vilifying one’s opponent in the eyes of the magistrate. But if clerks employed these popular images to bolster their cases in disputes, they by no means intended to castigate their occupation as a whole. To the contrary, by bringing the degenerate character of specific individuals within their ranks to the magistrate’s attention,

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damning portrayals served to underscore, by contrast, the honorable nature of clerks in general. In other words, the object of vilification was portrayed as corrupt not in relation to statutory regulations, which most clerks violated by their very presence in the yamen, but in terms of the informal norms of yamen practice, norms framed as consonant with generalized societal values of honesty, personal integrity, loyalty, and filial behavior. When combined with citations of office regulations and given the collective support of fellow clerks, these sorts of representations, either positive or negative, could be quite effective in eliciting action from a magistrate. Witness, for example, the expulsion of Lu Lixiang as an utter scoundrel and his later reinstatement under a different magistrate as a filial son and valuable civil servant. By acting in this manner to control the behavior of fellow clerks and thereby constrain the monopolization of office resources, informal regulations and standardized practices worked in conjunction with personal networks of support to help sustain the viability of clerical work as a long-term occupation. But if yamen work was represented as an honorable and socially valuable occupation, the fact remained that the normative values of this occupation departed from the formal standards of administrative conduct to which appointed officials were held as well as from the orthodox Confucian ideals upon which those standards were based. The economic foundation of yamen work as an occupation was not, after all, a regular salary from the state. Nor did it even purport to be based on the personal resources of clerks. Rather it was openly based on the fees drawn directly from the local population. In this sense, functional position within the yamen was being exchanged for economic returns well outside the realm of formal state institutions. Insofar as this system achieved a degree of informal, or illicit, legitimacy on the local level, it effectively removed any boundary separating the administrative role of county government from the community in which it operated. Within the realm of yamen practice, county government thus became less an embodiment of external and distinct political authority than it was a field of negotiation and exchange between yamen personnel and local residents. Before we can explore this aspect of yamen practice and its relationship with local society, however, we must first meet those members of the yamen staff who played an even more immediate role in the interaction between yamen and community: the runners.

chapter four

Runners

There are no officials under heaven who do not love the people. Yet even a government that loves the people cannot reach down to them as goodness is often blocked from within by the collusion of verminous runners. Yamen runners were established to provide labor. From the beginning it has therefore not been possible to do without them completely. Yet most of them are but rogues who care nothing for the public welfare and conspire only to do evil. They can neither be commanded by reason, moved by sentiment, nor influenced by virtue and benevolence. . . . Everything depends on the official taking measures to control them so they will know a fear of the law. . . . Those who transgress the law must be quickly and severely punished. Only then can the common people be safeguarded. —Liu Heng, Ba County magistrate 1825–18271

T

he position of yamen runners in the Qing administrative system was even more contradictory than that of clerks. Although they were responsible for carrying out the bulk of all nonclerical tasks associated with county administration as well as serving as one of the primary mechanisms for the enforcement of state authority at the local level, yamen runners were reviled by officials at all levels of government as the most venal and corrupt of yamen employees. As we have seen, the position of yamen clerks was characterized by a similar paradox; but in the case of runners, this paradox was made even sharper by several key differences between the two groups. To begin with, yamen runners far outnumbered clerks. The relative difficulty this numerical preponderance posed for control was further compounded by the fact that unlike clerks, runners frequently operated outside the confines of the yamen. Their work thus

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brought them into direct contact with the local populace even as it placed them beyond the reach of supervision by either the magistrate or his personal staff. Moreover, in contrast to yamen clerks, who could lay claim to at least a modicum of personal honor and virtue due to the literate nature of their work, runners were viewed simply as menial laborers. Without even the pretense of scholarship, literary training, and all the potentials for moral self-cultivation implied therein, runners were held to be inherently untrustworthy and incapable of resisting the temptations of corruption. Thus, where officials regarded clerks with a fair degree of suspicion, their attitude toward runners was more often marked by open hostility. Despite such attitudes and the critical position of runners in local administration, however, the Qing government made few efforts to reform the formal system. Those steps that were taken did nothing to alter structural problems of county administration, such as the hopelessly inadequate statutory provisions for staffing and financing. Efforts were instead directed at increasing the magistrate’s personal responsibility for maintaining discipline among his runners as well as increasing the range and severity of punishments to which runners were subject. As Liu Heng’s comments suggest, the burden of control lay squarely on the shoulders of the local official. Yet few magistrates possessed Liu’s zeal and talent in this regard and, as a result, local administrative practice continued to develop informally, beyond the boundaries of statutory regulation and control. Central government officials in the Qing tended to place all runners in the single uniform category of self-seeking scoundrels whose only motive in taking yamen employment was to reap the profits of corruption. This same outlook has also informed the analytic framework of most present-day scholarship. But with the availability of the Ba County archives, we are now given the opportunity to move beyond the stereotypes and gaps in our knowledge. As this and the following chapter will demonstrate, yamen runners were not the homogenous group of villains the imperial center imagined them to be. Rather, they functioned as a large and highly stratified body, differentiated not only on the basis of authority but also according to income, job security, and even status. Within this structure and in the absence of any operational regulations dictated by the central government, Ba County runners formulated a body of sub-rosa occupational rules and standards designed to protect their livelihood and to mitigate the effects of intrayamen competition. In the process, these illegitimate functionaries created a system of

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administrative employment that was only occasionally influenced by the statutes of the government they ostensibly served. This chapter explores this informal system by outlining the organization of yamen runners along with their primary duties and responsibilities. Following an effort to get some sense of how many runners the Ba County yamen employed, I consider their social and economic backgrounds as well as how they attempted to validate their technically illegal positions in the yamen. In Chapter 5, I move on to the internal operations of yamen runners, including matters such as recruitment, tenure, discipline, and networks of support. Finally, and most importantly, I examine how the contradictory position of runners within the yamen influenced their role in county government and their relationship with members of the local community.

Organization and Personnel The title of “yamen runner” is a convenient but very loose translation of the Chinese term chaiyi. More literally rendered as “drafted service,” the term originated in the Northern Song dynasty’s system of drafted labor service (chaiyifa), by which leading members of local communities were recruited for temporary service as village officers (McKnight 1971, 22–37). As the cornerstone of local government under the Song, village officers were responsible for such basic administrative functions as the maintenance of village records, the repair of public works, local charitable institutions, the collection and delivery of taxes to the yamen, as well as local police work and public security. With these tasks relegated to communities themselves, the county yamen had only to employ a small contingent of yamen laborers (yayi) consisting of gatekeepers (menyi), jailers (jinzu), medical examiners (wuzuo), night watchmen (gengfu), sedan-chair bearers (jiaosanfu), and lictors (zaoyi), all of whom worked primarily within the confines of the yamen proper. As imperial administration was progressively centralized in the Ming and early Qing dynasties, most of these local administrative functions were absorbed by the yamen, which consequently required a much larger workforce. In the process, the term chaiyi came to refer to those members of the yamen staff who now performed these duties outside the yamen gates. In Ba County, this workforce was divided into four groups with varying degrees of functional special-

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ization: district runners (kuaiyi, liangyi); salt runners (yanyi); constables (buyi); and commoner guards (minzhuang). Although “runner” is widely and indiscriminately used to cover all nonclerical yamen laborers (yayi), in the following pages I use the term more restrictively to refer to these last four groups, whose members’ duties in the countryside brought them into regular contact with local residents. Of these four, district runners and constables constituted by far the largest segment of yamen employees. The importance of their role as administrative functionaries, as well as official concern with their activities outside the yamen gates, is reflected in the fact that the archival record as it pertains to runners in the nineteenth century is almost completely devoted to these two groups. In the following description of how these key members of the yamen staff were organized, it is important to bear in mind that for the most part such organization was based not on statutory guidelines, but rather on local customary practice and informal procedures. Although this organizational structure was occasionally modified by incumbent magistrates such as Liu Heng, matters of recruitment, rank, advancement, jurisdictional boundaries, and dispute resolution were largely self-determined by runners themselves. Divisions and Ranks District runners, the largest single group of administrative personnel in Ba County, were divided by assignment to one of the three subcounty districts (li) as described in Chapter 1: Huaishi, Juyi, and Xicheng. In the Jiaqing period (1796–1821), runners in each of these districts were subdivided into left and right divisions (ban) (Li Rongzhong 1989, 96). Shortly thereafter, these divisions were further divided into two rotating shifts (lun), one for odd numbered months (dan) and another for even (shuang). As with clerks and their respective offices and divisions, runners worked exclusively in the specific district, division, and shift into which they had been recruited. Collectively known as either the three districts (sanli) or the three districts, six divisions (sanli liuban), the organization of runners in each of the three districts is summarized in Figure 3. In the early years of the Qing dynasty, district runners operated only in the countryside. At that time, administrative duties within the city of Chongqing were performed by both lictors and commoner guards. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the city’s growth had created a much greater administrative burden. To

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District (Xicheng, Juyi, and Huaishi) Left Division Odd Shift

Even Shift

Right Division Odd Shift

Even Shift

Figure 3. Organization of Ba County District Runners

assist in dealing with this workload, district runners began performing a variety of tasks within the city, eventually coming to eclipse lictors and commoner guards entirely in this respect. But because Chongqing did not itself constitute a discrete administrative unit, it was not provided with a separate contingent of district runners. Instead, runners from the three districts shared responsibility by each providing several runners to serve in rotating ten-day shifts. This temporal division of duties created a number of tensions, however, and remained a consistent source of conflict and litigation throughout the late nineteenth century. In contrast to district runners, constables were divided on the basis of the ten smaller subdistricts (li) nested within the three districts. Thus, whereas a district runner might identify himself as a Xicheng runner, for example, a constable working within the same district would cite the more specific subdistrict unit to which he was attached. The restriction placed on geographical jurisdiction was meant to match their intended functional limitation as public security officers. Like district runners, constables in each of these subdistricts were subdivided into left-right divisions and odd-even shifts serving on a rotation basis. Unlike district runners, however, the city of Chongqing had its own complement of constables who were permanently assigned to one of the city’s twenty-nine wards (fang). The organization of personnel among both district runners and constables was based on a hierarchical system of mutual responsibility. In the Qianlong period, each division of constables and district runners was led by several head runners (touyi) who were responsible for a specific number of subordinates working under their supervision. As the number of runners grew in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, magistrates sought to maintain at least a semblance of control by imposing tighter units of mu-

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tual responsibility. Thus, during his tenure as Ba County magistrate in the 1820s, Liu Heng grouped the runners in the various divisions into five-man units, with each unit made the responsibility of a single “chief runner” (zongtou) (MLS 17:37a). By the second half of the nineteenth century, progressive expansion in the number of runners had necessitated yet another layer of responsibility and control. By the Guangxu reign, the chief runners within each division of constables and district runners had thus been placed under the supervision of between six to ten “head runners,” now styled as lingyi, who worked under the direction of a single “managing head runner” (guanshi). The head runners constituted the yamen’s statutory quota of runners. Like head clerks, the position of head runner was one of substantial authority as well as liability. Invested with seals of position by the magistrate, head runners were responsible for the performance of all duties assigned to their respective shifts, the assignment of tasks to subordinates, as well as the recruitment of new personnel. On the other hand, head runners were also expected to pay for all operating expenses when their unit was on duty (e.g., BXDA 6.6.507; 6.6.602). The ability to meet such payments, particularly on the part of the managing head runners was, in fact, one of the primary qualifications for the job. Head runners were also responsible for all actions of their subordinates and were subject to corporal punishment and dismissal if they were found to have been negligent in their supervision. In GX 19 (1883), for example, two constables assigned to guard a prisoner being held in the cangue had taken their charge in tow to a nearby opium den where, after the constables had smoked themselves into delirium, the prisoner made his escape. In addition to having the two constables beaten with heavy bamboo, the magistrate ordered that if the escaped prisoner was not recovered within fifteen days, all head runners in the division would be punished with a particularly harsh form of confinement known as the “cage” (long) (BXDA 6.6.566; see also 6.6.494; 6.6.650). Below the head runners there remained Liu Heng’s chief runners (zongyi), whose numbers had increased significantly since Liu’s tenure. It was the chief runners, moreover, who took direct charge of most work assignments and who actually left the yamen to carry out their duties. Finally, below the chief runners were the local runners (sanyi). Unlike the head and chief runners, who resided in the

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yamen while on duty, local runners generally remained in the countryside, a feature of employment which left their status within the yamen decidedly ambiguous. Typically, when an item of business came into a division, the head runner assigned it to a chief runner who, after registering as “runner-in-charge” (chengyi, chengchai) would proceed to the appropriate market town or village, where he and a local runner carried out the assigned task. Just as head runners were ultimately responsible for all their subordinates, so, too, were chief runners responsible for the actions of the local runners under their supervision. Thus, when local runner Zhang Chu was a day late in delivering documents to the neighboring county in GX 11 (1885) he was reprimanded by the magistrate. The chief runner who had deputed Zhang, on the other hand, was charged with the improper assignment of duties (paichai butuo) and was subsequently beaten with heavy bamboo (BXDA 6.6.524). All head, chief, and local runners were listed on an unofficial register for each division maintained by clerks in the yamen’s Office of Punishments. In addition to these informally registered personnel, each division utilized a number of individuals who served in an auxiliary capacity and whose names were not usually listed. Such individuals were referred to as either assistant runners (bangyi) or the more pejorative term of baiyi.2 Because of its negative connotations, use of the term baiyi was ambiguous and is thus in need of clarification here. Technically, both “assistant runner” and baiyi denoted local residents who were not employed on a steady basis but who might be used for short periods to help out with specific tasks. The pejorative aspect of baiyi stemmed from the fact that although the Disciplinary Regulations of the Six Boards permitted the strictly temporary use of assistant runners during periods of heavy work in the same way as they did with clerks, the use of unregistered personnel, referred to in the regulations specifically as baiyi, was forbidden (CFZL 16:5a). Nevertheless, because the official quotas for yamen runners set by Beijing were inadequate to meet the staffing needs of local government, magistrates were compelled to employ runners on a longterm basis beyond the statutory limits. This group, consisting of chief and local runners, was unofficially enrolled in the yamen registers. But from Beijing’s point of view and in terms of official regulations, such regularly employed yet extrastatutory runners were

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indistinguishable from unregistered individuals who worked only on a periodic basis. They were all baiyi. Thus, how a nonstatutory runner was referred to depended on how the speaker wished to portray him. In their reports to superiors, for example, magistrates often referred to all supernumerary personnel working with their tacit permission as “assistant runners” in order to avoid the appearance of illegally employing runners beyond the quota. Conversely, senior runners requesting the dismissal of a subordinate might refer to that subordinate as a baiyi, even if the individual in question had worked for years as a local or chief runner, in an effort to portray him in the worst possible terms. Likewise, an unofficially registered runner would generally refer to an individual working under his direction on an occasional basis as an “assistant” runner. If that same individual came under suspicion or attack, however, his accusers would refer to him as a baiyi. To minimize the confusion resulting from these practices, I confine my use of the term baiyi to those unregistered individuals who provided temporary assistance only. Individuals working on a long-term basis, whether informally registered or not, will be referred to simply as nonstatutory runners. As we shall see in a later section, the numbers of assistant runners and baiyi working in connection with the Ba County yamen could be quite large. Nevertheless, rather than adopting the central government’s view of them as a veritable army of parasites singlemindedly devoted to pillaging the public, it would be more accurate to see them as a large pool of occasional laborers. When a registered runner set off on a particular task, he might take along several friends, associates, or family members to assist him. Though these individuals were no doubt motivated by the opportunity for monetary rewards, their use was also conditioned by the environment in which runners worked. Ba County was a mountainous area of widely scattered settlements infamous for bandit gangs who used the proximity of the provincial border to evade arrest. The county was also noted for its well-developed opium and salt smuggling networks among the local residents. Sent into the countryside to deliver summons, carry out arrest warrants, initiate investigations, or prompt for taxes, runners often faced considerable physical danger from both armed criminals and communities hostile to any intrusion by representatives of governmental authority.3 In this context, the use of unregistered assis-

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tants was not only a means of providing income opportunities but also could be a simple matter of physical survival.

Duties To a great extent, the division of administrative duties among yamen runners was based on functional specialization. Lictors, for example, were in charge of administering corporal punishments in the yamen court as well as of clearing the road before the magistrate’s retinue whenever he had occasion to leave the yamen on official business. Commoner guards drilled regularly with militia units and were assigned the task of guarding the county granaries. With similarly specific intent, constables had been established in the Yongzheng period for the sole purpose of arresting criminals and assisting in bandit suppression (DLCY 387; MLS 21:30; BXDA 6.6.113). Somewhat less apparent from their title were the administrative duties of the yamen’s district runners. These included the delivery of communications to and from superior yamens in either Chongqing or the provincial capitol of Chengdu; the posting of notices, proclamations, and orders in both the city and countryside; the escort of visiting officials and foreign travelers; and, most importantly, the collection and delivery of taxes along with the pressing of tax payments from those in arrears. In practice, the division of labor was not always as discrete or rationalized as this description suggests. In the early Qing, for example, lictors had been responsible for all administrative tasks within the walls of Chongqing city. By the mid-nineteenth century, these duties had been assumed by district runners as described above (BXDAHB 226–27). Yet even as late as the Guangxu period, it was not unusual to find lictors, commoner guards, or in some cases even sedan-chair bearers delivering documents within the city (e.g., BXDA 6.6.113; 6.6.531). Within each division of runners, there were also specialists who shared responsibility for certain duties with similar specialists in other divisions. Foreign affairs (yangwu), for example, were the province of specialists in both the district runner and constable divisions. In GX 26 (1900) we find such specialists from both divisions being punished after a foreigner they were escorting eluded them and headed down the Yangzi River unaccompanied (BXDA 6.6.612). Specialists among the district runners and constables likewise shared responsibility for the licensing and supervision of traveling drama troupes (BXDA 6.6.652).

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With the notable exception of tax collection, which I examine in Chapter 5, administrative duties yielded very little in the way of sanctioned income. In most cases, runners were required to cover the cost of their own operating expenses. Runners on assignment outside the city were provided with a stipend for food and travel expenses, but for the most part these stipends were supplied by senior runners. The heaviest burden for such payments, as well as for the general financial maintenance of the various divisions while on duty, fell on the head runners and particularly on the managing head runner. When accused by a subordinate of embezzling legal case fees totaling more than 1,000 taels of silver in GX 8 (1882), managing head district runner Peng Tai thus explained his use of these funds in the following terms: I have served as a head runner for over thirty years. Since becoming manager in TZ 11 (1872), I have incurred personal debts of over 1,000 taels as a result of the fees paid to other yamens as well as the expenses for banquets and the living expenses of those in the division. Unfortunately, in these last few years administrative duties have been heavy but legal cases few and the income is therefore insufficient to meet the costs of food and clothing in the division, which have not decreased in the slightest. What is left over (after these expenses) is not even adequate to meet the interest on my previous debts. I have therefore been forced to shift accounts [nuodong yongxi] to meet expenses. Even so I have not been able to recover my debts. But I have certainly not added anymore fees nor have I embezzled any funds. (BXDA 6.6.507)

The financial responsibility of managing head runners for divisional operations could at times be quite heavy. In GX 24 (1898), for example, managing head runner Fan Rong, whom we shall meet again in Chapter 5, claimed that in one month alone he had paid more than 25 taels of silver from his own pocket. Fan’s ability to meet such payments was, in fact, one of the main reasons why he had been promoted to the position of managing head runner in the first place. Responsibility in such matters was not simply a matter of customary expectations but was often explicitly set forth in formal agreements. When Fan Rong was appointed, for instance, the terms of his position were clearly stipulated in an agreement drawn up and signed by all head and chief runners in the division: Because the last manager died, the division mutually determined that Cen Biao should take over. Cen, however, is old and his family poor and it is therefore difficult for him to find the funds necessary to meet administra-

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tive expenses. Also, in recent years the number of duties has increased while legal cases have remained few, so that the division’s living expenses have become very difficult to meet. It was therefore agreed by all that Fan Rong should work together with Cen as manager. Whenever there is an expense, Fan will either pay it himself or undertake to borrow the required amount. Legal case fees will then first be applied to repaying any principal and interest [so incurred] with the remainder to be divided equally among those runners who handled the cases. (BXDA 6.6.602)

The examples of Peng Tai and Fan Rong clearly demonstrate how runners were responsible for any expenses incurred while carrying out their duties as yamen employees. They also indicate that in order to meet these costs, and thus avoid punishment for the dereliction of duty, it was necessary to rely upon the second type of yamen labor—legal casework. As with clerks, the fees collected by runners in the course of processing legal cases (ban’an) were critical both as a means of meeting expenses and as a source of personal income. From the central government’s vantage point, all fees collected in connection with legal cases by yamen employees were equally corrupt in the sense that they constituted a use of public administrative authority for purely private purposes. As one descends the administrative hierarchy to the provincial and county level, however, one finds an increasing recognition among officials of the need for extrastatutory sources of income as a result of local budgetary constraints (Watt 1972, Chap. 14; Ch’ü 1962, 66; Zelin 1984, Chaps. 2, 5). For this reason, magistrates commonly made allowances for the collection of fees by clerks and runners from litigants in civil disputes as well as from suspects and their families in criminal proceedings. The function of legal case fees as the fiscal basis for many yamen operations was clearly set forth in a petition to the Ba County magistrate from twelve chief district runners in GX 30 (1904): Whenever an official comes through this area, a runner from this yamen is sent to escort him. In addition, both the prefectural and circuit yamens have sundry affairs, such as the delivery and reception of documents, all of which are handled by us. We are also in charge of the posting of all announcements and proclamations throughout the county. The expenses and fees for all this are paid by us. All such official business relies on public money, which in turn relies on case fees. Most of these fees go to pay for administrative tasks while the remainder is used by us for living expenses (huoshi). But in the past few years the number of cases and fees has been decreasing, with the result that there is insufficient money to pay for operations. Because of this shortfall, we cannot continue to perform our duties

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and fear that public affairs will therefore be impeded. The responsibility for this is not light. But we are only poor and simple people with many debts and with no means to supply the necessary funds on our own. . . . We therefore have no choice but to state our needs in detail and to beg your grace to aid us in our effort to loyally carry out our responsibilities. (BXDA 6.6.5157)

Despite the claims made here, it is highly doubtful that the number of legal cases was in fact decreasing at this time.4 What is more likely is that the district runners here were seeking an increase in customarily allowable case fees so as to maintain their level of real income in the face of the inflationary pressures of the period. Their attempt, moreover, was underscored by the scarcely veiled implication that yamen operations, and thus the magistrate’s career, would be jeopardized if adequate provisions in this regard were not forthcoming. For beyond the concern over operational financing expressed here lay the more fundamental role of legal case fees as the economic basis of yamen work as an occupation. As such, case fees also served as the axis around which all matters of recruitment, rank, and tenure in the Ba County yamen revolved.

Tenure, Advancement, and Dispute Resolution The founders of the Qing dynasty never intended the position of yamen runner to be a full-time occupation. Rather, it was meant to be a form of temporary labor service levied upon the local populace. In this, Qing legislators differed little from their Ming dynasty predecessors. Most of the central government statutes governing the system during the Qing had, in fact, been adopted wholesale from the Ming Code (Littrup 1981). In addition to placing strict limits on the number of runners to be employed in any given yamen, these statutes were also designed to further reduce opportunities for corruption by establishing procedures for recruitment, accountability, and length of service. By statute, yamen runners were to be drawn from local households enrolled in the tax register with no record of either criminal activity or previous yamen employment (DLCY 53; MLS 4:35a). Due to the physical nature of the job, service was limited to healthy males, below seventy sui but no less than twenty sui (QHDSL 98:258, 261–62). Younger men, as well as the aged or infirm, were barred from the position. Affidavits attesting to all these qualifications were to be supplied by the recruit as well as his neighbors,

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who were also required to submit a pledge of responsibility for his behavior while in service. And finally, the statutes stipulated that no runner was to serve for longer than a period of three years (Ch’ü 1962, 63).5 County magistrates were held personally responsible for the enforcement of these regulations. To this end they were directed to submit annual reports to Beijing listing the names, age, residence, tax registry, and year of appointment of all runners employed in the yamen. Magistrates were also required to verify independently the status of all runners and ensure that the yamen employed neither supernumerary personnel nor anyone else whose presence violated the statutes. But as the number of runners expanded in response to increases in the administrative workload of the county yamen, the ability of magistrates to maintain this level of personal supervision and control declined to the point where, by the nineteenth century, most statutes on the employment of runners were so broadly ignored as to be irrelevant. As in other areas of yamen operations, standard procedure developed informally. Tenure The desuetude of central government statutes in regard to runners was most conspicuous in the area of tenure. Unlike clerks, where the statutes on tenure were enforced at least in regard to head clerks, Ba County runners ignored these regulations entirely.6 Regardless of whether he was a head, chief, or local runner, if an individual managed to avoid dismissal he could remain in position indefinitely. The system of ranks among runners described above was itself predicated on the expectation of indefinite tenure. The irrelevance of statutes in this respect is further reflected in the fact that even the magistrate’s official reports to Beijing show numerous cases of extended service. In a GX 2 (1876) report, for example, the average tenure for the forty registered lictors, district runners, constables, and commoner guards was twenty-four years, with no individual having less than fifteen years experience and some with as many as fifty or sixty years (BXDA 6.6.114). As this suggests, yamen practice in Ba County also departed from statute in regard to the advanced age of many runners. In GX 2 (1876) the average age of the twelve statutory lictors was sixty-two sui, while in GX 8 (1882) the average for statutory district runners was no less than seventy-six (BXDA 6.6.114; 6.6.4978). Obviously this meant that a good deal of the actual work in these divisions was

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being done by younger, informally registered men. This was particularly evident in cases of disputed succession to the position of head runner following the death or retirement of an incumbent. In these cases, chief runners vying for position frequently based their claim on the fact that they had for years been performing the duties of the former head runner and should therefore be allowed to assume the position in name as well as substance (e.g., BXDA 6.6.500; 6.6.507; 6.6.602). Recruitment and Advancement Although official regulations required that magistrates independently verify the qualifications of prospective runners, the workload of even a moderately busy post combined with the large number of yamen personnel to make this level of supervision impossible. Thus, while magistrates regularly reported to Beijing that all registration and vetting procedures had been scrupulously followed, in practice they tended to approve nominations presented by incumbent runners as a matter of course (e.g., BXDAHB 221–25).7 As a result, yamen employment was most often secured through personal contacts with those already working in the yamen. This reliance on personal contacts is clearly evident in the magistrate’s annual personnel reports. In 1861, for example, more than 52 percent of all statutory runners were residents of neighboring subdistricts located to the northwest of the city (BXDA 6.5.18). Local and Chief Runners. Near the bottom of the yamen hierarchy, local runners relied on nomination and sponsorship (bao) from chief runners, who thus became responsible for the actions of the recruit. While appointment was usually a foregone conclusion following nomination, the seriousness with which liability for a subordinate’s actions was taken is seen in the numerous instances of chief runners accusing or otherwise disowning a local runner whom they had previously sponsored (e.g., BXDA 6.6.495). Moving up the hierarchy a step, the position of chief runner required nomination and guarantees of mutual responsibility from one or several head runners. Once his nomination had been approved by the magistrate, the new chief runner was installed at the bottom of his division’s ranking at a ceremonial banquet he was required to host. In GX 33 (1907), for example, after twenty years as a local runner, one Hu Xuan was invited by head district runner Pei Sheng to become a chief runner in the right division of the Huaishi

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District. Hu accepted and was subsequently installed at a feast held at a local opium den, owned by Pei Sheng himself, for which Hu paid 20 taels (CD Minxing qizha 12-XT 1). Installation as a chief runner also required the payment of a fee to the sponsoring head runner. The customary amount of this fee ranged from 20 to 50 taels, depending on the workload, responsibilities, and potential income from the district or division in question. Ostensibly these fees were to be used by the head runner to defray the operating expenses of the unit. But regardless of the use to which the money was eventually put, its function as a price for position, and the resulting tendency of head runners to “sell” as many positions as possible, is evident in the frequent charges of “excessive recruitment” (lanzhao) lodged against head runners by incumbent chief runners who felt their livelihood to be threatened by the addition of new personnel (e.g., BXDA 6.6.495). Head runners were also in a position to exact sums from novice chief runners even beyond the customary installation fee due to the latter’s lack of support within the unit. Several years after he had become chief runner, for example, the above-mentioned Hu Xuan was accused of extortion in connection with a legal case by his sponsor, Pei Sheng. Hu Xuan denied the charges, stating that they were nothing more than an attempt by Pei Sheng to punish him for refusing to pay additional fees upon demand. Hu claimed that following his installment he had given Pei Sheng more than 60 taels in miscellaneous fees over and above his installation fee of 20 taels, which Hu cited as being the standard for the Huaishi District. This was, Hu insisted, much more than the amount paid by the other ten chief runners whom Pei had recruited since becoming a head runner. It was, in fact, even more than the 50 taels usually paid by runners in the Xicheng District, the busiest and most potentially lucrative district in the county. Thus, when Pei had pressed him for additional money, Hu Xuan had refused. Piqued by Hu Xuan’s refusal, Pei then responded by both depriving Hu of his rightful income from several legal cases and by convincing the other runners in the division to lodge what Hu claimed to be false and libelous charges against him. With no one in the division willing to support him, however, Hu’s allegations and protestations of innocence were without effect. Following a series of hearings before the magistrate, Hu was found guilty and expelled from the yamen (CD Minxing qizha 12-XT 1). The dispute between Hu Xuan and Pei Sheng indicates that re-

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cruitment and sponsorship were often based strictly on economic criteria. But whatever the truth of the various charges in this dispute may have been, the existence of variable levels of installation fees for the three districts and Hu Xuan’s initial willingness to pay in excess of the standard amount for his district both suggest that fee payment was seen as an investment based upon the income potential of the area in question. Head Runners. Vacancies among the head runners in both constable and district runner divisions were filled by chief runners who were nominated by a combination of incumbent head and seniorranking chief runners. Unlike head clerks, who served for only five years, head runners stayed in position indefinitely. When a position did open up as a result of the dismissal, retirement, or, more frequently, the death of an incumbent, competition and intradivisional maneuvering were correspondingly more intense. In contrast to other regions of China in the nineteenth century, such as Taiwan, there is no direct evidence that head runner positions were either purchased or directly inherited in Ba County (Dai 1979, 253–54). Although the succession of kin to senior positions was certainly not unknown, in nearly all such instances, the new head runner had already been serving in the yamen for some time. Thus, while kinship undoubtedly played an important role in securing yamen employment in the first place, its use as an avenue to senior positions was constrained by customary practices and regulations established over time and collectively enforced by the runners themselves. This did not mean that the definition and interpretation of these regulations were not themselves the cause of frequent dispute. There were, in fact, at least two competing criteria for the selection of a new head runner, both of which were occasionally presented to Ba County magistrates as long-standing customary practices. According to one criterion, new head runners were to be selected simply on the basis of seniority, with the number-one-ranking chief runner rotating in to fill any vacancy. The second principle of succession allowed for retiring head runners to choose their own replacement from among any of the top-ranking chief runners, provided that this selection did not meet with any objections from within the division. If the head runner died in office, then nomination from this same pool of candidates was to be made collectively

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by the remaining head and chief runners in the division. In no case, however, was the position to be given to a yamen outsider or relative with no prior service in the division. If competition for the position of head runner was intense, then that for the position of managing head runner was even more so. Disputes over this key position were characterized by appeal to the same opposing rules that marked head runner selection. An exemplary case of this type of dispute, as well as the private agreements and factional battles that accompanied them, is that of the Tang brothers. In GX 9 (1883), thirteen head and chief runners from the right division of the Juyi District lodged a plaint against head district runner Tang Qing, alleging that four years earlier he had violated the divisional rules by forging nomination documents in order to secure his position. Since then, they claimed, Tang had consistently usurped divisional affairs, improperly recruited more than twenty new chief runners, and embezzled at least 400 taels in case fees that should have been divided among other runners. Moreover, they continued, Tang Qing had recently been dismissed by the previous magistrate after being implicated in an extortion scheme. Tang, however, was now using the occasion of a new magistrate’s arrival to petition for reinstatement. If district affairs were to be properly managed, they argued, a rogue such as Tang Qing should clearly not be allowed to return (BXDA 6.6.510). Although the new magistrate agreed to take these charges into consideration, the file unfortunately ends at this point. In light of accusations made against Tang in a separate dispute later on, it is certainly possible that the allegations against him in this instance were true. On the other hand, they may have been nothing more than an attempt by Tang’s colleagues to force a financial settlement from him before allowing him back into the division. The four-year delay between Tang’s initial alleged infraction and the actual report could well have led the magistrate to reach such a conclusion. But whatever the reason, Tang Qing apparently succeeded in his attempt at reinstatement since twenty years later, in GX 29 (1903), we find him at last preparing to retire from the position as managing head runner in the same division. At that point, however, Tang Qing’s younger brother, Tang Shu, was moved to bring certain matters to the magistrate’s attention in the form of a plaint lodged against his brother. Tang Shu, himself a head runner in the same division, stated that when his elder brother

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had taken over as managing head runner, he, Tang Shu, had moved into the position of number-one-ranking head runner. Tang Shu further claimed that he had in actuality been performing all the duties of managing head runner for some time due to his brother’s age, his general ineptitude, and his various business distractions outside the yamen. Now that Tang Qing was retiring, Tang Shu insisted that the post of managing head runner should rightfully be his. Yet in spite of this, he continued, brother Tang Qing had deviously agreed to turn over the position to the number-three-ranking head runner, one Liang Cheng, on the basis of a private agreement by which Tang Qing would continue to receive a share of all case fees in the division, as well as retain complete control of any reopened cases that had originated during his tenure. Clearly, Tang Shu pleaded, this scheme was a flagrant violation of the proper order of succession and should thus be disallowed. The magistrate agreed to consider the matter (BXDA 6.6.636). In the course of the following month, all parties in the dispute marshaled support from other runners in the division and presented the magistrate with conflicting descriptions of the characters of Tang Qing, Tang Shu, and Liang Cheng, along with varying interpretations as to the division’s rules on succession. Those head and chief runners in support of Tang Shu claimed that he had, as number-oneranking head runner, already assumed the duties of his incompetent and manifestly corrupt elder brother and should thus be appointed. But Liang Cheng, in order to assume improperly the position of managing head runner, had worked to inflame long-standing animosities between the Tang brothers and had bribed Tang Qing to nominate him instead of Tang Shu. The scurrilous Liang Cheng, they declared, had even gone so far as to threaten to kill Tang Shu if the latter did not drop his own claims to the position (BXDA 6.6.636). On the other side, those backing Liang’s nomination insisted that the managing head runner had traditionally been selected not on the basis of rank alone, but was chosen instead from among the topfive-ranking head clerks in order to take better advantage of the division’s pool of talent. Liang’s appointment, they stated, had been the result of due deliberations on the part of all runners in the division and had thus conformed in every respect to customary procedures. At this point, the retired Tang Qing himself entered the fray, declaring that although his brother Tang Shu was indeed ranked number one in the division, he was by nature avaricious and incom-

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petent as well as violent and should thus be disqualified. Finally, in a dramatic bid to ensure Liang Cheng’s nomination, twelve head and chief runners threatened to resign en masse if the “despicable” Tang Shu was allowed to take over as managing head runner (BXDA 6.6.636). Faced with this storm of contradictory petitions and counterpetitions, the magistrate finally called for a hearing before his bench. After presentation of testimony from all concerned parties, it was finally determined that Tang Shu should become the new managing head runner based on his present rank in the division. The case was closed. No one in the division resigned as a result of the decision, nor did the magistrate pursue any of the allegations of malfeasance, bribery, or death threats on the part of Tang Qing or Liang Cheng.8 In arriving at his decision, the magistrate did not draw upon any statute or formal guideline for the simple reason that none existed. To settle the dispute, he instead chose between competing interpretations of informal rules and customary procedure as presented by the disputants and their supporters. In this sense, control lay not so much with the magistrate as an enforcer of official policy, as it did with the senior runners within the division. This internal control on the part of yamen runners is further indicated by the fact that unless there was a likelihood that the magistrate would learn of an offense through other channels, requests for disciplinary action or dispute settlement were made only in extreme cases or as a measure of last resort. For the most part, Ba County runners handled such matters on their own. Discipline and Dispute Resolution Before allegations of wrongdoing or intradivisional disputes ever reached the magistrate, they were first dealt with collectively by either senior runners within the division or by mediation councils composed of the head runners from all divisions. As with clerks, such mediation councils were generally held in the yamen temple in order to lend a greater sense of legitimacy to proceedings. In the course of handling these disputes, senior runners and councils enforced codes of conduct and meted out forms of discipline ranging from censure, probation, and fines to informal and provisional dismissal. In fact, it was frequently only after such measures failed to resolve a dispute that the magistrate learned of serious infractions. In GX 24 (1898), for example, two head and two chief district run-

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ners lodged the following complaint against chief runner Xiang Hai, outlining the steps already taken to enforce divisional rules. Xiang Hai worked in the division for two years but habitually ignored the regulations. He was repeatedly warned, but because he failed to change his ways we expelled him for several years. Recently he returned to the yamen and swore that he had reformed himself and so we permitted him to resume his former duties. Nevertheless he has continued his old habits and uses his authority in the countryside to extort money. We have tried to control him, but he refuses to change and we fear even greater disturbances. Since we have responsibility for those in our division we therefore request that your grace formally dismiss Xiang so as to prevent further abuses and to rectify divisional rules. (BXDA 6.6.546)

The magistrate complied with the request and formally expelled Xiang Hai from the yamen. No mention was made, however, of his previous dismissal and subsequent readmission to the division (see also BXDA 6.6.283; 6.6.495). Collective action of this sort on the part of senior runners was frequently in blatant violation of statutes, as seen in a GX 1 (1875) case wherein two head district runners submitted a petition regarding local runner Tao Fu. In addition to allegations of drunkenness, gambling, and profligacy, Tao was specifically charged with entering the division offices to start a fight. Tao Fu is completely without regard for the law. Recently he got drunk and came to our offices looking for [chief runner] Li Zhou, with whom he started an argument. In the ensuing fracas Tao grabbed a tobacco pipe and beat Li savagely. Li’s head was badly injured and blood poured out all over his clothes. We reprimanded Tao for this but he remained adamant and began to start a quarrel with us as well. Since then he has continued in his irresolute ways. Such an unlawful runner is harmful to all and it is thus impossible for us to provide security for him. . . . We therefore humbly request his dismissal. (BXDA 6.6.489)

Following an investigation into the circumstances of the fight, the magistrate agreed with the petitioners and dismissed Tao Fu from further service. Almost a year later, however, another plaint was submitted by these same chief runners stating that following his dismissal, Tao Fu had returned to the divisional offices swearing that he would behave himself. The chief runners had therefore allowed Tao to resume his work as a local runner. Yet despite his promises, Tao had quickly reverted to form. Only recently, they said, he had attempted

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to steal an arrest warrant that had been given to another runner, threatening to kill anyone who tried to stop him. Without comment on his own previous dismissal of Tao Fu, the magistrate once again complied with the requested disciplinary measures. Tao Fu was thus sentenced to a month of confinement, and he was ordered to cease causing trouble within the division upon his return to duty (BXDA 6.6.489). The Qing Code was quite clear on matters such as these. Any dismissed runner who contrived to reenter yamen service was to be punished with one hundred blows of heavy bamboo and three years of penal servitude, while any magistrate allowing such return to service was to be removed from office and demoted two grades in rank (DLCY 53.2; CFZL 16:4a).9 The mere fact that runners would openly describe procedures that not only disregarded the code’s statutes with impunity but also placed the magistrate’s own career in jeopardy dramatically illustrates the practical autonomy of yamen runners in matters of internal discipline and the degree to which official regulations were held in abeyance. By acquiescing in this matter, the magistrate both acknowledged that autonomy and underscored his inability to either enforce the statutes or to effectively intervene in the internal affairs of his staff. Nowhere was this inability more apparent than in regard to the number of runners employed in the yamen.

“Deceiving Those Above” The statutory quota for runners in county yamens throughout China had been established early in the Qing dynasty and, along with those for land taxes and labor services, was published in the Comprehensive Book of Taxes and Labor Service (fuyi quanshu) for each province. Since central government officials regarded even these statutory runners with a high degree of suspicion, it is hardly surprising that the employment of people beyond this quota was commonly held to be one of the root causes of local corruption and misgovernment (e.g., CFZL 16:5a). The elimination of these “rogues, scoundrels, and yamen vermin” was thus the subject of repeated imperial edicts, memorials, and circular orders issued by the Qing government throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.10 The belief among officials and political thinkers that the lure of corruption served as the primary attraction of yamen work was stated in the seventeenth century by no less an authority than state-

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craft thinker Gu Yanwu (1613–1682) along with his own simple solution to the problem of supernumerary personnel. Every county has close to one thousand people who rely on legal cases for their livelihood. Using such cases, they intimidate and extort money from the common people. Because of this, for every statutory position there are actually seven or eight persons working. But if there were no yamen affairs how could these people make their living? One should therefore limit every position to one or two persons and expel the rest, ordering them to seek other occupations. Furthermore, if the amount of yamen business is reduced, these (supernumerary personnel) will be left with no way to extort or cheat others. They will thus flee the yamen of their own accord. (MLS 4:35a)

As these observations attest, Gu Yanwu clearly recognized that even in the early years of the dynasty, yamen work was taken not as a form of temporary labor service, as originally intended, but rather as an occupation. Yet few practicing officials were as sanguine as Gu in regard to the feasibility of reforming this situation by simply reducing amount of yamen business. There was, to the contrary, widespread recognition that the administrative load of county yamens regularly outran the statutory provisions for manpower. Magistrates were thus allowed the expedient of hiring supernumerary personnel on a strictly temporary basis, although they were at the same time sternly admonished to control these individuals by means of detailed registration, mutual responsibility groups, frequent periodic inspections, and corporal punishment (MLS 4:35b). Above all, magistrates were enjoined not to “countenance their schemes, tolerate their treachery, or be misled by their cleverness” (QHDSL 98:257). Furthermore, although magistrates were allowed to temporarily employ supplemental runners, the use of such extrastatutory personnel on a permanent basis remained explicitly prohibited throughout the Qing period. The Qing Code thus prescribed a basic punishment for anyone abetting in the employment of personnel beyond the quota of one hundred blows of heavy bamboo for every supernumerary employed, with an increase in punishment of one degree for every additional three supernumeraries (DLCY 50.1). The code also stipulated that any statutory runner who took along a baiyi in the course of an assigned task was to be given one hundred blows of heavy bamboo and dismissed from yamen service (DLCY 344.6). Despite, or perhaps because of such warnings, assertions by magistrates to have dealt adequately with the issue of supernumerary personnel constituted one of the most perennial fictions of official correspondence in the Qing (e.g., BXDA 6.6.335; 6.6.2020). But what-

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ever magistrates claimed in their reports to Beijing, the fact remained that adequate control over yamen personnel was simply beyond the capabilities of most local officials. The problem facing magistrates in this regard was succinctly stated by Liu Heng during his tenure as Ba County magistrate: Yamen runners were established by law to carry out labor services and thus it has never been possible to do away with them altogether. But one should only employ the statutory number of ten or several tens. In the case of busy posts, it might be necessary to use a score or more beyond the quota. All those in excess of this number, however, should be vigorously eliminated. Yet getting rid of such runners is by no means easy. For although one might officially expel them from the yamen, they do not actually leave. This is known as “deceiving those above but not fooling those below [manshang bumanxia].” (MLS 17:36b)

In the nineteenth century, Sichuan Province was particularly noted for the large numbers of supernumerary runners serving in county yamens. Following a visit to his home in the province in JQ 23 (1818), for example, Shaanxi circuit censor Cheng Boluan memorialized that the district runner and constable divisions in counties throughout Sichuan commonly employed more than one thousand persons each (SCDASL 1(1983) 20; see also SCZC 3:3a). Within the province, Ba County was especially notorious in this respect. Liu Heng, who once stated that he took the elimination of such “verminous runners” (yadu) as one of his primary duties as a magistrate, claimed that upon arriving at Ba County he had discovered no fewer than seven thousand runners employed in various capacities. By denying these individuals income through the judicious assignment of duties and by attending to many administrative tasks himself, Liu claimed to have reduced this number by nearly sixty-eight hundred (BXZ/MG 9[2]:10b; see also Ch’ü 1962, 59). Nevertheless, Liu admitted that due to the large number of homicides in Chongqing and the high level of litigation arising from commercial disputes in the county, it was necessary to employ more than one hundred runners, still far above the statutory limits (MLS 18:24b). Even allowing for a degree of self-serving hyperbole on Liu’s part with regard to the runners he claimed to have found and eliminated in the yamen, nevertheless their numbers posed a formidable problem of control for even the most diligent of magistrates. Furthermore, even if an energetic magistrate such as Liu Heng did manage to institute reforms, there was nothing to prevent things from returning to their previous state after he left the yamen and moved

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on. Only eight years after Liu Heng left Ba County, for example, the internal work register for the constable division listed 319 men working in that division alone (6.3.25).11 By century’s end these numbers had grown still further. In 1903, Sichuan Governor-general Cen Chunxuan complained that his own private investigations had revealed that in Ba County the district runner, constable, and commoner guard divisions each employed between five and six thousand persons (SCDASL 1(1983) 22). But although the number of runners working in the yamen obviously far exceeded the statutory limits, we should regard the claims of officials such as Cheng Boluan, Liu Heng, and Cen Chunxuan to have discovered thousands of such men in Ba County with a good deal of skepticism. Produced as they were for the benefit of superior officials, statements such as these reflect the sort of numerical embellishment used by officials to add rhetorical force to proclamations, memorials, and accounts of their own individual achievements. The truth was that no one knew exactly how many runners were working in any county yamen. By utilizing material from the Ba County archive, we can now attempt a rough approximation somewhere between statutory levels and the claims of officials. In the early Qing, “yamen laborers” (yayi) in Ba County were defined by statute as consisting of four groups: lictors; gatekeepers; parasol bearers; and district runners. In the Shunzhi period (1644– 1662), the combined quota for all four groups was set at 139 persons. By QL 2 (1737), this number had been progressively reduced as a cost-saving measure to a mere twenty-nine, where it remained for the rest of the dynasty (BXZ/TZ 2:9a; BXZ/MG 6:33b). In addition to quotas for these four groups, separate quotas were established for jailers, night watchmen, and, following their creation in the Yongzheng period (1723–1736), constables and commoner guards. The statutory quotas for all nine groups of runners, from the early Qianlong reign to the end of the Qing dynasty, were distributed as shown in Table 4. The total figure of sixty-nine shown here is, not surprisingly, the same figure that was dutifully reported to Beijing by successive Ba County magistrates throughout the Xianfeng, Tongzhi, and Guangxu reigns (BXDA 6.4.9; 6.5.18; 6.5.20; 6.6.114–26; 6.6.335; 6.6.4978). Unfortunately, the internal work register for the constable division cited above is the only one of its kind that I have been able to locate. In lieu of this sort of documentation on the number of runners actually working in the Ba County yamen, we must therefore

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table 4 Statutory Quotas for Runners in Ba County Lictors District runners Gatekeepers Parasol bearers

12 8 2 7

subtotal

29

Med-examiner Commoner guards Jailers Watchmen Constable subtotal total

2 14 10 8 6 40 69

s o u r c e : BXZ/MG 6:33b.

draw upon less direct sources. The first of these is the list of runners’ names attached to documents presented to the magistrate in the course of intrayamen litigation. As with clerks, plaints and petitions from runners were rarely submitted by a single individual, but were instead presented by several cosignatories in order to demonstrate collective support for the requests or allegations contained therein. Typically, such documents were prefaced with declarations of the lengthy employment in the yamen on the part of one or several petitioners as proof of a long, loyal, and incident-free service record. Only in rare cases, however, do the names of these long-term employees appear in the magistrate’s official personnel reports, which could therefore have only represented a fraction of all runners working in the yamen. Moreover, the fact that these runners freely used their own names on these petitions, even though they were not listed on the official register, clearly indicates the magistrate’s knowledge of the fictive nature of his own reports to Beijing. Although such information is not available for all types of runners, reports and petitions can be used to estimate the number of district runners working in the yamen. Based on the names included on reports from mediation councils, for example, it appears that head district runners numbered between six and ten per district. Assuming an average of eight per district yields an approximate total of twenty-four head district runners for all three districts. The number of chief runners listed on petitions and plaints ranges between ten and twenty. It is unlikely that these lists were inclusive of all chief runners working in a given division, since they often represented factional cliques within that division. We do,

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however, have at least one reference to a total of forty chief runners working in the left division of the Huaishi District in the late Guangxu period (CD Minxing qizha 12, XT1). This district, furthermore, was not the busiest in the county; it was frequently noted that the Xicheng District had an even greater number of district runners as a result of its higher population and more numerous administrative tasks (e.g., BXDA 6.6.602). If, for the sake of approximation, we take the Huaishi District as representative, double that figure to include both right and left divisions, then multiply by the three districts, we arrive at a total figure of 240 chief district runners. When added to our estimate of head runners this gives a conservative estimate of 264 persons serving as district runners alone. The actual number of district runners working with at least the tacit permission of the magistrate would have been even larger, since none of this data includes information on either local or assistant runners. The second source of information on the number of runners working in the yamen comes from occasional reports from Ba County magistrates to the Chongqing prefect. Ba County magistrates coped with the problem of an insufficient statutory quota on runners by using the same dual reporting system we saw with clerks, whereby separate registers were sent to Beijing and the prefectural offices in Chongqing (see Chapter 2). Unfortunately, the Ba County archive contains far fewer of these unofficial reports for runners than it does for clerks. Nevertheless, the figures in Table 5 give at least a minimum suggestion of the number of nonstatutory runners employed. Figures are given here for extrastatutory commoner guards, constables, and district runners as well as the number of baiyi the reporting magistrates claimed to have eliminated. Once again the difference between the two categories is largely semantic: extrastatutory runners were those whom the magistrate had determined were necessary and thus retained beyond the quota, while the term baiyi was used to describe individuals who may have been working in the yamen for some time, but who had been deemed unnecessary and thus, purportedly, dismissed. Although fragmentary, these figures clearly demonstrate the lack of even a tenuous relationship between the statutory quotas set by the central government and the number of individuals working as runners. They also suggest that central and provincial level officials in the nineteenth century were correct in assuming that the num-

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table 5 Extrastatutory Runners in Ba County Extrastatutory Runners (retained) Year

Commoner guards

District runners

Constables

Baiyi (dismissed)

Total

1848 1855 1876 1901

— 4 13 20

— 38 311 260

— 42 64 120

— 56 — 249

213 140 388 649

s o u r c e s : BXDA 6.5.12; 6.6.111; 6.6.114

ber of supernumerary personnel was growing, although perhaps not at the rate of thousands, as cited by Liu Heng and Governor-general Cen Chunxuan. This impression is strengthened when we recall from our discussion of clerks that the numbers reported by Magistrate Zhang Feng in 1901 were significantly below those for the years immediately preceding and following. It is quite likely, therefore, that Zhang’s report on runners was similarly conservative. Furthermore, to all of these figures we must add those for local runners stationed in the countryside, those who were not included in any of the reports to either Beijing or the Chongqing prefect even though they usually worked with the approval of the presiding magistrate. One reason for this growth was the often-noted increase in workload faced by county yamens in the nineteenth century. As we saw with clerks, the nature of this increase is indicated by growth in the number of those runners responsible for public security, tax collection, and the processing of litigation (i.e., commoner guards, district runners, and constables). In DG 13 (1833), for example, Magistrate Ou Baxi granted requests from his head constables for the addition of seventy-seven local constables to the county’s river districts in order to handle the increased traffic and commercial activity of the area (BXDA 6.3.18). Over half a century later, Magistrate Zhang Feng explained to the Chongqing prefect that although the combined statutory limit for constables, district runners and commoner guards was a mere twenty-eight persons, the administrative and public se-

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curity burdens of the yamen required at least four hundred runners in these three groups alone (BXDA 6.6.111). The disparity between the statutory structure of county government and the actual needs of local administration was perhaps nowhere more acute than here in regard to runners. However, given the inability of magistrates to monitor, much less control, the number of runners in the yamen, it is unlikely that the growth of such numbers can be attributed to increases in the yamen workload alone. Rather, as Gu Yanwu suggested at the beginning of the dynasty, it appears that individuals well beyond the minimum required workforce were taking up yamen employment as an occupation. In other words, despite official prejudice and popular stereotypes of demeaned status, more men were finding the income and security of work as a yamen runner to be an attractive form of long-term employment.

“Why Is There No Goodness Here?” The overwhelming stereotype of runners left by Qing dynasty sources is that of the wulai—the rogue, the wastrel, the unaccountable troublemaker devoted solely to his own profit (e.g, DLCY 344.7; 344.9; MLS 4:25–27; 4:36). Among these “yamen vermin” (yadu), constables enjoyed a particularly notorious reputation. As board official and censor Tian Wenjing commented early in the eighteenth century, “Constables, thieves, and bandits are all basically the same. In fact, if a constable was not intimately connected with thieves and bandits, he would not be able to do his job as a constable” (MLS 20:46; see also BXDA 6.6.1366). A similar sentiment was expressed a century later by the governor-general of Zhejiang Province. Though the work of constables is particularly difficult, their status is well below that of even district runners, lictors, or commoner guards. Because of this, most people are unwilling to marry a constable. It is therefore not only difficult to add extra constables when needed, it is hard to find enough good people to fill even the basic quota. Those who do become constables are thus nearly the same as the thieves and bandits themselves and they engage in every imaginable sort of vile practice. (ZZCG 8:66–67)

Although sharing Tian Wenjing’s opinion of runners in general, the governor-general was apparently sensitive to the possibility that the problem of corruption among yamen runners stemmed at least in part from the position’s debased social status. With the exception of commoner guards and jailers, runners were in fact legally catego-

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rized as belonging to the demeaned (jian) social classes, a status they shared with prostitutes, slaves, actors, and certain regional occupational groups (QHDSL 7:4b; Ch’ü 1962, 106; Ch’ü 1965, 129). Just why yamen runners were placed in this legal category remains uncertain. In his study of lower-class groups in the late imperial period, Anders Hansson surmises that the demeaned status of some runners derived in part from the nature of their work (e.g., association with criminals and contact with corpses or polluting bodily fluids resulting from flogging and torture) (Hansson 1996, 49–50). Another possibility, suggested by both Hansson and James Cole, is that work as a yamen runner was legally classed as demeaned only after it had become the monopoly of groups who were already members of outcast groups (Hansson 1996, 89; Cole 1986, 69). But whatever the origins of their status, as members of the lower categories of the Confucian social order, runners stood in contrast to both officials and commoners, or “good” people (liangmin), in regard to their putative moral character. Like all demeaned groups, runners were therefore subject to a number of legal strictures. All runners, for example, were banned from participation in the examination system. Unlike clerks, the position of runner was therefore terminal in respect to even marginal advancement up the administrative hierarchy. Runners were also legally barred from marriage into commoner households, and many of China’s large agnatic lineages explicitly prescribed corporal punishment or expulsion for any member who took the position of yamen runner (Ch’ü 1965, 129– 32, 134; DLCY 115; Liu Wang Hui-chen 1959, 164, 256). The demeaned status of runners was reflected as well by practices within the yamen itself. Sumptuary laws of both the Ming and Qing dynasties required that runners wear either black or light blue garments, made from coarse silk or a mixture of silk, cotton, or hemp, as a mark of their status (Ch’ü 1965, 138). Moreover, when an individual entered yamen service as a runner, he gave up his given name (liangming) and was thereafter referred to by a two-character appellation. Thus Zhang Zide became Zhang Sheng, Cheng Sichuan became Cheng Gui, and so forth (e.g., BXDA 6.6.114). Although it might be argued that this practice was a matter of administrative expediency, the fact that yamen clerks were not required to submit to a similar alteration of their names implies an element of status differentiation. Differentiation in this sense was also seen in the language used by runners. In referring to themselves in reports or petitions to the magistrate, runners commonly used the self-

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effacing first person pronoun of “ant” or “grub” (yi) as well as subordinating phrases such as “kneeling before your grace’s exalted eminence we humbly report [guibingdalaoye taiqianweibing],” neither of which was employed by clerks in similar correspondence with the magistrate. The subordination and low status of runners were further reinforced by the use of punishments in the yamen. Even though runners operated independently of the magistrate’s authority in many respects, magistrates nevertheless sought to maintain at least the symbolic appearance of control through the frequent and uncompromising punishment of seemingly insignificant offenses. Thus, whereas clerks were only rarely subjected to corporal punishment, the archival record is littered with instances of runners being beaten, placed in the cangue, the much more severe cage, or being incarcerated in the yamen jail for minor transgressions. In XF 2 (1852), for instance, four gatekeepers were publicly slapped and placed in the cangue for full month after a local resident succeeded in getting past them to present himself unannounced before the magistrate’s bench (BXDA 6.6.4948). Or in GX 13 (1887) two runners were beaten with heavy bamboo and placed in the cangue for being two days late in delivering documents to the provincial capitol in Chengdu after they had fallen ill en route (BXDA 6.6.531; see also 6.6.459; 6.6.566; 6.6.582; 6.6.628; 6.6.653). All of this inevitably raises the question of why anyone would willingly assume such an apparently despised and possibly dangerous position in the first place. Qing officials themselves often asked the same question and in their answers they created the abiding figure of the yamen runner as a shiftless rogue who entered yamen service with the sole intent of engaging in corruption.12 Take, for example, the words of Sichuan Governor-general Huang Zonghan in an XF 5 (1855) directive commanding the expulsion of all extrastatutory runners: Those who become runners are without exception vagrants [wuye youmin] who use their association with the yamen as a sort of protective talisman or charm. As soon as they enter the yamen, they begin to engage in pettifoggery, shield and protect criminals, suborn perjury in order to implicate innocent parties, and concoct false accusations against others to extort money. In their behavior and deportment they are no different from roving hoodlums [guanggun]. (BXDA 6.4.12)

Not all Qing officials were quite this categorical in their assessment of the social provenance of yamen runners. At least some

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were willing to entertain the possibility that not all runners entered the yamen with criminal intent, but were instead led in that direction by the temptations presented to them by the job itself. This view was eloquently stated by nineteenth-century circuit intendant Zhou Liyuan in his remarks on the causes of corruption among yamen runners. Why is there no goodness here? There are those who become runners because they have failed in their studies; there are those from families who have fallen on hard times; and there are those without means who rely on such work to feed and clothe themselves. At first they have no intention other than to earn a living and have no desire to do evil. But once they enter the yamen, their nature becomes the same as those around them and day by day their hearts become more daring and bold. . . . As a result, men who once feared the law cannot resist the lust for power and wealth and so public affairs all become the means for harming the people. (ZZXS 12:27)

But if Zhou’s comments here suggest downward social mobility as a motivating factor among men seeking yamen employment, they also echo what was for many Qing officials an article of faith: proximity to authority on the part of those without the moral character and personal integrity gained by literary training and the inculcation of Confucian ethics inevitably led to corruption and the abuse of that authority. This combination of poverty, social marginalization, and a seemingly innate propensity to malfeasance not only typified Qing dynasty conceptions but also has continued to inform treatments of runners to this day. Yet if we dispense for the moment with the assumed linkage between demeaned social status and the abuse of administrative authority, it appears that perceptions as to the social and economic background of yamen runners were, by and large, correct. There is ample evidence that many yamen runners moved within marginalized social strata, which, if not always criminal, were nevertheless highly suspicious in the eyes of government officials. Susan Naquin, for example, has described how many yamen employees were attracted to White Lotus sectarianism due to their exclusion from other, more respectable religious organizations (Naquin 1981, 48). In this respect, it is worth remembering that Wang Lun, the Shangdong martial arts expert and leader of the 1774 peasant uprising recounted by Naquin, was himself at one time employed as a yamen runner (Naquin 1981, 38).13 Similar references to affiliations among runners, secret societies, and bandit gangs are scattered throughout the Ba County archive (BXDA 6.6.549; 6.6.1394; 6.6.3187). Aside

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table 6 Landholdings of Statutory Ba County Runners, 1861 (mou) Number Lictors 12 District runners 8 Constables 6 Commoner guards 14 o v e r a l l av e r a g e

High

Low

Average

6.5 16.3 6.5 13.1

1.6 1.6 1.6 3.3

3.4 8.8 3.0 6.4 5.4

s o u r c e s : BXDA 6.5.18; 6.6.316

from these, we also often find runners in suspect locations. In this respect, gambling halls, brothels, inns, hostels, and other such reputed centers of illicit activity figure prominently in the record. Opium dens, frequently cited as the location of meetings and banquets held by runners in Ba County, were in fact quite often owned and operated by individual runners themselves.14 Suspicious company alone, however, does not imply a uniform status or class background for all runners. What little evidence we have on the economic status of Ba County runners comes first of all from data on landholding provided by the official registers of statutory runners. In addition to name, age, residence, and year of appointment, these registers include the annual land tax owed by the runner’s household, which can be used to calculate the amount of land owned by a given runner. Table 6 represents individual and average landholding for the Ba County yamen’s forty statutory lictors, district runners, constables, and commoner guards in XF 11 (1861). As I cited in Chapter 1, Wang Di has estimated average landholding in Ba County during roughly this same period at 1.7 mou per capita, or 8.5 mou per household (Wei 1991, 387, 396).15 But although it would appear from Table 6 that a number of statutory runners met or even exceeded this figure, Wang’s estimate in this regard is misleading in that it is based on the ratio of cultivated land to the county’s total population. Since Ba County at that time included the population of Chongqing, Wang’s figures for average landholding in the county as a whole must be seen as downwardly

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skewed. Drawing from cadastral surveys from the early twentieth century, by which time the city and county had been administratively separated, we thus find an average of 18.67 mou per household (BXNJ 66). As Table 6 indicates, the landholding of Ba County’s statutory runners fell well below this average. Perhaps more significant than the average landholding for all statutory runners, however, is the disparity shown between them. According to Table 6, district runners and commoner guards were markedly better off than either constables or lictors, with several approaching the county average for household landholding. While this does not negate the conclusion that most Ba County runners came from the lower end of the economic scale, it does suggest that there was a fair amount of variation among them. By statute, yamen runners were required to come from families who owned land and were thus registered on the county’s tax rolls. But given that the statutory runners, from whom the data above is derived, represented but a fraction of those working in the yamen, it makes little sense to assume that all runners owned similar amounts of land or, for that matter, any land at all. In other words, data on registered statutory runners cannot reveal much about the range or distribution of economic resources among yamen runners. Anecdotal evidence in the archives, for example, indicates that at least some runners were possessed of considerable assets. As described above, access to financial resources, often in quite substantial amounts, was key to an individual’s ability to advance to the position of head runner. Further evidence of resources comes from the fact that positions in the yamen required the payment of a fee (see discussion in Chapter 5). Finally, we should not overlook the potentially sizable income provided by yamen work itself, income which could then be invested not only in land but also in businesses and the burgeoning commercial enterprises of Chongqing. When a group of more than sixty lictors was eliminated in 1859, for instance, nearly all the “retirees” reported that they would be going into various forms of business within the city (BXDA 6.4.23). What this evidence indicates is that the popular stereotype of impoverished runners needs to be modified to account for the possibility that not all runners took the job out of desperation. Furthermore, even for destitute individuals, the rapidly expanding urban economy of Chongqing offered a variety of income opportunities, which did not carry the demeaned status traditionally associated with yamen runners. The fact that these men were not only opting

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for yamen work but also were choosing to remain in yamen employ throughout their productive years suggests that the stigma of legally demeaned status was becoming irrelevant in the flux of nineteenthcentury Chinese society. Such status categories were the product of the Qing government’s attempts to impose a particular vision of the ideal social order and, along with that vision, a specific definition of sociopolitical orthodoxy. In this respect, it is significant that the chief marker of demeaned legal status in the Qing was the inability to compete in the civil service examinations and thereby take part in the elite culture that those examinations supported. This does not imply, however, that these same categories or ideals had the same normative value or relevance for everyone, particularly for those at the lower end of Qing society, such as the urban and rural poor and otherwise downwardly mobile classes. For men with few pretensions to orthodox markers of social status who were generally held in disdain by elite society in any case, work as a yamen runner could well have appeared as an attractive way to make a decent living. Rather than viewing the job of runner as a universally despised form of labor, we might therefore see yamen runners as one of several occupational groups developing within an increasingly differentiated and expansive society. Like most occupational groups, Ba County runners sought to establish a degree of legitimacy for their chosen livelihood. In this, runners adopted the same strategy as did yamen clerks by consciously distancing themselves from popular images of corruption in order to claim their work to be an honorable and socially valuable service.

Virtuous Servants and Evil Runners Despite the fact that most of them were illegally employed, yamen runners consistently attempted to enhance their positions by validating their role in local government. That they used elements of orthodox Confucian rhetoric in this effort is, by itself, unremarkable. Confucian discourse was, after all, the medium through which notions of personal integrity and honor were both conceived and expressed. But in the process of appropriating elements of this discourse, Ba County runners articulated the same remarkably unorthodox conception of proper administrative service as we saw earlier with regard to clerks. According to this formulation, the acceptance of monetary compensation for services honestly rendered

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in no way violated the ideal of a morally based and virtuous government, but was instead necessary for the maintenance of such a government. To achieve this effect runners utilized popular stereotypes of yamen runners as venal scoundrels in order to present an alternative characterization—that of the runner as a loyal public servant. The linkage between personal character and legitimacy was immediately apparent in opening phrases commonly used by senior runners in their communications with the magistrate: Receiving from your exalted grace the responsibility of public office with the utmost respect for virtue, your servant has neither violated [the law] nor been remiss [in his duties].

Such prefaces were then usually followed by declarations of personal poverty and long, incident-free tenure as further evidence of expertise and moral rectitude. In GX 21 (1895), for example, dismissed chief runner Yao En petitioned the magistrate for reinstatement with the support of three head runners from his division. Yao’s petition is typical of many such requests from dismissed senior runners. He begins with a statement of his long years of service along with an explanation of the circumstances surrounding what he claims to be a clear case of wrongful expulsion. I have handled public affairs in this yamen for over twenty years without a single blemish to my record or reputation. . . . In the fifth month of this year a document came from the Intendant’s yamen, which was to be delivered to the provincial capital within five days. I dispatched local runner Zhu Rong to carry this out. But because Zhu became ill, he was late in making the delivery and was subsequently dismissed as a result. I myself was blamed for the improper assignment of duties and was also dismissed. (BXDA 6.6.582)

Yao then concludes by relating his family’s impoverished condition as a means of demonstrating his own lack of self-interest or corruption as well as his reliance on honest yamen labor for his family’s sustenance. My family is poor, my parents old, my son too young to work, and my wife weak and frequently ill. We have so many mouths to feed but so little food. I can therefore only beg for your grace’s benevolent lenience and forgiveness so that I might be allowed to resume my old position. (BXDA 6.6.582)

The element of Yao En’s indispensability to divisional operations came several days later in the form of an additional petition from several more head runners requesting his reinstatement on the grounds that the division did not have enough experienced person-

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nel to handle its heavy workload and thus could not manage without Yao’s expertise. In the end, the magistrate granted the request and allowed Yao En to resume his position in the yamen. Local runner Zhu Rong, however, remained dismissed. The ability to win reversals of previous dismissals, as well as to prevail in intradivisional disputes, depended in large part on the existence of a hierarchy among runners, which invested rank with a certain amount of symbolic capital. Having succeeded in rising through the ranks over the years without being dismissed or implicated in any wrongdoing, senior runners could thus lay claim to a degree of moral character and honesty commensurate with their tenure. On the other end of the scale, local runners and occasional workers such as assistant runners were often depicted as men of unproven character and, thus, more likely to engage in illicit activity. The magistrate’s tendency to accept such portrayals is seen in the relative job security of the various ranks of runners. Of twenty-two constables dismissed in GX 20 (1894), for example, fourteen were local runners, five were chief runners, and only three were head runners (BXDA 6.6.572). Use of this hierarchy among runners is also evident in plaints where both head and chief runners were themselves referred to by their accusers as either local runners or, even worse, baiyi in order to call the character of the accused individual into doubt. A good example of this type is the case of Dai Cheng. In GX 28 (1902), seven head runners from the left division of commoner guards led by Liu Jin reported to the magistrate that a local runner from the right division, one Dai Rong, had recently been dismissed for extortion, drunkenness, and a general disrespect for the law. However, they continued, Dai Rong had deviously changed his name to Dai Cheng and then begged the leaders of the left division for admission. Yet despite their kindness in granting the request, the petitioners complained, “his character has not changed; he is wolfish and violent by nature, cheats everyone in the division, violates our rules, extorts money from people, frequently gets drunk, and constantly starts fights. We have no choice but to request his dismissal.” The magistrate agreed with the petition and Dai Rong/ Cheng was ordered expelled from the yamen (BXDA 6.6.622). A fortnight later, however, Dai Cheng submitted his own plaint in which he not only denied ever serving in the right division under another name but also contested his putative status as a local runner. Far from being a mere local runner, Dai insisted that he was in

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fact a head runner, an honest public servant whose long career was now being threatened by the factional and nepotistic corruption around him. I have served in the left division for many years without incident or trace of wrongdoing. I am, in fact, the number-two-ranking head runner in the division. Liu Jin has for years been a head runner in name only and it is actually chief runner Hu Lin who performs his duties. Recently the managing head runner died and it was subsequently decided that Liu Jin and I should jointly take over the position. . . . But at this point Liu allowed his student [tu] Hu Lin to falsify documents so as to induct his family members as chief runners. When I refused to go along with this scheme they developed a hatred toward me and have therefore concocted these scurrilous charges. . . . I submitted this to the mediation council but Hu and Liu refused to appear. Furthermore, when the council later made inquires everyone simply said that they knew nothing. . . . I therefore beg your grace to examine the division’s personnel registers and to reconsider this matter. (BXDA 6.6.622)

Unfortunately for Dai, his argument failed to convince the magistrate, who allowed the dismissal to stand. Notably, the successful attack against Dai did not include any specific or prosecutable charges. Instead it took the form of a broadstroke character assassination linking Dai to stereotypic images of corruption: a “wolfish and violent” nature, drunkenness, extortion, repeated rule violations, and a “general disrespect for the law.” To all of this was added the damning assertion that Dai was nothing more than a local runner, an unaccountable rogue who could not be trusted. Initially, at least, it might seem odd that both sides in this dispute called upon stereotypes that could only verify the magistrate’s suspicion as to the nature of yamen runners in general. But upon further consideration the strategy becomes clear; in using these stereotypes to portray the corruption and deviancy of specific individuals, the disputants sought to distinguish such behavior from the honest labor and upright character of the majority of runners, to which they themselves claimed to belong. We must remember, of course, that these portrayals were presented in the course of disputes brought before the magistrate, when the internal system of rules, procedures, and methods of dispute resolution by which runners normally operated had broken down. In these instances, the representation of oneself and others was constructed for the benefit of a specific audience with known prejudices and interests. But if these representations were at times used

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for duplicitous purposes, this does not mean that the underlying standards to which they appealed were necessarily false. The ability to use these portrayals successfully in disputes with fellow runners was, in fact, predicated on the magistrate’s recognition that claims of honesty and personal integrity among yamen runners were to at least some degree valid. Despite their constructed nature and the uses that were sometimes made of them, these portrayals thus reveal something of the way in which many runners viewed themselves and their work. As with clerks, yamen employment for runners was an occupation to which many of these men had devoted a large portion of their productive lives. In the absence of any formal body of standards and guidelines, runners attempted to protect their livelihood by imposing their own set of rules, procedures, and normative standards of behavior. Despite the presence of these rationalized elements, however, yamen work remained very much an informal and extrastatutory form of administrative employment operating without benefit of externally defined structure or supervision. As such, it was similar to any other, nongovernmental, occupation where the ability to prosper relied not only on the application of rules and standards but also on personal contacts and support from family members, patrons, and colleagues. Without this support, runners such as Dai Cheng could be isolated and portrayed as corrupt by their opponents in intrayamen disputes. Chapter 5 examines this aspect of yamen practice by focusing on interpersonal networks of support and alliance in the Ba County yamen. Once again, we will see that while these networks were often framed as being motivated by corrupt intent, in many ways they also served as one of the cornerstones of local administration.

chapter five

Illicit Allies and the Magistrate’s Men

I

n the summer of 1898, newly arrived Ba County magistrate Wang Chichang received a petition from three head runners of the Xicheng District regarding one of their fellow head runners, Fan Rong. As senior head runner Liu Cheng explained things, he had sponsored Fan Rong’s promotion to the position of head runner some ten years previously. Since then Fan had been consistently obstinate and had repeatedly violated division regulations. Moreover, despite admonitions and warnings from his seniors, Fan refused to mend his ways and was now threatening violence against anyone who got in his way. Liu Cheng claimed that he had thus been left with no choice but to call everyone in the division together, whereupon it was decided to present the magistrate with a formal request for Fan Rong’s dismissal (BXDA 6.6.602). Several days later, yet another petition was filed against Fan Rong by three additional head runners led by one Wang Sheng along with eight local runners from the district. This time the charges against Fan were much more specific. The number-four-ranking head runner in our division, Fan Rong, has for some time violated regulations and extorted money from those involved in legal disputes. With the proceeds of such practices he purchased an inn here in the city and since then has become even more evil. Whenever there is a legal case involving a woman [funu’an], he tricks the couple into staying at his own inn. Then, when the case is over and they prepare to return home, he presents the husband with an inflated bill. If his victims are unable to pay, he then forces the woman to become his concubine by threatening to take the husband to court. His number two concubine, in fact, was the wife of a man named Yang who ran off and left her after Fan had paid a convicted thief to implicate Yang in his crimes. . . . Even worse, though he calls these

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women his concubines, in reality he forces them to work as prostitutes so he can make a handsome profit. . . . Head runner Liu Cheng recently reported Fan Rong but your grace has not yet taken any action. We fear that if he is not soon dismissed he will cause even greater harm. (BXDA 6.6.602)

Magistrate Wang concurred that such a scoundrel should not be allowed to remain in the yamen and thus ordered Fan Rong’s immediate expulsion. Throughout these proceedings, Fan Rong himself had steadfastly maintained that the charges against him were nothing but lies orchestrated by Wang Sheng out of jealousy over Fan’s recent promotion to the position of managing head runner (guanshi). Little more than a month after Fan Rong’s dismissal, this version of events was corroborated when Wang Chichang’s successor as Ba County magistrate, Shen Bingkun, received a petition from the leaders of two market towns in Fan’s district. The petitioners claimed that Fan Rong was not only innocent of wrongdoing, he was, in fact, a model civil servant. As managing head runner, Fan’s upright nature and friendly relations with the people in the community had been instrumental in protecting property in the two villages during the recent anti-Christian riots. Fan Rong’s dismissal, they insisted, was the result of devious scheming and false charges by those in the division who resented his authority. Clearly, Fan Rong should be reinstated. Based on this plea, Magistrate Shen agreed to reinvestigate the case. Shortly thereafter he reversed his predecessor’s ruling and reinstated Fan Rong at his previous rank. This short episode in the Xicheng District division is suggestive of several key features of yamen operations in Ba County. First, the case demonstrates the use of alternating images of a given runner as a means of justifying and defending the interests of the parties involved. The contradictory portrayals of Fan Rong as either an extortionist pimp or a paragon of administrative virtue exemplify this sort of rhetoric. In such instances, the stress was not so much on the specific deeds of the runner in question as it was on his moral character and his suitability for yamen employment. In this sense, it is notable that none of the charges of extortion or forcing women into prostitution originally brought against Fan Rong were ever pursued following his dismissal. Similarly, Fan’s reinstatement was achieved not by disproving these allegations, but rather by reestablishing his character and his value as an administrative functionary. In addition, the case also points to several aspects of the internal

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organization and operations within the yamen. If it is difficult for us to see beyond the rhetoric used in the Fan Rong case to determine the “truth” of events based on plaints and petitions alone, then it was no less difficult for presiding magistrates. Cases such as this demonstrate how little impact magistrates actually had on the internal affairs of yamen runners. As described in Chapter 4, day-today matters of recruitment, advancement, discipline, and dismissal were for the most part regulated by runners themselves, with the magistrate’s role largely confined to judging between competing portrayals of characters and events. While this feature of yamen work suggests a degree of informal rationalization, Fan Rong’s story also demonstrates how rank, authority, and tenure in the yamen depended not only on standardized practices but also on an acute awareness of divisional politics and the formation of personal alliances and networks of obligation. In this, Fan Rong’s initial rise, his subsequent fall from grace, and his eventual recovery all reveal an intrayamen political economy that operated for the most part without the magistrate’s intervention, or even his knowledge. Moreover, it was not until this sub-rosa system broke down and matters were brought to the magistrate’s attention that the intricacies of this political economy ever became apparent to outside observers. Once out in the open, it became necessary for participants in a dispute to frame their own set of alliances as consonant with culturally accepted norms and orthodox principles of Confucian government. Yet another striking feature of Fan Rong’s case is that the support upon which he relied to regain his position came not from his colleagues in the yamen, but rather from local village leaders, the same people whom, according to received wisdom, runners were so infamously adept at victimizing. In this respect, the case reveals that although the relationship between runners and the communities in which they worked was frequently marked by resistance and open hostility, it could also entail a considerable degree of informal cooperation and negotiation. In either case, the ability of various parties to utilize popular stereotypes of venality to formulate alternative representations of a runner’s character played a critical role both in defending personal interests and in mediating the relationship between county government and local society. In the following pages I will return to the details of Fan Rong’s career as a means of illuminating these features of the Ba County yamen. After examining the function of intradivisional alliances and

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the role played by discursive elements in the defense or condemnation of these forms of association I then turn to the broader issue of the relationship between yamen runners and the local community within the context of tax collection.

Networks of Obligation The large number of runners working in any given division and the lack of formal regulations governing the distribution of incomeproducing assignments produced among runners the same competitive atmosphere that was evident among clerks. In this context, the establishment of standardized procedures, regulations, and internal methods of enforcement may be seen as one means of protecting hard-won access to authority and income. Nevertheless, as indicated by the case of Fan Rong, as well as by the dispute between the Tang brothers described in Chapter 4, the actual application and use of these measures left considerable scope for manipulation. Careers in the yamen were therefore shaped not only by rules but also by reliance upon informal networks of support and protection, as well as by the varying representations of these networks. Factions As with yamen clerks, factions among Ba County runners could be based on a variety of particularistic associations. Kinship, common residence, ranking cohort, and common sponsorship, as well as simple economic interests all played a role in the formation of intradivisional alliances and cliques. The functions these alliances served were also similar to those among clerks. Given the lack of any formal regulations governing yamen operations, for example, factional alliances often provided the collective support necessary to determine divisional policies or to enforce informal regulations when violated. They could also be applied to much less transparent enterprises, such as the attempt to monopolize resources by filling positions with friends and relations. The appointment of ten chief runners in the space of two years by head runner Pei Sheng and Pei’s subsequent bias in favor of these recruits in making case assignments serves as a good example of this (CD Mingxing qizha 12-XT 1). In either case, the central factors holding the factions together— mutual aid and sustained access to income-producing work—remained the same. Although even more fragmentary than that for clerks, evidence of

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factionalization in the various divisions and units of Ba County runners weaves throughout the archival record. Its most obvious manifestation is seen in the occasional establishment of mutual aid pacts, the substance of which was often written down in formal agreements with signed copies given to all participants. In most instances, these pacts were formed in response to a perceived threat to position and income posed by the hostility or venality of a senior runner within the division. The text of these agreements typically began with a description of the senior runner’s monopolization of divisional affairs and his practice of bringing false charges against anyone who resisted. This was usually followed by a pledge among the signatories to provide both monetary support and collective action should such a disaster befall any of their number. An example of how these agreements were used in disputes is offered by the case of head runner Song Zhao. In the eighth month of GX 11 (1885), Song was dismissed on the grounds of extortion in the process of prompting tax payments. Shortly thereafter, he submitted a plaint to the magistrate insisting that his dismissal had been the result of false charges brought against him by senior head runner Su Gui. Since taking over as head of the division several years earlier, Su had recruited a number of previously discharged runners with the agreement that they would pay him half of all the fees they earned from legal casework, the assignment of which Su Gui was in a position to control. At the same time, Song continued, Su Gui was also working to improperly advance his sons up the division’s ranks by having senior runners dismissed on fabricated charges. Song then claimed that because of his own outspoken protests against this situation, Su had colluded with a local resident to have him dismissed on trumped up extortion charges. As evidence of Su Gui’s perfidy, Song appended the text of a mutual aid pact signed more than a decade earlier by himself, Su Gui, and three others in response to similar schemes on the part of the managing head runner at the time. Subsequent to the signing of that agreement, the five signatories had acted in concert to expose the situation, with the result that the managing head runner had been dismissed. It was this very dismissal, Song asserted, that allowed Su Gui to advance to the position of senior head runner in the first place. Yet now Su was treacherously betraying his former ally’s trust by seeking to get rid of Song in order to “establish his own empire in the division and so monopolize all affairs.” The magistrate consented to look into the matter.

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By itself Song’s presentation of the mutual aid agreement did nothing to disprove the substantive charges against him. What it did do, however, was raise sufficient suspicion regarding Su Gui’s character and motives to cast doubt on the allegations he had made against Song. The story also reveals the importance of factional alliances, not only in efforts to circumvent divisional regulations but also to maintain them. Even though the remaining signatories to the agreement had long since retired from yamen service, their collective effort and support of Song Zhao in the defense of customary operating procedures carried enough credibility with the magistrate, even after twelve years, to win Song a new hearing. In the end, three months after his initial petition and following several court sessions, Song Zhao was reinstated at his former position (BXDA 6.6.4248). Further evidence of factional alliances is seen in the fact that runners rarely submitted plaints or petitions under their own name alone. Instead, such pleas were usually presented to the magistrate by a number of cosignatories as a means of demonstrating general agreement with the accusations or claims being made. In disputes centering on the succession of a given individual to a senior position, as in the case of the Tang brothers, this could effectively split a division into two or more warring factions. Advancement to such positions was governed by two competing principles: ranking and seniority, on the one hand, and the personal choice of the outgoing incumbent, on the other. When these two principles resulted in disputes, aspirants to a given position generally attempted to buttress their respective claims by enlisting the endorsement and support of other runners in the division. In cases such as these, where the conflict concerned control over a powerful position, the decision to support one side or the other could have a significant impact on a junior runner’s subsequent career in the yamen. For the aspirant himself, any chance of prevailing in a case of disputed succession was likewise diminished by the failure to win intradivisional support. In the Fan Rong case, for example, Fan’s primary opponent successfully used collective support to isolate Fan. The real mover in this case appears not to have been the senior-ranking head runner Liu Cheng, but rather Fan’s fellow head runner, Wang Sheng. Prior to Fan Rong’s advancement to the post of managing head runner, Wang had outranked Fan in terms of divisional seniority.1 Resentful of the promotion of a lower-ranking colleague, Wang Sheng set about gaining the support of a number of his fellow head runners

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along with that of several local runners. Fan Rong, by contrast, was unable to elicit any support whatsoever. This maneuvering by Wang does not, of course, shed any light on the veracity of the grave charges made against Fan. It does, however, indicate that without any backing from within the division, Fan’s actual guilt or innocence was irrelevant to the outcome. In cases like this, the isolated runner typically responded with a desperate attempt to reveal the self-interested motives of his opponents by referring to them pejoratively as “conspirators” or “gangs” (dang, huo). As exemplified by the fortunes of Fan Rong and other runners who found themselves in this position, such efforts were frequently unavailing in the face of collective accusations. Patrons and Clients The formation of intradivisional factions was often facilitated by the prevalence of patron-client relations in the yamen. In the competitive atmosphere of yamen employment, the ability to attain sponsorship from a senior runner was critical for gaining a position in the first place, ensuring access to case assignments, advancing through the ranks, as well as for defending oneself against allegations of abuse from other runners and factions. In extreme cases, such as when a junior runner had actually been dismissed, his sponsor might act to forestall enforcement by destroying or otherwise preventing the posting of the magistrate’s order (e.g., BXDA 6.6.579). Alternatively, a sponsor might use his influence to arrange for a dismissed client to enter another unit, perhaps under a different name (BXDA 6.6.495). In these cases, the senior runner drew upon longstanding and highly valued personal contacts and lateral alliances cultivated over the years between himself and the leaders of other units. Should the activities of a sponsor and his protégé give rise to animosity on the part of other runners in the division, the pair would often be metaphorically referred to with the derisive appellation of langbei. The term itself is a compound of a wolf (lang) and a mythological creature known only by the name of bei. According to popular lore, it was said that since the wolf had short hind legs and the bei short forelegs, the latter had no choice but to ride atop the wolf’s back in order to live. As well as connoting collusion, conspiratorial activity, and an avaricious nature, the term also indicated extreme dependence, particularly in situations where the dependent bei had

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been placed in dire circumstances and thus was made to rely even more upon the wolf, or, in this case, the sponsor. Sponsorship in the Ba County yamen was generally based on the same factors as were factions: kinship; residence; mutual acquaintances; or economic interest. But whatever its initial basis, sponsorship created a student-teacher (tu-shi), or patron-client, bond along with the corresponding culturally sanctioned expectations of obligation, obedience, and reciprocity. Violation of these norms, furthermore, was often presented to the magistrate as clear and sufficient evidence of both low moral character and the likelihood that the individual in question had committed other vile deeds or infractions of the regulations as well. When his fellow head runners accused Fan Rong of forcing women into prostitution, for example, the charge was supported with the claim that Fan had betrayed the trust of his sponsor and teacher, senior-ranking head runner Liu Cheng. Fan Rong refuses to change his ways. His teacher, Liu Cheng, has repeatedly admonished him but he refuses to acknowledge Liu as his teacher and superior [fanburenshi muwuzunzhang]. He shows no respect for seniority but instead threatens Liu with violence. (BXDA 6.6.602)

In a similar manner, managing head runner Peng Tai responded to allegations of embezzlement lodged against him by his erstwhile protégé, head runner Jiang Feng, in GX 8 (1882). I accepted Jiang Feng as my student [tu] and on this basis he [eventually] became a head runner, for which I myself supplied the necessary guarantee of mutual responsibility. . . . I am now old and feeble, but Jiang has violated his human obligations [nilun] by threatening me with false accusations so he himself can take over as managing head runner. I spoke with him and tried to settle matters by turning over to him a greater responsibility for divisional affairs. But he refused to desist in his perversity and now accuses me of embezzlement. Clearly this is an example of a wayward student attacking his teacher and usurping authority with false allegations [nitumieshi baduoniewu]. If I don’t report this, I fear that his threats and actions will destroy proper moral relations [lunchang] throughout the division. (BXDA 6.6.507)

In using such value-laden terms as nilun, nitu, and especially lunchang, Peng Tai is clearly alluding to the debasement of the moral obligations between inferiors and superiors upon which the Confucian social and political orders were based.2 But while appealing to orthodox ideological concepts and culturally conditioned expecta-

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tions of respect for seniority and authority, condemnations such as these were also quite practically motivated by the fact that sponsors were responsible for the actions of their subordinates and were liable to severe punishment should the latter’s transgressions come to the magistrate’s attention. For although Ba County runners enjoyed a remarkable degree of freedom in their internal affairs, they nevertheless remained subject to severe corporal punishment if the magistrate found evidence of negligence or lax supervision. In this sense, accusations by a patron against a client functioned as a sort of preemptive strike designed to distance the patron from a fractious client. Thus, in GX 4 (1878), head constable He Gui reported assistant constable Suan Hong for falling asleep while on guard duty. Suan Hong is a student of mine . . . but he consistently drinks wine and smokes opium to excess. . . . He is negligent, hopes only for gain, and doesn’t recognize the seriousness of his responsibilities. I have repeatedly warned him but he refuses to change. I have the responsibility of managing divisional affairs and if I do not report this, I fear some calamity will surely occur. I therefore would not dare to hide or conceal this matter. (BXDA 6.6.495)

Although couched in terms designed to appeal to the magistrate’s own administrative interests, the calamity He Gui feared was, of course, that he himself would be punished for Suan’s actions. Although the condemnation of Suan Hong’s character here might strike us as somewhat excessive in light of the seemingly minor offense of nodding off while on 2:00 a.m. guard duty, the moral tenor employed here is typical of this sort of report. It could also be quite effective. Suan Hong was subsequently beaten with light bamboo and confined in the cangue for one month. We have already seen that in lieu of any formal body of administrative law regulating yamen procedures, runners themselves tended to formulate their own sub-rosa system of divisional rules and customary procedures. We have also seen that informal regulations in areas such as recruitment, training, advancement, discipline, and dispute resolution were accompanied by an appropriation of orthodox Confucian discourse used to validate the yamen runner as a hard-working and honest civil servant. But if all this suggests a degree of informal procedural rationalization of yamen work, the cases cited here also suggest something of the limits of these processes. Precisely because of their informal and extrastatutory nature, ya-

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men regulations in regard to personnel and income had to be supported with particularistic associations such as factions and patronclient relationships. If these associations were at times decried as serving purely private interests to the detriment of public affairs, they could also be positively valued as integral aspects of customary procedure that were essential to the stability of local government. In the remainder of this chapter, we step outside the yamen precincts to examine the relationship between runners and the local community in which they worked. Here, too, we find the statutory structure of the Qing state to be at odds with the administrative needs of county government. And here, too, we find this breech being filled with informal customary procedures as well as an ambiguous application of popular stereotypes used to either condemn or validate these same procedures.

Talons and Teeth Revisited Clerks and runners serve as an official’s talons and teeth. They cannot be dispensed with even for a day, nor can any matter be handled without them. But if an official wants them to function as the fingers on his arm, it is imperative that he strictly control and supervise them. This is because they only care for profit and know nothing of gratitude or honor. Therefore, if an official shows leniency it will only give rein to their desires. But if the official acts with severity, they will be filled with dread and awe and cease their cunning. —Prefect He Gengsheng (MLS 4:30)

Befitting their legal status as a demeaned occupational group, yamen runners were meant to serve only as menial laborers and servants of the magistrate with no independent or discretionary authority. All legitimate administrative authority resided in the person of the magistrate, who, as the “father and mother official” (fumuguan) of local government, was solely responsible and accountable for all yamen operations. Paramount among these responsibilities was the control of runners. Only in this way could the public be protected from the villainies of these “yamen vermin” and the humanistic ideal of benevolent Confucian government thus be preserved. Yet while often distrusted and despised by the magistrate, yamen runners nevertheless served as a primary mechanism for the enforcement of state authority. The runners left the yamen to arrest suspects, summon witnesses, and press for tax payments; they also operated the yamen jail, interrogated prisoners, and inflicted corpo-

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ral punishments. In this sense, yamen runners worked, as an oftquoted phrase put it, as the “talons and teeth” of the county magistrate (weiguan zhi zhaoya). But whatever use a magistrate chose to make of his yamen runners, it was nevertheless imperative for his subsequent career that he maintain at least some vestige of control over them. By the nineteenth century, however, magistrates had for the most part relinquished all but nominal control over even such basic administrative matters as the recruitment and tenure of yamen runners. If magistrates found it difficult to supervise the practices of runners within the yamen precincts, the problem became much more acute when runners left the yamen on assignments to the city and countryside.3 The need for strict control over yamen runners was largely precipitated by the failure of the central government to provide for their financial maintenance. Like clerks, runners made their living and paid for many of their own operating expenses through the collection of fees from local residents. Unlike clerks, however, runners worked primarily outside the yamen gates, where the line between customary fee collection and outright extortion was correspondingly more difficult to determine, let alone regulate. Despite occasional recognition among local officials that yamen runners must be given adequate compensation if they were to be dissuaded from corruption, periodic revisions of the Qing statutes did nothing to alter this basic deficiency of the system (MLS 18:26a; 20:46a; ZZCG 18:66). Instead they took the form of increasingly harsh penalties for runners found guilty of malfeasance, as well as for magistrates who failed to investigate and prosecute such cases with sufficient vigor. Along with an expanding variety of officially proscribed practices, we find in the Qing Code an impressive array of severe punishments such as flogging, banishment, tattooing, and beheading, all designed to lend force to such proscriptions.4 On the local level, concern with the activities of runners was reflected in the space devoted to the subject in magistrates’ handbooks and administrative guides popularly circulated among local officials (e.g., MLS; ZZCG; XZZZXS; Huang Liuhong). Most often the authors of these compendiums recommended the same approach as the central government, namely, frequent and harsh punishment. This attempt to instill a fear-induced obedience among runners is exemplified by Prefect He Gengsheng’s suggestion that upon assuming a new post, local officials should publicly flog several runners as a warning to others. “By punishing them in this way you will dem-

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onstrate your resolve and all others, standing in awe, will not dare to transgress the law” (MLS 4:30). Yet all this legislation and effort not withstanding, yamen runners continued to “transgress the law” on quite a regular basis. We have already seen that the dilemma of magistrates in this regard was in part the product of structural shortcomings related to funding and manpower requirements. It was also rooted in the very function of yamen runners as agents of the state. When this function was combined with the use of extrastatutory personnel and informal methods of funding, the result was one of the abiding ironies of local government under the Qing; the power of runners to extract or extort fees from the populace, and thus violate the professed paternalism of state authority by harming the emperor’s subjects, was itself based on their role as representatives of that same state (i.e., as the magistrate’s talons and teeth). The following sections examine several ways in which the dual role of runners as both villains and state enforcers influenced their relationship with the local community and the ways in which that relationship was represented before the magistrate’s bench. Looking first at instances of hostility directed at runners, we will see that opposition to their abusive behavior was often used by local residents as a cover for resistance to state authority. We will also see how magistrates at times responded to such attempts by using their own acknowledged lack of control over yamen runners as a means of enforcing compliance with state policy. Finally, we shall see how the role of runners in county administration could produce not only hostility but also cooperation with local residents seeking influence within the yamen. Agents of the State / Enemies of the People Given the historical reputation of yamen runners for malfeasance and corruption, it is only natural that we find numerous allegations of such in the Ba County archives. In fact, there appear to have been very few areas of local administration not open to abuse of some sort. We find runners accused, for instance, of extorting payment in connection with court summons and criminal proceedings, the mistreatment and torture of prisoners, the sale of freedom to convicted felons (maifang), the establishment of phony transit tax (lijin) stations, and a host of inventive subterfuges relating to the collection of land, grain, and deed taxes. A further reflection of the abusive potential of runners is seen in instances where local residents masquer-

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aded as runners (maochong) for the purpose of extortion (BXDA 6.6.518; 6.6.542; 6.6.565; 6.6.586; 6.6.936). Examining the reports on these cases, however, it soon becomes clear that conflict and animosity toward runners was frequently occasioned not only by actual malfeasance but also by the fact that yamen runners confronted local communities as agents of state authority. The potential for violence in these confrontations was demonstrated in QL 51 (1780), when runners Liu Qing and Huang Shun were sent to the countryside to arrest two individuals suspected of harboring thieves and receiving stolen goods. As they were returning to the city after making the arrests, Liu and Shen were intercepted by a number of their prisoners’ neighbors and relatives, who set upon the two runners with knives and clubs while the prisoners escaped. In reporting this incident and requesting the arrest of the perpetrators, the assistant magistrate (xunjian) justified such action in part by noting that “although Liu Qing is a yamen runner, he was not at the time involved in any other unlawful circumstance” (BXDAHB 230, emphasis added). The assistant magistrate’s logic here is indicative of the attitude many officials had toward yamen runners. Despite the fact that they were responsible for carrying out the magistrate’s orders, runners were generally presumed to be guilty if they were involved in any altercation with local residents resulting from those duties. As one magistrate recalled in the mid-nineteenth century: Once there was a runner who complained to me that he had been beaten. Upon questioning him I said, “Runners should by no means beat people. On the other hand, if you had not been extorting money or threatening to place someone in chains in the process of delivering this summons, who would have dared to beat you? Officials assign administrative tasks to runners because they cannot carry them out personally. If you allowed yourself to be beaten, then you are clearly not fit to be a runner.” (MLS 4:35a)

Although certainly not universal, the burden of proof in most such cases was clearly on the runner. Such a bias was the safest strategy for any Ba County magistrate to adopt given the official prejudice against runners and the very real possibility of any decision in favor of a runner being appealed to the prefectural court just down the street from the county yamen. This presumption of guilt on the part of runners by magistrates presented local residents with the opportunity to manipulate such biases in their own efforts to resist state control over community af-

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fairs. An exemplary case of this sort occurred in GX 34 (1908), when rural agent Liu Zhikang filed the following report on an incident that had occurred in his village. On the fifth day of this month, salt runners Chen Qing, Luo Gong, and Zhou Sheng went to the home of Ding Chunshan. Finding no one home they picked up several items, including cash, a silver hairpin, an inlaid vase, and ten duck eggs. At that moment, however, Ding returned . . . and, seeing his possessions rolled up in a mat, insisted on coming to the village to report the matter to me. The runners thereupon arrested Ding on the charge of salt smuggling and picked up several catties of salt, which Ding had at home, to use as evidence. They then put him in chains and brought him to the village, whereupon I tried to mediate. If this was really a case of smuggling, why was there so little salt? And why had these runners not come to my office first before attempting to arrest Ding? Ding himself vehemently denied the runners’ accusation. . . . Meanwhile the other villagers had become quite upset, grumbling that everyone had a few catties of salt on hand and that this was hardly reason enough to arrest someone. I could do nothing but accompany Ding and the runners to the magistrate’s yamen and make this report. (BXDA 6.6.3465)

That same day, however, the magistrate received a strikingly different version of events from the three runners in question. Having been charged with your grace’s warrant to investigate and make arrests in cases of salt smuggling, on the fifth of this month we went to the home of one Ding Chunshan and seized [a large quantity] of smuggled salt. But Ding began screaming and cursing at us and soon his neighbors and relatives arrived. The growing mob absconded with most of the salt and since there were but the three of us we could do nothing about it. We therefore took Ding to the village and consulted with the rural agent, Liu Zhikang, in order to sort things out. [Once in the village, however,] Ding and his friends took hold of all of us and beat us. The injuries that we suffered as a result can be shown as evidence. Because he feared an incident, Liu Zhikang broke things up and helped us bring Ding to the yamen. (BXDA 6.6.3465)

At the subsequent hearing, Ding Chunshan testified that the three runners had originally attempted to extort several thousand qian from him, and that when he had refused, they then took the articles from his home and falsely arrested him for salt smuggling. In defending their actions, runners Luo, Chen, and Zhou maintained that many residents of the village were in fact actively involved with Ding in salt smuggling. They further explained that the articles in question had not been taken by them as charged, but had instead been brought to the village later by Ding’s confederates in order to

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accuse them falsely. Finally, they testified that the entire story of extortion had been concocted by someone known by all in the area to be a steadfast friend of Ding’s, none other than rural agent Liu Zhikang. In the end, however, the magistrate decided in Ding Chunshan’s favor, determining that the small amount of salt impounded was insufficient to justify an arrest, regardless of the runners’ claims to have originally seized a much larger amount. Obviously, he concluded, this was a case of attempted extortion. Furthermore, the runners had acted without proper authority by placing Ding in chains. All three runners were therefore sentenced to detention and ordered to pay court fees of 1,000 qian. Ding Chunshan was released upon a security guarantee given by Liu Zhikang, while the head runners of the salt division were instructed to exercise better judgment in deputing personnel in the future. Several days later, a separate report was submitted by representatives of three government-licensed salt transport companies based in the city of Chongqing. The representatives stated that according to evidence from their own investigations, Ding Chunshan was indeed illegally selling salt from a private well on his property. Residents of the area, however, habitually remained silent and, along with Liu Zhikang, acted to shield Ding whenever runners came to investigate. Although the three runners had been punished because they were found to have arrested Ding without sufficient evidence, their report had nevertheless been true. Liu Zhikang and those acting to shield Ding Chunshan, they concluded, should therefore be brought to trial and the three runners released. Unfortunately for the runners, the magistrate denied the validity of the investigation and upheld his previous ruling on the matter. Although the “truth” of this incident is beyond our grasp, in representing their own version of events, both Ding Chunshan and Liu Zhikang clearly took advantage of the magistrate’s prejudices by emphasizing specific elements in order to strengthen their case (e.g., the attempt at extortion, the detailed list of goods allegedly confiscated, and the unauthorized use of manacles and chains). Yet despite the tendency of magistrates to assume that runners were the guilty party in such conflicts, the fact remained that much of what runners did as administrative functionaries and public security agents was by its very nature objectionable to local communities. As a result, runners often found themselves in the unenviable position of facing what amounted to an incipient revolt against state au-

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thority. This was most clearly the case in the realm of tax collection. Here, however, magistrates sometimes exhibited a markedly different attitude toward the malfeasance of their runners. Land Tax and Surcharges in Nineteenth-Century Ba County During the Qing dynasty, Ba County was not officially considered to be a problematic area in terms of tax collection. Although the central government rated it as a busy (chong), difficult (fan), and troublesome (nan) post, the county did not carry the further classification of wearisome (pi), a term reserved for counties with consistently large amounts of tax arrears owed to Beijing. The reason for this was not that the residents of Ba County were particularly conscientious taxpayers. Rather, it stemmed from the fact that the land and head (diding) tax quota for the province of Sichuan was itself unusually light in comparison with other regions of the empire. Following the devastation of the province during the Ming-Qing transition, the early Qing government had sought to encourage land reclamation and resettlement in Sichuan by setting the provincial tax quota at an invitingly low level (SCCZ 256). Subsequently frozen in perpetuity at a slightly higher level by the Kangxi emperor, the tax quota remained virtually unchanged at only 659,000 taels per year for the remainder of the dynasty, despite a rapid rise in population and expansion of cultivated land. Ba County’s own share of the provincial quota in the nineteenth century was a mere 6,781 taels, with a tax rate of only .007 taels per mou of prime cultivated land (shangdi) (BXDA 6.6.316; 6.6.335). While this anomaly enabled successive Ba County magistrates to fill their stipulated tax quota with relative ease, it did not mean that local residents enjoyed a correspondingly light tax burden. Because the regular tax quota was so small, and the subsequent deficit in local administrative financing so large, officials in Sichuan made proportionately greater use of miscellaneous taxes and other extrastatutory forms of taxation. Although such practices were a common means of financing local government throughout China in the Qing dynasty, in Sichuan they played an unusually important role. One of the most important of these sources of revenue was the deed tax (qishui), paid by the purchaser upon the registration of a new deed following the sale of land or buildings. Unlike the land tax, which remained static, and functioned essentially as a sales tax on all property transfers, deed taxes served as an effective means of tapping the region’s burgeoning population and economy. Although not

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particularly high in the eighteenth century, annual deed taxes quotas set by the provincial government rose steadily in the nineteenth century: from 21,380 taels at the end of the eighteenth century to nearly 480,000 taels by the close of the Guangxu period in 1908, representing an increase of over 2,100 percent (SKSS 107). To help defray local administrative expenses, magistrates were permitted to retain all deed tax revenue collected in excess of the quota established for their county by the provincial government in Chengdu. Not surprisingly, nineteenth-century magistrates employed a variety of means to enhance this surplus. In Ba County, for example, the deed tax was set at 0.03 taels for every tael of purchase price. Prior to the Guangxu period, this tax was assessed only on sales of more than 100 taels. But in GX 14 (1888), incoming magistrate Zhou Beiqing announced that henceforth the deed tax would be levied on all deeds, regardless of purchase price, before the deed could be registered and made legal (BXDA 6.6.4389). It is impossible to know how much this measure increased the revenue available to Zhou and subsequent Ba County magistrates for the simple reason that none of it was reported to the provincial authorities (BXDA 6.6.316; 6.6.335). An even more lucrative source of revenue were the various surcharges levied on the basis of an individual’s regular land tax quota. In addition to a meltage fee (huohao) of 0.15 taels per tael of land tax, there were fees for the feeding of clerks and runners involved in collection and the issuance of tax receipts, fees for the paper used to register tax payments, fees for the rope used to bind up the tax chests, fees for the provisioning of guards, and fees for transport of tax chests based on the distance of the collection site from the county yamen. Surcharges such as these could easily come to 1.5 or even 2 taels for every tael of land tax collected (SCCZ 253). The most significant of these surcharges in nineteenth-century Sichuan, however, was the jinjuan levy. Although commonly referred to in combination, the jinjuan levy in fact consisted of two separate surcharges: the jintie subscription and the juanshu contribution. Initiated by the Sichuan provincial government in XF 4 (1854) to meet increased military expenditures occasioned by the Taiping Rebellion, the jintie subscription was set at the rate of one tael for every tael of land tax (SKSS 87). In order to raise still more revenue, the juanshu contribution was established six years later at the rate of 2 taels per tael of land tax (SCCZ 253). To help cover local expenditures, county magistrates in the late

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Tongzhi period were permitted to retain 3 percent of all jinjuan revenue collected, with the balance remitted to the provincial treasurer in Chengdu (BXDA 6.5.866). Both of these surcharges were originally conceived as temporary means of tapping the province’s undertaxed landed wealth. Collection of both levies was thus limited to households owing an annual land tax payment of at least one qian (BXDA 6.5.866). The extraordinary nature of the levies was further indicated by the fact that collection was to be supervised by specially appointed members of the local gentry (BXDA 6.6.4323; see also SKSS 88). Once established, however, the levy remained a regular feature of the local tax structure until the end of the dynasty. By the end of the Tongzhi period gentry involvement had lapsed and collection was subsequently taken over by the clerks of the yamen’s revenue office. The success of this levy as a means of raising revenue is reflected in the fact that the provincial government eventually sought to use it as the basis for consolidating informal tax collection. In the early Guangxu period, all other forms of land tax surcharges in the province were outlawed. Subsequently, local administrative expenses were to be drawn solely from the jinjuan levy. Yet despite this effort to bring a degree of rationalization to informal tax collection, the measure did not result in an effective limitation of county tax burdens; local magistrates responded to the decree by simply raising the jinjuan levy still further. According to Wang Yeh-chien’s estimates, by 1908 the average taxpayer in Sichuan was paying no less than 6.66 taels in jinjuan levies for every tael of land tax (Wang Yehchien 1973, 23). In Ba County the levy’s yield was even greater: 58,250 taels as compared to an annual land tax quota of 6,781, or nearly 8.60 taels per tael of land tax (Wang Yeh-chien 1973, 21; SCCZ 791). For most residents of the county, of course, it did not really matter whether a given tax was statutory or informal. What concerned the local taxpayer was the total amount taken by combined taxes, surcharges, and levies and the vigor with which demands for payment were enforced. In this regard, archival evidence indicates that taxpayers in Ba County were no less resistant to the Qing state’s attempts at the extraction of revenue than were taxpayers in other areas of China. Thus, behind the official characterization of the county as one of comparatively trouble-free tax collection, there lay an incipient conflict between community and yamen. At the center of this conflict stood the yamen runner.

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Tax Men The most important function of yamen runners in the collection of the land tax, deed tax, and miscellaneous surcharges was the task of prompting payment from households in arrears on their tax payments (cuiliang, cuike). In the Ming dynasty, this had been the responsibility of headmen (lizhang) in the lijia registration system. In order to correct the inequities and malpractices of this system, as well as to increase the efficiency of tax payments in general, the early Qing government had replaced the system with the use of “rolling lists” (gundan). As described by Madeline Zelin, the “rolling lists” were not designed to make a single household responsible for the tax payments of others, as the lizhang system had been. Rather, it served as a means of notifying individual households that their payments were due within a given period of time (Zelin 1984, 19–20). According to this system, a list was composed of the names of all landowning households within the li unit along with the amount of tax owed by each. With the approach of tax deadlines, the list was to be delivered to the household at the top of the list. When that household had delivered its payment, that name would be struck off and the list passed on to the next household listed. Although elegant in design, the use of “rolling lists” was impractical in areas such as Ba County, where the mountainous terrain and scattered pattern of individual households made the passing of the list from one household to another difficult. A new method was therefore devised wherein the task of tax prompting was assigned to a single household residing within a given jia unit. The position of jia prompter (jiacui) would then be rotated every year so as not to impose an unfair hardship on any one person. The premise here was that by replacing the li unit with the smaller and more localized jia, the tighter focus of prompting would make the system both more efficient and less vulnerable to abuse than the lizhang system had been. But whatever the original intent, this method of tax prompting quickly developed a similar pattern of problems. With powerful families able to avoid the responsibility of prompting tax payments, the task tended to fall to men with insufficient resources or standing to either force recalcitrant taxpayers to pay or resist abuse at the hands of yamen clerks and runners (SCCZ 254). To resolve such problems, the position of jiacui was forsaken and the duty of tax prompting given to a local agent known as the xiangbao.5 Unlike the jiacui, the xiangbao was meant to be a man of some

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local standing who was officially appointed and served for several years running. By design, these circumstances should have given the position sufficient authority to prompt tax payments effectively while at the same time making the xiangbao’s activities easier to regulate and control. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, this system, too, had proved to be ineffective. With the position of xiangbao now linked to the onerous job of tax prompting, local households of note resorted to a wide range of bribery and subterfuge to avoid appointment, while those with fewer resources sought exclusion by placing themselves under the protection of local gentry households (SCCZ 254–55). There do not appear to have been any subsequent attempts to modify formally the system of tax prompting in Ba County. Instead, the duties of the xiangbao in this regard came to be shared by the yamen’s district runners. For unlike the xiangbao, or any other local resident, the runner’s direct association with the yamen made him less susceptible to pressures within the community and provided him with the authority necessary for effective tax prompting. At the same time, the continued involvement of the xiangbao was intended to serve as a safeguard against abuse and malfeasance on the part of the runners. In terms of operational jurisdiction and responsibility, the system worked as follows. Soon after the end of the tax-paying period and the removal of the tax chests from stations around the county, clerks of the revenue office reported all arrears to the magistrate, who then authorized the issuance of individual prompting warrants (cuiqian), threatening arrest if payment was not made immediately. The prompting warrant itself was an impressive-looking document, roughly 1 wide and 2 long and embroidered with a pattern of flames around its wide margins. Once issued, the warrant was passed to the head district runner in charge of operations within a given subdistrict, who then turned it over to the chief runners with jurisdiction over the relevant li unit within the subdistrict. Finally, the chief runner assigned the job of actually prompting payment to a local runner, who was himself responsible for prompting within one or several jia. The local runner, in conjunction with the area’s xiangbao, would then proceed to the household in question to present the warrant and demand payment of the tax debt along with fees for all food, lodging, and travel expenses incurred by the runner (kou’an, lufei, chaifei). If the local runner encountered difficulty in carrying out his duties, such as a refusal on the part of the individual

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concerned to make restitution, then a report was submitted to the magistrate requesting authorization for further action. This system aimed both to ensure prompt action and to forestall abuse by creating an interlocking system of mutual responsibility. If, for example, a local or chief runner was found guilty of extortion, then it was generally the head runner who received the most severe punishment, usually under the rubric of “inappropriate assignment of personnel” (paibutuoren). Punishments might include fines, flogging, confinement, detention in the cangue, dismissal, or a combination thereof. At the same time, however, punishment might also be meted out if a runner was deemed not to have pursued a prompting warrant with sufficient vigor. The problems and pressures facing the runner in the performance of this duty did not stem solely from the demands of the magistrate. Although invested with the authority of the magistrate and armed with a warrant carrying the magistrate’s seal, the job of prompting tax payment from an often recalcitrant population was by no means straightforward or without considerable difficulties. The first problem facing the runner was the sheer number of individuals owing back taxes. Although Ba County was not rated by the central government as a “wearisome” post in terms of tax collection, it is nevertheless common to find in the archive reports by local runners charging anywhere from 50 to 200 separate households with tax resistance (kangnaliang). Many of the individuals named in such reports were claimed to have not submitted their tax payments for more than a decade. At times, these lists might comprise virtually the entire population of the runner’s jurisdictional unit of responsibility. If these instances of mass refusal to pay taxes can be seen as form of passive revolt against state authority, then it was a revolt the runner was responsible for resolving on his own. A more formidable problem for the runner was that of ferreting out precisely who owed what. If the local citizenry had actually behaved according to the stipulations of the Qing tax system and reported all land holdings, sales, and purchases in a prompt and complete fashion, this would have been the job of the yamen clerks, with the runners’ responsibility limited to the enforcement of payment. But in reality, landowners employed a host of ruses designed to disguise ownership and sales in order to avoid registration and thus evade the land tax, deed tax, and surcharges that went along with such registration. A runner arriving at someone’s door with a prompting warrant in hand might, for example, be told that the land

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had gone to a younger brother following the division of the family’s property, or that it belonged to another, unrelated, person in the area with the same surname. Or he might be told the land had been sold to a second party that had apparently failed to register the new deed and transfer land tax liability. After tracking this person down, the runner might then be informed that the sale was only partial, that the tax had already been paid, that the property had been resold, or that the whole thing was a sham on the part of the first party motivated out of a long-standing animosity. Or he might simply discover that the person stated on the warrant did not, in fact, exist except on paper. Operating under a strict time limit and facing possible punishment or financial liability, the runner had to ascertain who actually owed the taxes and then either press that person for payment or file an explanatory report with the magistrate. In such cases, the runner served not only as a tax collector and enforcer for the state’s extractive interests but also as a tax investigator. However, if the runner made an error and pressed the wrong party with the vigor required by the magistrate, then he might well find himself accused of abusive practices or attempted extortion before that same magistrate. Yet a third, and more daunting, problem facing the runner was the very real danger of physical violence at the hands of hostile individuals or communities. In a GX 1 (1875) case, for example, a local runner was sent to force payment from four households after two previous attempts by other runners had failed. In pursuing one of the individuals on his warrant, the runner learned that his quarry was hiding in the home of a neighbor, one Chen Mingshan, whose name also happened to be on the runner’s list. As the runner approached the house, however, Chen’s brother suddenly emerged and began cursing and beating him. Before long, a local militia leader (tuanshou) heard the fracas and intervened. Although Chen Mingshan’s brother and the original target managed to escape, the runner succeeded in apprehending Chen Mingshan, whereupon he set out for the nearest market town. Before they had gone but a short distance, Chen’s brother and twenty other local residents caught them on the road and assaulted the runner with clubs and knives. Fortunately, the same militia leader once again appeared on the scene to rescue the hapless runner, although by then both the assailants and Chen Mingshan had fled (BXDA 6.6.4194). The danger of this sort of physical abuse was significantly increased in Ba County by geographical features. Those owing taxes

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frequently resided not in nucleated villages or market towns, where the runner could seek assistance from rural agents and militia members, but in isolated hamlets or individual settlements scattered throughout the mountainous countryside. Although not always confronted by gangs of armed men such as in the previous example, the possibility of a lone runner being assaulted by hostile householders was not to be taken lightly. As one runner who had just recently received such a thrashing complained to the magistrate, “Working as a runner and prompting taxes are already difficult enough. How can we dare to even report cases [of nonpayment] when faced with such beatings, much less actually press for payment?” (BXDA 6.6.4267). Under these circumstances, it is understandable that runners assigned such duty regularly enlisted the aid of fellow runners or even friends and family members on a private basis before setting off for the countryside. Although the use of such unregistered personnel, or baiyi, was frequently decried by superior officials as one of the most pernicious sources of abuse and was explicitly outlawed by statute, Ba County magistrates continued to support the practice by authorizing tax runners to recruit their own assistants in the execution of prompting warrants. Tax Brokers Despite the range of difficulties and hurdles confronting runners in the process of tax prompting, if a runner failed to collect the owed taxes prior to the final deadline, he became liable for payment in order to make up the deficit. Under previous systems of tax collection and prompting, this burden had fallen to the li headman or, subsequently, to the xiangbao (BXDA 6.6.4234). But as these positions came to be filled by men with progressively fewer resources at their disposal in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, responsibility tended to be placed on the next higher level of the administrative apparatus—the yamen runners. Three local runners described the hardships of tax prompting to a magistrate in GX 23 (1897): If collection is not completed by the first deadline, then we are ordered to press for payment. If payment is not completed by the second deadline, then we are put on probation and possibly placed in the cangue for several days. If collection is not made by the final deadline, since we have already been punished and face possible dismissal, we have no choice but to borrow the sum required in order to pay the amount and fill the tax quota. (BXDA 6.6.4298)

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The sums required by this process and the difficulties of recovering those sums from delinquent taxpayers could at times be substantial. In GX 11 (1885), for instance, a runner reported that he had been forced to borrow 50 taels of silver at a high interest rate from several moneylenders in the city to cover the arrears of thirty-eight households in his district. All his subsequent efforts to force repayment, however, had met with refusal. “Now the moneylenders are pressing me daily for payment,” he complained. “But my home is poor and I have nowhere to turn. . . . In a situation such as this, how can I be expected to continue paying for people?” (BXDA 6.6.4247; see also 6.6.4243). Not only obstinate taxpayers might cause a runner grief in this regard. In GX 8 (1882), for example, three xiangbao offered to collect on a number of outstanding prompting warrants under the guise of assisting a local runner. When the three men subsequently refused to turn over the money, the runner was forced to cover the amount on his own (BXDA 6.6.4239). Similar peculation and fraud on the part of clerks in the Office of Revenue might also result in a runner being forced to pay out of his own pocket (BXDA 6.6.596; 6.6.4197). But if tax prompting placed runners in a position of financial liability, that same liability also presented an opportunity to secure a steady source of income in the form of interest charged on sums used to cover tax debts. In its simplest form, the system worked like this. In possession of an individual’s unpaid, and thus unstamped, tax receipt as well as a prompting warrant, a runner would undertake to prepay, or front (dian), the sum owed. Using the receipt as security, the runner would then obtain a loan from a moneylender and pay the tax debt, thus canceling the outstanding warrant. He would not, however, turn over the stamped receipt until such time as the principal, with interest, had been repaid. Although the interest accruing on fronted taxes for an individual household for any single year might be relatively small, enterprising runners could at times assemble a large number of such debtors with a collective debt of several hundred taels of silver. If these debts were left unpaid for a number of years, as they often were, the total outstanding debt could well reach into the thousands. In essence, this practice transformed instances of tax delinquency into cases of private debt. Like any other sort of business transaction or creditor-debtor relationship, the practice of tax fronting frequently resulted in disputes and litigation. In both form and process, these cases resembled other types of litigation brought before

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the magistrate’s bench. If a runner’s initial plaint went uncontested, the magistrate usually responded by issuing a warrant commanding the debtor to make full restitution of both principle and interest or face summons and arrest. If the accused tax delinquent challenged the runner’s plaint or filed countercharges, usually of attempted extortion, the magistrate might order clerks in the revenue office to investigate the matter. Even without an investigation, however, contested charges were often followed by a formal court hearing at which all principals and witnesses gave testimony prior to the magistrate’s final judgment. Cases like these could at times be quite protracted, extending over several months and involving as many as two or three separate hearings. One of the most remarkable aspects of these cases is that the practice of fronting tax payments by runners was itself a clear violation of the Qing Code’s statute prohibiting tax engrossment (baolan) (DLCY 122). Nevertheless, the willingness of successive magistrates in the Guangxu period to give such cases a hearing lent the practice a degree of informal legitimacy, a legitimacy that was enhanced every time a magistrate decided in favor of a runner’s claims against a local resident. The extent to which tax fronting had developed into an element of standard yamen procedure is further indicated by the emergence of a customary 3 percent limit on interest, notice of which was sometimes attached to tax receipts as a means of curbing excessive collection on the part of yamen runners (SCCZ 635). The establishment of an informal limit on interest did not, of course, bring an end to either instances of abuse or charges of such being lodged against runners by local residents. It did, however, provide magistrates with a means of distinguishing between truly abusive rates and those customarily accepted as standard procedure. By the same token, the mere fact that the practice of fronting had been brought under some form of regulation, however informally, allowed runners to frame the collection of interest within these parameters as their rightful due for the rendering of a valuable service. The evolution of this practice into a form of customary, albeit illegal, yamen procedure was not based solely on the pecuniary interests of the yamen staff. An equally, if not more important factor in this evolution was the personal interest of the magistrate in securing tax revenue for his own use as well as for remission to the provincial and central governments. We should not conclude from all

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this that the magistrate’s court necessarily served as mere window dressing for the extraction of revenue from the local population. For balanced against the magistrate’s fiscal concerns was his need to avoid the appearance of impropriety or laxity in the supervision of his yamen staff. When combined with the near-reflexive assumption of guilt on the part of runners prevalent among Qing officials, the need for caution in this respect provided local residents with a valuable resource in defending themselves against charges of nonpayment, regardless of their validity. Take, for example, the story of local runners Wang Bing and Zeng Tai, who in the sixth month of GX 20 (1894), filed a plaint against five households for failure to repay more than 20 taels, which Wang and Zeng claimed to have fronted during the course of several years. The magistrate issued the standard warrant commanding payment or arrest. Six months later, however, the two runners filed another plaint citing continued resistance on the part of two men listed on the previous warrant, Deng Yufeng and Deng Nicun. We went to the countryside to collect first from Deng Nicun, but he told us he had sold his property some years ago to Deng Yufeng. We soon learned, however, that Deng Yufeng has since died. [Since Yufeng’s son has already died as well], the debt should thus be paid by his grandson, Deng Wenying. We therefore located Wenying and pressed him for payment. At the time, he agreed to pay us the 13,000 qian to cover the debt, plus an additional 2,000 wen for lodging fees and 800 wen for traveling expenses. We then returned to the city, thinking that the matter had been settled. But now Wenying not only denies that the title to any land belonging to Deng Nicun has ever been transferred to his family but he also claims that we extorted the money from him. This is a complete fabrication. . . . How could Wenying have land but no land tax? We therefore humbly request an investigation of this matter and a summons for Deng Wenying. (BXDA 6.6.4292)

By this time, Deng Wenying’s widowed mother had already filed her own plaint flatly denying any relation to either Deng Nicun or Deng Yufeng and charging runners Wang and Zeng with extortion. In making this accusation, the widow went to great lengths to portray herself and her family as virtuous and loyal subjects, who were now being victimized by treacherous yamen runners. We are originally from [neighboring] Bi County. My own elder brother placed first in the 1861 Metropolitan examinations [jinshi] and subsequently served as a board official. Unfortunately he died without heir. My husband, who was appointed as Prefectural Administrator of Schools [jiaozhi], died shortly thereafter. I then lived chastely together with Wenying

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until the Tongzhi years, when we moved here to Ba County to take over the property established by my brother during his career. But though the estate has been kept intact, it yields barely enough rental income for the two of us to feed ourselves. This last year, the names Deng Nicun and Deng Yufeng were included on a list of those not paying their debts for over ten years. Deng Nicun is, in fact, the same person as Deng Yufeng and so it is he who should pay for any land registered under that name. But runners Wang and Zeng claimed that Yufeng was Wenying’s grandfather and so arrested him. They then detained him until they could extort not only the outstanding debt, but also money for sumptuous meals, opium, new straw sandals, and other things. Our own property is all in one lot with a tax quota of 2 qian 4 fen and is registered under my deceased husband’s name. My brother and husband both served the dynasty loyally, though we are but simple people. How would we dare to resist paying our taxes? [Wang and Zeng] have improperly used tax receipts to extort from us. If verminous runners such as these are not quickly arrested and punished severely, then in the future all runners will behave no differently from wolves. (BXDA 6.6.4292)

By claiming that Deng Nicun and Deng Yufeng were one and the same person, Widow Deng provided a convenient alternative explanation for the unpaid tax debt on land registered under the name of Deng Yufeng. If Deng Nicun had engaged in criminal tax evasion by falsely establishing property under this name, she claimed, it had no connection whatsoever to her own family’s tax obligation. This denial of any connection between Yufeng and her own family was reinforced by the repeated insistence that her property consisted only of a single lot registered under her husband’s name. Beyond these assertions, her claim rested on the classic formulation of a contrast of character: her own family’s virtue and honor in the face of poverty and hardship as opposed to the well-known wolfishness of predatory yamen vermin. In the course of the following months, Wang Bing and Zeng Tai reiterated their case with the submission of additional petitions, the claims of which were supported by a separate report from the area’s xiangbao. Nevertheless, in a hearing convened nearly a full year after Wang and Zeng’s initial plaint, the magistrate found in favor of the widow and her son. Having examined the tax receipts under the name of the widow’s husband and finding them to be paid in full, the magistrate determined that no familial connection between the name Deng Yufeng and Deng Wenying had been adequately established. As for the outstanding debt of Deng Yufeng, the magistrate stated:

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This deficit in payment for several years running should have been investigated as to who owned what land and who was responsible for paying. Why was there such a delay before reporting this situation? These runners did not investigate or act because they obviously intended to file accusatory reports and extort money with utter disregard for the law. Although they should be punished without mercy, I will in this case act with lenience. Runners Wang Bing and Zeng Tai are herewith ordered to return all money received from the widow Deng and her son. (BXDA 6.6.4292)

Although they had lost whatever money they may have fronted in this case, Wang and Zeng could at least be grateful that they had not been dealt with more severely. Other runners in similar circumstances were not so fortunate. While serving as a local runner early in his career, for example, Fan Rong had submitted a plaint along with his superior, head runner Song Zhao, listing 107 households for failing to repay fronted land tax and jinjuan levies. The magistrate thereupon ordered the accused parties to either make good on their debts or appear at the yamen within five days with all deed and tax receipts in order to settle matters. Two days later, a plaint was lodged by one Zhang Kaixian, a local resident not named on the warrant, accusing Fan, Song, and a third runner, Song’s brother-inlaw, Yu Hua, of extortionately pressing him for payment of more than 10 silver taels. Song answered the charge by claiming that Zhang was the elder brother of the man actually listed on the warrant. This man, however, had recently fled the county to avoid prosecution following an altercation with a local salt merchant. With the younger brother gone, Song reasoned, it now became Zhang Kaixian’s responsibility to make good on his brother’s debts, and it was on that basis that they had pressed him for the sum in question. Unfortunately, the magistrate remained unconvinced by Song’s explanation. Deemed guilty of using tax debts as a pretext for extortion, the three men were subsequently beaten with heavy bamboo and held in the cangue. As the senior runner, Song Zhao was further sentenced to confinement until the return of the 10 taels, after which he was dismissed from yamen service (BXDA 6.6.4248). Although Song Zhao was later reinstated, as I described earlier, these and many similar cases clearly demonstrate that going to court over debts resulting from tax fronting was by no means a sure thing for a runner. In order to better their chances for a favorable outcome, runners developed their own rhetorical strategy, formulated to distance the individual runner from popular images of avarice

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while at the same time appealing to the magistrate’s contradictory interests as an administrator. Here, the practice of tax fronting was consistently depicted not as a source of personal income for the runner, but rather as a hardship imposed by contumacious individuals. Plaints submitted by runners generally began by citing long years of loyal service and conscientious performance of their lawful taxprompting duties, the importance of this duty for the collection of tax revenues, and the immoral, cunning nature of those who evaded their obligations in this regard. As a group of aggrieved local runners once complained, “They cleverly place their property under a false name, or claim the property to be temple land, or push responsibility onto someone else, or any one of many other forms of cunning deceit, after which they seek to cover their schemes by making false accusations of extortion against us” (BXDA 6.6.4298). Claims such as this were then usually followed by a description of the runner’s successive outlays of borrowed money to cover the arrears as well as an account of previous attempts to settle the matter amicably out of court. Although such rhetoric was obviously aimed at presenting the runner as a loyal and honorable servant of the state, the more critical message was usually delivered in the closing lines of the plaint. For example, in the spring of GX 30 (1904), several years after his reinstatement as a head runner, Fan Rong submitted a report listing at least 140 households that had failed to repay the more than 10 silver taels he had borrowed to cover both their land taxes and jinjuan levies. “I recently went to the countryside myself to request repayment and settle this matter,” he explained, “but they all join together and refuse to pay even one fen. Certainly the payments of taxes is no light matter. How can these people dare to refuse in this wanton manner?” (BXDA 6.6.4329). The magistrate responded to the report by issuing a prompting warrant. The following spring, Fan Rong submitted yet another report, complaining that while a number of those households listed in his previous report had paid their debts, a great many of them had refused. “The deadline for [spring] collection is drawing near,” Fan stated in closing, “but my own debts are accumulating daily and if I cannot repay these debts, it will be difficult for me to borrow money in order to front [tax payments] in the future. I fear that if these rebellious and disloyal individuals are not forced to repay, then others will act in like manner and the collection of taxes will be made even more difficult” (BXDA 6.6.4329).

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Despite Fan Rong’s specific use of the term “tax resistance” (kangliang) in making his accusation, the actual dispute here was clearly one of private debt for the simple reason that the taxes themselves had already been paid. The underlying message of Fan’s plea was nonetheless unmistakable: if the repayment of fronted tax payments was not enforced, then the future remission of tax quotas was likely to suffer as a consequence. In this, as in many other instances, the magistrate heeded the warning and ordered the arrest of all individuals involved if restitution of principal and interest was not made immediately. The support given by magistrates in cases such as these inevitably led to the collection of interest well beyond the customary level of 3 percent. This in turn resulted in even more litigation and allegations of extortion. In these cases, however, the attitude of Ba County magistrates was generally much more tolerant than in cases where the runner was deemed to have extortionately pressed payment from an altogether innocent party. The reason for this tolerance is evident in the response of Magistrate Zhou Beiqing to a plaint submitted by a local resident, who claimed that due to a recent illness, he had been unable to remit his taxes before the deadline. When he had gone to the yamen only a few days later, he was told that because the runners had already paid his tax for him, he would now have to pay the original sum plus interest. Surely this amounted to nothing less than the use of public affairs to reap private gain, the man complained. Magistrate Zhou’s response was a model of concise admonishment: “You failed to pay your taxes on time, so the runners paid them for you. Truly you have no one to blame but yourself. Furthermore, runners must incur debts in order to front tax payments and I cannot force them to suffer further hardship. Pay the tax and interest to the runners immediately and settle this matter” (SCCZ 620). This tendency of magistrates to use the collection of interest by runners as an inducement against dilatory taxpayers is even more strikingly demonstrated by a GX 11 (1885) case wherein eight local gentry (shenliang) complained to Magistrate Guo Zhang of the usurious interest rates being charged by yamen runners. In the past two years, they explained, the harvests in the county had been exceptionally bad, with the result that many people were hard pressed to meet their tax payments. Regardless of these hardships, yamen runners took advantage of the situation to front the taxes and then charge exorbitant amounts of interest. Clearly, they pleaded, the

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magistrate should have pity on these impoverished people and issue a proclamation enforcing the limit of 3 percent on any fronted tax payment (BXDA 6.6.4246). Not unsympathetic to the plight of the poor, Magistrate Guo agreed to limit interest on late payments as requested. He nevertheless reminded the petitioners that the victims of yamen runners were themselves ultimately responsible for their own tribulations. “Several orders have already been issued setting strict time limits on tax payments,” he declared. “But not every household observes these limits and instead they rely on runners to front payments for them. The extortion and suffering these people are subject to is truly lamentable, but in the end it stems only from their own negligence and resistance” (BXDA 6.6.4246). The attitude of Magistrate Guo’s successor toward refractory taxpayers was hardly less severe. Several years after Guo had left the county, three gentry lodged a similar appeal. Although it was common in Ba County for runners to front tax payments for people, they said, the more unscrupulous among them often refused to turn over the stamped receipts even after they had been paid off. “Hoping for an even better price, they hold onto these receipts as if they were rare commodities. They come to our village and extort more than double, or even several times the required amount. Yet still they are not sated” (BXDA 6.6.4252). After describing the plight of a particular individual who had been subjected to such extortion, the petitioners pleaded for the magistrate’s attention and a formal order prohibiting these vile crimes. As had his predecessor, the magistrate declined to prosecute the runners charged with extortion. His reply succinctly captures the way in which magistrates could use their acknowledged inability to control the mercenary actions of their own “talons and teeth” as an effective means of enforcing the law: The law does not permit delay in the payment of taxes. Fearing that people might be too busy or ill, two periods of collection were established. But this does not mean that people can delay payment. If they are truly good people [liangmin], they will enthusiastically pay their taxes on their own, without being pressed to do so. But people’s hearts are not all the same and so every year there are many households that do not pay. The regulations on time limits are strict and the punishments severe. Having allowed runners to front the money, these people cannot avoid the responsibility for the interest that the runners charge. . . . I have already looked into the charges brought against these runners. Such events, however, are the natural result of people not paying the full amount of their

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taxes on time. . . . The extortionate practices of runners . . . cannot be separated from the blame of those who delay or resist their tax payments. The evils of the one can therefore not be rectified as long as that of the other continues. Do not again dare to disturb me with this matter. (BXDA 6.6.4252)

Considering the vehemence with which magistrates condemned extortion on the part of yamen runners in most other areas of administrative procedure, the attitude of the magistrates in both these examples was remarkably complacent. Yes, runners are vile and repugnant creatures, they seemed to say. But if one wishes to avoid their clutches, the best solution is simply to obey the law and pay one’s taxes on time. In the words of Magistrate Huo Qinwei, announced in a notice posted throughout the county in the fall of GX 28 (1902), “The deadline for final payment of all land tax and jinjuan levies has been set on the eighteenth day of this month. If you fail to remit your payments before this time and wait until runners have paid them for you, what good will your regrets be?” (SCCZ 635). As these cases demonstrate, tax fronting served the interests of the magistrate in a number of ways. Most significantly, it provided him with the revenue to both remit the county’s tax quota in timely fashion and help defray, at least partially, his own administrative expenses. It also furnished him with a convenient means of prodding residents of the county to observe the established tax deadlines. In this respect, the collection of interest and the presumption of avarice among yamen runners themselves served as administrative devices with which to check any tendency to passive tax resistance by effectively creating a financial penalty for late payments. But if the needs of county government gave tax fronting a degree of legitimacy at the local level and allowed yamen runners to carve a relatively secure source of personal income from the administrative process, in the eyes of government officials at higher levels, the practice nevertheless remained a particularly insidious form of corruption. Thus, the increasing prevalence of tax fronting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was accompanied by repeated efforts on the part of provincial and central government officials to eradicate it under the rubric of protecting the people from the depredations of yamen runners. In GX 29 (1903), for example, Sichuan Governor-general Cen Chunxuan issued a proclamation stating that although the process of prompting tax payments was difficult, allowing runners to front

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such payments simply gave them an excuse to harm the populace while removing any means of effective control. Cen therefore declared the practice to be banned throughout the province. He further warned that should any report of such activity reach his office, it would be taken as a clear violation of this prohibition and would result in the immediate dismissal of the responsible magistrate (SCCZ 633). Like many other such attempts to institute central control over local administrative practices, this one also appears to have been without any appreciable effect. In the years following Cen’s prohibition, Ba County magistrates continued to receive a steady stream of plaints from yamen runners requesting the magistrate to compel repayment of fronted taxes. By the closing years of the Guangxu period, amid the general climate of government efforts at administrative reform and restructuring, the Sichuan provincial government finally acknowledged tax fronting as a necessary, although unfortunate, reality. Thus in GX 34 (1908), the offices of the provincial treasurer and judicial commissioner promulgated regulations created to give official sanction, and at least nominal control, to a practice that was by then already a standard feature of county governments in the province. Investigations have shown that in Sichuan the fronting of tax payments by runners has become an established custom. Yet the charging of high interest rates by these runners is also of great harm to the people. Although the fronting of payments is specifically prohibited by statute, in reality poor households occasionally have need of cash in order to submit their taxes on time. If special arrangements are not made allowing runners to borrow and front such cash, then magistrates, being unable to allow a delay in the submission of tax quotas, will be forced to issue prompting warrants, which are then used for extortion. . . . But if rules are clearly established and made known to all, then even simple people will not be subjected to abuse and runners will not dare to act in a reckless manner. Henceforth, tax chests are to remain open until the end of the eleventh month and runners are not to be allowed to front any payments prior to the time at which the chests are removed. After that time, if households are dilatory or late, runners are permitted to borrow the sums and front payment. Interest on all fronted sums is not to exceed 3 percent per month and may not be compounded. Principal and interest are to be paid no later than the fourth month of the following year. If this deadline expires without payment being made, a prompting warrant is to be issued by the magistrate. If any runner dares to publicly acknowledge but secretly violate this regulation, he is to be punished severely and dismissed immediately. (SCCZ 622)

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The rationale stated here for permitting a limited and regulated form of tax fronting made no mention of the fiscal inadequacies of the Qing state, which had both led to the system’s development in the first place and maintained it in practice for more than half a century. Nor was any essential change in the actual structure of administration being put forward. Once again, the problem was seen as being rooted in the debased character of yamen runners, with the solution lying in further efforts to shield the populace from their purported rapacity.

Friends in Low Places Since the chief and local runners and their unregistered assistants actually went to the countryside in the performance of their various duties, understandably, animosity tended to be directed at them, rather than at head runners, who for the most part remained within the yamen. There is, in fact, ample evidence that head runners occasionally enjoyed a quite different relationship with the local communities, particularly with the leaders of those communities. Here we frequently find not confrontation but cooperation in the service of mutual interest. Cooperation between head runners and local leaders was predicated on the authority head runners exercised over all those working under them, an authority that was largely independent of the magistrate’s control. If local leaders were to blunt or subvert state intrusion, or even to deal effectively with the problem of abuse on the part of an individual runner working in the countryside, then the most effective point of contact was not with the magistrate but with the head runners. It is thus not uncommon to find instances of community leaders coming to the divisional offices to discuss matters of divisional policy directly with head runners. The most obvious evidence of cooperation between community leaders and head runners is found in attempts by local gentry to intervene in disputes over the succession to senior positions. Midway into the previously discussed dispute between head runners Tang Shu and Liang Cheng regarding who was to succeed Tang’s retired elder brother as managing head runner, representatives from three villages in the district submitted a petition to the magistrate offering their own solution to the problem. The public affairs and legal cases of a community are all the responsibility of the head runner. If a head runner is not upright, then corruption will

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surely arise. We have concluded that the dispute between Tang Shu and Liang Cheng arose out of jealousy and ill will. We would therefore like to suggest that a third head runner, Li Yu, be selected as managing head runner. Li Yu is both diligent and very familiar with public affairs. He is therefore fully capable of controlling the chief runners, assigning reliable people, and preventing any delays or abuses in the administration of public matters. (BXDA 6.6.636)

Deeming the recommendation inappropriate on the grounds that such matters were not the proper concern of local leaders, the magistrate rejected the suggestion of a third candidate and went on to appoint Tang Shu as managing head runner. Several weeks later, however, another plea was submitted by the elders from yet another village in the district. Like Liang Cheng’s supporters before them, the petitioners described Tang Shu as manifestly corrupt, an individual whose reputation for venality was known throughout the district. Poison such as his is truly hard to bear. We have spoken with the runners in his division and know that they are not happy with his appointment. How will Tang Shu be able to control them? We beg your grace’s attention to this matter. Tang Shu has taken advantage of your grace’s recent arrival in Ba County and the fact that you are not familiar with his character to gain the position of managing head runner. (BXDA 6.6.636)

Once again the magistrate rejected the plea, this time on the patently trivial grounds that the petition had been submitted without the proper clerical seal. In both these attempts to influence the selection of a new managing head runner, community leaders based their appeal on a politically orthodox linkage between administrative authority and moral integrity. Since the managing head runner was in charge of all divisional operations, the reasoning went, it was of obvious importance to see the position filled by someone of “upright character,” someone who could both “control his subordinates and himself resist the temptations of corruption.” Although in these cases the magistrates were unwilling to countenance any interference from local elites, in other instances such intervention not only was successful but also was instrumental in a head runner’s ability to stay in office. Once again the case of Fan Rong provides an outstanding example. Recall from the opening pages of this chapter that a group of rural agents and local gentry had given a portrayal of Fan Rong quite different from that provided by his opponents within the division.

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Rather than the pimp and extortionist his fellow runners had made him out to be, Fan Rong was instead described as a valuable civil servant of proven character and ability. Last year this county witnessed many disturbances between local residents and the converts of Christian missionaries. . . . In the course of these events Fan Rong maintained friendly relations between everyone by deputing only the most upright and fair-minded runners, who came to our villages and protected property during the riots. . . . In both town and country, churches and the homes of converts were looted and burned. Here in our villages, however, not a single item was lost or destroyed. If Fan Rong did not have good relations with local gentry and commoners, how would he have been able to calm the crowds and safeguard property? He is truly reliable and honest and his dismissal was the result of nothing more than private spite. (BXDA 6.6.602)

The petitioners explained that prior to Fan Rong’s appointment, the post of managing head runner had been held by his teacher and patron, Liu Cheng. Due to Liu’s corrupt activities, they had been forced to come to the divisional office, where they insisted that the position be given to the next ranking head runner, one Hu Zhao. Although they were successful in getting Hu Zhao installed in Liu’s place, Hu unfortunately died shortly thereafter. Even more unfortunate was the fact that according to the office ranking, the post should then have gone to the “old and feeble” Cen Biao. Since Cen Biao was clearly incapable of fulfilling the duties of managing head runner, the petitioners had once again come to the office. After consultations with the division’s head runners, it was finally decided that Fan Rong should take over. But the decision had left several head runners, particularly Wang Sheng, angry and spiteful at being passed over for the position. Wang had therefore contrived to inflame an ongoing quarrel between Fan Rong and his teacher, Liu Cheng, as well as to bring false charges against Fan. The result of all this was, of course, Fan Rong’s dismissal. However, if the magistrate wished to maintain peace and smooth administration in the district, then he should disregard these calumnies and reinstate Fan without delay. The responsibility of a managing head runner is a heavy one. If good people are not chosen not only will runners engage in corruption, but the area’s gentry and wealthy families will be greatly harmed. . . . We raise this only out of concern for public welfare. Since we represent everyone in our communities we can only beg your grace’s indulgence and request that you allow Fan Rong to resume his old position and duties. (BXDA 6.6.602)

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On the basis of this petition, newly arrived magistrate Shen Bingkun ordered further investigations into Fan Rong’s character and his relationship with residents of the district. Two weeks later, over the vociferous objections of his original detractors, the magistrate reinstated Fan at his previous rank of managing head runner. Certainly not all head runners in Ba County had the same backing of local gentry that Fan Rong seemed to enjoy. As demonstrated by the antagonism between Fan’s gentry supporters and his detractors within the yamen, community leaders were frequently the most vocal and strident critics of the yamen’s divisional leaders. The willingness of these leaders to come to Fan Rong’s aid in this instance is significant nonetheless. First of all, evidence from this and other instances of gentry coming to the divisional offices to discuss matters of administration and personnel indicates the practical autonomy of yamen runners and the functional irrelevance of the magistrate to many areas of yamen operations. At the top of the hierarchy within their division, head runners exercised a considerable amount of independent authority. It thus made sense for community leaders to voice their concerns and make arrangements directly with the head of a division, rather than going through the formality of petitioning the magistrate, who might deem their requests as unwarranted meddling. It was usually only after things had reached a crisis point or when the interests of certain parties were threatened that many local administrative practices ever came to the magistrate’s attention. When conflict did reach this point, it was necessary for the opposing sides to frame personal contacts, informal arrangements, and extrastatutory forms of income as benefiting local administration and the public in general, rather than serving purely private interests. Given the fact that a magistrate’s performance in office was in large part measured by his ability to maintain public order, the images of rioting and looting in the countryside painted by Fan’s supporters were by no means fortuitous. Rather, they were aimed directly at one of the magistrate’s chief concerns as a career-minded official. With the context thus set, Fan Rong’s authority within the yamen was depicted not as abusive or illicit but as a critical means of keeping the peace, allaying public fears, and controlling otherwise rapacious underlings. Fan Rong, the former scoundrel and “yamen vermin,” was thereby redeemed as an “honest public servant,” an indispensable and stalwart defender of efficient administration and virtuous government.

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As revealing as the tale of Fan Rong is, one thing it does not tell us with any certainty is whether or not he was actually innocent or guilty of the charges brought against him by his colleagues. Fan himself admitted owning an inn at which many litigants stayed while their cases were pending. Yet aside from the sweeping accusations of extortion and the equally sweeping denials of any wrongdoing on Fan’s part, the magistrate was presented with no direct evidence or testimony that might have independently established either his innocence or guilt. Fan Rong was originally dismissed not because the magistrate knew the charges to be true but simply because a substantial number of those in his division claimed them to be so. In a similar manner, Fan’s reinstatement was based not on any conclusive proof of his innocence but on the support offered by community leaders. Although magistrates Wang Chichang and Shen Bingkun doubtlessly regarded both sets of claims with a good deal of skepticism, the dictates of administrative expediency were sufficient to first expel Fan Rong as a scoundrel and then later reverse that decision and allow his return to the yamen as a valuable aid. This is in itself emblematic of the role played in local administration by runners, as well as clerks, and once again brings us back to the question of corruption and legitimacy. I have stressed throughout these chapters that from the standpoint of the central government in Beijing, the practices, indeed the very presence, of most yamen personnel violated the law. Illegality here was accompanied by a sense of illegitimacy stemming from the fact that clerks and runners operated outside the constraints of ideological training and normative political values as well as beyond the direct control of official regulations. Yet in the realm of local administrative practice, it nevertheless remained a necessary illegitimacy, one required by the indispensability of these illicit functionaries within a formal system that was inadequate to meet the actual needs of county government. To fulfill the public security and revenue extraction demands of his post, the magistrate was obliged to reach a wary accommodation and compromise with the yamen staff as he found them upon his arrival. Accommodation in this sense resulted in the extrastatutory system described in these chapters, one in which clerks and runners not only created careers based on the extraction of fees from the public but also exercised a level of operational autonomy unheard of elsewhere in the imperial bureaucracy. To the extent that administrative necessity validated the income and career concerns of the

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yamen staff and allowed for a reinterpretation of orthodox political values, the basic nature of imperial government at its most basic level was shifted away from that of the Qing state’s officially promulgated ideology. Regardless of the ideals of benevolent paternalism and humane government espoused by Confucian officials and transmitted throughout the empire by readings of the sacred edit, for the majority of local residents “government” meant yamen clerks and runners. The clerks and runners of the county yamen, after all, had the most direct and frequent contact with people. Only in exceptional circumstances would an individual even see the magistrate, much less have occasion for any direct interaction with him. In this respect, the relationship between society and the state was essentially defined by that between the local populace and the yamen staff. For most residents of any given county in China during the Qing, government was not an abstracted repository of virtue and moral authority emanating from on high. It was instead the clerks and runners who collected taxes, or the runners who delivered court summons or pressed for or fronted tax payments, all of whom extracted fees. This was not, in other words, a government of scholars exercising moral suasion upon a passive population; rather, it was a government administered by trained specialists who expected and invented ways to get paid for their efforts, if not by the state, then by those they administered in the name of the state. But if the pecuniary interests of the yamen staff created a context for conflict, then it also opened the possibility for negotiation between local residents and these putative agents of the state. For although runners, in their role as enforcers of state authority, frequently confronted individuals and communities engaged in proscribed activities, the illicit manufacture of salt, for example, they could at times also be persuaded to overlook such activities in return for monetary compensation. Similarly, if one could not actually buy administrative services like a commodity, then one could at least bargain for a more advantageous position or to offset temporary setbacks in one’s financial position. For example, in the system of tax farming described above, local administration functioned not only as an arm of the state, either intrusive or benevolent, but also as an area of exchange, which combined the informal practice of money lending with the formal position and function of yamen runners. In this light, we might consider local administration as an area of

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interaction where the traditional demarcations between state and society did not apply. Instead we see elements of both state and societal structures, institutions, and practices all melding together to constitute a body of resources out of which emerged a unique form of highly localized administrative practice. This is not to say that the ultimate power of the state or the orthodox ideological representations by which the state legitimated its authority were irrelevant in the local context. On the contrary, they mattered a great deal, for these elements formed the parameters within which the system operated and provided the discursive categories upon which individuals both inside and outside the yamen drew in defining and defending their personal interests. But as I have suggested here, formal structures, statutes, and ideologically driven portrayals of the relationship between Confucian state and society cannot in and of themselves capture many of the quotidian realities of that relationship. For that we must look at the ways in which representation and interest, including those of the state at large, its officials, and its functionaries, as well as private individuals, were mediated by elements of local practice. In the following chapter, I consider these issues further by examining a feature of yamen procedure that has figured prominently in these pages: the functioning of the magistrate’s court and the collection of customary legal case fees.

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I

n the eyes of most central government officials during the Qing, the fees collected by clerks and runners in the processing of legal cases served as a prime example of the greed and parasitic nature of these “yamen vermin.” More than any other aspect of yamen operations, fee collection represented an intrusion of selfseeking interest into the realm of public affairs (gongwu). In addition to equating fee collection with corruption, Qing officials regularly maintained that the practice inevitably led to a proliferation of litigation, as yamen underlings duped unwitting local residents into presenting “trivial” disputes before the magistrate’s bench, rather than resolving them through informal mediation. Fee collection was thus seen as having a corrosive effect not only on the administration of justice but also on the moral basis of society in general. Yet as we have seen repeatedly throughout these chapters, legal case fees continued to serve as one of the fiscal cornerstones of local government. Fees generated by cases brought before the magistrate’s bench provided the funds for many administrative operations as well as a reliable source of income upon which clerks and runners depended for their livelihood. At the local level, fee collection thus constituted not a shadowy world of corruption, but rather an openly acknowledged feature of the yamen court. This chapter explores this aspect of local judicial administration in greater depth by first examining the role of legal case fees as a form of income along with the structure of zealously guarded jurisdictional boundaries and proprietorial rights that clerks and runners exercised over legal cases. Defined and enforced by clerks and runners themselves and regularly defended before the magistrate, yamen

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regulations governing legal case assignment and fee collection served as a type of informal administrative law in the same manner as did those pertaining to matters such as recruitment and advancement. The critical difference between these two areas of yamen practice was that fee collection was not internal to the yamen but instead brought yamen employees into direct contact with the community. In so doing, it also placed them squarely within the realm of gentry interests. Although these interests were certainly not always the same as those of the county magistrate, the status and social authority of the local gentry were nevertheless rooted in the same ideological sources as was the authority of the Qing state and its appointed officials. In the same way that the pecuniary interests of yamen personnel were seen as undermining the idealized relationships that legitimated state authority, so too were these interests inimical to the basis of gentry dominance. Gentry leaders in Ba County therefore often used the same rhetoric to express the same opinions of yamen clerks and runners as did government officials. Insofar as images of yamen corruption were made to serve gentry interests, they must be examined in the same manner as similar declamations on the part of government officials. After describing the system of fee collection, I therefore turn to the ways in which the stereotypic portrayal of clerks and runners as invariably corrupt was often used by gentry leaders as a strategy for not only maintaining but also extending their own authority over local affairs in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In all of this, we shall see that the magistrate’s court, as well as the broader process of dispute resolution in general, can be read as a field of social interaction within which were embedded specific resources, the control of which was conditioned by localized conditions, institutions, and practices.

Case Fees and Income Despite the pervasiveness of customary fee collection by yamen clerks and runners throughout the empire, most central government officials viewed the practice not as a source of legitimate income but as a form of extortion. Such a view was clearly expressed in an edict of JQ 5 (1800): “At first, those who became clerks extorted money from people. In time these practices became established as [customary] fees which have steadily increased over the years. . . . Such practices must be prohibited as they can only cause harm to the people” (QHDSL 98:262; see also HCJSWXB 22; BXDA

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6.6.99). In addition to castigating fee collection as a form of extortion, Qing officials frequently blamed it for the high levels of litigation brought before the magistrate’s bench. In this, the comments of Censor Cheng Boluan in a JQ 23 (1818) memorial on the causes of administrative corruption in Sichuan are typical. All provinces are burdened with heavy legal case loads. Repeated edicts have been given for provincial officials to expedite judgments in these cases so as to relieve people of their burdens. Looking at the reasons for these numerous cases, I find that instances of negligence on the part of officials are relatively rare. The primary cause is the control of affairs by runners. At the root of this control is the practice of collecting fees. In counties throughout Sichuan there are customary court fees. In all cases, great or small, many such fees must be paid. . . . Runners, furthermore, are generally divided into local and chief runners. If one wishes to become a chief runner, however, one must first pay an installation fee. If a runner did not intend to take money from people in order to enrich himself, why would he be willing to pay such high installation fees in the first place? (SCDASL 1 [1983] 20)

Although the identification of extortionate fee collection as the cause of increased litigation might strike us as paradoxical, it was nevertheless based on a fundamental premise of Confucian political philosophy; that is, the vast majority of people do not act as autonomous individuals, but instead remain subject to external influences, whether it be the morally based leadership of local officials and gentry or the pernicious designs of the yamen staff. Yamen clerks and runners, like the nefarious litigation brokers (songgun), were thus thought capable of gulling their witless victims into presenting petty disputes before the court, after which the victims found themselves enmeshed in a web of fees and charges, often to the point of being left penniless. Because of this, it was believed that fee collection on the part of clerks and runners was ultimately responsible for the large number of appeals brought to the provincial courts (Ocko 1988, 304). Provincial officials in Sichuan tended to agree with this assessment. In GX 7 (1881), for example, the Sichuan provincial judicial commissioner (anchashi) claimed that out of every ten appeal cases he received, at least seven or eight were related to the collection of fees by clerks and runners (CD Minxing chaiyi haimin 19). The optimum solution to this problem, as expressed by officials from the provincial level upward, was simply to ban the collection of legal case fees altogether. This had been Cheng Boluan’s suggestion in 1818, and it was also the order of Sichuan Governor-general Zhao Erxun nearly a century later in 1908 (SCDASL 1 [1983] 20, 26).

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Faced with the daily expenses of local administration, county magistrates recognized that a total ban on fee collection was unworkable. Local officials thus contrived a variety of ad hoc measures in an attempt to resolve the problem by placing limits on fee collection, rather than doing away with it altogether. During his tenure as Ba County magistrate, for example, Liu Heng ordered that runners who observed the time limits placed on warrants and refrained from victimizing the local populace through excessive collection would be awarded merits, with collected merits being worth the assignment of additional warrants (MLS 18:26a; YLYY 19).1 Officials in other regions of the empire adopted similar measures. As governor of Henan in the early eighteenth century, Tian Wenjing (1662–1732) noted that if runners were to be dissuaded from corrupt practices, then it was necessary that they and their families be supported. Such support, he suggested, might take the form of monetary rewards for runners making timely arrests (MLS 20:46). In 1821 the governor-general of Zhejiang similarly recommended that constables be rewarded on a sliding scale based on the seriousness of the suspect’s alleged crime (ZZCG 18:66). The majority of these proposals, however, were quite short-lived. Aside from the unseemly appearance of collusion between the magistrate and yamen underlings created by rewards, the most basic problem was that few, if any, magistrates had the economic wherewithal to pay runners or clerks out of their own pockets. Acknowledging legal case fees as a critical source of funding for yamen operations, Liu Heng himself once wrote that although fee collection should be personally monitored by the magistrate, the practice could not be done away with altogether (YLYY 12). For this same reason, the magistrate of Wan County, a short distance downriver from Chongqing, stated in XF 12 (1862) that clerks and runners should be permitted to collect fees, but only within the scope of customary levels (SCDASL 3 [1984] 55–56). Yamen clerks and runners had their own rationale for fee collection. As cited throughout the preceding chapters, clerks and runners commonly referred to legal case fees as their sole source of support and basis for livelihood. In this sense, they typically argued, case fees served as the very foundation of honest labor in the yamen and the cornerstone of corruption-free administration in general. Such references were usually accompanied by declarations of impoverished circumstances on the part of individuals and their families as a means of denying self-interest or malfeasance. The underlying

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message of this rhetoric is clear: the acceptance of fees did not in itself violate the dictates of ethical government, as long as collection was kept within customary limits and one did not get rich in the process. The actual amount of income generated by legal cases has long been shrouded in the hyperbole of Qing official and gentry sources, which commonly describe wealthy households brought to ruin at the hands of predatory clerks and runners (Ch’ü 1962, 69). The acceptance of these sources by present-day historians is reflected in the received wisdom that due in large part to the depredations of the yamen staff, local residents uniformly shunned any involvement with the magistrate’s court. Recent scholarship based on archival sources has done much to dispel this notion of a formal legal system far removed from the daily lives of most people in the late imperial period (Allee 1994; Bernhardt and Huang 1994; P. Huang 1996; Macauley 1994, 1998; Buxbaum 1971). Philip Huang’s work on civil justice in the Qing, in particular, has shown that, contrary to official representations, the fees charged by yamen runners were not so high as to dissuade people from going to court over relatively minor matters when informal mediation failed to resolve a dispute (P. Huang 1996, Chap. 7). While Huang’s concern is with court fees as a factor in an individual’s decision to seek justice before the magistrate’s bench, mine is with the other side of this coin: How much could a yamen clerk or runner actually make from legal case fees? Drawing from the fees cited in a GX 32 (1906) agreement between the Ba County magistrate and local gentry leaders, Li Rongzhong has concluded that legal disputes involving two parties yielded an average of 5 taels per disputant, with the sum of 10 taels being split evenly between the clerks and runners involved in the case (Li Rongzhong 1989, 100; see below and Appendix D). Li’s estimate here is supported by a GX 8 (1883) plaint in which several head district runners claimed that runners assigned legal cases generally received between 2 and 4 taels per case (BXDA 6.6.507). But while these figures are consistent with Huang’s conclusion that court costs were by no means out of reach for many people, it is very difficult to use them to extrapolate an average annual income for clerks and runners. To begin with, we have no way of determining what an “average” case entailed. Even if we confine ourselves to civil disputes over matters involving land, debts, or marriage, we find wide variations in the number of court appearances, the number of

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witnesses involved, the amount of investigation required, the number of counterplaints filed, and the frequency with which cases were settled out of court prior to final adjudication by the magistrate. As the agreement translated in Appendix D shows, each of these aspects carried with it a separate fee. As a result, some cases might have brought in considerably more than 10 taels, while others probably yielded somewhat less. Fees collected in the course of criminal cases such as theft, robbery, and homicide were of a higher order altogether and thus produced an even wider degree of variation. The next problem in calculating an annual income from legal case fees lies in determining the number of legal cases dealt with by the magistrate’s court. Here, at least, we are on firmer ground due to Huang’s efforts to provide a much needed baseline. After sorting through the widely contradictory archival and anecdotal evidence on the subject, Huang estimates a range of between 50 and 500 new civil cases per year at the county level in the second half of the Qing (P. Huang 1996, 178).2 As the court of first instance for a bustling entrepot and population center, the Ba County yamen appears to have received somewhat more than Huang’s upper range of 500 cases. Reports submitted by the Ba County magistrate from 1907 to 1909, for example, show an average of 633 new civil cases per year. It is quite likely that these figures are low, since county magistrates tended to underreport the amount of litigation in their jurisdictions. Furthermore, for a county that included a port city with extensive underworld and secret society activity, these reports list a suspiciously low average of 10 cases of robbery, theft, and homicide sent to the higher courts for review (BXDA 6.6.486; CD Neizheng zonglei 19). More difficult than estimating the total number of cases is the problem of determining how those cases and their associated fees were distributed within the yamen. For Ba County clerks, case fees were divided between the responsible head and regular clerks on a 30/70 basis, with any portion given to assistant or student clerks taken from the regular clerks’ share (BXDA 6.6.523). For both constables and district runners, fees were split evenly between the head, chief, and local runner involved (CD Minxing qizha 12). Given the pyramidal numerical structure of the units to which both clerks and runners were assigned, it further stands to reason that divisional and office heads handled more cases and thus received more income than did their subordinates. Yet even with this information, without more precise knowledge of either how many extrastatutory personnel were working in a given unit or distribution of case loads

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across those units, it remains impossible to arrive at a plausible, much less reliable, estimate of average annual income. Even if an average income is beyond our grasp, it is still possible to suggest at least a range of individual income potentially generated by legal case fees. Based on his estimate of an average of 10 taels per case, Li Rongzhong calculates that, after deducting office expenses, head clerks regularly earned nearly 1,000 taels per year, with head runners taking in only slightly less (Li Rongzhong 1989, 100). While I would agree that this level of income was occasionally possible, particularly for an enterprising head of one of the yamen’s busier offices who was willing to stretch the boundaries of standard practice, it nevertheless seems unreasonably high to be taken as even the upper end of a normative range. To begin with, the Ba County magistrate’s own combined salary and supplemental stipend was only 1,045 taels (BXZ/MG 6:33b).3 It is thus difficult to imagine that the yamen’s fourteen head clerks and even more numerous head runners could have been netting a similar income on a sustained basis without rendering their regular protestations of insufficient resources laughably transparent to the magistrate. An annual income of 1,000 taels also appears high in light of the 100–200 tael installation fee paid by new head clerks. If the position was indeed worth 1,000 taels annually, it seems quite likely that the price of attaining that position would have been significantly higher. If this is was true for head clerks, whose position was limited to five years, then it certainly would have been so for head runners, who held their positions indefinitely. Finally, Li’s calculations here are based on an extremely questionable number of 2,000 legal cases per year for each of the yamen’s clerical offices, a figure that would dwarf the average of 633 new cases reported by the Ba County magistrate for the entire yamen as cited above. Somewhat more reasonable is Dai Yanhui’s estimate of an annual fee-based income of roughly 720 taels for head runners and 150 taels for regular runners (putongchaiyi) in Tainan County, Taiwan, in the late nineteenth century (Dai 1979, 665).4 If runners in a frontier province such as Taiwan could make this much, then it seems likely that yamen personnel in a busy post such as Ba County could earn at least that amount. Dai’s estimate, however, is based on citations from a gentry-sponsored county gazetteer, a source wherein putatively high incomes were commonly given as evidence of rampant corruption. Thus, although Dai’s figures are not beyond the realm of the possible, they must nevertheless be treated with a good deal of caution.

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While acknowledging the arbitrary nature of such an attempt, until we have further hard evidence it seems more plausible to place the upper range of annual income for most head clerks somewhere between 300 to 400 taels, with regular clerks potentially earning anywhere between a third to one-half of that amount. Once again, caution must be used before generalizing these amounts to all clerks in the yamen. Clerks working in centrally important offices such as revenue and punishments would obviously have handled more cases than would those in small offices such as salt, works, and granary. As for yamen runners, given their greater numbers, the unskilled nature of their work, and their much smaller installation fees, it seems reasonable to conclude that their income was considerably less than that of clerks. For the sake of approximation, we might therefore estimate an upper limit of around 100 to 200 taels per year for head runners, with chief runners, again, taking in perhaps a third to one-half of that. As these levels indicate, the annual incomes of yamen clerks and runners were considerably less than the extravagant amounts frequently cited in official and gentry sources, which, until quite recently, have largely been accepted at face value. This makes it easier to understand the vehemence with which clerks and runners defended their jurisdictional boundaries and proprietorial rights over legal cases. It also renders more comprehensible why yamen personnel often engaged in protracted disputes with each other over amounts as small as 10 or even 5 taels. In 1901, 10 taels could purchase one shi of hulled rice, or enough to feed an adult for a year (Zhou Yong and Liu Yingtiao 1987, 161). But if a yamen clerk or runner was unlikely to become wealthy from customary legal case fees, he could at least earn enough to sustain a reasonable livelihood. With an annual income of between 100 and 150 taels, a yamen clerk in Chongqing was, in 1900, roughly on par with a shop manager (Zhou Yong and Liu Yingtiao 1987, 161). And, at somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 taels per year, a chief runner could certainly count himself as better off than most other manual laborers in the city. I do not mean to imply here that yamen clerks and runners in Ba County never engaged in activities that were clearly extortionate even by the narrowest of definitions or that legal case fees were not at times collected well beyond customary levels. But to indiscriminately regard all case fees as uniformly corrupt blinds us to their standardized nature as well as the role they played in both local

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judicial administration and county government. It also renders the concept of corruption itself devoid of any value in differentiating standard procedures from behavior that was truly deviant within the realm of yamen practice. Rather than viewing all case fees as an example of yamen corruption, we should therefore approach them as an extrastatutory, yet nonetheless quotidian, component of the local judiciary. As such, legal case fees provided a regular source of income for clerks and runners, the right to which was regularly defended before the magistrate himself.

Lines of Contention Given the role of legal case assignments as the economic basis of a career in the yamen, it is only natural that claims to this critical resource frequently resulted in the sorts of competition, turf wars, and factional infighting described in the preceding chapters. Disputes over access to legal casework were, in fact, the single largest source of conflict both within and between the various subdivisions of clerks and runners. What is somewhat startling is the extent to which yamen employees themselves attempted to regulate this access by establishing rules and procedures governing case jurisdiction and the precision with which they sought to define specific proprietorial rights of usage and income. When these rights were violated or contested, clerks and runners consistently pursued a course of conflict resolution remarkably similar to any other form of civil dispute. As in other types of intrayamen disputes, the first step in dealing with contested claims on the part of either clerks or runners was for the personnel within the unit in question to discuss the matter among themselves. Failing settlement within the subgroup, the dispute was then submitted to mediation councils at the yamen temple. It was this collective body, rather than the magistrate, that generally determined customary procedures in regard to legal case assignments, with rules of operation often set in writing and distributed to all relevant units for future reference (e.g., BXDA 6.6.287; 6.6.293). Only if a dispute could not be resolved by mediation were plaints then submitted to the magistrate for final adjudication. Magistrates’ attitudes toward these disputes were ambiguous. On the one hand, magistrates nearly unanimously complained of the incessant quarrels among clerks and runners as a vexatious and harmful impediment to the expeditious processing of legal cases.

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Under constant pressure from their own superiors to resolve court cases quickly, many magistrates took steps to preempt potential disputes among yamen employees. Ba County runners, for example, were required to take an oath when they began employment, swearing they would not violate the rules of assignment and quarrel over cases. A similar oath was a standard component of a previously dismissed employee’s readmission to yamen service. Yet despite repeated admonitions to “cease these pernicious disputes, and get on with business,” Ba County magistrates continued to accept plaints from yamen personnel and to settle them on the basis of customary rules and procedures as defined by the clerks and runners themselves. This tendency on the part of magistrates in the nineteenth century not only served to augment the force of these informal jurisdictional regulations but also added an aura of legitimacy to yamen practices, which further inspired clerks and runners to view their claims to income as rightful, just, and deserving of a fair hearing when threatened. The claims of clerks and runners over legal cases occupied two separate realms of yamen practice. In other words, any given legal case carried two discrete levels of usage and income rights: one for clerks, and another for runners. Ba County clerks did occasionally complain that jurisdictional disputes among runners and the resulting process of mediation and adjudication could tie up a case for several months and thus delay the receipt of much needed income, just as runners might allege that the clerks of a specific office had accepted bribes to improperly assign a case to another division. For the most part, however, there appears to have been remarkably little contact between the two groups in the course of fee collection. Although the respective claims of clerks and runners were distinct, the proprietary nature of those claims and their methods of resolving conflicts were essentially the same. Clerks In the conflict described in Chapter 3 between Wu Bingzhong and Lu Lixiang in the works office, we saw how access to legal case assignments could serve as the basis for factional formation and intraoffice disputes. We also saw how efforts to safeguard that access by preventing its monopolization played a role in the formulation of office regulations and standardized procedures. But before a legal case ever arrived at a particular office and thus became subject to the proprietorial claims of individual clerks, it first had to be assigned there.

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When the report of a crime or a plaint in a civil dispute came to the yamen, it was first heard by the magistrate or, more often, his legal secretary, who then decided if it should be accepted or rejected on a prima facie basis. If accepted, the file and preliminary instructions were passed to the documents office for registration (YLYY, 26b–27a; BXDA 6.6.273). Once registered, the file was then given to the Office of Receipts and Transmissions where, after the nature of the case had been determined, it was delivered to the appropriate clerical office for processing. Once in a specific office, the case file was either assigned to a regular clerk or kept by the head clerk himself. From that point forward, all matters pertaining to the case—the copying and filing of the plaint, the issuance of summons, related investigations, the recording of testimony in initial and subsequent hearings, the submission of counterplaints, the recording of judgment, as well as the receipt and delivery of any financial awards or penalties—became the responsibility of the individual clerk in charge (chengbanshu). To each of these steps specific fees were attached. These fees were paid directly to the clerk in charge by both the plaintiff and defendant in civil disputes, or by the suspect and his family in criminal investigations. For the clerks in the yamen’s various offices, this system placed the Office of Receipts and Transmission in a position of critical influence, which often led to allegations of malfeasance, bribery, and the abuse of authority. In GX 31 (1905), for example, head clerk Cheng Bingquan from the Office of Revenue accused several regular clerks in receipts and transmissions of accepting bribes from the Office of Rites to reassign cases that should rightfully have gone to his own division. “The duties of this office are increasingly numerous and difficult,” Chen explained. “Copying, drafting, and filing all rely completely on (fees from) the handling of legal cases. . . . If we do not report these devious actions and receive your grace’s prompt attention, corruption and evil will surely grow” (BXDA 6.6.287-4). Following an investigation by the mediation council, the magistrate determined that the revenue office did indeed have a justifiable claim to the case in question. Although no individuals were disciplined, the magistrate sternly instructed the clerks of receipts and transmissions to distribute case files with greater attention to the rules. A similar dispute involving the Office of Rites that same year demonstrates not only the importance of receipts and transmissions but also the difficulty of determining rightful jurisdiction in the face of competing claims. The dispute began with a plaint submitted by

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head clerk Chen Hongze and eight regular clerks from receipts and transmissions regarding a case wherein one Luo Taihe had accused another party of illegally transferring a pledge on property. Since the case involved members of the Jiangxi merchants’ guild hall, Chen claimed, the file had been given to rites in accord with standard procedure. However, Chen continued: Regular clerk Jiang Congzhai from works then came to our office and began quarreling. At that point several other clerks from works stormed into the office and started a fight. Files and furniture were scattered everywhere and Chen Hongze was struck over the head with a bench. Luckily, Li and Wang from the Office of Punishments happened by and stopped the fight. We submitted this to the mediation council but since no settlement could be reached, the council instructed us to submit this plaint to your grace. We hereby humbly beg for your urgent attention in this matter. (BXDA 6.6.287-1)5

The following day, the magistrate received a counterplaint from Jiang Congzhai supported by a head clerk and seven of his regular clerk colleagues in the Office of Works. Jiang claimed that according to the customary rules, any case involving the misappropriation or mishandling of a pledge should come to the works office, regardless of whether the property in question belonged to a guild, temple, commercial business, or warehouse company. Jiang then outlined how Chen Hongze’s younger brother and fellow receipts and transmissions clerk, Chen Honghou, had in the past sold ten cases to the rites office for 3,000 qian each rather than sending them to works, where they belonged. Now, Jiang complained, the Luo Taihe case was being sold in the same manner: As soon as we heard of this we reported to the mediation council for settlement but Chen Honghou didn’t show up. Only then did we go to the receipts and transmissions office, where we politely inquired about the case. But Chen Honghou cursed us all and told us he had proper authority in this matter. By selling these cases, however, he is cutting off our source of livelihood. Now he and several clerks from rites have colluded to submit a false plaint against us in which we are accused of starting a fight. They started the fight, not us. . . . We twenty clerks in the Office of Works rely on legal cases to live, but they collude to sell them and thus steal our food and clothing (jueshiyi). How can such behavior be tolerated? (BXDA 6.6.287-2)

At this point the magistrate referred the dispute back to the mediation council for further investigation as to who started the fight and how such cases were usually assigned. Eleven days later nine head clerks from the council submitted their report.

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By custom, each office has cases only it should handle. These cases constitute the lifeblood [shenghuo] of any office. Whenever there is a legal case it should be assigned on the basis of what gave rise to the dispute. Such details are to be examined by clerks in receipts and transmissions and the assignment made accordingly. Only in this manner can arguments be avoided and cases settled promptly. However, the Office of Receipts and Transmissions is divided into three divisions, and not all clerks (in these divisions) have the same ability or expertise. As a result, mistakes are sometimes made. At other times, misassignment is intentional so that the facts of a case are turned upside down to the point where the office that should receive the case is denied jurisdiction. In fact, clerks themselves sometimes collude with each other so that in the end it is nearly impossible to determine which office should rightfully take the case. This in turn gives rise to accusations of the sale of cases or of scribes [daishu] being bribed to alter the details of a plaint so as to confuse right and wrong. All these types of mistakes and corruption result in disputes that are very difficult for us to settle. As a result, these disputes are presented to your grace, after which they are once again returned to us for investigation. We humbly request that your grace post a copy of the rules and order the receipts and transmissions office to obey these rules in order to eliminate disputes. (BXDA 6.6.287-3)

Appended to the council’s report was an outline of customary jurisdictional divisions among the eight offices (see Appendix E). The outline clearly indicates the function of legal casework as a source of revenue for yamen operations. At first glance, the assignment of cases seems to have been carried out according to a functionally rationalized division of labor among the yamen’s clerical offices. The Office of Rites, for example, handled all cases pertaining to marriage and ancestral temples; punishments took charge of those involving homicide, theft, prostitution, and such; and the Office of Revenue dealt with disputes arising from land sales and rental property. On the other hand, rites also had jurisdiction over cases involving medicine and miscellaneous commodities (zahuo); works had claim to those involving pawnshops, warehouses, and guild halls; and the Office of Salt handled not only cases based on the sale and transport of salt but also those ambiguously labeled as dealing with foreign articles (xijian). The reason certain offices were customarily assigned legal cases in such an apparently arbitrary manner stems from the role of these cases as a source of revenue; with case jurisdiction allocated in this way, offices that might otherwise receive an insufficient number of cases to support themselves were provided with a

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greater share of the income generated by Chongqing’s expanding commercial economy.6 In the Luo Taihe case, however, even with such jurisdictional gerrymandering it is difficult to see how the Office of Rites had laid claim to the case in the first place. As presented by the mediation council, the jurisdiction of rites was limited to disputes over ancestral temples and ceremonies, family property, marriage, and the pricing of medicines and miscellaneous commodities. Since the Luo Taihe case involved none of these, it is quite possible that receipts and transmissions had indeed sold the case file as charged. Unfortunately, although the magistrate agreed to post the regulations, the outcome of this particular dispute is unknown to us since the file ends at this point. Nevertheless, the conflict between the Offices of Rites and Works clearly demonstrates the proprietary interests of the parties involved as well as the pattern of appeal to established procedures when contesting these claims before the magistrate. In addition, the dispute and the mediation council’s report also suggests how competing claims and the selective emphasis of certain details in a plaint might influence the final outcome of a case. Although this aspect of judicial practice requires further research, it is at least plausible that jurisdiction by one clerical office rather than another would affect a magistrate’s perception as to the relevant features of a case. For example, was the case cited above a simple dispute over pledged property, or did it entail consideration of the rights and responsibilities of guild hall members? Presentation of the case by either the rites or works office could well have altered how the magistrate viewed the matter and thus subtly guided him in his selection of an appropriate statute. To the extent that yamen scribes might have taken bribes to alter the specific wording of a plaint, the influence of proprietorial interest would have been even more pronounced. This same attention to detail, the ability to offer alternate representations of what constituted the basis of a legal dispute, as well as the potential for deliberate falsification are equally apparent in the activities of Ba County runners. Runners The financial interest of runners in legal cases led to the same sort of competition and contention as with clerks. However, the larger number of runners working in the yamen and the dense structure of divisions, units, and shifts to which they were assigned presented far more opportunities for conflict. As a result, case disputes

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among runners not only outnumbered those of clerks but also the basis of their jurisdictional claims tended to be more complex. For the sake of clarity, the following discussion simplifies matters somewhat by concentrating on three areas of dispute, those within and between subdivisions of district runners and those between district runners and constables. District Runners Conflict Within Subgroups. Like clerks, individual runners were eligible for legal casework only when their unit was on active duty and only after they had performed one or more administrative tasks (youchai caiyou’an). In addition, assignments were to be made on a rotating basis so as to provide all runners in the unit with equal access to casework. But whereas clerical fees were divided between head and regular clerks on a 30/70 basis, the fees for runners were to be split into equal shares between the head, chief, and any local runners handling the case (see CD Minxing qizha 12). As we might expect, disputes between district runners working in the same unit thus centered on the assignment of cases and the disbursal of fees. A typical example of the former occurred in GX 1 (1875) when five chief runners of the Huaishi District led by one Xu Zhang accused fellow runner Tao Fu of various forms of misconduct, including gambling, whoring, and creating general disturbances. More specifically, Tao was charged with getting drunk one evening and then coming to the district office, where he had allegedly assaulted chief runner Xu Zhang with a tobacco pipe (BXDA 6.6.489). Although the magistrate ordered an investigation, there is no evidence in the file of any action taken against Tao Fu at that time. Two months later, however, Xu Zhang and the others submitted another, much more specific accusation. All the divisions operate according to established practices. Whenever a warrant or summons comes in, the head runner assigns it to a chief runner, who then turns it over to a local runner. In this way the sale or misassignment of cases is prevented. . . . Recently, when the principals of a dispute were summoned, chief runner Chen Shu was deputed to handle the case along with local runner Jiu Fu. But Tao Fu disobeyed the rules and tried to steal the summons, stating that he would kill anyone who attempted to stop him. (BXDA 6.6.489)

Xu then requested and was granted Tao Fu’s dismissal. Now formally expelled from the yamen, Tao submitted his own plaint claiming

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that according to the customary rotation of assignments, the case in question should have been his. But when he had tried to pick up the warrant, Chen Shu confronted him and started a fight. Tao then went on to charge that Chen Shu and head runner Zhou Rong were actually colluding with one another to hoard cases for themselves. In fact, when Tao had quarreled with another of Zhou Rong’s gang (bang) several months previously, Zhou had concocted the false story of Tao’s beating Xu Zheng with a pipe. Tao Fu insisted that his dismissal was a result of the grudge born against him by Zhou Rong and Chen Shu over his resistance to their attempts to steal cases from him. The magistrate was persuaded by Tao’s argument and he was subsequently reinstated (BXDA 6.6.489). Tao Fu’s testimony strongly hints at the role played by case assignments in patronage networks in the Ba County yamen. In this instance, the allegation was that Zhou Rong had used his authority as division head to improperly assign cases to his clients within the division to the exclusion of other runners. A similar element of patronage also operated in regard to the disbursal of fees, as shown by an early Xuantong period dispute between chief runner Hu Xuan and head runner Pei Sheng. As outlined in Chapter 4, the dispute came to the magistrate’s attention with Hu Xuan’s allegation that Pei Sheng had unjustly charged him with extortion. At the heart of the matter, however, was Hu’s further claim that Pei and his confederates were withholding case fees. Last winter your grace accepted more than sixty cases, the fees from which should have been divided equally among the head, chief, and local runners who handled them. Recently I took charge of the Gao nee Chen case along with Chen Shou. But Pei Sheng used his position as head runner to take my share for himself. I should have received one-third of the total, but Pei split my share with Chen. Only recently did I learn that all this was due to Pei’s spite over my refusal to give him money when pressed to do so several months ago. (CD Minxing qizha 12)

Pei Sheng countered Hu’s charges with his own accusation that Hu had indeed been given the Gao case, but he had extorted 10 silver taels from the principals and should therefore be dismissed. The dispute between Pei and Hu continued for the next four months and involved court appearances and testimony from more than ten witnesses. Eventually Hu Xuan and Chen Shou were both found guilty of extortion and were subsequently dismissed. But determining that

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Hu had compounded his guilt by falsely accusing Pei Sheng of withholding case fees, the magistrate increased his sentence by adding a month in the cangue followed by another month in detention. The specific charges in this case are perhaps less significant than the way in which the magistrate dealt with them (e.g., through formal court procedures including the repeated summoning of witnesses before his bench and explicit references to the rules governing runner case jurisdiction). It might be argued that all this attention was due to the charges of extortion lodged against Hu Xuan and Chen Shou. In most such instances, however, a runner accused by his superior of extortion would simply be expelled from the yamen without further ado, particularly if that accusation was supported by other members of the division. The significant question in this case thus seems to have been whether or not customary procedures regarding case assignments and fee collection had been violated. In other words, Hu’s claim that he was being denied his rightful income had taken the case out of the area of simple disciplinary action and into the realm of intrayamen litigation. Conflict Between Subgroups. As with clerks, district runners sought to minimize disturbances within their ranks and to guard against the monopolization of cases by establishing regulations governing jurisdictional boundaries between divisional units and subunits. In GX 28 (1902), for example, the assembled head and chief runners from the three districts held a banquet at which the rules and practices then in effect were set down in writing and signed by representatives of each division (see Appendix F). Yet despite such an apparently clear delineation of jurisdiction, district runners at every level of subdivision continued to bring disputes to the magistrate. As one disputant put it, “For years everyone obeyed and upheld the rules. But in these past years corruption has grown and as each division struggles with the others, the old rules are disregarded” (BXDA 6.6.293-23). As the agreement suggests, disputes among district runners were of two basic types: those between runners of different districts involving questions of spatial jurisdiction; and those between the various shifts within a single district entailing temporal distinctions. An example of the latter was seen in GX 28 (1902) in a dispute between the left and right shifts of the Juyi District. In this instance, four head runners of the left shift claimed that the right had improperly claimed a case that had come in while the

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left was on duty. The right shift’s leaders, on the other hand, insisted that the case in question was based on a previous dispute that had been reopened and as such should go to the shift that had handled the original case—namely, the right shift. According to them, the rules on this point were quite clear and the fact that twenty years had passed since the settlement of the original case was, therefore, entirely irrelevant. In the end, the magistrate agreed and found in favor of the right shift. In making this decision, the magistrate quoted the rule on reopened cases going to the original shift, noting that in this instance one of the original litigants had altered his name to deceptively reopen the case in violation of the prior settlement (manfa’an). He then closed by warning the left shift against going along with or encouraging such contrivances in order to falsely gain jurisdiction and circumvent the rules (BXDA 6.6.293-23). Another dispute that same year occurred at an even lower level of subdivision, this time between the odd and even shifts of the left division of the Juyi District. As the mediation council reported their investigation to the magistrate, the case in dispute involved a plaint submitted while the odd shift was on duty, while the second, third, and fourth plaints had come in during the even’s shift. None of the plaints had been accepted by the magistrate, however, until a local agent (jianzheng) submitted a report on the matter, at which time the magistrate ordered a reexamination of all plaints. All the runners involved in the dispute agreed that cases should be assigned on the basis of date. The question was whether the pertinent date was that of original submission or that of the magistrate’s acceptance of the plaint. With the mediation council unable to resolve the issue, the magistrate took the unusual step of referring the matter to clerks in the Office of Rites, where it was subsequently determined that the relevant date was that of magistrate’s acceptance. Since the even shift had been on duty on that day, the case should clearly go to them (BXDA 6.6.293-39-40; see also BXDA 6.6.293-2). Arguments regarding temporal jurisdiction between shifts of a given district were relatively straightforward. Much more contentious were those between runners of different districts. One of the most frequent types of these interdivision conflicts was that between runners of a given district and those of another who were on city duty. As I discussed in Chapter 4, all three districts rotated this duty on ten-day shifts. According to general practice, any case in which both litigants were residents of the city would be assigned to

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the runners on duty at the time the plaint was submitted. If the case involved litigants from both the city and countryside, on the other hand, then joint jurisdiction was granted (e.g., BXDA 6.6.298-8-916). Since residence was the key to determining jurisdiction, disputes tended to center on this aspect of a given case. For example, in GX 25 (1899) head runner Tang Qing from the Juyi District submitted a plaint claiming that a resident of his district, one Nie Shaozhou, had recently come to the city to submit a plaint at the yamen, during which time he had lodged with an old acquaintance (BXDA 6.6.293-18).7 But, Tang claimed, the Huaishi District runners were now claiming that Nie was a full-time resident of the city and that the case should therefore go to them since they were on city duty at the time. Tang Qing further stated that after he had accepted the summons for the case over the protests of the Huaishi division, several Huaishi runners had caught him in the street and beaten him senseless. Citing his thirty years of service in the yamen as indicative of his own upright character, Tang demanded a clear decision on the assignment of this case. That same day, a Huaishi District head runner, He Wu, submitted his own report. He Wu insisted that Nie Shaozhou was not only a resident of the city but also had, in collusion with Tang Qing, misrepresented his residence on the plaint so that the Juyi District could get control of the case. The case had been submitted to mediation but, according to He Wu, Tang had refused to give up the summons despite the council’s ruling against him. The magistrate responded by ordering further investigation. Finally, nine days later, eleven members of the mediation council submitted their report to the magistrate. After reiterating the rules on the division of cases between city and countryside, the council stated that the investigation had shown that although Nie Shaozhou was legally registered in Juyi District, he did not actually live there. All witnesses confirmed that Nie and his brother had moved to the city ten years previously. The case, they concluded, should therefore go to the Huaishi runners. In closing, the council underscored the importance of the rules governing case assignments in the following terms: If this case is given to [Tang Qing and] the Juyi District, not only will it violate the old rules and confuse everything, it will also set a precedent for a runner successfully usurping a case. This means that any degenerate [buxiao] runner could hope to alter city cases into countryside cases and those of the countryside into city cases. In the past everyone observed the rules

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and there was no confusion. Now we fear that others will follow this example. We have the responsibility of investigating and mediating such matters and we would not dare give a biased account. (BXDA 6.6.293-19)

In this case, the magistrate took the unusual step of setting aside the council’s recommendation. Ignoring the distinction between legal and actual residence, he chose instead to give the case to Tang Qing on the basis of Nie Shaozhou’s legally registered residence in the countryside. No further steps were taken against He Wu, and no investigation was made of the alleged assault upon Tang Qing. In challenging another group’s claim to a case, runners at times used quite sophisticated arguments in efforts to manipulate rules and establish their own jurisdictional rights. A clear, although unsuccessful, attempt at this sort of manipulation is seen in a dispute between Xicheng and Huaishi District runners in GX 28 (1902) (BXDA 6.6.293-28-30-35). Quoting from the agreement signed at the banquet earlier that year, head runners Wang Fang and Wu Hua from the Xicheng District stated that in litigation over tilled land, embankments, and irrigation canals, case assignment was to be made on the basis of where the property lay, not where the litigants resided. Thus, a recent case in which a woman had accused her grandson of improperly assuming authority and selling family property should go to the Xicheng District runners since that was where the property was located.8 Yet despite the fact that the case was clearly based on the sale of property, they continued, a head runner in the Huaishi District, one Zou Lin, had used the pretext that the litigants were residents of that district in order to claim jurisdiction. Zou Lin, they argued, should therefore be compelled to cease his improper claims and abide by the rules of the agreement. The magistrate thereupon ordered the mediation council to make an investigation and for all concerned to abide by the council’s findings. At this point, however, Zou Lin and three chief runners from the Huaishi District attempted to shift the basis of the dispute altogether by claiming that the case was not really a property dispute at all but was, instead, based on a quarrel over family matters (jiawu). If the case was a property dispute, they asked, why had it been given to the Office of Rites instead of revenue? Since this was clearly not a property case, the issue of where the property was located was irrelevant. The central issue, Zou argued, was the litigant’s residence, and on those grounds, he claimed that the case should go to the Huaishi runners. Unfortunately for Zou, the magistrate did not find such reasoning persuasive. Upon receiving the council’s report, he

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judged that the case did in fact turn on the issue of property and therefore ordered Zou to relinquish control of the case to the Xicheng District runners.9 The willingness of Ba County magistrates not only to hear jurisdictional disputes from runners but also to adjudicate these disputes on the basis of customary procedures was predicated at least in part upon the assumption that these procedures would have no adverse effect on the litigants in legal cases. If a group of runners could demonstrate that a given practice had a negative impact, however, then magistrates were sometimes willing to alter the rules and deny claims based upon them. This was the case in a GX 32 (1906) dispute between the Xicheng District and the combined runners of the Juyi and Huaishi Districts over a case arising from grain sales. The heads of Juyi and Huaishi claimed that all cases stemming from the transport and sale of grain had traditionally been given to all three districts for joint jurisdiction. The Xicheng District, however, was attempting to violate this rule by claiming sole jurisdiction over three such cases on the grounds that they had been on city duty when the plaints were registered (BXDA 6.6.1484). The Xicheng District runners, on the other hand, based their argument not on the rules, but on the harmful effects of certain customary practices. “Whenever cases are assigned on a joint basis,” they reasoned, “each division seeks to fatten itself by deputing more runners. More runners means more fees must be paid, as well as greater opportunities for corruption. Is it not therefore better to assign cases to a single division?” At this point the magistrate merely ordered an investigation as to the nature of the rules on this matter. Six days later, however, the magistrate received a petition from several local gentry, rural agents, rice merchants, and brokers regarding the practice of joint jurisdiction. Rice transport in and out of the city is a matter of commerce. Such trade is facilitated by brokers who front payments for up to several months. If no payment is received by that time, brokers have no choice but to go to court to collect. But when these cases are assigned to all three divisions, the litigants must pay extortionate fees. What is clearly seen by the magistrate as but one case in fact requires the fees equivalent to three. . . . Under these circumstances, we fear that brokers will be unwilling to operate and the rice trade will thus be disrupted. We therefore beseech your grace to order that grain sale cases be given to one division only so as to protect trade and relieve the burden of excessive fees. (BXDA 6.6.1484)

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The magistrate agreed with the plaintiffs’ reasoning and ruled that all cases of grain sale and transport should be given solely to the division on city duty “in order to eliminate disputes over these cases and rid merchants of excessive fees.” He thereupon awarded the cases in question to the Xicheng District runners. Although in this instance the magistrate chose to override customary procedure, it is notable that he did so only in regard to grain sales, where joint jurisdiction had been shown to have a harmful influence on commerce, a principal concern of any magistrate presiding over the port of Chongqing. In other cases, it appears, the custom of joint jurisdiction and the mutual claims of different groups of runners was upheld. District Runners Versus Constables In terms of administrative design, there should have been no functional overlap between the various groups of runners involved in judicial affairs. According to the intended division of labor, constables were limited to the apprehension of suspects and the transport of convicted felons; district and, later, salt runners to the serving of summons and assistance in judicial investigations; lictors to attendance upon the magistrate’s court while in session and the administration of corporal punishments; and jailers to the supervision of detainees held in the yamen jail. In practice, however, this system, by which a single case would, in the course of being processed, pass through several functionally specialized divisions, collapsed into one whereby a single division handled a case in its entirety. In the mid-Qing, legal cases were assigned to one of three groups of runners. Cases originating in the four districts outside Chongqing were divided between district runners and constables, while those in the city were given to either constables or lictors, who at the time were also performing administrative tasks in Chongqing. Shortly after the northern district of Jiangbei was established as an independent jurisdiction in QL 24 (1759), district runners were made responsible for administrative affairs within the city and eventually arrived at the system of rotating duty as described in Chapter 4 (BXDAHB 226–27). Having relieved lictors of their administrative burdens, district runners soon began to demand a share of the city’s legal casework as well. The district division’s expansion in this regard was aided by the numerous accusations of extortion and corruption brought against lictors in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By the mid-nineteenth century, lictors had been com-

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pletely barred from case assignment, leaving district runners and constables with exclusive access to legal cases in the county. The elimination of lictors, however, did nothing to lessen the conflict between district runners and constables. Set by customary practice, rather than formal regulation, jurisdictional boundaries in both the city and countryside remained a point of contention until the end of the dynasty. The frequent disputes between the two groups over this issue are of particular interest for two reasons. First, they demonstrate how, in the absence of formal regulations governing such matters, jurisdictional boundaries tended to evolve in response to the efforts of each group to expand or defend their sphere of control and sources of income. In addition, these disputes underscore the ambiguity of civil and criminal cases in the Qing judicial system and thus confound any attempt to draw a clear distinction between the two on the basis of how they were processed.10 In presenting their claims before mediation councils and magistrates, district runners typically argued that the constable division should be restricted to those cases assigned to the Office of Punishments, which centered on theft, robbery, homicide, and violent assault. With cases such as land, marriage, and debt disputes claimed by district runners, it would seem as if a de facto division of cases roughly equivalent to Western notions of civil litigation and criminal prosecution had been achieved in practice. Further investigation, however, quickly proves this appearance to be illusory. To begin with, district runners themselves also claimed jurisdiction over a number of cases coming from the punishments office. If, for example, a violent quarrel resulted in one party being wounded by a knife, hoe, or other metal implement, it was assigned to constables. If the weapon was wooden, then it was given to district runners (BXDAHB 226–27). Cases involving prostitution required even more attention to detail and serve as an example of how statutes contained in the Qing Code were elaborated upon at the local level in order to delineate jurisdictional boundaries. Due to the large number of disputes arising over prostitution cases in the early nineteenth century, representatives of the district and constable divisions met in DG 12 (1831) to formulate an agreement on their assignment. According to later copies of the agreement, if a case involved purchasing, kidnapping, or otherwise forcing a commoner into the demeaned (jian) status category of a prostitute, it should go to the district division. If, on the other hand, prostitution was linked with theft, cheating, or public disturbances, the case would be awarded to

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the constables (BXDA 6.6.293-14). In addition to this basic division, however, the agreement also stipulated twelve instances where joint jurisdiction should obtain, including the forcing of a wife or daughter into prostitution, enticing individuals to visit brothels, violent assault at the hands of prostitutes or their pimps, and colluding with prostitutes to engage in extortion. The possibility of varying interpretations of the details of a case presented by this scheme created obvious opportunities for dispute. Should a case be assigned to both constables and district runners on the grounds that a daughter was sold into prostitution, or to the district runners alone because that sale had violated status categories? If a quarrel between a prostitute and her customer resulted in injury, should it be deemed a matter of public disturbance or one of assault? Such conflicts and the litigation they gave rise to were further compounded by the constable division’s repeated efforts to expand their reach by formulating an alternative principle of jurisdictional division. Whereas district runners maintained that the basis of assignment should be the underlying cause of a case and, secondarily, the clerical office to which it had been given, constables claimed a much wider competence by insisting that regardless of its root cause or the particular office handling a case, if any element of violence, theft, robbery, prostitution, gambling, or opium consumption were present in any plaint submitted to the yamen, their division should be given at least partial jurisdiction (e.g., BXDA 6.6.293-42). Such disputes thus turned on whether a case should be treated as a unitary whole or whether its various features could be apportioned as separate and discrete claims. In other words, could a “civil” dispute be “criminalized” to some extent for the sake of proprietary interest? The difficulties presented by these conflicting principles of jurisdiction as well as the sophisticated arguments employed by runners in presenting their claims before the magistrate are evident in a GX 26 (1900) dispute between constables and Xicheng District runners over a case involving allegations of forced prostitution and assault and countercharges of marriage fraud and robbery. The case had already been the object of a dispute between the Offices of Rites and Punishments, which had resulted in the case being given to rites on the grounds that it involved a question of marriage.11 Head district runner Wang Fang thus argued that since the case had gone to rites, it should be assigned to district runners. But, Wang charged, the constable division had bribed clerks in the rites office into giving

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them control of the case in clear violation of customary procedure (BXDA 6.6.293-10). That same day, head constable Zhao De submitted his own plaint, stating that in the disputed case, a woman Xia had accused one Huang Haiqing of trafficking in women and trying to force her daughter into prostitution. When the daughter refused, Xia alleged, Huang had cut her throat.12 Huang Haiqing, in his countersuit, protested that the girl was already a prostitute and had attempted to steal his money with the aid of several hired thugs. Constable Zhao thus concluded his argument for exclusive control of the case in the following manner: It is not at all clear if the two sides were married, but it is obvious that the case involves prostitution, knife wielding, and theft. Based on the language in the original plaints, we were given the case. The original plaint, in fact, said nothing about marriage. But the . . . district runners are now trying to use the issue of marriage in order to usurp this case and steal our food and clothing. (BXDA 6.6.293-11)

With the question of prostitution now made a central issue, the leaders of the district division responded by slightly modifying the basis of their own claim. The woman Xia has claimed that Huang [Haiqing] forced her daughter into prostitution, while Huang says she was already a prostitute who had deceived him into marriage. According to the rules, any case involving either a commoner [liang] being forced into demeaned status [jian] or a prostitute being raised to commoner status should be ours. . . . The constable division is using the presence of the word “prostitute” [changji] in the plaint as a pretext to twist the facts of the case. . . . Constables are all gluttonous wolves with insatiable appetites [taolang bubao] who continually dispute cases. It is simply not possible to assign cases on the basis of one or two words. (BXDA 6.6.293-12)

In the course of this dispute, both constables and district runners presented the magistrate with copies of the now sixty-eight-year-old agreement on the dispensation of prostitution cases described above. Faced with two competing claims, each apparently grounded in long-standing practice and supported with documentary evidence of precedent, the magistrate chose to follow what was for him the simplest course by awarding jurisdiction to both divisions. An even clearer example of the potential for multiple interpretations of a single plaint is found in a dispute over a GX 34 (1908) case in which a woman had accused her elder brother’s wife of stealing unspecified objects from her house. For their part, the district run-

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ners based their claim on the fact that the mediation council had determined the case to be a property dispute between family members. True, certain objects had been taken, but this alone did not constitute theft. The case should obviously be given to district runners (BXDA 6.6.293-48). Constable He Qing, however, countered this account with a more literal interpretation of the submitted plaints. According to custom, any case with a plaint containing the word “theft” [qie] should go to us, regardless of what was stolen or what clerical office is in charge. This is a matter of general agreement and practice among all runners. This case contains [such a phrase] and should thus be ours. But the [district] runners ignore the rules and now dispute this case. Legal cases serve as our food and clothing, and since without them we cannot live, we have no choice but to beg your grace to order the district runners to desist in this pernicious quarrel. (BXDA 6.6.293-49)

Neither the constables nor the district runners questioned the kinship of the two women involved in the case nor did anyone challenge the fact that property had been removed by one party against the will of the other. The relevant issue was, instead, whether this act could itself be construed as “theft” within the context of family relations and thus be taken as the basis of case assignment. In this instance the magistrate’s answer was unequivocal: Examining this case . . . I find that the plaint does contain the word “theft,” but it does not at all indicate what was stolen. . . . Moreover, the case involves family matters in which certain items were taken because [one party] was not willing to give them [to the other]. How can this be deemed “theft” [hewei touqie]? To argue that the various plaints constitute a case of theft is particularly inappropriate. Furthermore, to claim jurisdiction on the basis of a single phrase without citing in what year or under what magistrate such a rule was established is suspiciously vague and suggests an attempt to twist the facts. This case will therefore be given to the district division. (BXDA 6.6.293-49)

Although the constable division failed to win even partial jurisdiction here, it is notable that the magistrate did not explicitly reject the underlying basis of their claim, namely, that the presence of a single element could be used to justify the sharing of income, regardless of whether or not that element constituted the cause of the case in question. Despite the frequency of disputes to which it gave rise, joint jurisdiction between district runners and constables thus remained a common practice in the Ba County yamen. As with clerks, competition of this sort between district runners

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and constables could well have had an impact on the outcome of legal cases. In this instance, assignment to either the constable or district division would have acted to highlight specific features of the case while de-emphasizing others. The influence of the joint jurisdiction eventually decided upon is somewhat more problematic but significant nonetheless. Presented with the multifaceted plaints submitted by the woman Xia and Huang Haiqing, for example, it is possible that the presiding magistrate would have noted the separate elements of violence, prostitution, marriage, and theft and weighed them all in making his judgment regardless of which group of runners was in charge. With joint jurisdiction, however, attention to the disparate aspects of the case became not only possible but very nearly unavoidable, thus confronting the magistrate with a much more difficult decision as to the relevant basis of adjudication. In this sense, the jurisdictional claims of yamen runners could extend beyond their own immediate economic interests to affect the practice of jurisprudence itself. Summary The fact that clerks and runners submitted their jurisdictional disputes to mediation or adjudication before the magistrate’s bench indicates that the collection of legal case fees was far from being an unprincipled struggle over the spoils of corruption. Even though the vast majority of clerks and runners were employed in violation of central government statutes, at the county level, the magistrate’s continued willingness to consider their contending claims demonstrates not only that the fees upon which this technically illegitimate level of administrative personnel depended were accepted as customary but also that access to these fees was both highly structured and, in effect, legally defensible. Like the regulations governing the recruitment, assignment, and advancement of yamen personnel, those relating to legal case jurisdiction thus functioned as a sort of informal and highly localized administrative law. When the proprietary rights implied by these rules were violated, the resulting pattern of dispute resolution was remarkably similar to that of other types of civil litigation. As Philip Huang has outlined the process, civil disputes were usually first submitted to community leaders for mediation. If mediation failed to settle the matter, the case was then brought before the magistrate, who, if he accepted the plaint, would typically order an investigation. Between this initial submission and the final de-

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termination of a case, there was what Huang refers to as a “middle stage.” According to Huang, it was in this stage, combining elements of both the formal and informal aspects of the justice system, that the majority of civil disputes were settled, either privately by the litigants themselves or through further efforts at mediation. If such efforts were unsuccessful and the case was carried through to the point of formal judgment, then the magistrate would make his decision on the basis of specific statutes contained in the Qing Code (P. Huang 1993a, 1996, Chap. 5). The process of dispute settlement among clerks and runners conforms almost exactly to this pattern. As outlined above, the initial attempt at resolution was through the agency of mediation by the leaders of the various divisions. If settlement was unattainable at this stage, the litigants themselves submitted plaints to the magistrate, who then made an immediate judgment, ordered further investigation, or remanded the case back to the mediation council for additional consideration. The fact that many of the files on these disputes end at this point with no final determination by the magistrate suggests that settlement was being reached on a private basis. Finally, if the dispute did continue to the point of official judgment, then magistrates consistently applied a recognized body of rules in making his decision. In fact, the only significant exception to the general pattern was that in determining the relevant basis for settlement, magistrates drew upon a body of informal rules defined by customary practice rather than the statutes of the Qing Code. When a civil dispute or criminal charge entered the yamen court system, it was made subject to at least two layers of economic claims and possible disputes, potentially trebling the amount of litigation brought before the magistrate’s bench. Yet despite the deleterious impact this must have had on an already seriously overburdened yamen court, the system of fee collection remained a basic feature of county judicial administration. It now remains to examine briefly how this nominally illicit system was at least partially controlled by magistrates with the aid of local elites, how it affected various interests in the community, and how it might have influenced application to or avoidance of the magistrate’s court in general.

Control and Authority Whatever their personal opinions about such matters may have been, most Qing dynasty magistrates acknowledged the collection

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of legal case fees as a necessity of local administration. The most salient problem facing magistrates was not in the collection of legal case fees per se, but rather in the limitation of such fees to some established level. Corruption and abuse could then be defined as anything that exceeded that level (i.e., in quantitative, rather than qualitative, terms). In Ba County, as in counties throughout China, the question of what actually constituted an acceptable level of fee collection had historically been a matter of local custom. Since magistrates were for the most part ignorant of such regionally specific practices, however, standard procedure in this regard was largely ordained by clerks and runners themselves. In order to maintain some degree of control over this aspect of judicial procedure and thus forestall accusations of negligence being lodged with their superiors, Ba County magistrates had, by the mid-nineteenth century, begun to accept the direct assistance of local gentry in the supervision of case fees. In discussing gentry involvement in the justice system, one runs the risk of portraying them as a unified social group whose attitudes toward and use of that system were in all instances distinct from those of nonelites. Clearly this was not the case. Like other members of the community in which they lived, gentry themselves occasionally went to the yamen court as litigants and were subject to the same fees and potential for abuse as anyone else. Furthermore, the term gentry is ambiguous and can be taken to include individuals with widely varying degrees of local status stemming from their relative access to economic, cultural, and interpersonal resources, all of which affected their relationship with the magistrate and the ability to influence administrative practices among the yamen staff. In the following pages, I use gentry to refer to men who identified themselves as such in petitions and plaints (shenshi, shiren, or shidafu), to holders of both upper and lower degrees (juren, shengyuan, jiansheng), as well as to those who styled themselves simply as students (wensheng, wentong). There was, of course, an enormous social distance between the various members of this group, so much so that it is in many respects questionable whether they can usefully be described as a group at all. The social standing of a provincial degree holder was, after all, several magnitudes greater than that of a shengyuan, who himself stood well above a mere student in this regard. Despite these differences, in presenting themselves to the magistrate as leaders of their respective communities, these men repre-

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sent the voice of a distinct interest group whose local influence was based in part on the fulfillment of status-bearing roles within those communities. To the extent that the interests and practices of yamen clerks and runners impinged upon those roles, the two groups were in competition for the control of available resources. In this sense, the fact that the interests of the yamen staff were pecuniary, while those of the gentry were often symbolic, is relevant only insofar as it influenced the manner in which claims were defended and the additional resources each side might draw upon in making that defense. In the remainder of this chapter, I focus on two status-bearing roles commonly assumed by local gentry: defenders of community interests, and mediators in community disputes. Insofar as these roles placed gentry leaders in opposition to the yamen staff, they generally took the form of attempts to control the amount of fee collection as well as efforts to keep local dispute resolution within the realm of informal mediation. Carried out under the rubric of “eliminating corruption and pacifying the people,” gentry leaders sought by these means to protect and even augment their symbolic capital as public-minded benefactors of society by utilizing the same popular images of yamen corruption and venality that we have seen in previous chapters. But if, in the process, they drew from the same ideological well as the magistrate, then it was certainly not the magistrate’s authority they sought to enhance. Rather, gentry leaders attempted to use the commonly recognized problem of controlling yamen clerks and runners as a platform upon which to protect and expand their authority over local matters. The result was a decidedly conflicted relationship between magistrates and local leaders, one in which the yamen staff once again occupied a pivotal position. Limiting Fees; Damage Control Although gentry leaders in Ba County generally accepted the fact that the collection of case fees was unavoidable, they nevertheless sought to place some sort of limit on the types and amounts of such fees. Most often this attempt took the form of collective petitions to either the magistrate or higher provincial officials. In GX 3 (1877), for example, nine gentry (shenshi) presented the Ba County magistrate with the text of an agreement on the collection of fees that had been reached between local leaders and the incumbent magistrate in TZ 8 (1869). Among its various articles, the agreement set limits

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on the number of runners to be sent and the fees to be paid in the delivery of a summons; food and lodging allotments for runners; fees to be paid upon the submission of a plaint; and fees for any out-ofcourt settlement of a dispute previously submitted to the yamen. The agreement also contained the stipulation that any runner attempting to press for fees beyond these limits should be reported by those directly affected (CD Minxing qita 12). Similar pacts were established in other areas of judicial procedure, such as the number of witnesses to be summoned in homicide cases as well as the fees to be paid to yamen scribes (CD Minxing qizha 1; BXDA 6.6.294). Inscribed on stone tablets erected throughout the county, these agreements constituted yet another form of informal administrative law at the local level. The most direct effort at control on the part of Ba County elites, however, was through the agency of quasi-independent bureaus (shenju) established and funded by local elites specifically for that purpose. For county magistrates, the use of such organizations to help supervise yamen employees created a delicate situation. The Disciplinary Regulations of the central government were, after all, quite explicit in stating that responsibility for managing yamen personnel resided solely with the magistrate. When, for example, Ba County magistrate Zhuang Yüyun forwarded a gentry proposal to establish a bureau to oversee the treatment of prisoners sentenced to the cangue in GX 5 (1879), the governor-general himself replied with a scathing rebuke, chastising Zhuang for the dereliction of his duty. As for the malfeasance of constables, these individuals are to be used by the magistrate, and they should therefore be controlled by him as well. Those to be dismissed should be dismissed; those worthy of being retained should be retained. How is it that this magistrate thinks of controlling these runners only after the local gentry have submitted a public petition? How is it that the magistrate himself is not capable of restraining the runners of this yamen? This situation is truly lamentable. (BXDA 6.6.238)

Despite the governor-general’s initial criticism, the plan for the bureau was eventually approved. “An act of virtue on the part of our local gentry that will sow unlimited benefits and which in no way constitutes interference in matters of public administration,” as Magistrate Zhuang carefully described it.13 Behind these claims of virtue and public-spiritedness, however, there lay a much more practical rationale for the bureau. As we have seen in the previous chapters, county magistrates faced an overwhelming number of ad-

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ministrative burdens, not the least of which was exercising control over a yamen staff the size of which rendered the personal supervision demanded by the central government impossible to maintain in practice. If fee collection and its attendant abuses were to be kept to a minimum, then it was necessary to allow for outside assistance in the areas of financing and manpower. Yet the aid provided by gentry bureaus was something of a Pandora’s box for the magistrate. For once established, these quasiofficial organizations had a pronounced tendency to expand their functional reach well beyond that set forth in their founding charters. A brief look at the establishment and development of one of the most outstanding of these bureaus, the Three Fees Bureau (sanfeiju), not only exemplifies the growth of gentry involvement in county government in the latter half of the nineteenth century but also demonstrates the double-edged alliance that existed between local elites and magistrates in the interest of controlling yamen personnel. The Three Fees Bureau Of all the fees collected by yamen personnel, the most notorious were those taken by runners in the processing of robbery or homicide cases (daoming’an). Allegations of the financial ruination of families implicated as either suspects or witnesses in such cases run throughout the archival record (e.g., BXDA 6.6.1398; CD Minxing zalei 29; CFZL 16:5b–6a). The allegations of extortionate practices of constables, in particular, were so widespread they gave rise to local idioms used to describe them. “Opening the blossom” (kaihua), for example, referred to the practice of extorting money by threatening to have an accused thief implicate his neighbors by claiming they had received or purchased stolen goods. If an individual refused to pay, then he or she was also arrested and would only be released upon payment. This payment was, in turn, referred to as either “washing the thief’s name” (xizeiming) or “washing the family’s disgrace” (xijiabing). Aside from those considered to be altogether illicit, however, there were three fees collected in these cases that were generally regarded as legitimate: those for corpse examination (peng); for arrest and detention (bu); and for the escorting of prisoners to the prefectural or provincial courts (jie). Traditionally, these fees, referred to collectively as the “three fees” (sanfei), had been collected by runners directly from prisoners or their families and neighbors. But although ostensibly legitimate, the lack of any recognized limit on

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the amount collected inevitably led to widespread abuses and subsequent charges of extortion. In order to control the payment of the three fees, elites in counties throughout Sichuan began setting up bureaus in the closing years of the Xianfeng period (1851–1862). Delayed several years by the disruptions of the Taiping Rebellion, Ba County’s own Three Fees Bureau was formally established in TZ 3 (1864) on the basis of a petition submitted by twenty-seven local gentry, including thirteen provincial degree holders (juren) (BXDA 6.4.124; 6.6.5019). The bureau was provided with an office managed on an annual rotation basis by three “upright and civic-minded gentry” (gongzhengshen), who were formally invested with a seal of office by the magistrate.14 The Three Fees Bureau was never intended to eliminate fees altogether, but merely to relieve local residents of the burden they imposed by establishing a separate source of revenue for payment. Initially, funding for bureau operations and fee payments came from rental income on property collectively purchased by means of a “contribution” (juan) levied on land taxes, rent, deposits, and the capital stock of merchants (BXDA 6.4.124). To this rental income were later added a percentage of all deed tax payments as well as a portion of lijin revenue (BXZ/MG 17; SCZC 1:8a–10b).15 Following the bureau’s establishment, runners were no longer permitted to collect fees directly from those involved in theft or homicide cases, but would instead be paid by the bureau upon the presentation of a stamped chit. By controlling the source of fee payment, the Three Fees Bureau was in a position to monitor the amount of payment as well. In response to petitions from local elites and past gentry managers (shendong) of the bureau, the intendant of the East Sichuan circuit in GX 5 (1879) ordered that permissible levels for the three fees be inscribed on a tablet set before the magistrate’s court. In addition to the three fees the intendant’s order also specified limits on fees collected in the course of other types of litigation as well. Although the tablet itself was later destroyed, its contents are known to us by virtue of a report from the presiding Ba County magistrate to the Chongqing prefect twenty-seven years later, which included the text of the original tablet along with the amounts of fees then in effect (see Appendix D). The bureau’s effectiveness at controlling fees is demonstrated by a comparison of the two lists showing that, despite an inflationary trend which saw the price of rice more than

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treble between 1888 and 1901, the level of allowable case fees remained virtually unchanged.16 According to its original charter, the function of the Three Fees Bureau was restricted to disbursing fee payment to runners. Any abuse by the latter was to be reported to the magistrate by those directly involved, and local leaders were themselves instructed to refrain from intervening in such matters. Two years after the founding of the bureau, for example, eighteen provincial and lower-degree holders reported to the magistrate regarding the direct collection of excessive fees by two runners, with the Three Fees Bureau charter cited as explicitly prohibiting this practice. Although agreeing to interrogate the runners in question, the magistrate also reprimanded the authors for overstepping the bounds of their authority. As stipulated by the bureau’s regulations, if a runner presses for additional payments from the people, it is to be reported by those directly concerned. These gentry know this but nevertheless take it upon themselves to interfere in public matters. If there is any case of runners extorting fee payments, then they are to be reported by the victims as stated in the regulations. (BXDA 6.5.874)

Despite this admonishment, in the course of the Guangxu period the bureau steadily expanded its area of competence, eventually developing into an independent supervisory body investigating and reporting allegations of abuse lodged against clerks, as well as runners, in both criminal proceedings and civil disputes. By the turn of the century, the Three Fees Bureau had extended its reach still further to include the nomination, investigation, and disciplining of rural agents. By then the bureau was even being used by yamen clerks on occasion to mediate their own disputes prior to submitting them to the magistrate (BXDA 6.6.523; 6.6.586; 6.6.618). If this expansion met with any resistance from successive Ba County magistrates, there is no indication of it in the archival record. Perhaps encouraged by this success, several former bureau managers petitioned in GX 25 (1899) to augment the bureau’s function yet again by placing it in charge of the collection of the jinjuan levy described in Chapter 5. According to the petitioners, this responsibility had originally been given to local gentry leaders, but it had been turned over to clerks in the Office of Revenue during the Taiping Rebellion. Due to the subsequent growth of corruption among these clerks and the resulting shortfalls in the amounts actually turned over to the magistrate, they argued, it was only proper

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to restore the duty to a representative of the community’s leading families and primary taxpayers—that is, the Three Fees Bureau. This time, however, the magistrate refused, stating that the proposed changes would only further complicate the already difficult business of tax collection. The bureau, he concluded, would therefore remain limited to its supervisory role and would not be allowed to meddle in official administrative affairs (BXDA 6.6.4306). But if the magistrate in this instance balked at giving local gentry control over collecting taxes from themselves, it does not appear to have discouraged the bureau’s leaders from reaching out in other areas of local administration. In the closing years of the Guangxu period, for example, the bureau took over responsibility for the collection of a special tax levied on licensed opium dens in the county. A portion of this revenue was then held back for the purchase of additional property and the establishment of yet another gentrymanaged facility, the Three District Office of Public Affairs (sanli gongsuo), which took charge of training recruits to Chongqing’s newly established police department as well as giving public lectures on issues of local self-government (BXZ/MG 17:9a–11a). The Three Fees Bureau was finally dissolved in the course of administrative restructuring following the 1911 Revolution, with all its property and sources of revenue turned over to a newly established office in charge of feeding and clothing the county’s growing population of prison inmates. The development of the Three Fees Bureau is significant on a number of levels. First, the effort by local elites to define and in effect codify local case fees worked to standardize the economic cost of dealing with the magistrate’s court. Although it is unlikely that codification resulted in a successful freeze on the amounts actually collected by yamen personnel in all instances, it at least limited excessive collection by establishing a benchmark beyond which fees were deemed to be extortionate and thus subject to prosecution. By the same token, in setting an acknowledged ceiling on what could be taken, the bureau established a certain body of fees as indisputably legitimate. Even if this legitimacy existed only on an informal and localized level, it nevertheless gave clerks and runners alike a means of defending case fees as constituting not corruption, but rather a fair return for services honestly rendered. The Three Fees Bureau, an institution established for the purpose of limiting fee collection, thus ironically helped to enhance the financial basis for yamen employment as a viable occupation.

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More immediately, however, the Three Fees Bureau provided Ba County elites with a vehicle for greater involvement in county government, an involvement which was quickly extended beyond its original domain. In this process, the issue of control over yamen runners was an obvious and convenient point of departure facilitated by the widespread image among officials of runners as corrupt scoundrels. In light of the magistrate’s marked inability to exercise effective control over these “rogues” on his own, gentry assistance could thus be represented not as an intrusive appropriation of administrative authority, but as a benevolent and, for the magistrate, low-cost means of dealing with a chronic problem within local government. In addition to supplying local gentry with a semiofficial position in the county’s administrative apparatus, the Three Fees Bureau provided several other benefits as well. Insofar as they themselves were involved in litigation or made subject to extortion due to their wealth, the control of runners and their fees was clearly advantageous. Of equal importance, though, was the symbolic function of the bureau. For in establishing the Three Fees Bureau, its gentry leaders and supporters publicly placed themselves in the position of benevolent protectors of a local populace frequently typified as wellmeaning but gullible innocents set upon by rapacious yamen employees. In this sense, vilification of clerks and runners acted to highlight, by contrast, the moral superiority of the community’s gentry leaders, thereby reinforcing their local prominence and authority. This same strategy is also evident in another area of gentry involvement with the judicial process, the effort to restrict the number of local disputes entering the formal court system. The Restriction of Court Cases: Formalizing the Informal Since all instances of robbery, theft, and homicide were required by law to go to the yamen, contact with clerks and runners in the investigation and prosecution of such cases was inescapable. As we have seen, local gentry leaders sought to ameliorate the effects of this contact by limiting the types, amounts, and sources of fees to be paid. In the area of civil disputes, however, elite strategies were somewhat different. Here, the effort to control the amount of fees paid was secondary to the focus placed on the role of community leaders in reaching mediated settlements as a means of preventing disputes from going to court in the first place and thus avoiding contact with clerks and runners altogether. Once again, the rhetorical

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stress was on the position of gentry leaders as the guardians of local interests, with the yamen staff again portrayed as an imminent threat to the community’s well-being. As with the effort to control fees, the attempt to reduce litigation produced elements of both cooperation and tension with the magistrate. In the Qing dynasty it was nearly axiomatic for magistrates to complain to their superiors about the difficulty of their posts and the litigious nature of the local population. In Ba County, however, such complaints would seem to have had some substance. The interrelated factors of Chongqing’s expansion as a port, the remarkable growth in both the foreign and Chinese population fueled by that expansion, and the greater commercial penetration of the city’s rural hinterlands all combined to produce a greater potential for social conflict and thus an increased amount of litigation being submitted to the county yamen in the latter half of the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, the East Sichuan Circuit, of which Ba County was the seat, was commonly noted as the worst area in the province in regard to the proliferation of court cases (e.g., CD Minxing chaiyi haimin 23; Minxing qita 1; Minxing qita 2; Minxing shuyi suomin 21; SCDASL 1 [1983] 20). Official reports from the magistrate on up consistently portrayed the county as one of extreme difficulty, with population, trade, and foreign presence most often cited as the chief causes of litigation (BXDA 6.6.198; 6.6.202; 6.6.223; 6.6.229; 6.6.602; 6.6.649). Zhou Xun, a late Qing magistrate who served in several districts in Sichuan other than Ba County, claimed that due to trade and the large number of foreigners, the amount of litigation and criminal proceedings in Ba County were significantly higher than in other counties. In fact, Zhou said, with the exception of the city of Chengdu and its vicinity, Ba County was undoubtedly the most difficult assignment in the province (Zhou Xun 1986, 83). Although Ba County gentry to some extent recognized social and economic change as a source of civil conflict, like Qing officials they placed the blame for actual litigation and the resulting ruptures in social relations squarely upon clerks, runners, and such local ne’er-do-wells as the ever-present pettifoggers (songgun). As twelve lower-degree holders and students living to the west of Chongqing complained to the Ba County magistrate in GX 13 (1887): The market town of Yixing is a crossroads and as a result there is a great deal of trade and commerce here. . . . In recent years, moreover, the number of opium dens has increased greatly and local customs change almost daily.

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. . . When disputes arise, we try to settle them here. But disreputable characters and pettifoggers stir matters up and convince folks to present cases at the subdistrict yamen at Baishi station, after which runners descend upon us to extort fees. . . . As a result of this litigation, fathers and sons refuse to speak, brothers quarrel, and husbands and wives split apart. All this is due to the collusion between evil runners and local bullies. . . . The recent increase in the number of court cases is also the result of these people stirring up trouble so that petty disturbances grow into major conflicts. (BXDA 6.6.1639)

In the process of linking increases in formal litigation to moral and social decay and the depredations of yamen runners, gentry leaders stressed their own role as mediators capable of amicably settling community conflicts. With the stated purpose of shielding the community from the calamities purported to be caused by involvement with the court, Ba County gentry frequently argued that it was necessary for this traditionally informal role to be formalized with official proclamations. In GX 22 (1896), for example, twenty-five degree holders and rural agents submitted a request to the Ba County magistrate extolling the social value of community leaders. “We involve ourselves in public affairs with the greatest respect for virtue,” they began. “If there is a petty dispute among the people of this area we can resolve it here without taking the matter to court. Under our guidance, disputes can be settled and enmity dissipated so as to avoid hardships and bankruptcy” (BXDA 6.6.1398). The petitioners then continued with a classic rendition of how pettifoggers and evil yamen runners lured unsuspecting locals into taking “small disputes that should be settled by us” to the yamen, after which the victims were forced to pay exorbitant fees. “Those harmed are loyal and good,” they declared, “but they are also ignorant and simple. . . . The evils done are too many to count and the sounds of wailing and sorrow have become unbearable. We therefore have no choice but to ask for a proclamation stating that if there is a dispute in the village, it should first be submitted to us” (BXDA 6.6.1398). Aside from the proclaimed attributes of moral virtue and social stability, local mediation held a variety of more immediate benefits for elites. To the extent that locally powerful individuals or families were engaged in disputes, for example, the odds of attaining a favorable outcome were greatly increased by keeping the process of settlement at the level of informal mediation, a level at which social standing and influence could be used to its best advantage. Insofar as such individuals were themselves acting as mediators, control

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over local affairs and the ability to incur debts of gratitude and obligation for future use were similarly increased. Authority and control of this sort were both masked and reinforced by framing the institution of mediation as being of benefit to everyone in the community. By contrasting this method of conflict resolution with the evils and corruption surrounding the yamen court, local elites once again enhanced their claims to status as the protectors of local interests and also as disinterested leaders selflessly working for the well-being of the community. A similar but more immediately interventionist method of achieving this same end is seen in attempts by local gentry to restrict access to the formal court system by attacking the legality of cases presented at Ba County’s subdistrict yamens. The Subdistrict Courts In the nineteenth century, the government of Ba County included two such yamens: that of the assistant magistrate (xiancheng), located in Baishi station 60 li to the west of Chongqing, and that of the subdistrict magistrate (xunjian), located in Mudongzhen roughly the same distance to the east. Established in the Yongzheng period (1723–1736), the official function of both offices was limited to assisting in bandit suppression and the arrest of criminals to be bound over to the magistrate’s yamen in Chongqing for prosecution (BXZXZ 71; BXDA 6.6.660). By regulation, subdistrict yamens were not allowed to receive plaints in connection with civil disputes, this also being the responsibility of the county magistrate. Yet by the nineteenth century, these subsidiary yamens had begun to handle a wider range of administrative duties, eventually coming not only to accept plaints from local residents but also to adjudicate without review by the county magistrate (e.g., BXDA 6.3.8774). The informal establishment of these subdistrict courts did not go unopposed, however. Citing the malfeasance and corruption of runners operating out of these yamens, community leaders in the areas around Baishi station and Mudongzhen repeatedly petitioned magistrates and higher officials for injunctions barring such practices. In JQ 18 (1813), for example, Ba County magistrate Dong Shun responded to such a request by commanding a tablet to be inscribed with orders forbidding local residents from lodging plaints with either of the subdistrict yamens. “If people have quarrels over trifling matters [xigu]” he instructed, “they should first settle them among themselves without going immediately to court. If disputes cannot

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be resolved, however, they are to be presented only at the magistrate’s yamen” (BXDA 6.6.660). Following a petition from twelve Ba County gentry in GX 2 (1876), Circuit Intendant Yao Jinyuan issued a similar injunction proscribing the hearing of cases at subdistrict yamens. Such practices, Yao stated, not only exceeded the statutory authority of subdistrict officials but also provided runners and clerks with clear opportunities for the extraction of excessive fees and various other forms of corruption (BXDA 6.6.660; see also BXDA 6.6.617; 6.6.1398; 6.6.1639; SCDASL 3 [1984] 48). But although magistrates regularly spoke out against corruption on the part of subdistrict yamen employees, apart from Dong Shun’s inscription I have not located a single example of a Ba County magistrate commanding subdistrict officials to stop accepting plaints and adjudicating disputes, despite continued petitions from local gentry and admonitions from both circuit intendants and prefects to do so. The reason for this reticence is not difficult to imagine. As described earlier, Ba County was renowned for the large amount of litigation entering the court system. Faced with strict statutory time limits on the settlement of all cases, magistrates were under considerable pressure to dispense with such cases by whatever means possible. Toward this end, Ba County magistrates in the Guangxu period made repeated requests for the appointment of special deputies to assist in the hearing of minor cases (BXDA 6.6.202; 6.6.204; 6.6.223; 6.6.229; 6.6.234). Given this burden, any magistrate would have been understandably reluctant to shut down an auxiliary court since, to his mind, it could only result in even more cases being shifted to his own bench. Ba County magistrates were therefore willing to bend the rules somewhat, and perhaps even countenance a certain degree of abuse, for the sake of administrative expediency. In the eyes of local elites, however, this “expedient” actually served to increase the amount of litigation in the county by providing additional venues for the formal hearing of civil disputes. By this logic, shutting down these courts would deny easy access to the formal system and thus force at least a portion of local disputes back into the process of informal community settlement. The difference between elites and magistrates on this issue was therefore not one of ultimate goal; although for different reasons, both sides desired a reduction in litigation. Contention was instead based on the presumed efficacy of a given course of action. The conflict here was played out in exemplary fashion when forty-three gentry from the villages around Mudongzhen petitioned

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Ba County magistrate Chuan Songling in GX 29 (1903). Once again the claim was that yamen personnel and pettifoggers were tricking local residents into going to court over trivial matters. In addition to describing the extortionate practices of clerks and runners at the subdistrict yamen, the authors also stressed their own role as mediators and the value of community settlement over formal litigation. “If there is any dispute in the area we can settle it with virtue and fairness. Since we all drink from the same well, in the end we must all learn to get along together” (BXDA 6.6.1555). The petition ended with a demand that Magistrate Chuan close the subdistrict yamen court in compliance with the order issued by Intendant Yao Jinyuan some twenty-four years previously. Chuan’s response was to condemn vociferously and prohibit the malfeasance of clerks and runners. He did not, however, specifically forbid the subdistrict magistrate from receiving cases. Less than a month later, the same group of local leaders submitted yet another petition. After once more citing multiple instances of corruption among the clerks and runners at Mudongzhen, the petitioners chastised Magistrate Chuan for the shortcomings of his previous order. In GX 2 [1876], Zhang Xuangui petitioned Intendant Yao, who then issued a proclamation barring the subdistrict yamen from receiving cases. . . . We have read this document carefully and find that it clearly states that the subdistrict yamen was established for the sole purpose of aiding in arrests. We hereby append a copy of Intendant Yao’s original order for your perusal. Despite the difficulties and confusion of the present age, the law does not permit subdistrict yamens to receive cases. But they ignore the rules and willfully violate the intendant’s order. . . . Your grace has issued a proclamation prohibiting extortion, but you did not forbid the hearing of cases. Perhaps your grace does not realize the depth of corruption that exists and that without swift action such evil will be impossible to eliminate. . . . Your grace is the father and mother of the people. How can you be at peace with [the present] situation? For this reason we append Intendant Yao’s order and jointly request a ban on the hearing of cases by the subdistrict magistrate. (BXDA 6.6.1555)

Disregarding the thinly veiled threat of appeal to superior officials implied by the repeated mention of Yao’s proclamation, Magistrate Chuan noted that he had already given his orders on the matter and sternly warned the petitioners against disturbing him further. As with the employment of yamen personnel in violation of official statutes and the allowance for a sub-rosa system of fee collec-

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tion, the administrative burden faced by magistrates such as Chuan Songling rendered strict compliance with government policy and regulations regarding subdistrict courts impractical, if not entirely impossible. Thus, while willing to voice his opposition to corruption on the part of clerks and runners, Magistrate Chuan was not ready to take the further step of eliminating a component of the county’s judicial apparatus, even if that component was operating in an illegal manner. Unfortunately, the file on this particular episode ends at this point. Nevertheless, we can at least surmise that Chuan Songling was able to resist any further moves by his gentry antagonists because he remained in position as Ba County magistrate until his scheduled replacement three years later (BXZXZ 370). The archival record, moreover, shows no evidence that the subdistrict yamen ceased to accept plaints from local residents or that its staff ever stopped receiving fees for their services. The fiscal inadequacies of county government under the Qing resulted in the use of legal case fees to underwrite both administrative operations and the livelihood of yamen employees. The primacy of this source of revenue within the yamen was underscored by the elaborate and, to some extent, codified division of jurisdiction and proprietorial rights exercised by clerks and runners over court proceedings. Furthermore, despite being based on the extraction of fees from local residents in direct violation of official statutes, fee collection enjoyed at least an informal legitimacy as demonstrated by the willingness of Ba County magistrates to adjudicate intrayamen disputes arising from the practice. In addition, although it took place beyond the reach of formal external control, fee collection was nevertheless held within certain limits by both local custom and the internal system of rules and normative standards imposed by clerks and runners themselves. Along with facilitating a fair distribution of case assignments, these rules and standards served to safeguard yamen work as a viable occupation by distinguishing customary, if formally illicit, practices from more egregious forms of abuse. All of this suggests that the classic image of unchecked rapacity among yamen clerks and runners in connection with the magistrate’s court needs to be modified. Above all, we need to reexamine the portrayals of yamen corruption provided by official and gentry sources upon which our assumptions have been based. For just as the vilification of individual clerks and runners was often used as a discursive strategy in intrayamen disputes, so, too, could the condem-

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nation of all yamen personnel be brought to the service of interests outside the yamen. In other words, we need to consider the rhetoric of corruption as a strategy, or resource, employed in the competition between elites and magistrates for local power and influence. Contrary to many of our long-held assumptions in regard to the Qing legal system, fee collection on the part of yamen personnel was not so extreme as to dissuade people from seeking redress before the magistrate’s bench. Nor, despite the frequent allegations of officials and gentry to the contrary, did they come to the yamen only after being cajoled into doing so by wily runners and pettifoggers. Within the context of a flourishing commercial economy and a rapidly expanding population, residents of Ba County had sufficient reasons of their own for utilizing the formal justice system. Presentation of a dispute before the magistrate’s bench raised the stakes in any civil conflict by bringing direct pressure to bear on one’s opponent in the hopes of achieving a more advantageous settlement. Regardless of whether or not one intended to carry the process through to final judgment by the magistrate, this level of pressure was simply not available in the informal system of mediation. As an expected part of litigation, court fees were an essential component in the escalation of a dispute and, as such, were part of the cost to oneself as well as to one’s opponent, calculated when weighing the relative merits and disadvantages of going to court. Popular attitudes toward clerks, runners, and their multifarious fees may therefore be seen as a product of where an individual stood in the process. To the person taken to court or any loser in a court decision, such fees would certainly be perceived as onerous, unjust, and corrupt. For the victor, however, they were the price paid to achieve certain desired ends. Moreover, to the extent that court fees were becoming informally standardized, calculations of this sort became that much simpler. Standardization may thus have even increased the number of disputes entering the formal justice system by making at least one aspect of involvement with the court more predictable. The tendency on the part of the local population to submit minor grievances to the magistrate’s bench served as the subtext for condemnations of yamen employees by elites and government officials alike. In this respect, yamen clerks and runners were an easy target to be used in any attempt to discourage formal litigation. With their own interest in the judicial process reduced to its barest economic essentials, yamen personnel operated outside the ideological and moralistic framework within which social and political power were

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legitimated. Despite the indispensable position they occupied in the judicial apparatus, clerks and runners were vulnerable to attack as immoral, corrupt, and emblematic of the socially disruptive effects of litigation. Characterizations of this sort on the part of local elites, however, must be read in the context of the culturally defined and statusbearing roles that facilitated their dominance in local affairs. Regardless of the extent to which these roles served as a mask for coercive power and control, the status and authority accruing to them could only be sustained by acts with at least the appearance of personally disinterested community service. In the realm of dispute resolution, for example, by demanding that their role as mediators be formalized and by contrasting their own leadership in such matters against the claimed rapacity of clerks and runners, local elites drew upon the cultural and ideological resources at their disposal in an attempt to channel community conflict through social institutions from which they derived symbolic capital.17 In addition to enhancing gentry prestige in symbolic ways, the mediation process also facilitated local influence more directly through the accrual of social debts and obligations on the part of community residents. On the other hand, based as it was on an economic rather than social nexus, involvement with the yamen court was relatively free of such entanglements. Much the same dynamic was noted by R. F. Johnston during his tenure at the British court at Weihaiwei at the turn of the century. Johnston interpreted the increased tendency of local residents to present disputes before his bench as the result of the low cost of the British administered court when compared to the gratuities, expenses, and obligations associated with informal mediation. Johnston maintained, furthermore, that if the preference for formal litigation over mediation continued, it would inevitably undermine the authority of village elders and clan patriarchs upon which the social structure of the traditional Chinese village was based (Johnston 1910, 102). Although Johnston overlooked the strategic, as opposed to purely economic, uses of formal litigation, his analysis of the social dynamic involved is nevertheless quite close to my own in suggesting that the use of the formal court system detracted from the authority of gentry elites and community leaders. But if Ba County gentry sought to protect their status as community leaders by attacking the putative corruption of yamen clerks and runners, they also used the same strategy to extend their local

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authority into the realm of administrative affairs. The growth of gentry and elite activism in the latter half of the nineteenth century has been the focus of several outstanding monographs. In his study of the militarization of local society following the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion, for example, Philip Kuhn interpreted the formation of gentry-led militia units as a key element in the expansive authority of local elites (Kuhn 1970; see also Kuhn 1975). Kuhn’s ground-breaking work in this area was followed by that of Mary Rankin, who identified managerial activism in civic affairs among Zhejiang elites as indicative of an emergent public sphere in the closing decades of the Qing dynasty (Rankin 1986). With the Three Fees Bureau of Ba County, we now see a similar, though considerably earlier, expansion of gentry authority, this time in the critical area of judicial administration. The bureau was founded at midcentury with the sole purpose of providing an independent source of revenue for fee payment in connection with specific types of legal cases. While this already represented an unprecedented formalization of gentry involvement in the judicial process, the bureau steadily expanded its scope of activity until, by the end of the century, it had evolved into an essentially autonomous administrative organ with investigatory authority over informal judicial practices relating to civil litigation as well as criminal prosecution. Having thereby institutionalized their role in the local judicial process, Ba County gentry leaders were able to extend their influence over administrative matters still further with the subsequent founding of the Three District Office of Public Affairs. Established on the basis of funding provided by the Three Fees Bureau, the Three District Office provided community leaders with an institutional means by which to control public discussion on issues of local self-government in the closing years of the dynasty. As suggested by Esherick and Rankin, it is important to note here that the growth of gentry and elite influence was not always a matter of appropriating authority from a disintegrating state apparatus (Esherick and Rankin 1990, 340–41). As exemplified by the Three Fees Bureau, local gentry combined traditional resources with those made available by changing circumstances to formulate new strategies and methods of increasing their control over local affairs. In this instance we see a linkage between three such resources: the recognized need for informal yamen financing in the face of inadequate statutory provisions and greater administrative workload; the symbolic role of local gentry as community leaders and protectors of

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community interests; and, above all, the widespread image of clerks and runners as a corrupting and socially corrosive influence. If public declamations by gentry leaders as to the corruption of yamen clerks and runners in connection with the magistrate’s court were often predicated on considerations of status and local control, then those of the magistrate himself were guided by his interests as a career-minded official. The administration of justice during the Qing was, after all, but one portion of a magistrate’s duties. Although expected to maintain the state’s monopoly on the dispensation of justice, he was also held responsible for keeping order among the people of his jurisdiction as well as maintaining strict control over the yamen staff. A proliferation of litigation arising from civil disputes therefore not only constituted a burden on the magistrate’s time and reflected poorly on his ability as an administrator but also left him susceptible to censure should charges of abuse in the processing of such cases reach his superiors. In this context, the vigorous condemnation of yamen corruption seen in official reports by magistrates throughout the nineteenth century served to convince his superiors of the magistrate’s unflagging diligence in protecting the public. At the same time, warnings of the likelihood of abuse at the hands of yamen personnel also served as a means of dissuading local residents from coming to court over minor disputes. In this, the representation of corruption among clerks and runners served the same purpose as it did with regard to tax prompting, where it was used to encourage the prompt remission of taxes. In other words, the interests of magistrates were often best served by decrying abuse while at the same time utilizing the assumption of such abuse as an administrative tool. Aside from the administrative utility of these negative representations, however, direct action against the fee system by the magistrate was forestalled by the same pragmatic concerns and personal interests that motivated his verbal assaults in the first place. For balanced against the imperatives to reduce litigation and to control corruption was the recognition among magistrates that yamen employees relied upon such litigation and case fees for both personal income and operating expenses. Thus, beneath all the rhetoric and public castigations of corruption, there continued to exist another, informal level of practice wherein administrative necessity created a space within which a formally illicit and frequently condemned system of fee collection was sustained as an integral part of the local judiciary.

chapter seven

The Legitimacy of the Indispensable

We honor officials [guan]; we disparage clerks and runners [li]. Yet officials are in office only temporarily while clerks and runners are there for a long time; officials are few, but clerks are a multitude. Officials are assigned to areas thousands of li from the capital and are made responsible for matters such as records, taxes, and agricultural affairs, in none of which do they have any expertise. . . . Clerks and runners, on the other hand, are well versed and familiar with all of these affairs. In the processing of legal cases, for example, matters such as copying, transmitting, investigation, and arrest can all be done without an official, but they cannot be accomplished without clerks and runners. Thus, to say that the revenues of the empire and the well-being of the people rest upon officials is really to say that these things rely upon on clerks and runners. —Governor Chen Hongmou, ca. 17431

U

nder the Qing dynasty, the sole source of formally constituted political authority at the local level was the county magistrate. As the direct representative of the emperor in Beijing, the magistrate’s role as a link between the imperial center and local society was reflected in the very title of his office: zhixian, the “official who knows the county.” Yet in the vast majority of cases, the magistrate actually knew very little about the county to which he was assigned. In addition to being prohibited from serving in the same province in which his native district was located, the magistrate also occupied any given post for only a brief time. As a result, this “official who knows the county” was prevented from gaining any real familiarity with the locale, its dialect, economy, and customs, as well as the peculiarities of the regional system of administration. Even in the mid-eighteenth century, provincial officials such

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as the renowned Chen Hongmou recognized that these circumstances inevitably placed control over daily operations in the hands of yamen clerks and runners. Beyond the statutory quotas limiting their numbers and the penal sanctions proscribing specific acts, however, the formal administrative system of the Qing had very little to say regarding the organization and procedures of clerks and runners in the county yamen. Considering the detail and precision with which the Qing statutes regulated the duties and responsibilities of appointed officials from the palace down to the magistrate, this lack of regulatory concern is striking. Yet as long as taxes were collected and local order maintained, Beijing preferred to leave the details of how these tasks were accomplished up to provincial officials, who then passed responsibility on down to the local level. At the bottom of this hierarchy, it was the magistrate, the “father and mother official,” who was ultimately responsible and in whom all authority for county government was centralized. Ideally, magistrates were to maintain control over the yamen staff and administrative operations through a judicious combination of personal supervision and penal sanction. But while a diligent magistrate might by these means succeed in regaining some control over yamen affairs, in most cases these changes lasted no longer than the individual magistrate’s brief tenure. For example, Liu Heng, one of Ba County’s most ambitious and activist magistrates, instituted several reforms during his tenure to eliminate abuse on the part of yamen runners. In one such measure, yamen personnel were to be removed from the process of delivering court summons, and therefore the ability to dun fees, by giving the summons not to a runner, but directly to whomever had lodged the original plaint. This person would then turn the summons over to the rural agent in his area for delivery to the party or parties in question (YLYY 10). The plan was elegant in design, but there is no evidence whatsoever that this attempt to circumvent the economic interest of yamen runners survived Liu Heng’s tenure. As with most efforts by magistrates to alter customary procedures, once Liu Heng was gone operations reverted to the previous status quo. In this regard, the localized system of administration was not only informal and extrastatutory, it was also nearly impervious to reform from above. Until now, most scholars have followed Beijing’s lead by regarding the relative autonomy of clerks and runners as indicative of corrup-

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tion. That these conditions were so pervasive throughout the empire is then generally attributed to one or a combination of factors: a failure of administrative and political will on the part of the central government; the result of structural deficiencies; or simple fiscal inadequacy, to name but a few. In stressing the element of failure, however, these studies start from the assumption that all acts deviating from formally declared norms are not only corrupt but also dysfunctional. Beyond this, there is an implied, teleological assumption of a normative pattern of administrative practice and state development against which that of the Qing can be measured. Although often only implicitly, the ultimate yardstick in this regard remains that of Weber’s ideal of a rationalized bureaucratic administration and its institutional and functional separation from local society. Yet as we have seen repeatedly in these chapters, many aspects of county administrative practice do not fit neatly into Weber’s model. At the most basic level, yamen clerks and runners themselves cannot be seen as primarily representative of either state or societal interests. Rather, they must be simultaneously regarded as agents of the state, an occupational group rooted in the local community, and as individuals seeking to enhance their personal circumstances by maximizing the resources at their disposal. In addition, many of the practices these men engaged in, while corrupt by the standards of the formal administrative system, were not only commonplace but also essential components of local government. With points such as these in mind, I have chosen to focus neither on the deviance of yamen procedures from statutory norms nor on the many undeniable cases of abuse that took place. I have instead examined yamen practice as an extrastatutory system of local administration comprised of both formal and informal institutions, as well as state, societal, and personal resources and interests. Considering these aspects of the county yamen helps to uncover the actual, as opposed to the theoretical, nature of interaction between state structures and local communities, an interaction that was often in sharp contrast to the orthodox Confucian norms declared by the Qing central government. In the remainder of this concluding chapter, I want to pull back from the confines of Ba County somewhat to consider the implications this informal administrative system has for our understanding of Chinese state and society in the late Qing dynasty. In particular, I want to stress the ways in which the gap between statutory and informal administrative practice points to changes taking place within

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the seemingly static structure of Qing government. I also want to suggest that the resulting pattern of quotidian administrative practice at the county level exercised a pivotal influence on the relationship between imperial government and local communities in the closing decades of the imperial era.

Illicit Bureaucrats The menial status of yamen work derived primarily from its early association with drafted labor service. Yet as we have seen, most clerks and runners worked in the yamen not as a form of short-term labor rendered to the state, but as their primary occupation. In the course of occupationalizing yamen labor, clerks and runners exhibited many of the hallmarks of bureaucratic organization identified by Weber: the formation of rules governing recruitment, training, advancement, and work assignments; the establishment of normative standards of behavior along with methods of discipline and control; career orientation; and a decided tendency toward entrenchment and resistance to external authority. Along with the collection of fees, it was this de facto autonomy that most concerned Qing officials. For unlike officials, clerks and runners were not subject to the statutory administrative regulations used by the imperial center to check the development of such independent authority on the part of the emperor’s appointed representatives. The reason for this is clear: legally speaking, the entire structure within which yamen employees operated was not supposed to exist. It is in this sense that I refer to clerks and runners as illicit bureaucrats. The term is meant to convey the extrastatutory and frequently illegal nature of many yamen practices while at the same time emphasizing the role these practices played collectively as an informally legitimized system of local bureaucratic government. While yamen practice reflected many of the rationalized elements we might expect in any bureaucratic organization, the informal basis of yamen organization also left wide scope for the influence of nonrational factors, such as interpersonal relations, kinship, factional alliances, and patron-client bonds. These two elements of practice—rationalized procedure and particularistic association— should be seen not as oppositional, but rather as acting in tandem. In the absence of any formal body of externally imposed regulations and with the magistrate often ignorant of local customary procedure, personal alliances were frequently necessary to stabilize yamen

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work by establishing both divisional policies and the disciplinary apparatus necessary to enforce those policies. An outstanding example of the role that networks of personal support played in the creation and maintenance of customary procedures is the numerous instances of written agreements among clerks and runners stipulating, among other things, the conditions and limits of mutual assistance, the assignment of legal casework, and the jurisdictional boundaries between divisions. As often alleged by clerks and runners themselves, these sorts of pacts and alliances were sometimes used to monopolize yamen resources or to cover extortionate activities. Nevertheless, within the context of extrastatutory operations, particularistic associations were also employed to create bonds of loyalty, reciprocity, and standards of personal integrity. They were thus fundamental not only to a stable system of employment in which an individual had a reasonable expectation of job security, advancement, and income, but also to the informal system of administrative practice upon which county government rested. Traditionally, our tendency has been to regard the intrusion of particularism into an otherwise rationalized bureaucratic structure as a form of self-regarding, deviant, and, ultimately, dysfunctional behavior (Metzger 1973, 10, 397). But as emphasized here, the rationalized and personalistic aspects of yamen practice did not necessarily contradict each other. They could equally well be mutually facilitative. In this sense, yamen practice combined bureaucratic procedure with the cultural norms and social practices prevalent within late imperial society at large. Through an appeal to these same generalized norms, yamen clerks and runners also managed to establish a degree of legitimacy for their formally illicit occupation. Despite the central government’s condemnation of their presence and activities within the yamen, clerks and runners achieved a level of informal legitimacy by virtue of their indispensability and the customary nature of their practices. In defending these practices, the yamen staff appealed to the magistrate’s own career interests through oblique references to how technically illegal procedures were necessary for smooth operations and the magistrate’s ability to both remit taxes and keep the peace. But the validation of yamen work as an occupation went well beyond simple expediency. In drawing upon discursive elements of Confucian orthodoxy, clerks and runners demonstrated the ways in which these ideological structures helped shape notions of correct behavior even as they were used to

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justify unorthodox forms of practice. What we see here, in other words, is the creative adaptation of normative values and orthodox discursive formations to underwrite local modifications of the formal administrative structure. We have, for example, seen repeated claims to adherence to the moral obligations (lunchang) held by Confucian orthodoxy to govern proper relations between individuals, particularly those between inferiors and superiors such as disciples and teachers (tu-shi). We have also seen that conflict within the yamen, as in the wider community, was ideally to be resolved not through litigation, but through mediated compromise. Failing this, allegations of violating proper moral order of things (nilun) were often used to impugn an opponent’s character before the magistrate’s bench. In all of this, what was being validated was the utility of the yamen staff in upholding the correct social and political order of things. Despite its extrastatutory nature, yamen labor and practice could thus be framed as a public service, an honorable occupation of honest men. As stated in Chapter 2, it is tempting here to regard the claims of moral rectitude made by yamen employees as so much window dressing for corrupt and abusive activities. Such claims were no doubt often used in precisely this fashion. But to dismiss universally the moralistic self-representations of clerks and runners privileges similar claims on the part of both officials and gentry by implying that the latter were free of such personal interest. That the interests of elites often centered on the accumulation of symbolic capital while those of the yamen staff were more likely focused on material factors, does not lessen the degree to which both sets of interests drew upon prevailing societal values for their justification. We should not, however, attempt to resolve this issue by simply dismissing all ideologically based discourse—whether articulated by officials, gentry, or members of the yamen staff—as equally disingenuous attempts at the mystification of power. To do so implies that articulated values invariably functioned as a cover for ulterior motives that were somehow more genuine. It also assumes that we, as disinterested observers, are capable of extracting those motives from observable patterns of behavior. What this suggests is that we cannot analyze power and authority apart from the value system through which it operates, but must instead take seriously ideologically charged language and the values it reflects. As an essential component of the habitus of both individuals and groups, Confucian moral norms played an important role in

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shaping conceptions of morality, propriety, and justice even as it was being used by those same individuals and groups to defend and maximize status and livelihood. As this implies, we cannot divorce declarations of subjectively held values from what we ourselves interpret to have been the objective interests of historical actors. Rather, we must accept the messy and complex interplay that existed between power, legitimacy, and cultural values as articulated through dominant discursive formations. This does not mean, however, that the values embedded in these formations were perceived, represented, or applied in the same manner or toward the same ends throughout society. To the contrary, it is precisely through variations in this regard that we can begin to discern the dynamics of change that existed within what appears in many other respects to have been a static sociopolitical structure. Nowhere is this more apparent than in regard to the question of yamen corruption.

Corruption Of all our images of county administration in late imperial China, the most widespread and enduring has been that of pervasive corruption. The assumed ability of yamen employees to use their position to squeeze the local populace at will while simultaneously thwarting official attempts at control has rendered the evil clerk or runner as the stock villain on the stage of local government. The image, however, is based primarily on the testimony provided to us by elite and official accounts. Until quite recently, we have simply not had sufficient documentation to get beyond such one-dimensional characterizations. But with the availability of local archives such as those from Ba County, we are finally in a position to amend some of our long-held assumptions. To begin with, it seems clear that we need to differentiate between the historical representation of corruption and the realities of daily practice and customary procedure in the yamen. As we have seen, discourse on corruption and administrative morality was often used strategically by various parties for specific purposes. Magistrates, for example, frequently used warnings of rapacity among clerks and runners as an administrative tool to encourage compliance with their commands, while local gentry used similar rhetorical strategies to underscore the moral and social validity of their own authority in community affairs. We have also seen that clerks and runners

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themselves often drew upon such rhetoric in order to distinguish between the corrupt and honest elements in their midst. The use of these discursive formations by yamen employees is especially noteworthy in that it underscores the distinction between technically illegal, yet customary, practices and those that violated even these informal norms of administrative behavior. Although this distinction is blurred, if not altogether erased, by most elite and official accounts, it is nevertheless critical to any attempt to get beyond the rhetoric of corruption to arrive at a useful understanding of yamen practice. The distinction also suggests how representations of corruption were not unitary, but were instead adapted and applied selectively and creatively to fit the needs of individuals in specific circumstances. Beginning with their very presence in the yamen, nearly all yamen employees at times engaged in practices that violated official statutes and could thus be defined as corrupt. Yet because most of these practices were necessitated by the shortcomings of the formal administrative system, insofar as they represented a form of corruption, it was a corruption built into the system itself and without which local government could not have functioned. A strictly legalistic standard of corruption thus fails to apprehend the customary nature and functional value of many formally illicit practices. To demonstrate this point, we might look again at the practice most often held to be the primary source of yamen corruption—fee collection. Of the various activities deemed corrupt by elite and official sources, none was more consistently or vehemently excoriated than the practice of collecting fees in connection with the magistrate’s court. The ability of clerks and runners to dun fees from the local populace was, in fact, widely viewed as the root of all other forms of corruption, be it the presence of supernumerary personnel or their entrenched resistance to removal. More than any other yamen practice, that of fee collection in connection to legal proceedings was represented as a violation of the ethical principles of imperial government, because it allowed private interest to intrude upon the realm of public affairs.2 Yet given the limitations of the Qing state’s statutory sources of revenue, informal fee collection served as an indispensable source of administrative financing. At the local level, while certain forms and amounts of collection were viewed as corrupt and thus proscribed even by clerks and runners themselves, others were considered to be an acceptable and even necessary component of the county

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judiciary. By the mid-nineteenth century, this was so much so that permissible types and rates of collection were occasionally inscribed on stone tablets and made available for public reference. It was to this level of practice that clerks and runners appealed when making claims for the legitimacy of their occupation as well as their own sense of personal honor. Contrary to official and elite claims, yamen employees did not have to trick local residents into coming to court in hopes of extorting squeeze from their hapless victims. The claim that case fees collected by yamen clerks and runners were responsible for the increasing amounts of litigation in the nineteenth century has long been enigmatic, since it seems, on the very face of it, to be entirely counterintuitive. If anything, extortionate fees or the likelihood thereof should have prevented the presentation of minor disputes before the magistrate, not encouraged them as so often claimed. To understand the logic of this assertion, we must see it as rooted in the same conception of a passive and largely undifferentiated general population upon which the Confucian ideal of a morally suasive government was based. According to the classic formulation of this notion as articulated in the Confucian Analects, under a virtuous administration, the behavior of commoners was guided less by the calculation of selfinterest than by the moral influence of local officials and educated elites, much as the grass is brought to bend before the wind (Legge 1971, 258). Under such positive influences, commoners, that is, “good people” (liangmin), would refrain from going to court over trivial matters and would instead resolve minor disputes through the more socially ameliorative institution of mediated settlement. That local residents were, in fact, going to court over such matters could only be explained in one of two ways: either local officials and community leaders were not doing their job in terms of moral influence and guidance, or such guidance was being subverted by the pernicious and corrupting influence of yamen employees and pettifoggers (songgun). But as described in Chapter 6, amid the escalating social and economic differentiation of late Qing society occasioned by population growth, social differentiation, and commercial expansion, local residents had sufficient reason of their own for going to court without being cajoled into doing so by wily clerks and runners. Furthermore, although many local residents were no doubt subjected to predatory behavior on the part of some yamen employees, the general level of

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fee collection was in most cases considerably less than the hyperbolic descriptions of official and elite sources, which must themselves be seen as part of an effort to deter people from doing what they were already doing in increasingly large numbers. Although the efforts of local elites played an important role in the process, an even more basic factor restraining the rate of fee collection was the occupational interests of yamen employees themselves. Most clerks and runners were motivated not by the desire to make a quick fortune through extortion, but by the need to secure a reliable source of income from which they could make a decent living. Within these limits, the collection of fees was defended by the yamen staff as necessary, proper, and just; it was only the unreasonable collection of fees beyond these limits, not the practice itself, that was deemed to constitute corruption. Once again, the informal legitimacy achieved by this effort to reformulate the boundary between licit and illicit behavior is indicated both by the local codification of customary rates as well as by the willingness of magistrates to adjudicate disputes among yamen employees over proprietary rights to legal cases. Codification of allowable fees, even if only on an informal basis, also influenced the ways in which local residents utilized the court. Given the relatively low cost and increasingly standardized rate of fee collection, the magistrate’s bench offered a means of dispute resolution unencumbered by the social debts and obligations incurred by mediated settlement. Moreover, to the extent that many communities were becoming economically polarized and the traditional authority of gentry leaders was increasingly eroded in the nineteenth century, the relative impartiality of the magistrate’s court made it all the more inviting as a venue for resolving conflict. It might be suggested here that fee collection on the part of yamen clerks and runners can be read as a form of functional or facilitative corruption. To the extent that admittance to the yamen court was restricted, fee payment can be seen as providing access to a scarce resource. Insofar as fee collection helped underwrite yamen operations in judicial as well as other areas of administration by providing county governments with a critical source of revenue, it performed yet another important function. In both these senses, fee collection exemplifies what Edward van Roy refers to as an “interstitial” institution—one which develops within the interstices of society to fill functions that can be performed in no other way (van Roy 1970, 88–89). That such institutions are characterized by some

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as corrupt is, according to van Roy, due to the gap that exists between economically adaptive organizational behavior and the relatively static values through which that behavior is perceived in societies undergoing pervasive change. By highlighting the disjuncture between practice and dominant values, corruption can thus serve to identify the locus of social and economic change and the eventual emergence of new norms (van Roy 1970, 90). Although I agree with van Roy’s assertion of the growth of interstitial institutions as an index of social and economic change, his identification of a unitary system of dominant values from which such practice can be said to deviate remains problematic. Like all definitions of corruption, the concept of functional corruption implies a relevant standard of noncorrupt practice and thereby privileges a particular definition of corruption as articulated by specific groups of individuals. Thus, it not only misses the systemic and pervasive quality of the “corrupt” deviation from this assumed norm and clouds the important distinction between illicit practices that were normative and those which were not, it also masks the ways in which representations of corruption themselves served a social and political purpose. Rather than negotiating this problem by distinguishing between a “facilitative” corruption, on the one hand, and a “corrupting” corruption, on the other, it seems more useful to recast the framework altogether by relativizing both the term corruption itself as well as the behaviors to which the term is applied by historical actors in actual historical contexts. Above all, we must avoid privileging any norm, be it our own or those of dominant strata within the society under observation. For despite their distance from the statutory norm, the informal administrative methods described in this study cannot usefully be analyzed as a form of deviance for the simple reason that within the realm of daily practice, these methods constituted not an aberration of the norm, but rather the norm itself. Instead of seeking an analytically precise definition of corruption, we would do better to recognize that the line between legitimacy and corruption was often extremely permeable and a matter of local custom, rather than official decree. We also need to acknowledge that the distinction between corrupt and legitimate practice was itself frequently used by contemporaries in a strategic manner within a specific set of circumstances and available resources. Whether we apprehend extrastatutory yamen practice as corrupt, however, is ultimately less significant than the gap that existed be-

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tween such practice and the formal administrative structure of the Qing state. As a body of informal procedures, relatively free of the strictures of statutory administrative law, yamen practice was much more flexible than the formal system and thus better able to respond to the pressures placed upon county government in the nineteenth century. While reformist central government officials in the first half of the nineteenth century were stressing the role of virtue in government and the need to economize on local administrative expenditures, for example, the use of extrastatutory clerks and runners expanded to keep pace with the flood of mundane tasks occasioned by a rapidly expanding and diversifying population (Kuhn and Mann-Jones, 1978, 116, 118). In the same manner, fee collection served as an informal means financing local government by tapping into a growing commercial economy without recourse to direct taxation. It is not implausible that this system of informal measures was at least partially responsible for the Qing government’s ability to administer the empire despite the remarkable, and well-noted, thinness of its formal bureaucratic presence at the local level. But if this extrastatutory system of administration in some ways helped to maintain the Qing dynasty, it was nevertheless a system beyond the direct control of the central government. It was this lack of central control that enabled clerks and runners to fashion a sustainable livelihood out of yamen work in the first place and to valorize that livelihood to some extent through the use of Confucian rhetoric. Their success in this endeavor, moreover, was itself symptomatic of an even more far-reaching effect of the reliance on informal administrative practice, that of the erosion of the central government’s monopoly on local administrative resources, both material and symbolic. More than any other factor, this erosion made these resources available to members of the local community, thus shaping the interaction between this, the lowest level of the state’s institutional apparatus, and the structures of local power and authority.

Networks of Power I have suggested that because of its informal and extrastatutory aspects, the county yamen can be understood as a field of social interaction conditioned by culturally sanctioned patterns of interpersonal bonds, as well as by institutional rules and norms. The effects of informal practice in this regard were not limited to activities

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within the yamen, but rather were carried over to the relationship between county government and the local community. Here, too, the notion of administrative practice as a field of social interaction proves useful. In the introduction to his edited volume, Bureaucracy and Political Development, political scientist Joseph LaPolambara notes the importance of the lowest level of administrative personnel in shaping public attitudes toward government and the state in general. He argues that whatever values and ideological validations of state authority might be expressed by those at the top of the administrative hierarchy, the most direct and critical influence is generally exercised by those at the bottom (LaPolambara 1963, 6–7). Although LaPolambara’s observation is directed primarily at the influence of administrative functionaries upon the perceived legitimacy of the state, it can equally well be applied to the availability and local use of administrative structures and resources. Regardless of the ideals of benevolent paternalism and humane government espoused by Qing officials and transmitted throughout the empire by ritualized readings of the sacred edict, for the vast majority of the emperor’s subjects, government meant the clerks and runners of the county yamen. After all, the clerks and runners had the most direct and frequent contact with the community. Only in exceptional cases would an individual even see the magistrate, much less have occasion for interaction with him. In this sense, imperial government was not an abstracted repository of virtue and moral authority emanating from on high. It was instead the yamen staff, the magistrate’s talons and teeth, who collected taxes, made arrests, delivered court summons, registered land sales, posted notices, and carried out investigations in the countryside. On the other hand, the pecuniary and occupational interests of clerks and runners combined with the informal nature of local administrative practice and the lack of external control to create ample room for the exercise of personal acquaintance and influence in dealing with these agents of the state. Precisely this possibility so agitated Qing officials. Although usually framed by imperial officials as a subversion of paternalistic influence and an undermining of public morality, the subtext to such rhetoric was the threat of a dilution of state authority. Present-day scholars have often recognized this same dynamic, but have more often characterized it as a blunting of both state intrusion and the full rationalization of the relationship between the late imperial state and society.

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Both of these suppositions may be true. The more important point here, however, is that informal practice rendered county administration less a unitary arm of imperial authority, be it benevolent, intrusive, or indifferent, than an area of negotiated exchange combining informal deal making with the more formal functions of the yamen staff as agents of the state. We have seen several examples of such negotiation in these pages: gaining access to the yamen court; tax farming among runners; and cooperative relations between members of the yamen staff and local communities. To these we can add administrative services, such as the issuance of licenses and permits to merchants, brokers, drama troops, brothels, and opium dens; the avoidance of taxes through the misregistration of deeds; or the ability to gain favorable treatment or inside information by virtue of personal connections with those working in the yamen. In areas such as these, county administration provided local residents with a resource to be used in the pursuit of their own interests. The availability of this resource was itself determined by the economic interests of yamen clerks and runners, their control over the means of administration, and the extrastatutory nature of the system within which they worked. There was, of course, considerable latitude for abuse within this system. But as I have argued, such abuse was to some degree constrained by the yamen staff’s need to maintain a stable source of livelihood as well as by the strictures of local customary perceptions about what constituted a fair exchange. In this context, yamen clerks and runners were a distinct interest group in the local constellation of power, authority, and influence. They were also players in a triangular pattern of conflict and alliance between members of the yamen staff, the magistrate, and the local gentry. To begin with, yamen clerks and runners shared with the magistrate an obvious interest in maintaining administrative stability within the county. If the magistrate desired this stability in order to further the interests of the state, and with it his own career trajectory, then stability was no less important to members of the yamen staff seeking to sustain their chosen occupation. This shared interest gave rise to methods of informal administrative practice as a sort of modus vivendi between magistrates and yamen employees. Yet although often cooperative, the relationship was in some respects inherently conflictual. The economic interest of clerks and runners in litigation, for instance, frequently contradicted the magistrate’s desire to reduce the number of cases on his docket. Here as

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in other areas, the issue of control over and access to administrative resources created the greatest source of friction. We have already seen numerous instances of the yamen staff’s ability to resist attempts by successive magistrates to exert control over yamen operations by altering customary practices. In efforts to strengthen their own hand in these conflicts, magistrates had a number of means at their disposal, not the least of which was the display of naked coercive power through corporeal punishment. To help minimize their dependence on the yamen staff, magistrates also regularly employed their own staff of personal servants and secretaries, whose administrative expertise offered a counterweight to that of clerks and runners. Yet the most critical resource and source of support in this area was the magistrate’s relationship with the local gentry. The relationship between magistrates and gentry elites has been the most thoroughly analyzed of all political relationships at the local level, so much so that it is sometimes represented as constituting the totality of local power and influence. To a certain degree this is understandable. Without the cooperation of community leaders, a magistrate had little hope of effectively administering the hundreds of thousands of people within his jurisdiction. Thus, whereas the yamen staff was described as the magistrate’s talons and teeth, gentry leaders were often referred to as his ears and eyes (ermu). The metaphor of sense organs here was quite appropriate. For if talons and teeth can be seen as instruments of the magistrate’s will, the image of ears and eyes implied a commonality of perception that went well beyond mere instrumentality. Cooperation in this relationship was rooted in the shared values and ideals of Confucian orthodoxy and the structure of authority that rested upon those ideals. As noted by many scholars, this mutual investment in the hierarchical structure of society and polity, as well as in the ideological underpinnings of that structure, made it possible for the imperial state to share authority with local elites in a manner not possible in early modern Europe. In terms of social provenance, education, tastes, and articulated values, magistrates and gentry had more in common with each other than either did with other groups within the community, including the yamen staff. Although magistrates and gentry leaders were close in many ways, their interests, as well as the strategies employed in pursuit of those interests, were not always the same. If gentry involvement was often seen as a vital source of support and assistance, then it was also frequently regarded by magistrates and superior officials alike as a

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form of interference and troublesome meddling. This was particularly true in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as gentry activists began to fill the administrative gaps left by a weakening central government and to capitalize on newly available resources and changing circumstances, all intended to increase their influence over local affairs. In this process, yamen clerks and runners again played an important role. To the extent that the activities and pecuniary interests of the yamen staff interfered with or undermined the sources of gentry authority, the relationship between the two groups was naturally antagonistic. In this conflict, community leaders often drew upon the formally illicit nature of yamen practices to portray clerks and runners as predatory. The putative corruption of the yamen staff thus served to underscore their own, equally putative, moral influence and disinterested motives. As exemplified by the founding of gentry organizations such as the Three Fees Bureau, local leaders at times used this strategy not only as a means of protecting their local status but also as an effective means of expanding their administrative influence under semiofficial auspices. Although this aspect of the local political economy needs further research, it is nevertheless clear that interaction between gentry and the yamen staff was not always as hostile as it has traditionally been portrayed. True, collaboration between community leaders and yamen clerks and runners was no doubt often used to further narrow interests or to augment the coercive power of particular individuals. But there is no basis to assume that this was always the case. As we saw with the gentry defense of the accused runner Fan Rong, personal relations and contacts within the yamen could help serve broad community interests, such as the prompt arrest of bandits or thieves, a blind eye toward illicit salt or opium production upon which local communities depended, or even the maintenance of customary restrictions on fee collection. Particularly among men on the lower margins of elite status with relatively few resources at their disposal, direct contact and cooperation with clerks and runners was often the most effective means of augmenting local influence and achieving desired ends. In such instances, it was not the magistrate, but rather the senior clerks and runners who had the most immediately determinative influence. Local gentry were thus in a unique position to play multiple angles in this triangular relationship, to emphasize their traditional role as bastions of orthodoxy in communication with the magistrate while

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at the same time negotiating informally with members of the yamen staff in order to circumvent the strictures of the formal system. For yamen clerks and runners, the cultivation of informal relations with locally influential individuals could be equally advantageous. Hence we have seen community leaders speaking out in support of clerks or runners accused by their colleagues of malfeasance as well as attempting to have their own candidates placed in positions of authority within the yamen. These cases represent only those occasions when such matters were brought to the magistrate’s attention by intrayamen disputes. What we cannot see are the uncontested, and thus undocumented, instances of cooperation that took place on a daily basis. Although the precise nature of the interactions and exchanges described in this study were to some extent peculiar to Ba County, I would suggest that the dynamics of these relationships were similar in counties throughout the empire. In order to uncover these dynamics, however, we must avoid the tendency to reify Western historical experience by presuming a clear line of demarcation between state and society. We need instead to look beyond the boundaries of formal institutions and statutes to see the county yamen not as a discrete institution inserted within an equally discretely bounded local community, but rather as a site of resources and practices— both formal and informal, material and symbolic—that were to varying degrees available to particular social and occupational groups. Unlike the formal administrative system, yamen practice was adaptive. Indeed, its very existence can be seen as a response to changes in the broader social, economic, and political contexts within which it operated. To some degree the informal aspect of county administration had been present since the beginning of the late imperial period as a result of the initial gap between the formal administrative system and the needs of county governments. In the face of this static formal system, however, the dramatic demographic and economic expansion of the empire in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries resulted in an equally dramatic growth in the realm of informal administrative practice. Corollary to this growth was an increase in the availability of yamen resources for appropriation, an availability that was augmented from the midnineteenth century onward by the declining effectiveness of the central government, the growing rift between elites and the state, and the general increase in social unrest. Thus, while informal administrative practices helped sustain the Qing dynasty through this

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century of upheaval, it did so at the cost of the imperial center’s control over its own administrative apparatus. This leads to a final question, one that has long puzzled scholars of late imperial government in China. Why did Qing central government policy continue to maintain the fiction that the formal administrative system was adequate in the face of what appears to us to have been overwhelming evidence to the contrary? At least part of the answer to this question is that from the perspective of those in Beijing, the formal system seemed to be adequate. As Madeleine Zelin describes in her study of fiscal reform in the eighteenth century, success at extrastatutory methods of revenue enhancement at the local level masked the need for any systemic structural change (Zelin 1984, 74). The same was true for issues relating to yamen personnel. The informal administrative practices described in these chapters provided county governments throughout China with sufficient continuity, stability, and flexibility to allow magistrates to carry out their basic duties to the satisfaction of the central government. Local order was generally maintained and tax quotas were, for the most part, remitted on time. When an occasional magistrate or provincial official complained of insufficient resources, it could thus be explained away as a lack of talent, diligence, or moral character on the part of individuals, rather than indicative of a need for thoroughgoing reform. If the soundness of the formal system was in many ways illusory, then it was nonetheless a convenient illusion to maintain. As in previous dynasties, legislative emphasis in the Qing remained focused on controlling yamen personnel through quotas, service limits, and penal sanctions, as well as on prescribing penalties for magistrates found to have been dilatory in their supervisory responsibilities. Thus, while early Qing emperors made efforts to further centralize authority and rationalize selective aspects of imperial administration, neither they nor their successors made any attempt to recast the structure of local government or alter the social and institutional lines dividing centrally appointed officials from the yamen staff. Yet on another level, the question of why no structural reform was undertaken to resolve the contradictions of local government is itself problematic because it assumes those with the power to do so were free from the constraints imposed by both ideological and political considerations. As a centralized bureaucratic structure, the late imperial state served as an institutionalized instrument of dom-

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ination, one which successive dynastic houses from the Song onward used to appropriate progressively greater degrees of administrative control, authority, and resources from the leaders of local communities. Imperial success in this endeavor owed much to the legitimizing effects of Confucian ideology, which provided for the continued social dominance of local elites even as it underwrote the expansion of state authority in administrative matters. According to the metaphysical groundwork established by neoConfucian thinkers in the Song, the imperial state did not, indeed could not, serve as a naked instrument of domination. Instead, the Confucian state was represented, in its institutions, officials, and sovereign, as simultaneously the instrument and embodiment of cosmic morality. Imperial power was thus to be both exercised and legitimated through neither the coercive force of law nor the utilitarian function of administrative technique, but rather through the alignment of power with universalized principles of morality and justice. The Qing legal-administrative system was itself a crystallization of this ideal. Regardless of the uses to which it came to be put in actual practice, on a formal level the Qing Code was never meant to serve as a body of positive law mediating relationships between either the imperial state and the emperor’s subjects or among those subjects themselves. Imperial law was constructed instead as a repository of penal sanctions designed to uphold the cosmic balance of justice by maintaining a static political and social order. As a representative of imperial authority, the magistrate was to exert influence not through the proactive enforcement of law, but rather through the august power of his office, as well as by his own personal conduct. As stated previously, in this sense the magistrate’s court served as a ritual center binding society, state, and the cosmos together while imbuing the whole with a transcendent morality. As this implies, there was no break here between social and political norms and ideals; the same moral imperatives commanded obedience to the emperor, his representatives, and social elites alike. In large part, the sharing of these legitimizing principles between political and social elites was responsible for the imperial system’s incredible stability and longevity. Unlike post-Enlightenment Europe, there developed no clear, much less sanctified, separation of the private and public realms, as attested to by the classical Chinese language’s lack of any term for private that did not carry a pejorative connotation.

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Because of this ethical dimension, late imperial government also lacked the sort of depersonalized functional rationalism that characterized the emergence of bureaucratic states in Europe. The failure of the Wang Anshi reforms in the eleventh century can, in part, be seen as a result of resistance by both bureaucratic and social elites to creating just this type of rationalization. Subsequently, neither technical skill nor utility marked an individual as qualified for office or social standing, but rather his identification with Confucian sociopolitical values. The steady growth of the imperial state and its aggrandizement of local administrative authority from the Song period onward thus took place without any major disjuncture in social and political relations. As the duties and administrative workload of local officials such as the magistrate expanded during the course of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the process took place within the same ideological framework that had sustained a much smaller empire. Because of this, as their numbers increased and their work in the yamen evolved from a form of labor service to a semiskilled occupation, clerks and runners nevertheless remained well beyond the pale of officially recognized legitimacy. Their utilitarian role as functional specialists without the qualification of either literary training or degree-holding status rendered them mere administrative instruments, manifestly unfit to serve as direct representatives of imperial authority. By the founding of the Qing dynasty in the seventeenth century, the growth of the empire was already making the inadequacies of the formal administrative system increasingly apparent. By the nineteenth century, one hundred and fifty years of continued growth had made the contradictions between administrative theory and practice even more glaring. Although the activities of yamen clerks and runners can hardly be regarded as the primary cause of what was increasingly seen as a crisis of local government, their illicit practices and their presence outside the bounds of legitimacy nevertheless left them vulnerable to attack by both sides in what was developing as a conflict between the dynasty and local elites. Certainly there was no shortage of suggestions as to how to reform the local administrative system in the nineteenth century, all of which noted the centrality of the yamen staff and their supposed corruption as an issue of primary concern. Reminiscent of Gu Yanwu’s observations at the beginning of the dynasty were state-craft thinkers such as Feng Guifen, who identified the problem as the

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overcentralization of political power. With the magistrate facing an unrealistic number of administrative tasks, real power inevitably fell into the hands of rapacious yamen underlings. The solution, according to Feng, was to decentralize administration and return a measure of authority to local gentry leaders, thereby eliminating dependence upon yamen clerks and runners (Kuhn 1975, 265–68). On the other side were provincial officials like Ding Richang, who believed the problem to be a lack of direct contact between officials and the people due to the interference of the yamen staff (Ocko 1983, 1–11, 176–77). The answer proposed here, however, was not to decrease, but rather to increase centralized authority and bureaucratic reach. Increased centralization, it was argued, would remove clerks and runners as a block to imperial authority and influence by incorporating them into the ranks of officialdom and thus tying their interests more explicitly to those of the dynasty. In the end, neither path was taken. Indeed neither path could be taken without upsetting the balance between social elites and imperial authority through either a radical devolution of dynastic power, on the one hand, or an equally radical expansion of bureaucratic personnel, on the other. Even had the Qing government possessed the fiscal wherewithal necessary to engage in such an expansion, as long as the legitimacy of imperial power and authority was linked to adherence to Confucian principles, clerks and runners could not be brought into the official fold without debasing the entire structure. In the meantime economic growth and social development, as well as internal rebellion and imperialist incursions, were producing new social formations, new elites, and new local power holders who had less invested in the maintenance of the traditional status quo and even less concern for the Confucian legitimization of power. But not only the social bases of the dynasty were shifting. By the close of the nineteenth century, informal and extrastatutory patterns of interaction between communities and administrative personnel had already become part of the fabric of local government. These patterns were not significantly altered by the restructuring of government following the 1911 Revolution. Instead the revolution sheared away the last vestiges of restraint in the appropriation of local administrative resources by both yamen personnel and private citizens. With the demise of the imperial era, the stage was thus set for an even more decentralized and more thoroughgoing form of domination.

Appendixes

appendix a

Administrative Duties of Clerical Offices in the Ba County Yamen

Personnel (li): the transfer of all documents to incoming magistrates, records of salaries paid to all officials and runners, registers of all nonofficial personnel employed by the yamen, and files on periodic examinations of official performance. Granary (cang): investigations of all county granaries, relief grain, all documents pertaining to the examination of accounts at the end of magistrate’s tenure, and appointment and registration of all granary officials (post held by local gentry). Revenue (hu): management and collection of all land and deed taxes, special levies, provisions for orphans and the indigent, population counts, baojia registers and changes of all baojia personnel, and commodity price lists and weather reports. Rites (li): management of spring and autumn ceremonies, schools, temples, orphanages, benevolent institutions, brokers, pawnshops, and the entertainment of visiting officials. Salt (yan): all affairs and documents pertaining to salt and tea manufacture and transport. Military (bing): stationing of troops, maintenance of stables and military rations, and maintenance of all lifeboats and ferries working on the Yangzi River. Punishments (xing): maintenance of prisons, care of prisoners, foreign affairs, and opium production and licensed opium houses. Work (gong): regulation of weights and measures, currency, exchange rates, conscript labor, kilns, silk production, mining, sugar produc-

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tion, cloth production, walls and dikes, and brokerage licenses (in conjunction with the rites office). Receipts and Transmission (chengfa): reception and distribution to appropriate office of all internal and external documents. Documents (jianshi): waiting upon the magistrate and transmission of all documents to and from yamens within the city (prefectural and daotai).

appendix b

The Jins of Ba County

The Jins employed in the Ba County yamen were not members of a recognized lineage. They did not maintain a shrine to a common ancestor, they held no corporate property in common, and they maintained no genealogy. Rather, the Jins functioned as a kinship group, comprising segmented natal units with greater or lesser degrees of association among them. The diagram on the following page outlines the relations within this group and shows the posts and offices occupied by its various members in the last half of the nineteenth century. Data have been drawn primarily from two types of documents in the Ba County archive: appointment papers for the position of head clerk in which candidates supplied the names of three generations of patrilineal ancestors, and case records and other files in which individuals made specific reference to their kin within the yamen.

Personnel SC

Jin Zanyao

Unknown

Salt HC

Chen Hanbing

Jin Dianxuan Punishment RC Salt RC Personnel HC

Personnel HC

Personnel HC

Jin Jingxiu

Jin Jiaxiang

Jin Dianyang

Jin Xiangmu

Granary HC

Jin Xuelin

Jin Wengui

Jin Xieyang

Jin Dianyuan

Salt SC

Punishment RC

Salt HC

Jin Wenrui

Jin Yuanzhao

Jin Zhouqi

Jin Wendou

Jin Zhouyun

Jin Yongzhi

Chongqing Branch

s o u r c e s : BXDA 6.6.242; 244; 246; 254; 255; 263; 267; 268; 270; 272; 280; 301; 312; 314; 319; 331; 333; 334; 335.

Head Clerk Regular Clerk Student Clerk

Salt RC

née Jin

Salt HC

Jin Zaiyong

Jin Zhenyuan

Salt HC

Jin Yinggan

Jin Tingsheng

Jin Xianzhang

HC RC SC

Jin Ruiting

Unknown

Rural Branch

The Jins of Ba County

appendix c

Clerical Agreement on Mutual Support and the Dispensation of Legal Case Assignments in the Office of Works, GX 20 (1894) Part One Being of one mind and with resolute hearts we, Xu Zanyuan, Lu Chunshan, Lu Lixiang, Chen Bingjing, and Xu Ruitu hereby set forth the following call for the rectification of office rules. All of us have served for many years in this office. In previous years, we had rules stating that all legal cases and summons were to be turned over to the head clerks for assignment. We operated in this way for many years without confusion. Recently, however, the present head clerk, Wu Bingzhong, and newly admitted regular clerk Zeng Qingzhong have conspired with dismissed clerk Qu Mingzhang and others to form a gang [pengcan] for the purpose of violating office rules so as to keep all case assignments to themselves. Zeng and Qu have even gone so far as to alter the rules, relying on their influence to band together and demand money from other clerks. We all have families who rely on us for food and clothing. Fearing that those not in the gang will be denied income, we therefore come together to write this in order to rectify the office rules and provide mutual assistance to each other. It shall not be permitted to toady, to ingratiate oneself, or to be hypocritical in these matters. If any of Wu’s gang uses a pretext to falsely accuse any one of us, we agree to offer reports in support of the accused. It shall not be permitted to shirk this responsibility, to receive bribes, or to otherwise avoid this duty. If anyone is falsely accused, we shall not shift responsibility, but will allow the accused to append this agreement to his report. All court expenses (relating to such cases) are to be borne by all of us

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together. If there is a [unrelated] charge of treachery or extortion, however, this agreement shall not apply. We are all scholars who studied without success and have written this agreement in the interest of providing our families with food and clothing. If office rules are not rectified, we fear that anyone not in Wu’s gang will be reported on false charges and dismissed. We all sign this document freely and willingly and with no thought of private gain. This agreement shall be copied in five parts with one copy to be given to each signatory. Written and sealed on this the sixteenth day of the seventh month of the twentieth year of Guangxu by Xu Zanyuan, Lu Chunshan, Lu Lixiang, Chen Bingjing, and Xu Ruitu.

Part Two In the interest of obeying the established rules of this office, we, head clerk Wu Bingzhong and regular clerks Xu Zanyuan, Lu Chunshan, Lu Lixiang, Chen Bingjing, Xu Ruitu, Zeng Qingzhong, and Jiang Tingqi hereby set forth the following agreement. In the past, we in this office had rules governing legal cases, which in recent years have fallen into abeyance. Since Wu Bingzhong took over as head clerk, those in the office frequently dispute jurisdiction over these cases, and we are therefore compelled to come together in mutual consent and agreement. Hereafter, whenever there are legal cases or investigations, out of every ten, four will go to the head clerk and six will be assigned to regular clerks on a rotating basis. Every shift [text damaged]. It shall not be permitted to block or hinder. If a regular clerk is unlawful [bufa], the head clerk shall discuss the matter with others in the office and determine if a report to the magistrate is warranted. It shall not be permitted to [text damaged]. If there is a quarrel between regular clerks, they must confer with the head clerk to resolve the matter. It is absolutely forbidden for one person to submit devious and false reports to the magistrate on his own behalf or for selfish purposes. This agreement has been reached by mutual consent [text damaged] people’s hearts are not the same and so it is necessary to establish agreement [text damaged].

Appendix C

275

Written and sealed on this the twenty-eighth day of the seventh month of the twentieth year of Guangxu for the purpose of obeying previously established rules by head clerk Wu Bingzhong and regular clerks Xu Zanyuan, Lu Chunshan, Lu Lixiang, Chen Bingjing, Xu Ruitu, Zeng Qingzhong, and Jiang Tingqi. s o u r c e : BXDA 6.6.587

appendix d

Case Fees and Three Fees Regulations, GX 32 (1906)

Case Fees 1. In every case, the accuser and accused, regardless of the number of individuals in each party, will both pay an initial paper and brush fee of 700 wen. It is forbidden to collect on the basis of the number of people involved. 2. In all cases, the accused and accuser will each pay 1,000 wen to the runners in attendance at the initial hearing. Clerks who go to the countryside to investigate, take boundary measurements, etc. and who must travel within 40 li round trip, will be paid by both accused and accuser a transportation fee of 600 wen, and a food allowance of 200 wen. Beyond 40 li, add 200 wen for every 10 li. 3. In successive court sessions [fuxun anjian], a paper-and-brush fee of 160 wen is to be paid by both the accused and accuser. 4. In each case where a chief runner deputes another runner to deliver a summons [huan’an], the accused and accuser will each pay fees for food allowance etc. of 5,000 wen. If the contending parties are constituted by three, four, five, or six people, they will altogether pay 10,000 wen. In the case of destitute families [text damaged] this amount may be reduced by half. 5. Those summoned in addition to the principals in a case, regardless of whether they are witnesses, neighbors [tuanlin], or family members of the accused or accuser, will not pay fees to the runners. 6. Neighbors [dilin] who are called to testify as witnesses are not to pay any fees.

Appendix D

277

7. In every case, at the initial hearing [chushen], the accused and accuser will each pay a registration fee [song’anqian] of 800 wen. If the case is settled by mutual consent and dismissed, both sides will each pay 1,500 wen. 8. The accused and accuser will each pay a paper and brush fee for the agreement to settle the case [jujieyizhi] of 500 wen. 9. In every case [text damaged] food allowance etc. [damaged] each will pay 3,000 wen. It is not allowed to collect this fee per person. The above-listed fees are those currently in effect.

Three Fees Regulations 1. Escort of prisoner to the provincial capital without carriage, one case, one prisoner; the original rule stipulated an escort fee of 60,000 wen. This is hereby reduced to 45,000 wen. For each additional prisoner add 40,000 wen. Prisoners with carriage; for each prisoner add a carrying fee [taifuliqian] of 16,000 wen. From the time escorted prisoner leaves the prefectural yamen to the time he is returned to custody at prefectural yamen, a time limit of 100 days is set. If this is exceeded, a food allowance of 300 wen per day for runners and prisoner will be paid. To be figured on a monthly basis. If the prisoner is detained at the capitol and not returned, then the day he was detained will be recorded and food allotment will be paid on daily basis from that point. In this case, one half of the carrying fee will be returned. 2. Escort of prefectual or circuit prisoners to military exile [junliutu]: for one prisoner a fee of 30,000 wen will be paid; for two prisoners 50,000 wen; for each additional prisoner add 20,000 wen. 3. Escort of prefectural prisoners: one case one prisoner, fee of 50,000 wen to be paid; one case two prisoners [text damaged]; each additional prisoner add 10,000 wen. 4. All transport fees to be paid the day before the transport begins. A ticket will be given to the runner recording the type of transport, the number of prisoners, their names, and the amount to be paid. Runners will then go to the bureau office for payment. All details will be recorded. Runners are not allowed to press for additional payment at a later date.

278

Appendix D

5. Corpse examination fees [xiangyanchangfei]: if in the city or suburbs, coroners will be paid 1,600 wen for examination paper, and horse and food fee. Runners will be paid 3,200 wen for washing the body, lamp oil, and food. Horse and food allotment for the magistrate’s personal attendant(s) [genban], 1,000 wen. Food allotment for a large group, 500 wen. Food allotment for servant in charge of registration [haotou], 100 wen. Tea attendants [chadongfang], 100 wen each. Food allotment for small group, 300 wen. Food allotment for runners in charge of punishments, 200 wen. A coffin fee of 400 wen will be given unless the family desires to pay, in which case nothing will be given. 6. Accompanied coroners traveling within 50 li round trip in one day: each member of the party to receive horse fee of 340 wen and food allowance of 100 wen. Runners to be paid food allotment of 100 wen. Beyond 50 li up to 80, round trip of two days, each person to receive horse fee of 680 wen and food allotment of 200 wen. Over 80 li, for each additional li add [text damaged]. 7. Runners will receive a corpse-carrying fee of 30 wen for every 10 li. 8. In cases of unclaimed travelers dying of illness, those dying of starvation or cold on the roadside, or those drowned, the coroner will be sent to witness the burial. The punishments office will be paid a brush fee of 200, the coroner 300, and runners 400 wen, plus an additional 240 wen for burial fees. It is forbidden to claim the corpse to be a victim of homicide. 9. Corpse examination fees to be paid after examination is made. The runner and xiangbao are to go together to the bureau with the ticket. If the corpse was privately buried without report and the case settled without examination, or if a report of a corpse is made, but it is later determined that no examination is needed, only a coroner’s fee of 400 wen, a court fee [tangshiqian] of 240, a runner’s food allotment of 1,200, and a registration fee [songshenqian] of 1,200 wen will be added. 10. In the investigation of homicide cases and corpse examinations, if the amount paid by the bureau is insufficient [text damaged] not allowed to press neighbors. 11. Corpse examination fees are established specifically for local homicide cases. If a prisoner dies from illness, the magistrate will examine the circumstances himself. If a coroner from another county

Appendix D

279

is sent to examine [a corpse], [text damaged], the coroner and runners accompanying the official from that county will be paid a total of 3,400 wen. 12. Arrest and detention fees were originally set at 20 taels per month. Since then, the circuit intendant has ordered the bureau to pay an additional 10 taels for a total of 30 taels. s o u r c e : CD Minxing zonglei 29

appendix e

Division of Case Jurisdiction, GX 31 (1905)

Rites (lifang): ancestral ceremonies, temples, family property, marriage, and prices of medicines and miscellaneous commodities. Works (gongfang): canals, embankments, charcoal, wood, mining, minting, rental of guild halls, pawnshops, and warehouses. Punishments (xingfang): homicide, theft, robbery, prostitution, bandits, unlawful flight, violence, licentiousness, and foreign matters. Revenue (hufang): sales, purchase and rental of property, taxes, and loans and pledges. Granary (cangfang): grain sales and relief grains. Salt (yanfang): salt, tea, and foreign goods. Military (bingfang): garrisons, government stables, theft or sale of mail, and lijin stations. Personnel (lifang): honorific titles, official seals, examinations, and sale of office. s o u r c e : BXDA 6.6.287

appendix f

District Runner Agreement on the Division of Cases, GX 28 (1902)

We the head and chief runners of the six divisions hereby set forth in sincere and friendly terms regulations to be obeyed by all runners of the three districts of Ba County. This past year there was the case of Ni Shude’s firm accusing that of Mao Yi of extortion and violence. Ni’s business is in Zhong District (li), but he lives in the city. The plaint, however, said his household registration was in Lian District. This was a situation where the property is in one place but the owner in another. Runners Jiu Lun and Li Chun disputed the case. We of the six divisions mediated and determined that the case should be handled by both and that hereafter the old regulations should be followed. This third month we had the case of Li Chaochang accusing Li nee Zhang of conspiring to defraud her. The plaint said the households were in Jie District, but the property in Ren District; again a case of the same sort. Jiu and Li once again disputed the case, with each holding a plaint in hand as proof of his claim. We therefore again judged the situation and determined that Li Chun should relinquish his claim. Furthermore, in order to settle the regulations once and for all, it was decided that the fees from this case should be used for a banquet at which the old regulations would be rectified and set out clearly. Hereafter, everyone will respectfully obey the rules and will not dare to dispute plaints. Those causing disturbances, engaging in corruption or otherwise violating the rules will thereby earn the enmity and scorn of all. This rectification is done by mutual consent of all in the six divisions.

282

Appendix F

i t e m : If a case involves fields, marriage, canals, embankments, coal mines, kilns, Buddhist or Daoist temples, or rental disputes, then it will be assigned on the basis of where the property is located. In cases where people live in one place but the property is in another, it is forbidden to use this as an excuse to dispute the case. i t e m : Cases in the city that do not involve rent over tilled land will go to that division on city duty. i t e m : In cases involving native merchants or merchants of different regions living within the various districts of Ba County, if the business is established in the city and residence is established in the city as well, the case will go to that division on city duty. If residence is not firmly established or if residence in the city is only temporary, then the case will go to that district’s division or the division that has traditionally dealt with merchants from the region in question. i t e m : All cases in the city or districts, whether settled or set aside to be settled later, should, in the instance of their being deceptively reopened, go to the division that originally handled the case. If either side in a case appeals before a higher court and the case is returned here for investigation, then it will go to the original division. It is not allowed to call reopened cases new and thus claim that it should go the division on duty now. i t e m : All district runners will be responsible for their own affairs. Except for those cases where special deputies connected with lijin stations are involved, everything will be done by the old rules. i t e m : In regard to foreign matters, according to the old rules they should be handled by the punishments office and constables. Cases in other offices will go to the district runners concerned. i t e m : Orders from the Prefect, Intendant, and Garrison Commanders will be carried out by the old rules. In regard to salt bureaus, lijin stations, baojia, mines, commerce, currency, textiles etc., the transmission of documents will be determined on the day of arrival. i t e m : If any case that was settled by mutual consent of all parties is reopened, then it will be treated as a new case and assigned accordingly. If a case that was not settled by mutual consent is reopened, then it will go to the original division.

Appendix F

283

These rules are settled upon by the consent of all and will be followed forever. It is forbidden to invent stories and excuses in order to dispute cases and violate the rules. If anyone violates the rules, then the situation will be investigated and dealt with, with the usual fines being doubled. If someone further dares to be obstinate and continues to cause trouble, then his name will be given to the magistrate for dismissal. It is forbidden to hide or falsify circumstances out of favoritism. This agreement will be written in three copies, with each district to hold one copy and act in accordance with the rules. e r r a t u m : In all cases, regardless of whether settled by mutual consent or not, if the case is reopened it should go to the original division. (signed by eight runners from each of the three districts) s o u r c e : BXDA 6.6.293-21

Reference Matter

Notes

b o o k e p i g r a p h : SCZC, vol. 1, 620

Chapter One

Illicit Bureaucrats

1. For a useful discussion of this issue, see Albrow 1970, Chap. 1. 2. For the most succinct summation of the issues in this debate, see the essays by P. Huang 1993b; Rowe 1993; Rankin 1993; and Wakeman 1993, in the symposium “ ‘Public Sphere’/‘Civil Society’ in China?” Paradigmatic Issues in Chinese Studies, Part 3, Modern China 19, no. 2 (1992). 3. For political reasons, scholarship in China has not reflected this shift. Recent essays have continued to interpret pervasive corruption among clerks and runners as indicative of the generalized moral rot of the late imperial system. See, for example, Liu Min 1983; Wang Tanyuan 1989; Wu Jiyuan 1993; and Zhao Shiyu 1989. 4. Published collections of archival documents offer abundant examples of the often ingenious methods used by yamen personnel to squeeze more from the administrative process. That these examples usually constitute the entirety of archival samples relating to clerks and runners, however, underscores the degree to which Chinese archivists and scholars making the selection regard clerks and runners as nothing more than corrupt elements. See, for example, BXDAHB. 5. The remaining criterion that Ba County did not carry was that of “Wearisome,” with a large amount of overdue taxes (pi). 6. The actual number of magistrates was probably even higher than this, since the Ba County gazetteer does not list individuals who served on an interim basis.

288

Chapter Two

Notes to Chapter Two

Clerks

1. Zhang Feng was a native of Shaanxi Province and holder of a juren (provincial) degree. He served as magistrate of Ba County from GX 25 to 28 (1899–1902) (BXZXZ, 370). 2. Da Qing Huidian Shili (QHDSL) and Liubu chufen zeli (CFZL), referred to hereafter as the Disciplinary Regulations. 3. Such characterizations are pervasive throughout the secondary literature. See, for example, Ch’ü 1962, Chap. 3; Faure 1976; Ocko 1983, 8, 68– 77, 131–32; Rankin 1986, 17–19; Shiga 1974; Shue 1988, 98; Zhao 1989; Dai 1979, Chap. 8 sec 2. Ch’ü and Dai are alone in recognizing that clerical positions were occasionally filled by those from the propertied classes as a means of avoiding other forms of labor service (Ch’ü 1962, 39, 43; Dai 1979, 637). Ch’ü, however, insists that the vast majority of clerks were propertyless and that their position was one of low social prestige (1962, 39, 43, 197). 4. Three-month rotation meant, of course, that every three years each ban would serve a total of twelve months. 5. For jurisdictional divisions among the various clerical offices, see Chapter 6, this volume. 6. In the Collected Statutes, for example, clerks at the county level are collectively referred to as dianli, which I have translated below as “head clerk.” No further distinction was made between these and any other clerks working in the county yamen. See QHDSL, juan 148–50. 7. The terms dianli and lishu do not by themselves signify anything relating to a head or leadership position. This is understandable given that these clerks were the only ones legally working in the yamen. My rendering of these terms as “head clerk,” rather than the more literal translation of “documents clerk” or “administrative clerk,” is based instead on the functional position of these individuals as a means of distinguishing them from the larger body of informally employed personnel whom they supervised. 8. QHDSL 150:913. The distribution of head clerks in Ba County was not the same in all offices due to the differences in workloads and number of personnel. The Offices of Personnel, Granary, Salt, Military, Works, Receipts and Transmissions, and Documents each employed one head clerk who served year-round. The rites and punishments offices employed two head clerks, with these two rotating their supervision over their respective office’s three divisions. Only the revenue office had three head clerks, each of whom was responsible for a single division. 9. Chinese people count their age in sui, rather than in years. A child is one sui at birth and an additional sui is added to his or her age at each lunar new year. 10. CFZL 16:2b. Evidence that head clerks actually did leave their positions after five years can be found by tracking individuals in both the informal personnel reports submitted by the Ba County magistrate to the Chongqing prefect and in individual appointment and licensing documents.

Notes to Chapter Two

289

11. Top candidates were placed into four grades eligible to hold office at the following ranks: 8a; 9a; 9b; and unclassed (weiruliu). 12. For the status potential of these examinations, see QCWXTK 21: 5045. 13. In a somewhat extreme example of this, the head clerk of the works office, in requesting the enrollment of an unregistered clerk who had been working in the office for thirty years, referred to the individual simply as a “student” (BXDA 6.6.295). 14. Such practices on the part of head clerks and its implications for intraoffice factionalization will be examined in the Chapter 3. 15. For a description of the social milieu and practices of songgun, see Macauley 1998. 16. Evidence on the numbers of unregistered clerks is, understandably, extremely hard to come by. The total number of such unregistered personnel may have been quite large. In GX 33 (1907), for example, the Ba County magistrate ordered the expulsion of all unregistered personnel throughout the yamen, in response to which the various offices petitioned to have 169 unregistered clerks either enrolled as regular clerks or acknowledged as students (BXDA 6.6.348). 17. Bear in mind that these figures are the totals for all three divisions in each office. This means that only one-third of the clerks listed for any office were actually working in the yamen at any given time. The only exceptions to this are the Offices of Salt and Documents, which were not divided into divisions and whose clerks thus worked year-round. 18. The relative importance of the Offices of Revenue and Punishments had undergone a remarkable shift during the course of the Guangxu period. In 1878, revenue and punishments respectively accounted for 28 percent and 35 percent of all yamen clerks. Just prior to the New Policy reforms the two stood at near parity: revenue 33 percent; punishments 31 percent. But while the reform movement acted to decrease the number of punishments clerks, it had the opposite effect on the revenue office. In 1905, revenue clerks accounted for 37 percent of all clerks compared to 21 percent for those in punishments. 19. Such cases are most often seen in instances where the petitioner had already been expelled from the office but nevertheless desired to present his case to the magistrate. Even here, though, the preference was to convince other clerks to act as cosignatories. For examples of both options on the part of a single clerk, see BXDA 6.6.587. 20. BXDA 6.6.250. The Disciplinary Regulations specified punishments only for appointed officials. In cases where a clerk was found to have violated the Qing Code (Daqing lüli) (in cases of bribery, for example), the official in charge was instructed to refer to the statutes of that code to determine punishment. I am not implying here that clerks were never given corporal punishment. In most cases where such punishment was applied, however, it was the result of charges being brought against a clerk by local residents. 21. The Shen brothers were at least second-generation yamen employ-

290

Notes to Chapter Three

ees. Their father, Shen Bingchang, had previously served as head of the salt office. Following his retirement in GX 11 (1885), Shen Bingchang went on to take the end-of-term exams in Chengdu, where he placed second in the second rank (BXDA 6.6.421). For a discussion of the Shens as an example of kinship groups within the Ba County yamen, see Chapter 3. 22. The term lanzhao is a synonym for lanshe, found in the Qing Code’s statute banning the employment of supernumerary personnel (DLCY 50). See Chapter 3 for an extended discussion of such allegations and practices. 23. The specific legislation was entered in YZ 5 (1727) as a substatute to the Qing Code’s statute on bribery (DLCY 344.08). 24. In GX 33 (1907), for example, a 3,000 tael installation fee collected from the new head clerk of the revenue office was used for operating expenses for one of the county’s new schools (BXDA 6.6.348). 25. Other instances cited in the literature as examples of the inheritability of clerical office are less categorical than is Dai’s evidence for Taiwan. Susan Naquin, for example, describes the mother of sectarian leader Lin Qing as selling her deceased husband’s position as clerk in the subprefectural yamen and then bringing suit against the putative buyer when payment was not forthcoming. It is not clear, however, that this was necessarily a case of inheritance and sale of position, rather than one concerning the nonpayment of succession fees, as I have described. 26. For biographical notes on Liu Heng, see Watt 1972, 256–57; and BXZ/MG 9b:10a–12b. 27. For a review of the literature on this topic, see Turner and Hodge 1970, 22–33; and Freidson 1986, 20–38. 28. The status of yamen clerks as professionals is also called into question insofar as they worked within a bureaucratic organization that was subordinated to higher authority. For although clerks exercised a good deal of autonomy in some respects, this autonomy was nevertheless constrained by the broader parameters of the bureaucratic structure of which their occupation was a part. For discussions on the relationship between bureaucratic structures and professional status, see Freidson 1986, 160–66; and Vollmer and Mills 1966, 49–50.

Chapter Three

Families, Friends, and Factions

1. Although these fees bear a superficial resemblance to Weber’s description of the benefices associated with prebendal office holding, the differences between the two systems seem to be even more salient. Prebendal office holding, as Weber described it, was one feature in a broader complex of specifically feudal relations. The holder of a prebendal office was in most cases a member of the landowning social elite who accepted the benefice as part of his personal subordination to the ruler. In this manner, prebendal office itself came to be regarded as the personal property of the holder, who administered his office in a discretionary manner (i.e., without objectively defined duties and responsibilities). In contrast, yamen employees were not members of a semiautonomous social elite nor were their positions en-

Notes to Chapter Three

291

shrined as part of a larger sociopolitical order. In most cases, clerks and runners were wholly reliant on fee-based income for sustenance. Moreover, yamen work as well as the fees attached to that work were far more specifically defined than anything suggested by Weber’s depiction of prebendal office. Given these differences, it makes little sense to use either benefice or prebend in relation to yamen work, particularly insofar as these terms carry with them a number of subsidiary concepts and implications that simply did not pertain to the Chinese context. 2. The author, Li Guangting, went on to claim that Zeng Zhangling was assisted in his corrupt practices by both his elder brother and son-in-law and that Zeng Zhangling’s recent attack on Li was motivated by anger over Li’s previous resistance to their abusive behavior (see also BXDA 6.6.319; 6.6.331). For the outcome of this dispute, see the discussion of Jin Jingxiu below. 3. For stylistic reasons, the term clan is occasionally used in the following discussion in place of the more accurate, but also more unwieldy term common descent group. The term family is reserved for nucleated natal units and their affines within the various branches and components of the larger group. In all of this I have avoided the term lineage, except where indicated by the presence of self-conscious organization represented by corporate property or the establishment of shrines to a common ancestor. 4. The salt office in the Ba County yamen listed between three and six registered clerks in the Guangxu period. This does not, of course, take into account those individuals working as students, assistants, or otherwise nonregistered personnel. 5. Evidence of support between descent groups is seen in the fact that one of Jin Zhuoyun’s fellow recruits, Shen Bingzhang, had a son who would eventually succeed Jin Zhuoyun’s cousin, Jin Xieyang, as head of the granary office in GX 16 (1890) (BXDA 6.6.270). For Jin Xieyang, see below. For the activities of Shen Bingzhang and his two sons, Shen Fanchang and Shen Kechang, see Chapter 2. 6. The vacancies in the office filled by both Jin Xianzhang and Jin Zhuoqi had been created by the successive advancement of Jin Zhuoyun’s fellow recruits, Li Shenzhi and Shen Bingzhang, into the position of head clerk. 7. Jin Zhenyuan, like Jin Xianzhang and Jin Dianxuan, may have preceded his appointment as regular clerk with service as an unregistered student. Since unregistered clerks, by definition, do not appear in the personnel reports, we have no way of recovering this level of yamen employment by members of the clan. 8. It is not clear to which rule the Chens were referring here, although most likely it was the custom requiring that the nomination to vacant head clerkships come from within the yamen, as described in the previous chapter. 9. Reflecting the position of women in Qing society in general, it is typical of legal documents of this period that we are provided with no information about the widow Chen apart from her relationship to men such as her

292

Notes to Chapter Three

husband, Chen Hanbing, her uncle, Jin Zhenyuan, and her younger brother, Jin Zaiyong. 10. Chen Zhaochang was one of Chen Hanbing’s kinsmen who had earlier petitioned for the appointment of Chen Hanbing’s younger brother. In that petition, Chen Zhaochang styled himself as “student” (wensheng). The parentage of Jin Ruiting is unknown. Both Jin Zhenyuan and Jin Xianzhang referred to him as a nephew. It is unclear, however, if he was a brother of Jin Zaiyong and the widow Chen or the son of an undocumented fourth brother of Jin Zhenyuan and Jin Xianzhang. 11. Although there is no direct documentation on Wang Bingcen’s dismissal of Jin Zaiyong, Zaiyong’s name drops from the office register sometime between late GX 21 (1895) and early GX 23 (1897), that is, between the end of the Jin Zhenyuan affair and Wang’s own dismissal. Added to the statement by the head clerk who succeeded Wang Bingcen concerning Wang’s elimination of all of Jin Zhenyuan’s recruits, it seems likely that Jin Zaiyong was a victim of Wang’s purge. See also BXDA 6.6.281; 6.6.334; 6.6.335. 12. Jin Dianyang and Jin Jingxiu were inducted as regular clerks, and Jin Zanyao as a student. 13. The position in question had been made vacant by the dismissal of Shen Kechang, the brother of the previous head clerk, Shen Fanchang, who himself followed Jin Jingxiu’s cousin, Jin Xieyang. The Shen brothers were the sons of Shen Bingzhong, the colleague of Jin Jingxiu’s cousin in the salt office, Jin Zhuoyun. For more on the dispute between the Shen brothers and Liu Ce, see Chapter 2. 14. Jin Jingxiu continued to be an object of suspicion and complaint even after his retirement. Three months after the end of his term, his successor filed a series of plaints accusing him of sequestering several case files with the obvious intent of using them for illegal purposes. Following a hearing before his bench, the presiding magistrate was, like his predecessor, oddly forgiving in his treatment of Jin Jingxiu: although acknowledging that Jin should be punished severely, he nevertheless declined to do so, provided that Jin Jingxiu return the documents in question (BXDA 6.6.2282). 15. Although documentation is only available on five of Jin Jingxiu’s nominations, it is quite likely that he sponsored a good many more new head clerks during his five-year tenure as head of appointments. 16. For more on Wang Shangwu, his appointment as head clerk, and his relationship with fellow head clerk Zhao Jingru in the Office of Punishments, see Chapter 2. 17. Unless otherwise noted, all citations to the Lu Lixiang case are drawn from BXDA 6.6.587. The file consists of more than thirty-five plaints, petitions, and documents related to court hearings. 18. At the time of the magistrate’s instructions, the personnel office was still headed by Jin Jingxiu who, as cited previously, had already been accused of colluding with Wu Bingzhong to alter the work office’s personnel register.

Notes to Chapter Four

293

19. Refuting each charge against him, Lu Lixiang explained, for example, that he had not sold anyone’s wife into prostitution, but had simply been acting as a go-between in a marriage deal; that the charges brought against him by his elder brother’s wife were due to her unsororial nature (saoren bushou saodao); and that the quarrel with his younger brother was the result of Lu’s resisting the partition of family property. 20. The cangue (jia), a large and heavy wooden collar fastened about the neck and wrists, was a common form of judicial punishment for relatively minor crimes and offenses. After the device was locked into position and the subject’s transgression written on its surface, those sentenced were put on public display. The cangue was thus designed to combine extreme physical discomfort with personal humiliation. 21. Primary evidence for Zeng’s transfer comes from a GX 29 (1903) petition filed by then head of the works office, Lu Guo’en (see text below), and several regular clerks including Jiang Tingqi. The petition claimed that following Wu Bingzhong’s retirement, Zeng had been faced with an investigation into his past actions in the office. The name change and transfer, they alleged, was simply Zeng’s means of avoiding prosecution. Despite the fact that he no longer worked in the works office, Zeng’s name had remained on the office register. To avoid the possibility of further acts of corruption on Zeng’s part, they requested permission to formally expunge Zeng’s name (BXDA 6.6.286; see also 6.6.343).

Chapter Four

Runners

1. YLYY 20. 2. The term baiyi literally means “white” or “unregistered” laborer. As in the term baishu described in Chapter 2, bai here refers to the lack of an official red seal affixed to registration papers. Although the term might therefore be rendered as “unregistered runner,” it carried a negative connotation not associated with other unregistered runners, such as assistant runners. To maintain this distinction, I will therefore retain the Chinese term throughout the following pages. 3. For the central government’s recognition of the physical danger of work as a county runner and the subsequent requirement for strong, healthy young men to fill such positions, see QHDSL 98:261. See also MLS 20:46. 4. For a fuller discussion of this issue, see Chapter 6. 5. The Qing Code stipulated a punishment of 100 blows of heavy bamboo for anyone exceeding this limit. By the late nineteenth century, however, this substatute was widely recognized as a dead letter law. See DLCY 53.04. 6. Unlike the registers for clerks, where head clerks are clearly delineated from the more numerous regular clerks, yamen registers for runners make no distinction as to the ranks of individuals. Names were simply recorded under the general headings of district runner, constable, lictor, and so forth. Lists of local runners were kept in a separate register altogether.

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7. For similar practices in Taiwan, see Dai 1979, 253–54. 8. My conclusion that no one retired or was prosecuted as a result of this case is based on my failure to locate any documents pertaining to subsequent litigation or disciplinary action in the Ba County archive, along with the fact that the names of all principals in this dispute continue to be listed in personnel reports for the next few years. 9. Recognizing the difficulty of control in such matters, Qing legislators added a statute in QL 37 (1772), stipulating that any runner dismissed as a result of a serious offence was to be tattooed on the arm or face so as to prevent that individual from reentering service under a different name (DLCY 281.11). Once again, however, the Ba County archives provide no evidence that the measure was ever enforced. 10. See, for example, QHDSL 98:KX 14 (1775), QL 1 (1736), JQ 11 (1806), and DG 2 (1822). 11. The register lists forty-one runners under Liu Heng’s appellation of chief runner (zongtou), who were, presumably, responsible for operations throughout the county. Assembled into discrete teams under the supervision of each chief runner were the regular constables (buyi), of whom 128 worked within the walls and immediate precincts of Chongqing, with a further 150 operating in the countryside. 12. Once again, this outlook is reflected in present-day scholarship. Cole, for example, hypothesizes that the ruthlessness of yamen runners stemmed from their desire to take revenge for their despised social status by abusing their power (Cole 1986, 70). 13. For putative ties between sectarian groups and yamen runners, see also Cole 1986, 63; Kuhn and Mann-Jones 1978, 140. 14. For associations with brothels, inns, gambling halls, and so forth, see BXDA 6.6.602; 6.6.1394; CD Minxing qizha 1, GX 1–3; YLYY 20b. For opium den ownership, see BXDA 6.6.814; 6.6.815; 6.6.829; CD Minxing qizha 12, XT 1. 15. Qing dynasty population figures are based on households, rather than individuals. Wang’s estimate of per capita landholding is thus derived from his further estimate of five persons per household.

Chapter Five

Illicit Allies and the Magistrate’s Men

1. Fan’s promotion to the post of managing head runner was apparently due to his access to external sources of funds. As described in Chapter 4, Fan agreed to borrow such funds as needed to cover divisional expenses with the stipulation that subsequent legal case fees would be used to pay off the loan (BXDA 6.6.507). 2. Lunchang, for example, specifically refers to the obligations inhering to the five key relationships of the Confucian moral order: ruler-minister; father-son; husband-wife; elder-younger brother; and senior-junior friends. 3. At times the lack of control bordered on the comic, such as when district runner Yang Rong was assigned to deliver several documents to the

Notes to Chapter Six

295

magistrate in the next county. Becoming ill prior to his departure, Yang entrusted the delivery of the documents to his neighbor. When word reached the Ba County magistrate that the papers had not arrived, an investigation was made, which revealed that Yang’s neighbor and all the documents in his care had last been identified entering an opium den in Chongqing. Neither the neighbor nor the papers were ever seen again (BXDA 6.6.600). 4. As one indication of the ad hoc approach to the problems of local government on the part of Qing legislators, most of the items pertaining to yamen runners, as well as clerks, are found not in the code’s primary statutes, but rather in its substatutes. Of the fourteen substatutes to the statute on official bribery, for example, no less than eleven deal with yamen clerks and runners (DLCY 344). 5. The position of xiangbao represented a local conflation of what were in other regions of the empire two distinct local agents, the xiangyue and the baozhang. On the role of the xiangbao in North China, see P. Huang 1985, 50, 225–32.

Chapter Six

The Economics of Justice

1. Along with rewards, Liu Heng’s proposed merit system also included negative sanctions for runners who exceeded the stated time limit for the delivery of summons: a recorded demerit for one day past the deadline; ten strokes of heavy bamboo for two days; and twenty strokes for three days. Any runner exceeding the time limit by four days or more was to be sentenced to the cangue and immediate dismissal from further service (YLYY 19). 2. ”Civil cases” here refers to those cases that the magistrate was empowered to dispose of without being subject to review from the higher courts (zili). 3. The magistrate’s income consisted of a base salary of only 45 silver taels, to which was added a supplemental payment, known as the “nourishing goodness” stipend (yanglian), of 1,000 taels per year. To this we must add the fees the magistrate collected from yamen employees in order to cover his own expenses and the cost of gifts to superior officials. Liu Yu, a magistrate serving in Sichuan in the 1860s, claimed that magistrates in the province took between 3,000 and 10,000 taels per year from this source (SCCZ 549; see also Hickey 1991, 394–96). 4. Although there was considerable difference in the organization of runners in Taiwan and Sichuan, Dai’s “ordinary” runners are roughly approximate to chief runners in Ba County. Dai’s original citation was approximately 1,000 yuan for head runners, and 200 yuan for regular runners. For the sake of comparison, I have converted Dai’s yuan into taels. 5. Many of the files from which I draw in this chapter contain numerous discrete cases. As indicated previously, in such cases the basic citation is followed by the document number within that file. 6. I am grateful to Joseph Esherick for pointing out to me this aspect of legal case assignments.

296

Notes to Chapter Six

7. For more on Tang Qing’s career as well as that of his brother Tang Shu, see Chapter 5. 8. More accurately, the woman had only wanted to make a provisional sale of the property. Her grandson, however, had sold the property outright with no provision for later redemption. 9. Despite the magistrate’s ruling, there is no evidence that the Office of Rite’s jurisdiction over the case in question was ever challenged. Nor does the magistrate appear to have taken any steps to remand the case to the Office of Revenue in the absence of such a challenge. 10. The question of whether or not civil law existed in imperial China has lately come under renewed scrutiny by legal historians. While earlier scholars held that the imperial legal system was entirely penal (Bodde and Morris 1967; van der Sprenkel 1962), more recent studies have concluded that a civil aspect of Qing law is reflected in the types of cases accepted by magistrates and in how these cases were processed and adjudicated (Buxbaum 1971; Bernhardt and Huang 1994, Intro.; P. Huang 1993a, 1996). My purpose in raising this issue here is not to question the validity of these findings; rather, I want to emphasize that the application of Western notions, such as the distinction between civil and criminal cases, to a Chinese context remains tenuous and frequently relies on elements of procedure that can only be described as arbitrary. 11. I was unable to locate any case files or other documentation on the dispute between the Offices of Rites and Punishments. We thus have no information on the arguments made by either side or on the basis for the magistrate’s final decision. 12. Since no charge of murder was ever mentioned in this dispute, we can assume that the daughter did not die of her wounds. 13. The office, known as the Cangue Division Office (jiabansuo), was funded by means of 700 taels of silver collected through a special levy. This sum was then turned over to a moneylender in the city, with the interest accruing to the original capital being used for both fees and office expenses. The office itself was attached to the yamen’s subsidiary detention center (jiabanfang) outside the walls of the yamen proper. In order to end the disputes between district runners and constables regarding who had rightful control over this center, it was further agreed that one runner from each of the district runner’s three divisions as well as the constable division would be deputed to serve on a rotating monthly basis (BXDA 6.6.238). 14. Originally located within the yamen adjacent to the jail, the office was later moved next to the building that housed on-duty runners. In GX 15, however, the bureau was moved out of the yamen compound altogether to the buildings formerly used by a temple school in the city (BXZ/MG juan 17). 15. The combined income for the bureau in GX 16 (1890) was approximately 1,992 silver taels. In GX 32 (1906), it was just under 3,600 taels. The increase was due to both a rise in the price of rice as well as an increase in the amount of grain received in rent (see BXDA 6.6.5019; CD Minxing zonglei 29).

Notes to Chapter Seven

297

16. Between 1888 and 1901, for example, the price of rice in the city of Chongqing had risen from approximately 1.6 taels per shi to roughly 5 taels (BXDA 6.6.5019; Zhou Yong and Liu Yingliao 1987, 161). 17. As described by Macauley, similar efforts to protect their authority by restricting access to the magistrate’s court are evident in local elites’ attacks on litigation masters (Macauley 1998, 6–7).

Chapter Seven

The Legitimacy of the Indispensable

1. Zaiguan fajie lü, 1, in Chen 1936. The term li was sometimes used to distinguish clerical work from the sort of manual labor (gong) carried out by runners. In translating the term here as “clerks and runners,” I am relying on the additional, more inclusive usage of the term to distinguish all yamen employees from appointed officials (guan) such as the magistrate. For biographical information on Chen, see Hummel 1943, 86. 2. It was to guard against just this sort of intrusion among appointed officials that the “nourishing virtue” (yanglian) stipend had been established in the Yongzheng period. Imperial concern with the intrusion of personal interest as a source of corruption among appointed officials was also reflected in the distinction made in the Disciplinary Regulations between acts of malfeasance committed in the course of carrying out official duties, but without the intent of private gain (gongzui), and acts committed out of purely self-interested motives (sizui). Depending on the motives behind it, a single act of malfeasance could thus be classed as either one or the other, with those classed as sizui carrying a much stiffer penalty (Ch’ü 1962, 32–33).

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Index

In this index an “f” after a number indicates a separate reference on the next page, and an “ff” indicates separate references on the next two pages. A continuous discussion over two or more pages is indicated by a span of page numbers, e.g., “57–59.” Passim is used for a cluster of references in close but not consecutive sequence. Accommodation, 197 Adjudication, 60, 220, 226, 255 Administrative law, 9–10, 58, 226 Administrative necessity, 245 Administrative resources, 257f Anti-Christian riots, 28, 49, 161, 195 Anti-foreign sentiment, 28f, 49 Appeals process, 112 Appropriation, 73, 155f, 168 Assistant clerks, 36, 40ff, 128f Authority, basis of, 9ff, 13, 22f, 235, 243, 247, 258, 260f, 266 Ba County, 5, 137, 144, 175, 206, 262, 287n; description of, 25–30, 49, 129, 178, 181–82, 236, 239; administrative workload of, 29f, 47ff; tax collection in, 176, 180, 228 Ba County archive, xiv–xviii, 123, 145, 147, 152, 171 Baishu, 41ff Baiyi, 128f, 143, 148, 157, 182, 293n Balazs, Etienne, 20 Baojia, 13

Board of Personnel, 36–42 passim Bourdieu, Pierre, 11 Brothels, 96, 153 Bureaucracy, definitions of, 9 Cage, the, 127, 151 Cai Hongru, 71f Cangue, the, 117, 127, 151, 168, 180, 182, 216, 230, 293n Cangue Division Office, 296n Case assignment, 60, 136, 209–14 passim, 220–26 passim, 250, 273f, 281–83 Case disputes, 208–27 passim Cen Biao, 131, 195 Cen Chunxuan, 145, 148, 191f Centralization, 2, 7, 124, 247, 263, 266 Chen Bingjing, 106, 108f, 115, 227ff Chen Bingling, 106, 108 Chen Bingwen, 86 Chen Hanbing, 85–94 passim Chen Hanrui, 86f Chen Hongmou, 246f Chen Hongze, 221 Chen Jiujiang, 106, 110 Chen Mingshan, 181 Chen Shou, 215 Chen Shu, 215 Chen Wenbing, 106 Chen, Widow, 87f, 92, 291–92n Chen Zongyu, 106 Chen clan, 106 Chen lineage, 85f, 91f Cheng Bingquan, 210

314

Index

Cheng Boluan, 144f, 202 Chengdu, 37f, 76, 88, 130, 176, 236 Chief runners, 127ff, 134–37 passim, 146f, 179f, 193, 207. See also Runners Chongqing, 25, 54, 125f, 130, 144, 174, 234, 238; growth of, 27, 49f, 236, 238; as commercial center, 27, 52, 154, 213, 221 Ch’ü T’ung-tsu, 6f, 21, 40 Chuan Songling, 240f Ci Xi, 31f, 44 Civil disputes, 227, 235, 242 Civil litigation, 222, 226f Civil society, 15 Clerical agreements, 109, 273f Clerks, 31–36 passim, 41f, 70f, 269, 290n; ranking of, 36, 64–69, 98; number of, 45–51, 60, 69, 78; social background of, 51–58 passim; self representation of, 52–56 passim, 70–73, 112f; collective action by, 59, 63; nomination of, 61–64. See also Clerks and runners; Head clerks; Regular clerks Clerks and runners, 1f, 5–9 passim, 14, 198, 206f, 248, 254, 260–65 passim; representation of, xiv, 23f, 201, 203, 235–38 passim, 243, 245, 251; official’s view of, 1–4 passim, 11, 22, 169, 197; control of, 3f, 10f, 231, 245, 247, 263; autonomy of, 15, 197, 241, 247, 249 Codification, 8ff, 12, 234, 241, 255 Cole, James, 150, 294n Commoner guards, 125f, 130, 145–48 passim, 153 Community leaders, 193f. See also Gentry Confucianism, 17, 150, 167, 202, 251– 52, 260, 264; ideals of, 11, 79, 121, 248, 254, 265f Constables, 125f, 145–49 passim, 153, 221–26 passim Corruption, 171f, 211f, 235, 248, 252, 259, 287n; definitions of, 18–24, 207f, 256; facilitative, 19f, 255f; representations of, 25, 120, 201, 241–45 passim, 252, 256 County government, 7, 17, 121, 175f, 198f, 258f; workload of, 3f, 31f, 148, 231, 239, 241, 265 Court cases, see Litigation

Criminal cases, 222 Customary practice, see Informal administration Dai Cheng, 157ff Dai Yanhui, 206 Danxin archive, xiv Deed tax, 175f Deng Nicun, 185f Deng Wenying, 185f Deng, Widow, 185f Deng Yufeng, 185f Deysine, Anne, 20 Ding Chunshan, 173f Ding Richang, 266 Disciplinary regulations, 10, 32, 40, 61, 67, 128, 230, 289n Discourse, 24f, 72, 155f, 168, 199, 250f, 257 Discursive strategies, 120, 188, 241–42, 252–53 Dispute resolution, 58ff, 140, 208 District runners, 125, 145–48 passim, 153 Documents, Office of, 33, 47, 56, 99, 270 Dominance, 13 Dong Shan, 238f Drafted labor service, 124 Drama troupes, 130 Dual reporting system, 32, 45, 50, 147 Duara, Prasenjit, 14f Eisenstadt, S. N., 16 Elder Brother Society, 28, 54 Elman, Benjamin, 74 Embezzlement, 76, 96, 118, 138, 167 Esherick, Joseph, 244 Europe, 260, 264f Excessive recruitment, 63, 136 Extortion: among clerks, 44, 60, 67, 92, 106, 110, 113, 117ff; among runners, 138, 161, 164, 173f, 197, 215, 221, 231; and tax collection, 180, 187–91 passim Extrastatutory personnel, 44f, 62, 171. See also Supernumerary personnel Extrastatutory taxes, 175. See also Surcharges Factions, 12f, 25, 104–9 passim, 113–19 passim, 163–66 passim, 249. See also Particularistic associations

Index Fan Rong, 131f, 160–67 passim, 187ff, 194–97 passim, 261, 294n Fee collection, 200, 202f Fees: customary, 4, 12, 20, 22, 125, 165; installation, 57, 61, 63, 65f, 136, 154, 207, 290; circulating, 65; running, 89f; meltage, 176; arrest and detention, 231, 277; corpse examination, 231, 278; escort, 231, 277. See also Legal case fees Feng Guifen, 265–66 Foreign affairs, 130 Functional rationalism, 265 Gangs, 25, 109, 113, 117, 166, 273 Gatekeepers, 145f Gentry, 177, 194ff, 201, 228–41 passim, 251, 255, 259, 260–62; and mediation, 235–43 passim. See also Resources Gentry activism, 244 Gentry bureaus, 230 Granary, Office of, 33, 47, 62, 95–100 passim, 269, 280 Gu Yanwu, 143, 149, 265 Guo Zhang, 189f Guolu bandits, 27 Habitus, 251 Han Jingwu, 42 Hansson, Anders, 150 He Gengsheng, 4, 169f He Gui, 168 He Qing, 225 He Wu, 218f He Yingfu, 65f Head clerks, 36f, 62, 102f, 207, 288n; appointment of, 37, 86, 88, 95, 109; duties of, 37f, 65, 68, 88. See also Clerks Headmen, 178 Head runner, managing, 127, 131, 138f Head runners, 126f, 131, 136ff, 147, 179, 193–96 passim, 207. See also Runners Homicide, 205, 212, 222, 230–35 passim Hou Jisheng, 107f Hsiao Kung-ch’uan, 6 Hu Xuan, 135f, 215f Huaishi District, 25, 127f, 135, 147, 214, 218ff Huang, Philip, 14ff, 203f, 226f

315

Huang Zhonghan, 151 Human obligations, 167 Huo Qinwei, 191 Illicit bureaucrats, 249 Illicit legitimacy, 12, 121 Imperial authority, 259, 264, 266 Indispensability, 32, 70, 156, 197, 247, 250 Informal administration, 4ff, 184, 201, 250, 257f, 262f Informal legitimacy, 184, 197, 249f, 255. See also Legal case fees Informal regulations, 12, 51, 58, 69, 86f, 123f, 227; standardization of, 5, 75, 77, 112, 162, 168, 341; disputes over, 78, 137, 140ff Inheritance of position, 67, 87, 137 Interest rates, 184, 189 Internal discipline: among clerks, 38, 58ff, 64, 75, 77, 99; among runners, 124, 140ff, 162, 168 Jailers, 124 Jiang Feng, 167 Jiang Hanjiang, 107–10 passim, 117 Jiang Tingqi, 107–10 passim, 114–18 passim Jiangbei District, 25, 221 Jin Dianxuan, 84f, 95–101 passim Jin Dianyang, 97f, 292n Jin Dianyuan, 95 Jin Jingxiu, 87, 90, 97–103 passim, 109, 292n Jin Ruiting, 92f Jin Xianzhang, 84f, 89ff, 291n Jin Xieyang, 95, 97 Jin Xuelin, 83 Jin Yuanzhao, 83f Jin Zaiyong, 85, 87f, 93 Jin Zanyao, 97 Jin Zhenyuan, 85–94 passim, 98, 101 Jin Zhuoqi, 84f Jin Zhuoyun, 84–97 passim Jin clan, 83–94 passim, 109, 271–72 Jinjuan levy, 176f, 187f, 191, 233 Johnston, R. F., 243 Judicial practice, 15, 23, 213 Jurisdiction, 200, 208–22 passim, 250, 280; joint, 218, 220–25 passim Juyi District, 25, 125f, 138, 216ff, 220

316

Index

Kangxi emperor, 175 Kinship, 12f, 66, 80, 82, 101, 164, 249; constraints on, 81f, 84, 93, 137; function of, 81f, 93, 97, 102, 119. See also Particularistic associations Kuhn, Philip, 14, 244 Labor service, 2, 133, 249 Langbei, 166–67 LaPolambara, Joseph, 258 Legal case fees, 77, 201f, 204f, 234, 242, 254; as administrative resource, 23, 35, 132f, 200, 228, 241, 245, 253; as income, 35, 109, 131ff, 200–208 passim, 212, 241, 245, 273; as corruption, 132, 208, 253; distribution of, 205, 215; legitimacy of, 209, 226, 234; limits upon, 228–34 passim, 241, 255, 276–79. See also Fees Legitimacy, 10f, 25, 191, 209, 234, 264ff; of mediation councils, 59, 140; of yamen work, 73f, 155, 254; of informal practice, 156, 197, 249 Leys, Colin, 19 Li Guangting, 99 Li Rongzhong, 204, 206 Li Shenzhi, 88f Liang Cheng, 139f, 193f Lictors, 130, 145f, 153, 221–26 passim Litigation, 59, 90, 185–89 passim, 215, 223, 236, 242–43 passim, 254f; levels of, 202, 205, 227, 236, 239, 245 Litigation brokers, 43, 202. See also Pettifoggers Liu Ce, 62, 100 Liu Cheng, 160f, 167, 195 Liu Heng, 71, 122f, 144f, 148, 203, 247, 295n Liu Zhikang, 173f Lo, Winston, 11 Local elites, see Gentry Local government, see County government Local judiciary, 245 Local runners, 128f, 135, 148, 179. See also Runners Lu Chunshan, 107–12 passim, 273ff Lu Lixiang, 105–19 passim, 273ff, 293n Lui, Adam, 21 Luo Taihe, 211, 213

Magistrate, 10–11, 123, 169, 208f, 239, 246, 260, 264; control of staff, 3–4, 134f, 143, 169f, 245 Magistrate’s court, 1, 15, 185, 199, 204f, 232, 245, 253, 255, 264; as resource, 17, 22f, 201, 241f. See also Yamen court Mann, Michael, 16 Mediation, 16, 226, 235; social benefits of, 237f, 240, 254 Mediation councils: among clerks, 59f, 77, 81, 89ff, 101; among runners, 140, 146, 158; in case disputes, 208, 210– 13 passim, 217ff, 227 Medical examiner, 124 Military, Office of, 33, 47, 269, 280 Mills, Donald, 74 Ming dynasty, 133, 175, 178, 265 Moral relations, 167, 251 Mu Zezhou, 76ff Mutual aid, 109–13 passim, 163ff, 273, 281, 291n Mutual responsibility, 126ff, 167, 180, 250 Myers, James, 21 Naquin, Susan, 152 Neo-Confucianism, 2 New Policy reforms, 50 Nie Shaozhou, 218f Night watchmen, 124 Opium, 50, 96f, 127, 153, 223, 234 Ou Baxi, 148 Parasol bearers, 145f Particularistic associations, 78, 80, 105, 119ff, 162, 196, 249f. See also Factions; Kinship; Patronage Paternalism, of state, 171, 198, 258 Patronage, 12, 100–103 passim, 119, 166, 215. See also Particularistic associations Patron-client bond, 167f, 249 Pei Sheng, 135f, 163, 215f Peng Tai, 131f, 167 Personnel, Office of, 33, 44, 47, 60, 64f, 109, 111, 128, 269, 280; and Jin Clan, 95–101 passim Pettifoggers, 43f, 56, 236, 242, 254. See also Litigation brokers

Index Post-service examinations, 38–39, 55, 76, 85, 97, 100 Prebends, 290–91n Professionalization, 73–74 Prostitution, 50, 222–26 passim Punishments, Office of, 33, 47, 50, 95, 212, 222, 269, 280, 289n Qing administration, studies of, 5–8 Qing Code, 142f, 170, 184, 264 Qu Mingzhang, 107–10 passim, 117f, 273ff Quotas, 143, 263; statutory, 3, 10, 36, 39ff, 120, 127–33 passim, 142–48 passim; informal, 63, 78, 96, 103f Rankin, Mary, 14, 244 Rationalization, 5, 7f, 24; bureaucratic, 9f, 12f, 19, 78f, 119, 248, 250; among clerks, 58, 75, 77, 212, 258, 263, 265; among runners, 130, 159, 177; informal, 162, 168 Receipts and Transmissions, Office of, 33, 43, 47, 52, 210f, 213 Reform, 247, 263, 265 Regular clerks, 37–43 passim, 207. See also Clerks Resources: definition of, 16ff; state and society as, 16–17, 199, 248, 259, 262; availability of, 18, 248, 250, 255–62 passim; discourse as, 24, 185, 242ff; of gentry, 228f, 244. See also Magistrate’s court Resources, monopolization of: among clerks, 77, 81f, 94, 96, 103, 109–14 passim; and particularistic associations, 119f, 250; among runners, 163f, 216 Revenue, Office of, 33, 40, 47, 53, 67– 68, 71, 77ff, 269, 289n; in disputes, 98, 100, 118, 210; and tax collection, 177, 183, 233; jurisdiction of, 212, 219, 280 Rice, price of, 297n Rites, Office of, 33, 47, 50, 210–13 passim, 217–23 passim, 269, 280 Robbery, 205, 222f, 231, 235 Rolling lists, 178 Roy, Edward van, 255–56 Runners, 122–34 passim, 152ff, 157, 160–65 passim, 170; contrasted with clerks, 122f, 134, 150, 163, 170, 207,

317

213–14; officials’ views of, 122f, 142, 152, 172, 193; control of, 123, 127, 133ff, 140–44 passim, 151; autonomy of, 125, 135, 137–42 passim, 162, 196; representation of, 129, 156–59, 161f, 171; as agents of the state, 129, 169–74 passim, 198; violence toward, 129, 172f, 181f; disputes among, 136–42 passim, 157, 164; collective action among, 141, 165; number of, 144–49; demeaned status of, 149ff, 155, 169; stereotypes of, 149–58 passim, 162; relations with community, 162f, 169, 193–96; punishment of, 168–71 passim, 180; presumptive guilt of, 172, 174, 185f, 191. See also Chief runners; Clerks and runners; Head runners Rural agents, 220, 233 Salt, Office of, 33, 47, 63, 83–96 passim, 100f, 212, 269, 280, 291n Salt runners, 125, 173f Salt smuggling, 129, 173f Salt transport, 174 Scott, James, 19 Scribes, 43f, 56, 213 Sedan-chair bearers, 124, 130 Sichuan Province, 144, 175ff, 202 Single-whip tax reforms, 70 Shen Bingkun, 197 Shen Bingzhong, 88f Shen Fanchang, 62, 292n Shen Kechang, 62, 292n Song Zhao, 164f, 187 Song dynasty, 2f, 69, 124, 264f Sponsorship, 41, 61, 84, 102, 135f, 160, 166f State and society, 13–17 passim, 199, 248, 258, 262. See also Resources State authority, 169, 171–75 passim, 180, 201, 258 Student clerks, 40ff. See also Clerks Su Gui, 164f Suan Hong, 168 Subdistrict yamens, 238–41 passim Supernumerary personnel, 45, 134, 142ff, 147. See also Extrastatutory personnel Surcharges, 175–80 passim Surtax, see Surcharges Symbolic capital, 243, 251

318

Index

Taiping Rebellion, 27, 176, 233, 244 Taiwan, 67, 206 “Talons and teeth,” 1, 169f, 190, 258, 260 Tang Qing, 138ff, 218f Tang Shu, 138ff, 193f Tang brothers, 165 Tao Fu, 141f, 214ff Tax collection, 171, 175, 180, 190. See also Tax fronting; Tax prompting Tax fronting, 183–93 Tax prompting, 178–83 passim Tax resistance, 180, 188f Theft, 205, 222–26 passim, 235 Theobald, Robin, 19 Three District Office, 234, 244 Three Fees, 231f; regulation of, 276–79 Three Fees Bureau, 231–35 passim, 244, 261 Tian Wenjing, 149, 203 Validation, 168f. See also Legitimacy Vandermeersch, Leon, 9 Village officers, 13, 124 Vollmer, Howard, 74 Wang Anshi, 3, 265 Wang Bing, 185ff Wang Bingcen, 87–93 passim, 98–101 passim, 292n Wang Chicheng, 160f, 197 Wang Fang, 219, 223 Wang Lun, 152 Wang Shangwu, 54f, 104 Wang Sheng, 160, 165f, 195 Wang Yeh-chien, 177 Watt, John, 7–8, 14, 40 Weber, Max, 7–13 passim, 19, 78, 248f, 290n White, Gordon, 20 Widow Chen, 87f, 92, 291–92n Widow Deng, 185f Works, Office of, 33, 47, 64f, 99, 105–18 passim, 211ff, 269, 273, 280 Wu Bingzhong, 64, 99, 105–18 passim, 273ff, 292n Wu Haishan, 54f, 104 Wu Hua, 219 Xiangbao, 178–89, 183, 186, 295n Xicheng District, 125f, 136, 147, 160f, 219ff, 223

Xin Shunzhong, 88f Xu Congdian, 106f Xu Linxian, 106, 108 Xu Ruitu, 106–18 passim, 273ff Xu Zanyuan, 106–15 passim, 273ff Xu Zhang, 214 Xu Zheng, 214f Yamen, as social sphere, 13, 79f, 101, 119ff, 257–58 Yamen court, 22, 130, 200, 227f, 238, 241, 255, 259. See also Magistrate’s court Yamen employees, see Clerks and runners Yamen practice, 248, 256. See also Informal administration Yamen temple, 59, 140, 208 “Yamen vermin,” 3, 142, 149, 162, 169, 196, 200 Yamen work, as occupation, 60, 234, 241, 249f; among clerks, 57f, 70–75; among runners, 133, 143, 149, 155, 159, 197 Yao En, 156f Yao Jinyuan, 239f Yuan Shouding, 55 Zelin, Madeleine, 178, 263 Zeng Mianqi, 106, 108 Zeng Tai, 185ff Zeng Weicheng, 66f, 106–9 passim, 113 Zeng Zhangling, 56f, 82, 99, 291n Zeng Ziyun, 106ff Zeng clan, 106 Zhang Feng, 31–39 passim, 41, 44–47 passim, 50, 148, 288n Zhang Pengcheng, 40, 53 Zhang Wucheng, 82, 103 Zhou Beiqing, 176 Zhao Erxun, 44, 57, 202 Zhao Haishan, 54 Zhao Jingru, 54f, 86 Zhou Liyuan, 152 Zhou Rong, 215 Zhou Shudao, 100 Zhou Xun, 236 Zhou Zhaoxing, 52f Zhu Rong, 156f Zhuang Yüyun, 230 Zou Lin, 219f

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reed, Bradly Ward Talons and teeth : county clerks and runners in the Qing Dynasty / Bradly W. Reed. p. cm. — (Law, society, and culture in China) Based on the author’s thesis (Ph. D.—University of California, Los Angeles). Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn 0-8047-3758-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. County officials and employees—China—History. 2. China— Politics and government—1644–1912. I. Title. II. Series. js7352.a2r44 2000 352.140951—dc21 99-41457 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free, recycled paper. Original printing 2000 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 09

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