1. Chiang-hsi nung-yeh ti-li (Nanchang, 1982), 159.

2. I follow the nomenclature of Timothy Brook, "The Spatial Structure of Ming Local Administration," Late Imperial China 6, no. 1 (1985): 1-55. The T'ai-ho data are from T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 1:24 ff.

3. An understanding reflected, for example, in Kuo Tzu-chang's statement of 1607 that T'ai-ho's "population [ hu-k'ou ] numbered over 250 li ." Cf. Kuo Tzu-chang, Ch'ing-lo kung i-shu (T'ai-ho, printed ed., 1882), 18. 15b-16b.

4. John Nieuhoff, The Embassy of Peter de Goyer and Jacob de Keyser from the Dutch East India Company to the Emperor of China in 1655 , in Voyages and Travels , ed. John Pinkerton (London, 1811), 7:243.

5. Yang Wan-li, Ch'eng-chai chi (Ssu-pu ts'ung-k'an ed.), 74.7b-8b (inscription for the Yuan-ming building).

6. Wang Chih, I-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 8th ser.), A6.13a-14a (preface to poems for the Ching-hsiu studio); Chi-an fu-chih (Kiangsi, 1875), 52.2ab (Chin Yu-tzu, poem on the studio). The quotation is from Wang Chih.

7. Hsiao Ch'i, Cheng-ku hsien-sheng chi (ms. ed.), C34a-36b (lament for Liu O).

8. Lo Ta-hung, Tzu-yuan wen-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 3.28a-29b (preface to poems for Magistrate Chang).

9. There are several examples of this movement. Around 1400, Tseng Shih-min, "tired of the disorder, filth, and noise" of the inner city, moved out to rural Yueh-kang (Moon Hill Ward, township 32). Mme Kuo (1353-1432), also a hater of city life, spent her declining years with her sons on their detached rural estates somewhere to the west. Hu Chih wrote that he lived for four years somewhere in the western suburb, but, disliking the "marketplace clamor" there, he moved in 1546 to an "out-of-the-way lane," where he had a garden: ''I wield the hoe, leaving the books behind. . .. Here the reddening oranges, frost-touched, are ready to drop, and the fragrant red hollyhocks embrace the sun." The references are Wang Chih, B5.37b-39a (description of farming joys in Yueh-kang) and A8.13b-15b (epitaph for one of Mme. Kuo's sons); Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), A5.3b-4b (poems on moving house). Also in the early 1400s, Wang Chih described in detail how Yang Ssu-ch'ing escaped the din and crowding of the inner city by buying a hundred mou of what had been garden just outside the city and building a large family compound there. Wang Chih, A1.39b-41b (inscription for the Chi-ch'ing hall).

10. Wang Chih, A2.33b-35a (inscription for the Keng-tu hall); Hsiao Tzu, Shang-yueh chü-shih chi (woodblock ed., 1494), 14.12b-14a (epitaph for Hsiao Mu, 1368-1432); Wang Chih, A6.44b-46a (departing message for Tseng Yung-li, i.e., Tseng Chin, 1380-1458) and B33.9a-10b (epitaph for Tseng Chin).

11. See the detailed soil map accompanying Wu Pen-chung et al., "T'ai-ho ch'ü t'u-jang," Chiang-hsi sheng ti-chih tiao-ch'a-so ti-chih hui-k'an , no. 6 (July 1941): 157-88.

12. Described in Dardess, "A Ming Landscape," 308-11.

13. Ch'en Hsun, Fang-chou wen-chi (printed ed., 1593), A5.17a-18a (preface to the Shuang-ch'i Cheng genealogy).

14. Dirk Bodde, "Marshes in Mencius and Elsewhere," in Ancient China: Studies in Early Civilisation , ed. David T. Roy and T. H. Tsien (Hong Kong, 1978), 157-66.

15. J. G. Hawkes, The Diversity of Crop Plants (Harvard, 1983), 83-87.

16. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng shih-chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 8.41b (poem for Lo Hui-ch'ing).

17. Liang Ch'ien, Po-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 6th ser.), 6. 13b-14b (preface to poems for Elder Yao).

18. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 6.18b-20b (inscription on the repair of the T'ien-i yuan, T'ai-ho county).

19. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 1.36b-37a (poem, on T'ao-yuan [a ward in township 12]).

20. Ibid., 5.53ab (poem, late on the tenth day of the twelfth month . . . we viewed vegetable plots by a house).

21. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 19.17b-18a (poem, felicitations for Hsiao Yu-jung).

22. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 7-45b (poem, looking into a garden).

23. Ibid., 2.23b-24a (poem, looking at West Garden).

24. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A7.1ab (poem, on returning home from the Hai-chih ssu on an autumn day).

25. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 8.50a (poem, on the road at Ho-ch'i).

26. Ibid., 4.36ab (poem, stripping ramie).

27. Wang Chih, B37.35a-36a (appreciation of a painting of radish in the Wei-ts'ai studio). The radish name here is lu-fu .

28. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 2.7ab (poems on living in poverty); 2.7b-9b (poems on garden life); 7.34a-35a (poems on looking after the melons and vegetables in the east garden).

29. Ibid., 6.35a (poem, again on the peasant house in the old ward).

30. Ibid., 2.5b-6a (poem, crossing South Drain to visit a friend).

31. Ibid., 2.7ab; 6.30b-31a (poem, field family at Shui-k'ou); 6.35b (poem, on my delight at the arrival of the family slave [ chia-t'ung ]); 8.16b (poem, mountain family at Shih-t'ang).

32. Chou Shih-hsiu, Ch'u-jao chi (SKCSCP ed., 4th set), 3.4ab (poems on field families).

33. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 1.36b-37a (poem, on T'ao-yuan).

34. Ibid., 8.16b.

35. Ibid., 8.31b (poem, observing the wild fire).

36. Ibid., 8.26a (poem, clearing after rain).

37. As a retired imperial official, an aged Wang Chih toured his rice fields by sedan chair. His sons marshaled "several hundred tenants and bondsmen [ tien-p'u ]" to transplant the shoots, and all these laborers sang to the beat of a gong while they worked. It was a gala occasion that lasted the whole day. Cf. Yin Chih, Chien-chai so-chui lu (1507; reprint, Taipei, 1969), 156.

38. Wang Chen, Nung shu (SKCSCP ed., pieh-chi ), 11.13b ff.

39. Chiang-hsi fu-i ch'üan-shu (1611; reprint, Taipei, 1970), 4:1385 ff.

40. John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven, 1984), 45-47.

41. John L. Buck, Chinese Farm Economy (Nanking, 1930), 17-18; Jacob A. Hoefer and Patricia Jones Tsuchitani, Animal Agriculture in China: A Report of the Visit of the CSCPRC Animal Sciences Delegation (Washington, 1980), 10, 77-92.

42. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao , 16.17ab (poem, song of the Hsueh-ku lou).

43. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 4.35ab (poem, lament for the cow).

44. Chou Shih-hsiu, 3.4ab (poems on field families).

45. Ibid., 2.6b-7a (herder's song).

46. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 10.22b-25b (preface to the Hsiao genealogy).

47. Roger B. Swain, Field Days: Journal of an Itinerant Biologist (New York, 1983), 1-8.

48. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 1.36b-37a (poem, on T'ao-yuan).

49. Chou Shih-hsiu, 3.4ab; Liu Sung, shih-chi , 2.19b (poems).

50. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao , 19a.13a-14a (poem and commentary); Ch'en Hsun, poems section, 3.16a-18a (eight scenes from the library at Pei-ch'i); Chou Shih-hsiu, 2.7ab (wood collector's song). Quotations are from Chou.

51. Yang Shih-ch'i, Tung-li ch'üan-chi (SKCSCP ed., 7th ser.), A2.12b-14a (inscription for the Ch'iao-hsueh chai).

52. Chou Shih-hsiu, 4.36a-39a (biography of the southern wood collector who found the true Way).

53. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 8.14b (poem, visit to the mountain home of a secluded gentleman of the Hu surname).

54. Hua Shu, ed., Ming shih hsuan-tsui (reprint, Taipei, 1974), 4.24a (Hsiao Tzu [d. 1464], poem about his home in Nan-kao).

55. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 7.15a (poem, accompanying Shu Po-yuan over the bridge from Shuang-chiang-k'ou).

56. Liang Ch'ien, 6.55a-56b (message for Yen Hsuan-yen).

57. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 6.51a (poem, on the road at Ho-ch'i on the ninth day).

58. Ibid., 6.51b (poem, on the old fisherman's secluded home at Ho-ch'i).

59. Ibid., 5.91b (poem, the gardens and ponds of the Hsiao of Yun-t'ing Canton).

60. Ibid., 5.91b (poem); Chi-an fu-chih , 50.24b-25a and 53.32b.

61. Liang Ch'ien, 16.14b-16a (colophon to an epitaph).

62. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 2.14b (poem on hunting dogs).

63. Chou Shih-hsiu, 4.32b-33a (accounts of three righteous acts).

64. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 8.20b (poem, night alarm).

65. Ibid., 4.44ab (poem, cow and tiger).

66. Ou-yang To, Ou-yang Kung-chien kung i-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 18.6a-8a (epitaph for Hsiao Hsien, I472-1539).

67. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (Kiangsi, 1879), 19.48a-50a (Yang Chia-chen, letter to Vice Magistrate Chu about canton troops).

68. Ch'en Mo, Hai-sang chi (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser), 2.29a (poem, on a painting of fishing joys).

69. Yang Shih-ch'i, B62.43a-44b (poem, fishing in autumn).

70. Chou Shih-hsiu, 2.6a (fisherman's song).

71. Yang Shih-ch'i, B43.14a-15a (biography of the fisherman of the rapids). The word "rapids" refers to the infamous shoals of the Shih-pa-t'an on the Kan River south of T'ai-ho. Yen Tsung-tan's boat was probably a freighter.

72. Wang Chih, A5.5b-7a (preface to funeral poems for Liu Chung-kao [Liu Ang]); Yang Shih-ch'i, B32.11b-13a (epitaph).

73. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 6.29ab (poem, Lang-ch'uan).

74. Tsao-chih shih-hua (Shanghai, 1983), 173; T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1879), 2.22b ff.

75. Liu Sung, shih-chi 4.58b-59a (poem, on gypsum).

76. Ming shih-lu (reprint, Taiwan, 1965), 113:7052, 7134-37, 7155.

77. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 6.4a-6a (description of Wa-ch'üan).

78. Chi-an fu-chih , 50.57b (T'an Sheng, poem on popular customs).

79. Yang Shih-ch'i, B50.1a-8a (record of tomb visits) and B53.4b-5b, 14b-15b (letters to family members).

80. Chi-an fu-chih , 53.81a.

81. Wang Chih, B5.10a-12a (description of Shang-yuan-t'ang); T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1879), 2.22b ff.

82. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 14.12a-13b.

83. Ou-yang Te, Ou-yang Nan-yeh hsien-sheng (Woodblock ed., 1558), 17.19b-21a (preface to poems on Sung-kang [Pine Hill], dated 1533).

84. Edward Schafer, "T'ang," in Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives , ed. K. C. Chang (New Haven, 1977), 130; Li Hui-lin, "The Domestication of Plants in China: Ecogeographical Considerations," in The Origins of Chinese Civilization , ed. David N. Keightley (Berkeley, 1983), 43.

85. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 6.51ab (poem, on Liu Ken's mountain estate).

86. Ibid., 3.34b-35b.

87. Ibid., 4.31b-32a (poem, picking wild vegetables).

88. Ibid., 2.5b-6a.

89. Ibid., 2.1b-2a (poem about a reclusive garden waterer) and 2.10b-11a (poem, distress over the drought).

90. Ibid., 4.71a (poem, in the east garden, wild amaranth spreads of itself in the autumn rain).

91. Ibid., 6.15b (poem, staying with the Wen of Wu-ch'i on an overcast night).

92. Ibid., 7.16b (poem, seeing people take Echinochloa crus-galli as I passed below a mountain); 7.46a (poem, crossing the Kan from Shui-nan on the eighth month, eleventh day). See also Spencer C. H. Barrett, "Crop Mimicry in Weeds," Economic Botany 37 (1983): 255-82.

93. Wang Chih, A2.16a-23b (description of a trip to Mount Wu).

94. Chi-an fu-chih , 50.54ab (Wang Chih, poem on a painting of Han-lin Senior Compiler Hsiao [Tzu]'s thatched hall at Nan-ch'i).

95. Wang Chih, B8.44a-45a (preface to poems on eight scenes at Lu-kang).

96. Ibid., B3.26a-27b (description of the detached estate at Nan-yuan).

97. Liang Ch'ien, 4.42b-44a (inscription on the repair of the Lung-ch'eng ssu).

98. Ibid., 4.41a-42b (inscription for a physician's retreat).

99. Wang Chih, A2.38b-40a (inscription for a group of paintings).

100. Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, Lung-chin-yuan chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 1.16b-20a (biography of Kuo Ch'ing-k'uang [Kuo Hsu]).

101. Lo Ta-hung, 10.26a-36a (epitaph); Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu (1594; reprint, Taipei, 1965), 8:5057-58 (Tsou Yuan-piao, epitaph). The quotation is from Lo.

102. Shih Jun-chang, Hsueh-yü t'ang wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 3d ser.), 14. 16a-17b (description of a trip to Mount Yü-hua).

103. Wang Chih, A1.6b-8a (inscription for the altar and brick building on Mount Wang).

104. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 5:2128-35 (Wang Yü-k'uo, description of Tzu-yao shan [i.e., Mount Wang]).

105. Hsiao Shih-wei, Hsiao-chai jih-chi , in Li-tai ming-jen jih-chi hsuan , ed. Teng Chin-shen (Canton, 1984), 145.

106. Shih Jun-chang, 14.10a-11a (description of a tour of the Ch'un-fou Garden).

107. Chi-an fu-chih , 5.19a-20a (Hsiao Shih-wei, excerpted account).

108. Frederic Wakeman Jr., "Romantics, Stoics, and Martyrs in Seven-teenth-Century China," Journal of Asian Studies 43 (August 1984): 633.

109. Ch'ien Ch'ien-i, Mu-chai ch'u-hsueh chi (Ssu-pu ts'ung-k'an ed.), 28.28b-29b (preface to Hsiao Po-yü's [Hsiao Shih-wei's] commentary on the Awakening of Faith ). For the main text, see Yoshito S. Hakeda, trans., The Awakening of Faith Attributed to Asvaghosha (New York, 1967).

110. Hsiao Shih-wei, Hsiao-chai jih-chi , 146-47.

111. H. L. Li, The Garden Flowers of China (New York, 1959), 123.

112. Shih Jun-chang, poems section, 4.6a (passing T'ai-ho County) and 6.15b-16a (on the road from Chi-chou to T'ai-ho).

113. Chi-an fu-chih , 20.35b-39b; 47-73a-74b.

114. Shih Jun-chang, 14.10a-11a.

115. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 5:2147 (Wang Yü-k'uo, description of a tour of Lake T'ao). Fang I-chih's visits in T'ai-ho have been detailed in Yü Ying-shih, Fang I-chih wan-chieh k'ao (Hong Kong, 1972), and Jen Tao-pin, Fang I-chih nien-p'u (Hofei, 1983).

116. Shih Jun-chang, poems section, 26.25b-26a (poems on the Ch'un-fou Garden), 7.9b (the lotus pond in the Tun-p'u), and 18.21ab (song about the T'ai-ho vodka); Chi-an fu-chih , 51.1ab (Wei Hsi, poem); Chi-an fu-chih , 53.92b-93a (Wang Shih-chen [1634-1711], remark about the Hsiao wealth). The quotation is from Shih, 26.25b-26a.

117. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 5:2147-49 (Wang Yü-k'uo, description of a tour of Lake T'ao).

118. Chi-an fu-chih , 3.11b-12a (Wei Hsi, account).

1. The relevant literature here is enormous. For a summary statement, see Philip C. C. Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988 (Stanford, 1990), 329-31.

2. See especially Joseph P. McDermott, "Charting Blank Spaces and Disputed Regions: The Problem of Sung Land Tenure," Journal of Asian Studies 44 (November 1984): 13-41. Brief descriptions of local conditions can be found in Robert P. Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-Chou, Chiang-Hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung (Cambridge, 1986), 22-23, for Fu-chou Prefecture, Kiangsi, in the Sung; and Jerry Dennerline, The Chia-ting Loyalists: Confucian Leadership and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century China (Yale, 1981), 88-89, 264-41, 272-73, for Chia-ting County in the Yangtze delta in the Ming. Dennerline (p. xv) has also had to maneuver around "the lack of any detailed data on local agriculture, land ownership, family economies, and the like," and he, understandably, prefers analyzing personal networks to deploying class terms such as "landlord" and "peasant." Hui-chou Prefecture, in present-day Anhwei Province, is exceptionally rich in such local documentation; some of the literature is noted in Evelyn S. Rawski, "Research Themes in Ming-Qing Socioeconomic History—The State of the Field,'' Journal of Asian Studies 50 (February, 1991): 84-111. Tenurial landlordism from an econometric perspective is treated in Chao, Man and Land in Chinese History (Stanford, 1986), chap. 8.

3. This is the thrust of Joseph W. Esherick and Mary B. Rankin, eds., Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance (Berkeley, 1990). See especially the editors' concluding remarks, pp. 305-45.

4. Robert M. Hartwell, "Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750-1550," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42, no. 2 (December 1982): 395.

5. For the earlier irrigation work and its periodic repair, see Chiang-hsi t'ung-chih (Kiangsi, 1881), 63.7a; Liu Yueh-shen, Shen-chai Liu hsien-sheng wen-chi (reprint, Taipei, 1970), 469-71 (epitaph for Li I-fei, 1259-1336); Wang Chih, I-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 8th ser.), B6.30b-32a (preface to poems for the Yuan-ming lou); Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser), B3.6a-8a (inscription for the Tun-tien t'ang) and B10.1a-3a (epitaph for Hu Hsi, 1498-1580). Three inscriptions, dating to 1052, 1534, and the eighteenth century, have recently been found. The 1052 inscription includes an engraved map. See Chung-kuo li-shih-hsueh nien-chien (Beijing, 1989), 438. For the four-teenth-century irrigation work, see Wu Ssu-tao, Ch'un-ts'ao-chai chi (Ssu-ming ts'ung shu ed.), 10.5b-7a (epitaph for the builder's son, Liu Jen-shou, 1304-65); Wang Chih, B17.36a-38a (preface to the genealogy of the K'an-ch'i Liu). The agricultural writers were literati from the Tseng common-descent group of T'ai-ho city in the Sung, who were still prominent in Ming times, although their interest in the subject had lapsed. For a discussion of them and their books, see Sudo Yoshiyuki, Sodai keizaishi kenkyu (Tokyo, 1962), 24, 51-53. The text of Tseng An-chih's Ho p'u (Guide to the grains) of 1094, which was long lost, has been rediscovered in a local genealogy; see Chung-kuo li-shih-hsueh nien-chien (Beijing, 1987), 326.

6. Population figures are from Chi-an fu-chih (Kiangsi, 1875), 15.7b-8a; Chiang-hsi t'ung-chih (1881), 47.15ab; and Chung-kuo 1982 nien jen-k'ou p'u-ch'a tzu-liao (Beijing, 1985), 178.

7. Recent conditions in T'ai-ho County have been so bad that they bear little relation to past history. The county has suffered serious soil erosion: between 1957 and 1979, there was a 15 percent loss of cropland; and despite the likelihood that only the worst land has been removed from cultivation, T'ai-ho's per- mou yield of foodstuffs is among the lowest in the province. Irrigation systems, so prominent in the Sung and Ming, have all but disappeared. Sugarcane and sweet potatoes have supplanted rice and other traditional crops. T'ai-ho's 1982 population, which looks large enough by historical standards, is said to be insufficient to meet labor demands. Far from exporting population, either permanently or seasonally, as it did in the middle and late Ming, the county (and, indeed, much of the province) now has to import labor on a seasonal basis. See Judith Banister, China's Changing Population (Stanford, 1987), and especially Chiang-hsi nung-yeh ti-li (Nanchang, 1982).

Some rural people were too poor to consume rice every day. Hu Chih's grandfather, Hu Hsing-kung (1469-1527), an impoverished primary teacher, was for a while reduced to a diet of "taro and mixed cabbage and beans," but he studied so intently that he didn't mind the hunger. See Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A8.21b (generational account of the Hu family).

8. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 10.5a-6b (message for Wu Ming-li, continuing on his journey).

9. Wang Chih, A2.23b-25b (inscription for the Tun-pen t'ang).

10. Ibid., B6.34b-36b (message to T'ai-ho magistrate Cheng, on his departure). Cheng Lin was appointed magistrate in 1416.

11. Ibid., B18.14a-15b (preface to poems for Magistrate Shen, about to take office [in T'ai-ho]). Shen Yü was appointed in 1427.

12. Ch'en Hsun, Fang-chou wen-chi (printed ed., 1593), A4.22b-23b (message for Vice Magistrate Ch'iu Chung-yeh, returning to T'ai-ho). Ch'iu's tenure in T'ai-ho was 1440-46.

13. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 14.12a-13b (postscript to an inscription for the Kuo family retreat).

14. In Shih-kang (Stone Hill Ward, township to) lived Liu Sung's mother's people, the Shih-kang Hsiao, whose lands produced peaches, pears, mandarin oranges, persimmons, cabbage, leek, melon, edible bamboo, taro, and rice, together with pond-bred fish and livestock (zebu cattle and goats). Liu Sung described in detail the formalities and orderly routines observed by these people, and remarked that "inwardly I used to envy all this, since my own home was poor by comparison." He went on to say that "once I heard the elders talk about Hsiao Pao-sun, who was an accounts keeper and the son of Hsiao Ssu-lien, a facilitated degree holder of the late Sung [thirteenth century]. He was one of the richest men in the county. For several tens of li around his home, all of the gardens, fields, mountains, and forests were his, none of it sold to an outside surname." He ended by noting that this gigantic estate was later twice damaged in civil wars, and rebuilt, though on a reduced scale. See Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 10.22b-25b (preface to the Hsiao genealogy).

15. Wang Chih, A1.31b-33b (description of the joys of farming).

16. Ibid., B5.20a-21b (inscription for the detached estate at Ch'ang-ch'i).

17. For example, Chao Kang and Ch'en Chung-i, "Chung-kuo li-shih-shang-ti tzu-ying ti-chu," Shih-huo yueh-k'an , n.s., 9, nos. 5-6 (October 1979): 178 (full article, 169-193).

18. Ch'en Hsun, A3.37b-39a (preface to poems on the detached estate at Lung-men).

19. Liang Lan, Ch'i-le shih-chi (SKCSCP ed., 8th ser.), 8b (poem, on enjoying myself in the western garden plots) and 32b-33a (poem, on coming home from farming). Liang Lan's son, Liang Ch'ien (1366-1418), expanded his father's garden and diversified its produce. Out a second-story studio window, itself shaded dark by pine and bamboo, one could now view water caltrop planted in a willow-ringed pond. Nearby, a stone path transected an herb garden. From the doorway of the house one could hear fish splash and orioles twitter. "My home," wrote Liang Ch'ien, "is in T'ai-ho's Willow Creek, where there are several tens of mou of garden plots. There are several thousand bamboo, hundreds of peach and plum trees, and tens of beds growing rape-turnip, cabbage, ginger, sugar cane, cress [ Nasturtium montanum ], black mustard [ Bras-sica juncea ], barberry [ Lycium chinense ], and chrysanthemum. . . . And not even the costliest delicacies can surpass the lettuce gathered in the spring snow, or the leek harvested after the frost." Cf. Ch'en T'ien, ed., Ming-shih chi-shih (reprint, Taipei, 1971), 2:716 (Liang Ch'ien, poem on the Ai-ts'ui studio) and 2:270 (Liang Ch'ien, poem on garden life); Liang Ch'ien, Po-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 6th ser.), 7.18b-19a (preface to the Le-p'u poems). The quotation is from this last source.

20. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng shih-chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 3.34b-35b (poem, on a painting of fall colors in a plain); Hsu Hung, ed., Ming ming-ch'en wan-yen lu (SKCSCP ed., 6th ser.), 12.1a-4b (Yin Chih, biography of Liu Sung).

21. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 2.11b (poem, expressing my mind).

22. Ibid., 2.12a (poem, visiting a field-father).

23. Ibid., 8.25b (poem, rising early at a peasant house) and 2.60b-61a (poem, returning from observing the harvest below the mountain, in the sixth month, late in the day).

24. Ibid., 2.67ab (poem, in gratitude for the field-father's invitation to have some rice-beer).

25. Ibid, 8.25b (poem, observing the transplanting of rice shoots).

26. Ch'en Hsun, A8.3a-4b (epitaph).

27. Chou Shih-hsiu, Ch'u-jao chi (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 6.19a-21b (description of eight inspiring scenes at Chü-kang). The contrast of the Chou home base is with the densely clustered, citylike living arrangements of other rural families, such as the Hsiao of Jen-ch'eng Ward (township 25), the Liu of Chuan-chiang Ward (township 52), the Cheng of Shuang-ch'i in Ta-iui Ward (township 35), or the Chou of Ch'i-t'ien Ward (township 51). See Wang Chih, B3.49a-50b (inscription for the Chi-shan t'ang); Yin Ch'ang-lung, Yin Na-an hsien-sheng i-kao (ms. ed.), ch. 4, no p. (preface to the Hsiao genealogy); Chou Shih-hsiu, 5.43a-44b (departing message for Assistant Instructor Liu Chung-heng, en route to Shih-ch'eng); Ch'en. Hsun, A5.17a-18a (preface to the Shuang-ch'i Cheng genealogy); Lo Ch'in-shun, Cbeng-an ts'un-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 2.1a-2b (inscription for the Ying-hsi building) and 2.16b-18a (inscription for the Shih-te hall); T'ai-ho hsien-chih (Kiangsi, 1879), 24.44a-45a (Hu Kuang, inscription for the Kao-ming building); Wang Chih, B6.29a-30b (postscript to Chou Chih-kang's Kao-ming lou poems) and B6.30b-32a (preface to the Yuan-ming lou poems).

28. Liu Sung, shih-chi , 2.19b (poem, on a field family).

29. Chou Shih-hsiu, 1.17b (poem, on a field family).

30. Ibid., 3.4ab (poems on field families).

31. Yang Shih-ch'i, Tung-li ch'üan-chi (SKCSCP ed., 7th ser.), A16.11b-13a (epitaph).

32. Ibid., A16.11b-13a and A17.5b-8a (epitaph for Hsiao Lien).

33. Ibid., B30.11a-12b (epitaph for Hsiao Tzu); Ch'en Hsun, A5.8a-11a (preface to the T'ao-yuan Hsiao genealogy). Liang Ch'ien, 16.4ab (colophon to the genealogy) and 4.1a-2b (inscription for their academy); Wang Chih, A5.12a-13b (preface to the genealogy) and A3.2b-4a (inscription for the l-shout'ang); Yang Shih-ch'i, B23.22a-23a (postscript to the Hsiao genealogy), B1.16b-18b (inscription for the Ching-i t'ang), B3.1a-2b (inscription for the Wan-i chai), B4.13b-14b (inscription for the Ching-yueh t'ang), A4.Sab (preface to the Shih-t'ai poems), and A9.15b-18a (colophon to the Lucky Fungus poems and essays in honor of the Hsiao); Lo Ch'in-shun, 8.2a-4a (preface to poems for the Yung-ch'ing t'ang).

34. Hsiao Tzu, Shang-yueh chü-shih chi (woodblock ed., 1494), 18.16b-18b (epitaph).

35. Wang Chih, B33.38b-40b (epitaph).

36. Ibid., B28.34b-36b (epitaph). In the Yung-lo era, some of T'ai-ho's tax captains were required to do more than collect taxes. The emperor's building and expansion programs required some to build residences in the new capital (Peking) and others to superintend logging teams in the wild mountains of southern Hunan. See Wang Chih, B27.37a-39b (epitaph for Tuan Feng, 1365-1441, of Fishpond Lane in the western suburb), B28.26a-28b (epitaph for Kuo Tung-wei, 1393-1459, of Ch'ien-ch'i [or Ao-t'ou], township 62), and B28.24a-26a (epitaph for Yang Meng-pien's son, township 43); Ch'en Hsun, A7.45b-47b (epitaph for Yueh Hsu, 1390-1447, of Ho-ch'i Ward, township 62). None of these rich T'ai-ho men forced to live in Peking are mentioned in Sato Man-abu's detailed study of the whole policy in Toyo gakuho 64, nos. 1-2 (1983): 69-98. The heat, pestilence, and corruption of the Hunan logging camps are discussed in Hsiao Tzu, 19.6b-7b (biography of Hsiao Pang-yen, of Huang-kang, perhaps in township 67); Wang Chih, B26.54b-57a (epitaph for Tseng Ku, 1380-1437, of Shang-mo Ward, township 28); Yang Shih-ch'i, B46. 1a-4b (preface to a lament for P'eng Pai-lien, 1386-1433).

37. Ou-yang Te, Ou-yang Nan-yeh hsien-sheng wen-chi (woodblock ed., 1558), 20.11b-12b (preface to a revision of the Sha-li Chang genealogy).

38. Ch'en Hsun, A5.32a-33b (preface to the Chang-ch'i Hsiao genealogy).

39. Wang Chih, A8.7b-9b and B28.8b-10b (two epitaphs for Wang T'ien-ti).

40. Hsiao Tzu, 18.15a-16b (epitaph for Hsiao Chi).

41. Yang Shih-ch'i, B1.16b-18b (inscription for the Ching-i t'ang). Yü Yao was from Fukien Province; see P'u-t'ien hsien-chih (1879; reprint, Taipei, 1968), 5.47.

42. Ming shih-lu (Taiwan, 1965), 25:1323-28; Wan-li T'ai-ho chih (1579; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 331 ff.; Wang Chih, B33.56a-59a (epitaph for Yang Tzu-p'ei, 1391-1455, of township 62). Yang Tzu-p'ei, very distantly related to Yang Shih-ch'i, could donate only fifteen hundred piculs. For that, his name was engraved on a stela. His family was already exempted from services because his son was a government Confucian instructor.

43. Ming shih-lu , 30:3386.

44. Ch'en Hsun, A9.35a-36b (epitaph for Chi-an prefect Li Chi).

45. Ming shih-lu , 33:4767-68.

46. Ibid., 34:5096.

47. Ibid., 35:5532; Wan-li T'ai-ho chih , 334-36.

48. Liu Ch'iu, Liang-ch'i wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 11th ser.), 4.25b (inscription for the Chung-shun t'ang).

49. Yang Shih-ch'i, B53.18a-23a (family letters).

50. Wang Chih, B33.48a-50a (epitaph). In the seventeenth century, Yen Shu-ching did the same thing; cf. Kuo T'ing-hsun, ed., Pen-ch'ao fen-sheng jen-wu k'ao (1622; reprint, Taipei, 1971), 19:6279-81.

51. Yang Shih-ch'i, B40.26b-28b (epitaph for Wang's wife, née Hsiao, 1333-1412).

52. Hsiao Tzu, 16.31a-32a (account of conduct).

53. Wang Chih, B32.14a-16a (epitaph). One great-grandson, Lo Chün, won his chin-shih degree in 1448 and ended his career as a prefect (4A); unfortunately, nothing is known of any other descendants or of the disposition of the original estate.

54. Wang Chih, B17.7b-9a (preface to funerary poems); Yang Shih-ch'i, A18.23b-25a (epitaph).

55. Wang Chih, A8.24b-27a; Ch'en Hsun, A7.43a-45a (epitaphs for Lung Ts'an, 1384-1447); Wang Chih, B31.39b-41b (epitaph for Lung Shu-chao); Ch'en Hsun, B4.27a-28b (epitaph for Lung Kuei, i.e., Shu-hsuan). The quotation is from this last source.

56. Wang Chih, B24.38a-41b (epitaph for Lung Wen); Hsu Yu-chen, Wu-kung chi (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 4.60a-61b (departing message for Lung Shih-hsi, i.e., Lung Kuang); Yueh Cheng, Lei-po kao (SKCSCP ed., 3d ser.), 5.5a-6b (departing message for Lung Shu-tan). The Lung marriage connections with T'ai-ho's high elites were many: Lung Wen's son Chain was married to one of Wang Chih's granddaughters, and Lung Kuang's younger sister was married to Yang Shih-ch'i's second son; and further generational marriage interconnections could easily be discovered. Lung Wen bribed his way into a promotion and transfer to Nanking at the time of the palace coup of 1457; see Ming shih-lu , 37:6419.

57. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 13.4b-5b (postscript to the Lü family record of equal inheritance).

58. Ou-yang Te, 25.19a-22a (epitaph).

59. Wang Chih, A6.5b-7b (epitaph for Liang Hun).

60. Yang Shih-ch'i, B39.17b-22a (epitaph for Ch'en Yung).

61. Wang Chih, B27.16a-18a (epitaph for Wang Yen-jui).

62. Wu K'uan, P'ao-weng chia-ts'ang chi (Ssu-ming ts'ung shu ed.), 77.3a-5b; and Li Tung-yang, Li Tung-yang chi (new ed., Changsha, 1984), 3:358 (epitaphs for Hsiao Chen).

63. Yang Shih-ch'i, A4.19b-20b (message for Ou-yang Yun-hsuan, on his departure); Ou-yang To, Ou-yang Kung-chien kung i-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 17.1a-2b (epitaph for Ou-yang Yung); Ho Liang-chün, Ho Han-lin chi (1565; reprint, Taipei, 1971), 2:753-63 (epitaph for Ou-yang Mien and his wife); Kandice J. Hauf, "The Jiangyou Group: Culture and Society in Sixteenth-Century China" (Ph.D diss., Yale University, 1987), 147. The quotation is from Ou-yang To.

64. Ou-yang Te, 6.1a-14b (family letters); Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A10.23b-25a.

65. Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, Lung-chin-yuan chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 2.48b-50b. The governor was Weng P'u, for whose career see Chiao Hung, Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu (1594; reprint, Taipei, 1965), 3:2043-44. The prefect was T'ao Ta-nien; Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, 3.44a-46b (an inscription). Apparently only by slow degrees were T'ai-ho's dikes and reservoirs all counted and assessed for tax, however. The definitive count was not made earlier than 1581-82, perhaps not until as late as 1598. The county budget of 1610 lists reservoirs only, some seventeen thousand mou in extent, and these reservoirs appear to have been taxed at a very favorable rate, the same as the rate for the lowest grade of paddy. See Cbiang-hsi fu-i ch'üan-shu (1611; reprint, Taipei, 1970), 4:1385-1430.

66. Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, 5.63a-68b (letter to Inspector Wei Ch'ien-chi [1509-60] discussing famine relief methods). A major famine in 1637 was handled very differently; the magistrate prevailed upon wealthier people to contribute funds toward the purchase of gruel, and feeding stations were opened in Buddhist and Taoist temples where needy people lined up a thousand at a time to receive doles. Cf. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 7:2922-27 (Yang Chia-chen, "What I heard and saw about famine relief in 1637").

67. The major study of the inflow of foreign silver into China is William S. Atwell, "International Bullion Flows and the Chinese Economy, Circa 1530-1650," Past and Present , no. 95 (1982): 68-90.

68. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 11.23a-24b (preface to the genealogy of the Heng-kang Yuan).

69. Wang Li, Lin-yuan wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 1st ser.), 12.1a-2a (lament for Wang Kung-min).

70. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 17.27a-28a (epitaph).

71. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A26.14a-16b (epitaph).

72. Ibid., B10.11a-12b (epitaph).

73. Louis J. Gallagher, S.J., trans., China in the Sixteenth Century: The Jour-hals of Matthew Ricci, 1583-1610 (New York, 1953), 244-47; Matthieu Ricci, S.J., and Nicolas Trigault, S.J., Histoire de l'éxpedition cbrétienne au royaume de la Chine, 1582-1610 (Bellarmin, 1978), 700 (index).

74. Lo Ta-hung, Tzu-yuan wen-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 5.42a-44a (preface to the seventieth birthday [celebration] for my in-law, Wu Hsiang-shan). Lo Ta-hung was a famous scholar-official from Chi-shui County, north of T'ai-ho. Wu's granddaughter was married to one of Lo Ta-hung's nephews.

75. It was related that the Wu had run a local ferry since the Sung era. They funded the construction and repair of the ferryboats from an endowment in rice paddies. A family of the Liu surname held a hereditary contract, sealed with the county seal, to serve the Wu as boatmen; but at some point in the Ming era, the Wu sold the field endowment to someone surnamed Lo. One day, boatman Liu Chang came weeping to one of Wu Hsiang-shan's sons and begged him to resume the family obligation of managing the ferry. So "a thousand men of the six [subbranches] of the Wu lineage contributed funds to extend the field endowment, build boats, renovate the boathouse, and restore the Liu to their hereditary ferry service." Lo Ta-hung, 7.23a-24a (inscription for a stela at the ferry crossing).

76. That did not rule out elite tax cheating, as evidenced by the perennial problem of "empty grain" ( hsu-liang ), i.e., rice tax the registers showed as due but unpaid or uncollectible, owing to one or another form of ownership concealment ( kuei-chi, fei-chi ). A few citations of rice-tax shortfalls survive in the literature: 15,000 piculs in 1512; 4,942 in 1533; 1,659 in 1539; 1,950 in 1587. The total rice tax (according to the county budget of 1610) was 34,760.6996 piculs. Except in 1512, therefore, cheating resulted in marginal losses of 5 percent to 14 percent. In each of the cases cited, the magistrates took remedial action.

77. Ou-yang To, 5.10a-11b (preface to the revised comprehensive tax registers of T'ai-ho); Chang Mou, epitaph for Magistrate Lu Chen (1464-1519), in Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 3:1705-8.

78. Ou-yang To, 17.10a-12b.

79. Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, 5.75b-76b (epitaph).

80. Ou-yang To, 1.4a-5b (account of an investigation into empty grain in T'ai-ho). In 1539, Kuo Yuan-ch'ang and four other upright locals discovered another tax shortfall, and the magistrate forced the ward scribes to gather all the household heads together so as to eliminate fraud case by case. The ward scribes' work was then audited by the "hundred and ten township scribes." The end product was a new master register in which "the households' [quota of taxes] matched the tithings, the tithings matched the wards, the wards matched the townships, and the townships the county." These registers were then printed and posted where everyone could see them. See Ou-yang To, 5.10a-11b (preface to the collected registers).

81. Ou-yang Te, 25.25b-29a (epitaph).

82. Ou-yang To, 17.16a-17a (epitaph).

83. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A26.6a-7b (epitaph).

84. Ibid., A26.20a-31a (biography).

85. Ibid., B10.11a-12b (epitaph).

86. Kuo Tzu-chang, Pin-i sheng Yueh-ts'ao (printed ed., 1590), 6.23b-26a (biography).

87. Wang Shih-hsing, Kuang-chih i (reprint, Beijing, 1981), 81.

88. Timothy Brook, "The Spatial Structure of Ming Local Administration," Late Imperial China 6, no. 1 (1985): 38.

89. Just how lineage segments mapped onto fiscal households is better known in other localities in China. T'ai-ho lacked a statistically minded native son like Yeh Ch'un-chi, who made detailed studies of this matter in his native Hui-an County, Fukien, in the sixteenth century. See Yeh Ch'un-chi, Shih-tung chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.).

90. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1879), 24.40b-42b (Tsou Yuan-piao, inscription for the Ch'en ancestral temple).

91. Ou-yang Te, 20.14b-16b (preface to seventieth birthday honors for the virtuous widow Hsiao).

92. Quoted in T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 2:569-70. The extant gazetteer of 1579 is lacking the first five chüan , in which the quoted text would have appeared.

93. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 2:558.

94. See Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Cen-tury Ming China (Cambridge, 1974), 109-112.

95. Chang Huang, T'u-shu pien (1613; reprint; Taipei, 1971), 24:10188-202. The same effect was noted in Hunan around 1600, where Hung Mao-te wrote that "without ting all the tax is laid on the land. The people see the land as poison and abandon it as quickly as possible." Cf. Peter C. Perdue, Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan, 1500-1850 (Harvard, 1987), 62.

96. Kuo Tzu-chang, Ch'ing-lo kung i-shu (T'ai-ho, printed ed., 1882), 31.15a-18a (family instructions).

97. Chi-an fu-chih (Kiangsi, 1875), 15.43a-44a (Tseng T'ung-heng, record of field investigation). The boast was not wholly empty; the results of the survey ended up in the county budget of 1610, whose areal totals for rice fields coincide rather well with the rice fields shown on a detailed U.S. Army map of 1954. From 1607 to 1613, when P'u Chung-yü was T'ai-ho magistrate, the tax complaints he heard had little to do with unequal assessments. To be sure, P'u warned the people against false registry and tax engrossment ( kuei-chi and pao-lan ), but local complaints at the time targeted the duties and powers of the receivers and checkers and shippers, who, though compensated for their work by payments in silver, were squeezing excessive charges from the people. Cf. Kuo Tzu-chang, Ch'ing-lo kung i-shu , 26.1a-2b (stela in honor of Magistrate P'u, on his departure).

1. For example, when Lo Meng-chao died in 1434, his son Lo Ch'ung-pen, at the time a secretary (6A) in the Ministry of Justice, came crying to Grand Secretary Yang Shih-ch'i asking that he write a mu-piao . Yang agreed to do so. He stated that he had known the dead man personally and had already written an epitaph for his wife and another for Ch'ung-pen's brother (Yang Shih-ch'i, Tung-li ch'üan-chi [SKCSCP ed., 7th ser.], B30. 12b-15b). Wang Chih wrote Lo Meng-chao's mu-chih ming (Wang Chih, I-an chi [SKCSCP ed., 8th ser.], B30.29a-31a), and Ch'en Hsun wrote a chuan for him as well (Ch'en Hsun, Fang-chou wen-chi [printed ed., 1593], A10.1a-2b).

2. A baby is one sui the day it is born and turns two sui on the first day of the following lunar new year. Lunar new year's day falls in January or February of a Western-style year (in the decade 1390-1400, it fell in the period from January 17 to February 12). A sui -age varies from one to two years higher than a Western-style age, with an average of one and a half years. See Stevan Harrell, ed., Chinese Historical Microdemography (Berkeley, I995), 19, n. 7. Whenever exact birth and death dates aren't known, I have added one year to given sui ages.

3. Liang Ch'ien, Po-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 6th ser.), 13.9b-11a, 11ab; Yang Shih-ch'i, A17.8a-12b. The problem of excluding dead children is also characteristic of Chinese lineage registers; see Ted A. Telford, "Survey of Social Demographic Data in Chinese Genealogies," Late Imperial China 7, no. 2 (December 1986): 118-48, esp. 125. The T'ai-ho epitaphs do not substantiate Telford's assertion that "die young" (if it is equivalent to "died early," tsao tsu ) means death before the age of fifteen to twenty sui ; it can simply mean that a person died before his father or mother did, or was that a person was dead as of the time his father or mother's epitaph was written up. See Telford, "Patching the Holes in Chinese Genealogies: Mortality in the Lineage Populations of Tongcheng county, 1300-1880," Late Imperial China 11, no. 2 (December 1990): 116-36, esp. 121.

4. The result is a list larger than the one I reported in John W. Dardess, "Ming Historical Demography: Notes from T'ai-ho County, Kiangsi," Ming Studies , no. 17 (fall 1983): 60-77.

5. Note, however, that where all live births are routinely counted, as among the Chinese population in the United States, Chinese births have a notably higher sex ratio than white births (107.1:100, as compared to 105.6:100, for the years 1960-82). See W. H. James, "The Sex Ratio of Oriental Births," Annals of Human Biology 12, no. 5 (September-October 1985): 485-87.

6. Ming shih-lu (reprint, Taiwan, 1965), 73:1459-60.

7. Chu Kuo-chen, Yung-ch'uang hsiao-p'in (Pi-chi hsiao-shuo ta-kuan ed., reprint, Taipei, 1962), 2:2129.

8. Ou-yang Te, Ou-yang Nan-yeh hsien-sheng wen-chi (woodblock ed., 1558), 26.25bb-28a.

9. Chi-an fu-chih (Kiangsi, 1875), 47.11b-14a.

10. For the references, see Dardess, "Ming Historical Demography: Notes from T'ai-ho County, Kiangsi," 66. There are two different versions of the 1982 T'ai-ho County sex ratio: one comes out to 101:100, the other to 102.7:100. See Chung-kuo 1982 nien jen-k'ou p'u-ch'a 10% ch'ou-yang tzu-liao (Beijing, 1983), 100; and Chung-kuo 1982 nien jen-k'ou p'u-ch'a tzu-liao (Beijing, 1985), 178-79. However, the 1982 sex ratio for the whole province is 106.5; 100 (see pp. 22-23 of the latter source). Infanticide claimed the lives of 10 percent of the girl babies of the Ch'ing imperial clan and as much as 20-25 percent of the girl babies of the Liaoning peasantry in north China; see James Lee et al., "The Last Emperors: An Introduction to the Demography of the Qing (1644-1911) Imperial Lineage," in Old and New Methods in Historical Demography , ed. David S. Reher and Roger Schofield (Oxford, 1993), 361-82.

11. Listed in T'an Ch'ien, Kuo ch'ueh (reprint, Beijing, 1958), 1:9-19.

12. Yang Shih-ch'i, B40.1a-2b. She married Hsiao Fen, of the Peach Spring Hsiao in township 12. She was herself a Willow Creek Ch'en, a granddaughter of Ch'en Mo, Yang Shih-ch'i's tutor and uncle. For a general view of this matter, see Bao-Hua Hsieh, "The Acquisition of Concubines in China, Four-teenth-Seventeenth Centuries," in Chin-tai Chung-kuo fu-nü yen-chou , no. 1 (1993): 125-200.

13. Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, Lung-chin-yuan chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 5.72a-75b ( mu-chih ming for Hsiao Ai and his wife née Ch'en).

14. Wang Chih, A6.21b-23a (preface to the Nü-chiao hsu-pien ). Li Shih-mien (1374-1450) added a comment to this book; see Li Shih-mien, Ku-lien wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 3d. ser.), 8.28a-29a.

15. Wang Chih, B33.56a-59a.

16. Ibid., B25.46a-48a. Madame Tseng was from the Tseng common-de-scent group of Sandalwood Lane in T'ai-ho City West and was the principal wife of Yin Ch'un of Mountain Field Ward (township 31). Wang Chih thought her a model wife.

17. Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu (1594; reprint, Taipei, 1965), 4:2469-71 (Kuo Tzu-chang, mu-chih ming ).

18. Lu Jung, Shu-yuan tsa-chi che-ch'ao (Chi-lu hui-pien ed.), 182.13b-14a; also Liang Wei-shu, Yü-chien tsun-wen (reprint, Shanghai, 1986), 2:582.

19. Ch'en Hsun (Wang Hsiang, nien-p'u for Ch'en Hsun); A9.27a-28b (epitaph for Tseng Ching); and A9.28b-31b (epitaph for Kuo Miao-chih).

20. Lu Jung, Shu-yuan tsa-chi che-ch'ao , 181.28a.

21. Gary S. Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 44, 48.

22. Liu Ts'ui-jung has found comparable effects in north China lineages; see her Ming Ch'ing shih-ch'i chia-tsu jen-k'ou yü she-hui ching-chi pien-ch'ien (Taipei, 1992), 91. However, Harriet Zurndorfer's data for the Fan lineage of Hui-chou Prefecture, Anhwei Province, 1475-1574, show lower female fertility and a similar general trend, but nothing so neat as in T'ai-ho (see table 5). See her Change and Continuity in Chinese Local History: The Development of Hui-chou Prefecture, 800-1800 (Leiden, 1989), 193.

23. The procedure is discussed in Nathan Keyfitz, Applied Mathematical Dernography , 2d ed. (New York, 1985), 330.

24. For the upper-class population to reproduce itself, sets of children had the statistical task of replacing only slightly more than their two parents. This is; because of the small contribution extra consorts made to the size of the completed family of children.

25. In certain lineages of Hunan Province up to 1650, Liu Ts'ui-Jung has found short-term male growth rates of some z percent per annum. There were also periods of negative growth, which she correlates with the effects of local natural disasters. See her ''Formation and Function of Three Lineages in Hu-nan," in Chin-shih chia-tsu yü cheng-chih pi-chiao , ed. Chung-yang yen-chiu-yuan chin-tai-shih yen-chiu so (Taipei, 1992), 1:346-47.

26. The inability of "a significant fraction" of lineage males (broadly defined here as "upper class" males) to marry has also been noted in T'ung-ch'eng County, Anhwei, for the period 1520-1661. See Ted A. Telford, "Covariates of Men's Age at First Marriage: The Historical Demography of Chinese Lineages," Population Studies 46, no. 1 (March 1992): 19-35.

27. See, for example, Fu I-ling, "Ming-tai Chiang-hsi ti kung-shang-yeh jen-k'ou chi ch'i i-tung," in Ming Ch'ing she-hui ching-chi-shih lun-wen-chi , ed. Fu I-ling (Beijing, 1982), 187-97.

28. Sung Lien, Sung Wen-hsien kung ch'üan-chi (Ssu-pu pei-yao ed.), 10.18a-19a (eulogy for Liu O).

29. Yang Shih-ch'i, A22.20b-22b (biography).

30. Wang Chih, A1.4b-6b (inscription for the Tz'u-hsun t'ang, Hall of Maternal Instruction); Yang Shih-ch'i, B2.21a-23a (inscription for the same) and A16.1a-3a (epitaph for P'eng Hsu); Wang Chih, B34.10b-12a (biography of Liu Ling).

31. Ch'en Hsun (Wang Hsiang, nien-p'u for Ch'en Hsun), s.a. 1400.

32. Yang Shih-ch'i, B33.33a-34a (epitaph for Madame Liu).

33. See his biography in L. Carrington Goodrich and Fang Chaoying, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography (New York, 1976), 2:1535-8.

34. Wang Chih, B36.57b-60b (a memoir about [step]-grandmother Li).

35. Ibid., A8.30a-32b (epitaph for Ou-yang Huai) and B33.59a-62a (epitaph for Madame Ch'en).

36. Ibid., B34.34a-36a (letter of instructions to son Wang Chü).

37. Ibid., A8.5b-7b (epitaph for Liang Hun); Yang Shih-ch'i, A20.8b-11a (epitaph for same); Ch'en Hsun, A10.2b-4b (biography of same); Wang Chih, A10.34a-36a (epitaph for Madame Liu) and B25.4a-6a (epitaph for Ch'en Shun-chih); Yang Shih-ch'i, A21.15b-17a (epitaph for same); Liang Ch'ien, 8.5a-8a (account of conduct for Ch'en Chung-shu); Hsieh Chin, Wen-i chi (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 13.8a-10a (epitaph for same); Yang Shih-ch'i, B39.4a-6b (epitaph for Ch'en Chung-heng) and B42.7b-10b (epitaph for Ch'en Shang); Wang Chih, A9.23a-25b (epitaph for Liang Chiung).

38. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 13.11a-14a (epitaph for Wang Ch'iu); Ou-yang To, Ou-yang Kung-chien kung i-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 19.1a-3a (epitaph for Jen Lien-chen).

39. Lo Ch'i, Kuei-feng chi (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 16.14a-17a (epitaph for Lo Fu).

40. Wolfram Eberhard, Social Mobility in Traditional China (Leiden, 1962), 106-7, 110.

41. Lo Hsiang-lin, ed., K'o-chia shih-liao hui-pien (Hong Kong, 1965), 76, 150, 191, 239, 293-94.

42. Wang Chih, B17.36a-38a (preface to the genealogy of the K'an-ch'i Liu).

43. Ibid., A8.27a-3a (epitaph for Wang Tsai) and A8.30a-32b (epitaph for Ou-yang Huai).

44. Ch'ang-yuan hsien-chih (1541; reprint, Shanghai, 1981), 5.35b.

45. Wang Hsien-ch'ien, Hsu-shou-t'ang wen-chi (reprint, Taipei, 1966), 2:675, 767; Wang K'ai-yun, Hsiang-ch'i-lou wen-chi (reprint, Taipei, 1966), 583.

46. T'an Ch'i-hsiang, "Chung-kuo nei-ti i-min shih—Hu-nan p'ien," Shih-hsueh nien-pao 1, no. 4 (1932): 47-104.

47. Ming-tai Liao-tung tang-an hui-pien (Shenyang, 1985), 1:16-18.

48. Feng-t'ien t'ung-chih (1927; reprint, Shenyang, 1983), 4:4131.

49. Chiang-hsi t'ung-chih (Kiangsi, 1881), 12.37a (Chou Yung, memorial requesting the establishment of a heavier official presence [in Nan-Kan]).

50. Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, 3.3b-5b (message for Military Defense Vice Com-rnissioner Kao Pai-p'ing [Kao Shih-yen]).

51. Hai Jui, Hai Jui chi (reprint, Beijing, 1962), 1:202-8.

52. Kan-chou fu-chih (Kiangsi, 1873), 69.39b-40b (Huang Ta-chieh, letter to prefect Yang, demanding an end to illegal registry).

53. Kuo Tzu-chang, Pin-i-sheng Yueh-ts'ao (printed ed., 1590), 4.22a-24a (inscription for the sacrificial fields in honor of the Kuo ancestor).

54. See Frederick W. Mote and Denis Twitchett, eds., The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge, 1988), vol. 7, pt. 1, pp. 384-89.

55. See Wu Chin-ch'eng, "Ming-tai Hu-pei nung-ts'un ti she-hui pien-ch'ien yü shen-shih," Shih-huo 17, nos. 1-2 (June 1988): 65-87.

56. Yun-hsi hsien-chih (1936; reprint, Taipei, 1975), 3:793.

57. Yun-yang hsien-chih (1870; reprint, Taipei, 1970), 275; Ou-yang Te, 6.14b-16b (letter to junior kinsmen in Chu-shan).

58. Niida Noboru, Chugoku hoseishi kenkyu (Tokyo, 1959), 3:261-62; Wei Ch'ing-yuan et al., Ch'ing-tai nu-pei chih-tu (Beijing, 1982), 96, 128 n. 1; M. Abramson et al., "Tsziansi," Problemy Kitaia , no. 14 (1935): 108-110. There is a large literature on bondage in Ming China, the terms of which differed from region to region. For a general overview, see Nishimura Kazuyo, "Mindai no doboku," Toyoshi kenkyu 38, no. 1 (1980): 24-50; and especially Wu Chen-han, "Ming-tai ti chu-p'u kuan-hsi,'' Shih huo pan-yueh-k'an 12, nos. 4-5 (August 1982): 147-63.

59. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), A22.2b-5a (biography). Hsiao Ch'uan was the husband of Hu Chih's aunt.

60. Yang Yin-ch'iu, Lin-kao wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 2d ser.), 2.47a-55a (account of conduct for Madame Liang, his wife).

61. Ou-yang To, 17.3b-5b (epitaph).

62. Hu Chih, Heng-lu thing-she ts'ang-kao , A24.13a-18b (account of conduct for his mother, Madame Chou, 1497-1577).

63. Quoted in T'ai-ho hsien-chih (Kiangsi, 1879), 2.19b-20b.

64. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , B8.16a-20a (epitaph). Kuo Ch'i-shih was Kuo Tzu-chang's grandfather.

65. Yang Yin-ch'iu, 2.1a-4a (biography of Chang T'ing).

66. Ibid., 2.4a-7a (biography).

67. Ibid., 2.33a-38b (epitaph).

68. Cbi-an fu-chih , 20.35ab.

69. Ibid., 20.36ab; Yung-hsin bsien-chih (1874; reprint, Taipei, 1975), 4:1214-15; Fu I-ling, "Ming-mo nan-fang ti 'tien-pien,' 'nu-pien,'" Lishi yan-jiu , no. 5 (1975): 61-67. The last quotation is from Yung-hsin hsien-chih .

70. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 2:677-79; Ch'ing-tai nung-min chan-cheng-shih tzu-liao hsuan-pien (Beijing, 1984), 1:284-86.

71. See in particular Stevan Harrell, "Introduction: Microdemography and the Modeling of Population Process in Late Imperial China," in Chinese Historical Microdemography , ed. Stevan Harrell (Berkeley, 1995), 1-20.

72. Michel Cartier, "Nouvelles données sur la démographie chinoise à l'époque des Ming," Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 28 (1973): 1341-59.

1. The terms "descent group" and "lineage" and the distinction between them are taken from Patricia B. Ebrey and James L. Watson, eds., Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000-1940 (Berkeley, 1986), 5.

2. Information about the common-descent groups of T'ai-ho is not as complete or systematic as it is for some other parts of south China. Some south China gazetteers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carry a section called "registry of lineages" ( shih-tsu piao ). For example, Lu-ling, a large county bordering T'ai-ho to the north, lists in its gazetteer of 1911 some thirty-five hundred lineages large and small for a population of some 1.7 million (as of 1871). For Hui-chou Prefecture in Anhwei Province, there was a special register, first published in 1316 and later updated, listing seventy-four "large lineages" ( ta tsu ). These texts still survive. But nothing like a a countywide survey of common-descent groups or lineages was ever conducted in T'ai-ho; and although some twelve hundred extant lineage books are listed in Akigoro Taga's catalog, some forty of them from Kiangsi, none of them is from T'ai-ho. See Harriet Zurndorfer, "The Hsin-an ta-tsu chih and the Development of Chinese Gentry Society, 800-1600," T'oung Pao 67, nos. 3-5 (1981): 154-2I5; and Taga Akigoro, Sofu no kenkyu: Shiryo hen (Tokyo, 1960).

3. Hsiao Ch'i, Cheng-ku hsien-sheng wen-chi (Hsiao-shih shih-chi ed.), 9a-10b (preface to poems and other pieces relating to the Lung family library).

4. Ibid., 40b-42a (colophon).

5. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 13.2b-3a (introduction to Lo Tzu-li's genealogy).

6. Ch'en Mo, Hai-sang chi (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 8.13a-15a (epitaph for Lo Ta-k'o, 1286-1359); Wang Chih, I-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 8th ser.), A6. 10b-12b (preface to the Nan-ch'i Tseng genealogy).

7. Chou Shih-hsiu, Ch'u-jao chi (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 5.69b-70a (preface to the Chou genealogy).

8. Ch'en Hsun, Fang-chou wen-chi (printed ed., 1593), A5.32a-33b (preface to the genealogy of the Hsiao of Chang-ch'i in T'ai-ho). The source does not explain why it was felt that the genealogy was in danger; perhaps in cases of confiscation, government agents seized anything that appeared to' have value.

9. Lo Ta-hung, Tzu-yuan wen-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 3.56b-58a (preface to the genealogy of the Lo of T'ao-chin-i). T'ao-chin Ward was in township 42, T'ai-ho.

10. Yang Shih-ch'i, Tung-li ch'üan-chi (SKCSCP ed., 7th ser.), A4.10a-11b (preface to the Ts'ai genealogy).

11. Wang Li, Lin-yuan wen-chi (SKCSCP, 1st ser.), B3.10a-11a (preface to the Ho-ch'i Hu genealogy).

12. Ch'en Mo, 9.6a-7a (postscript to Liu Ching-an's genealogy).

13. Wang Chih, B16.7b-9a (preface to the Sha-ch'i Liu genealogy).

14. Yang Shih-ch'i, B12.10a-11b.

15. Ibid., B12.6b-7a (preface to the T'ai-yuan Hsu genealogy). T'ai-yuan (also known as Ta-yuan) was a ward in township 33.

16. Ch'en Hsun, A5.25a-26b (preface to the Chou-hsia Lo genealogy). There were two Chou-hsia Wards in T'ai-ho, one in township 49, the other in township 53.

17. Yang Shih-ch'i, A4.10a-11b (preface to the Ts'ai genealogy).

18. Ibid., B23.13ab (postface to the Shang-mo Tseng genealogy). Shang-mo Ward was in township 28.

19. Wang Chih, B23.27a-28b (preface to poems composed on the occasion of Yang Meng-pien's return south). Yang Meng-pien (from Shang-yuan-t'ang Ward, township 43) was a very wealthy man who claimed a relationship to Yang Shih-ch'i. Yang Shih-ch'i spurned him. This matter is discussed later in the chapter.

20. Yang Shih-ch'i, B5.14b-15b (inscription for the Le-chih t'ang).

21. Ibid., B51.7b-8b (family letter).

22. Wang Chih, A5.19b-21b (preface to the Ch'ing-ch'i Ch'en genealogy). Ch'ing-ch'i (Clear Creek) was on the east side of T'ai-ho city. It was not a ward.

23. Yang Shih-ch'i, B13.29a-30b (postface to the genealogy of the Hung-kang Yuan). Hung-kang (or Heng-kang) Ward was in township 33.

24. Ibid., B12.20ab (postface to the Ho-shan Liu genealogy). Ho-shan was said to lie ten li southeast of T'ai-ho city. It is not known to have been the name of a ward. Later descendants lived in Ta-yuan Ward (township 33).

25. Ch'en Hsun, A5.28a-29b (preface to the Feng-kang Kuo genealogy). The Feng-kang Kuo are better known as the Ta-kang Kuo. Ta-kang (Big Hill Ward) was in township 29.

26. Yang Shih-ch'i, B12.22ab (preface to the Nan-ching Hu genealogy). Nan-ching (South Path Ward) was in township 55.

27. Ibid., A2.14a-15b.

28. Yeh Sheng, Shui-tung jih-chi (reprint, Taipei, 1968), 2:697-98.

29. Ch'en Mo, 9.30a-31a (postface to Hsiao T'ien-yü's genealogy). Yang Shih-ch'i, B23.27b-28a, is word-for-word the same. Since Yang was Ch'en's student, he may have written the piece under Ch'en's direction, or in his behalf. The Hsiao in question were Sha-hu Hsiao, also known as Hsi-t'ang Hsiao, and were most likely from township 7 (another Hsi-t'ang Ward was located in township 59).

30. Yang Shih-ch'i, B23.8b-9b (postface to the P'eng genealogy).

31. Ibid., B23.24b-25a (a note on interloping). Wang Chih seems to have rescinded his endorsement, because it does not appear in his collected works.

32. Wang Chih, A5.19b-21b (preface to the Ch'ing-ch'i Ch'en genealogy); Ch'en Hsun, A5.11a-12b (preface to the same).

33. Yang Shih-ch'i, B13.25ab (preface to the Liu genealogy). Liu I lived at Hsia-ts'un in township 41. The Chu-lin Liu were based in township 38.

34. Ch'en Hsun, A5.5b-8a (preface to the Kuan-ch'ao Kuo genealogy). Ch'en's second wife was a Kuan-ch'ao Kuo.

35. Chou Shih-hsiu, 5.69b-70a (preface to the Chou genealogy).

36. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 14.18a-19a (colophon to a biography of Chou Tun-i, kept by Chou So-an).

37. Yang Shih-ch'i, B12.8a-9b (preface to the Shu-yuan Lo genealogy).

38. Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu (1594; reprint, Taipei, 1965), 1:402-4 (Ch'en Shang [1378-1413], biography of Yang Shih-ch'i).

39. As he relates in his account of conduct for his father, Liang Lan (1343-1410). See Liang Ch'ien, Po-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 6th ser.), 8.11b-18a.

40. Chou Shih-hsiu, 6.39b-40a (colophon to documents regarding Kuo Ts'ung-ung's surname restoration).

41. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 7:2914-16 (Liu Yeh, argument in favor of Liu Shih-te [Ssu-te]'s restoring his surname).

42. See Ann Waltner, Getting an Heft: Adoption and the Construction of Kinship in Late Imperial China (Honolulu, 1990). Patricia Ebrey has made a thorough analysis of the diverging interests of family ( chia ) and descent-group ( tsung ) in her "Conceptions of Family in the Sung Dynasty," Journal of Asian Studies 43 (February 1984): 219-45, esp. 232.

43. Yin Ch'ang-lung, Yin Na-an hsien-sheng i-kao (ms. ed.), ch. 4 (preface to the Liang genealogy).

44. Ou-yang To, Ou-yang Kung-chien kung i-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 117.12b-14a (epitaph for Wang Chih, 1460-1528).

45. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), A10.25b-28a (preface to a revision of the Chueh-yü K'ang genealogy).

46. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th set.), 9.20a-21a (preface to the Lei-kang K'ang genealogy).

47. Yin T'ai, Tung-lu-t'ang chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 1.76b-79b (preface to the T'ai-ho K'ang genealogy).

48. Lo Hung-hsien, Nien-an wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 12.42a-44b (preface to the T'ai-ho. Teng genealogy).

49. Ch'en Hsun, A3.22a-23b (preface to poems written in honor of Ch'en Kung-i [Ch'en I, d. 1472], on his departure to take up the post of assistant governor [4A] of Ying-t'ien [Nanking]).

50. Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, Lung-chin-yuan chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 5.97a-99b.

51. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 14.20a-21a (a note on the family record of the Kuan-ch'ao Kuo).

52. Liang Ch'ien, 16.12a-13b (colophon to the family record of the Kuan-ch'ao Kuo).

53. Ch'en Hsun, A5.5b-8a (preface to the Kuan-ch'ao Kuo genealogy).

54. Kuo Tzu-chang, Ch'ing-lo kung i-shu (T'ai-ho, printed ed., 1882), 18.23b-25b (preface to the genealogy of the Chien-ch'i Kuo). Chien-ch'i appears to be another name for Ao-t'ou, in T'ai-ho township 62.

55. Ibid., 31.12a-15a (message to the heads of the five lineages about revising the genealogy).

56. Ch'en Hsun, A5.28a-29b (preface to the Feng-kang [Ta-kang] Kuo genealogy); Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, 2.82a-84a (preface to the revised genealogy of the Ta-kang Kuo). Ch'en Ch'ang-chi's mother was a Ta-kang Kuo.

57. Wang Chih, B7.30a-32a (preface to the Kao-p'ing Kuo genealogy); Lo Hung-hsien, Nien-an wen-chi , 12.36b-39b (preface to the same).

58. The Ch'ing dynasty considered Kiangsi lineage conglomerates a threat and sought to break them up. See Alexander Woodside, "Emperors and the Chin nese Political System," in Perspectives on Modern Cbina , ed. Kenneth Lieberthal et al. (Armonk, 1991), 11-12.

59. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi , 6.7b-9a (inscription on the rebuilding of the Yueh family's Chui-yuan t'ang).

60. Liu Chiang-sun, Yang-wu-cbai chi (SKCSCP ed., 1st ser.), 17.15a-17b (inscription for a bronze image of the Jade Emperor in the Lin-yen Taoist temple).

61. Yang Shih-ch'i, B22.21b-22b (end note to the Yang genealogy) and B23.15b-16a (end note on the Yang genealogical chart).

62. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 5:2176-80 (Tsou Yuan-piao [1551-1624], inscription for the Ch'en ancestral temple).

63. Ou-yang Te, Ou-yang Nan-yeh hsien-sheng wen-chi (woodblock ed., 1558), 26. 1a-3b (epitaph for Ch'en Te-ming, 1478-1545).

64. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 5:2180-83 (Tsou Yuan-piao, inscription for the Lung ancestral temple); T'ang Hsien-tsu, T'ang Hsien-tsu shih-wen chi (new ed., Shanghai, 1982), 2:1177-86.

65. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 5:2176-80 (Tsou Yuan-piao [1551-1624], inscription for the Ch'en ancestral temple).

66. Tsou Yuan-piao, Yuan-bsueh chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 5B.33b-36a (inscription commemorating the lineage temple for all the Nan-ch'i Hsiao).

67. Ou-yang To, 3.1a-2a (inscription for the sacrificial fields of the Kuan-ch'ao Kuo lineage).

68. Ibid., 16.3a-6a (epitaph for Tseng Hsien, 1451-1535); Lo Ch'in-shun, Cbeng-an ts'un-kao , 1.29b-31b (inscription for the ancestral temple in honor of prefect Tseng Su-an [Tseng Yü, Hsien's father]).

69. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao , 1.28a-29b (inscription in honor of the additional sacrificial fields acquired by the Shang-mo Tseng).

70. Ou-yang To, 3.2a-4a (account of the yearly sacrifices of the middle branch [ chung fang ] of the Wang).

71. Ou-yang To, 17.10a-12b (epitaph for Chang Ssu).

72. Li Pang-hua, Ming tsung-bsien Li Cbung-su kung chi (printed ed., 1842), 9.8a-10a (preface to regulations for the general temple [for the Li] of the nine counties [of Chi-an Prefecture]).

73. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , B3.6a-8a (inscription for the Tun-tien t'ang).

74 Ibid., B10.1a-3b (epitaph for Hu Hsi, 1498-1580).

75. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao , 14.16b-19a (epitaph).

76. Kuo Tzu-chang, Cb'ing-lo kung i-shu , 31.15a-18a (family instructions).

77. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao , 7.27a-28a (preface to the Yun-t'ing community compact) and 16.3a-6a (epitaph for Tseng Hsien).

78. Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 4:2469-71 (Kuo Tzu-chang, epitaph for Tseng Yü-hung).

79. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A10.22a-23a (postscript to the T'ai-ho community compact); A10.25b-28a (preface to the Chueh-yü K'ang genealogy); A26.9b-14a (epitaph for Hu Shun-chü, 1522-76); B3.6a-8a (inscription for the Tun-tien t'ang); B5.5b-7b (preface to an appreciation of the painting of three retired elders at the Ch'iu-jen school); and B10.11a-12b (epitaph for Hu Hou, fl. sixteenth century).

80. See Shen Yen-ch'ing, Huai-ch'ing i-kao (1862; reprint Taipei, n.d., as ser. 38, no. 378, of Chin-tai Chung-kuo shih-liao ts'ung-k'an), A3.9b-16a (letter to the Chi-an prefect about conditions in T'ai-ho); ch. B1-B4 consist of detailed lawsuits and public notices. Shen was appointed magistrate of T'ai-ho in 1843.

81. See Hilary J. Beattie, Land and Lineage in China: A Study of T'ung-ch' eng, Anhwei, in the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties (Cambridge, England, 1979); Jerry Dennerline, "Marriage, Adoption, and Charity in the Development of Lineages in Wu-hsi from Sung to Ch'ing," in Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China 1000-1940 , ed. Patricia B. Ebrey and James L. Watson (Berkeley, 1986), 170-209; Timothy Brook, "Family Continuity and Cultural Hegemony: The Gentry of Ningbo, 1368-1911," in Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance , ed. Joseph W. Esherick and Mary B. Rankin (Berkeley, 1990), 27-50; and William T. Rowe, "Success Stories: Lineage and Elite Status in Hanyang County, Hubei, c. 1368-1949," in Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance , ed. Joseph W. Esherick and Mary B. Rankin (Berkeley, 1990), 51-81.

82. Robert P. Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-Chou, Chiang-Hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung (Cambridge, 1986).

83. Rowe, "Success Stories," 80.

1. Wang Ao, Chen-tse ch'ang yü (Ming-Ch'ing shih-liao hui-pien ed., 1st ser.), A.30a; Chu Kuo-chen, Yung-chuang hsiao-p'in (Pi-chi hsiao-shuo ta-kuan ed., reprint, Taipei, 1962), 2:1939.

2. Fen-sheng fu-an chin-shen pien-lan (reprint, Shanghai, [1990?]).

3. Kuo Tzu-chang, Ch'ing-lo kung i-shu (T'ai-ho, printed ed., 1882), 19.19a-21a (preface to the genealogy of the Huang-kang Hsiao).

4. Yang Shih-ch'i, Tung-li ch'üan-chi (SKCSCP ed., 7th ser.), A4.23b-24b (message for Tseng Ts'un-shan); Ch'en Hsun, Fang-chou wen-chi (printed ed., 1593), B3.18a-19b (inscription for the Chi-shan t'ang).

5. Ph. de Heer, The Care-Taker Emperor: Aspects of the Imperial Institution in Fifteenth-Century China as Reflected in the Political History of the Reign of Chu Ch'i-yü (Leiden, 1986).

6. Ming shih-lu (reprint, Taiwan, 1965), 32:4513.

7. Wang Chih, I-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 8th ser.), B13.4b-6a (message for Assistant Instructor Ch'en); Ch'en Hsun, A9.23a-27a (epitaph for Ch'en Yung); Ming Shih-lu , 33:4942, 4950. Lin Ts'ung (1417-82), from Fukien Province, went on to have an outstanding career; he had locked horns with Ch'en Hsun earlier on a wholly different matter. See Ming shih-lu , 32:4415, 4492-93, 4496-98; 33:4664-5; also 34:5381-2.

8. Ming shih-lu , 35:5690-92.

9. Ibid., 34:5433-34.

10. Ibid., 37:6342.

11. The total is reported in Cheng Hsiao, Chin yen (1566; reprint, Taipei, 1969), 189.

12. Ming shih-lu , 12:1421-2.

13. Ibid., 18:959-61,998.

14. Ibid., 55:1994-5.

15. Ibid., 95:1451.

16. Ibid., 98:1001-2.

17. Ibid., 42:1283-4.

18. Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu (reprint, Taipei, 1965), 1:402-4 (Ch'en Shang, biography of Yang Shih-ch'i).

19. Yang Shih-ch'i, B40.26b-28b (epitaph for Mme Hsiao, 1333-1412).

20. Wang Chih, B16.13b-15a (message for Hsiao Li-ching, returning to T'ai-ho) and B12.7a-8b (message for Vice Magistrate Hsiao Ssu-ching, on departing for Tz'u-li County).

21. Lo Hung-hsien, Nien-an wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th set.), 8.16a-18a (a statement for Hsiao T'ien-ch'ung, i.e., Hsiao Lung-yu); Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, Lung-chin-yuan chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 5.76b-79a (epitaph for Hsiao's father) and 3.79b-81a (message for Hsiao T'ien-ch'ung, on his departure north); Hu Chih, K'un-hsueh chi , in Ming-ju hsueh-an , ed. Huang Tsung-hsi (reprint, Taipei, 1965), 221-24. The quotation is from Lo's statement to Hsiao.

22. Yang Shih-ch'i, B31.12a-14a (epitaph for Yuan Chün, 1354-1424). Wang Chih recalled that when he was a sheng-yuan in the years preceding 1403, his class had numbered twenty in all. Wang Chih, B16.25a-26b.

23. Ch'en Hsun, A3.19a-20b and A4.4a-5b.

24. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 5:1860-64 (Tseng Meng-chien, inscription for the rebuilding of the Temple of Literature).

25. Yang Shih-ch'i, A8.12b-14a.

26. Ch'en Hsun, A7.43a-45a (epitaph for Lung Ts'an).

27. See Ch'en Hsun (Wang Hsiang, nien-p'u for Ch'en Hsun), s.a. 1401.

28. Ibid., s.a. 1403, 1414.

29. Ming shih-lu , 35:5641-2.

30. Ibid., 41:1091-2.

31. Yang Shih-ch'i, A3.4a-5a (message for Tseng Shih-jung).

32. Ibid., A22.20b-22b (biography of Ch'en Meng-hsing).

33. Ming shih-lu , 41:1091-2.

34. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), A8.20a-32a (generational account of the Hu family). The letters are quoted on pp. 22b-25b.

35. Ming shih-lu , 64:1410; Chu Ta-shao, ed., Huang Ming ming-ch'en mu-ming (reprint, Taipei, 1969), 3:899-911 (Han Pang-ch'i, epitaph for Ch'en Feng-wu).

36. L. Carrington Goodrich and Fang Chaoying, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography (New York, 1976), 1:843; Ming shih-lu , 66:2280 fl.; Tilemann Grimm, "Ming Educational Intendants," in Chinese Government in Ming Times , ed. Charles O. Hucker (New York, 1969), 142. So popular was Kiangsi Educational Intendant Shao Pao (1469-1527) that eight years after he left his post, former students commissioned T'ai-ho artist Kuo Hsu to do a portrait of him from memory; the result bore no resemblance to its subject, but Shao Pao appreciated it nonetheless. See Shao Pao, Jung-ch'un t'ang hsu-chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 8.23ab (appreciation of a small portrait by Kuo Hsu).

37. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , B9.20a-22b (epitaph for Ch'en Ts'an).

38. Ibid., A23.32b-41a (account of conductfor Yang Tsai-ming).

39. Lo Ch'in-shun, K'un-chih chi (reprint, Beijing, 1990), 201-2.

40. Kuo Tzu-chang, Ch'ing-lo kung i-shu , 3a (Kuo K'ung-yen, nien-p'u for Kuo Tzu-chang).

41. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , 22.12a-14a (epitaph for Tseng Ch'iu-t'an).

42. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 6:2222-4 (Hsiao Tzu-shang, message for Yin Ch'ang-lung, on his departure as sui-kung ).

43. Wang Chih, B2.24b-26b (inscription for the North Hall).

44. Ch'en Hsun (Wang Hsiang, nien-p'u for Ch'en Hsun, passim).

45. Hu Chih, K'un-hsueh chi , 221; Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A25.10a-13b (epitaph for Ou-yang Ch'ang), A24.1ab (account of conduct for Ou-yang Shao-ch'ing), and B11.23a-25a (biography of Yang Hai). Hu Chih's spiritual autobiography, the K'un-hsueh chi , has been the focus of some interesting literary and psychological research, notably by Wu Pei-yi and Rodney Taylor. Wu, The Confucian's Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China (Princeton, 1990), deals extensively with that text and its later influence on Kao P'an-lung (pp. 100-128). Wu also translates the K'un-hsueh chi in an appendix (pp. 243-51). Rodney Taylor's studies include "Journey into Self: The Autobiographical Reflections of Hu Chih," History of Religions 21 (May 1982): 321-38; and "Acquiring a Point of View: Confucian Dimensions of Self-Perception," Monumenta Serica 34 (1979-80): 145-70, in which he compares the spiritual testaments of Hu Chih and Kao P'an-lung (1562-1626). Neither writer tries to place Hu Chih in local, social, or national political context.

46. For the numbers of candidates taking the Kiangsi exams in the years indicated, see Han Yung, Han Hsiang-i kung chia-ts'ang wen-chi (reprint, Taipei, 1970), 2:557-61 (for 1456); Li Shun-ch'en, Yü-ku chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 5.20b-22a (for 1534); Ming-tai teng-k'o-lu hui-pien (reprint, Taipei, 1969), 13:6901 and 23:12085 (for 1558 and 1627).

47. Ming shih-lu , 95:1304.

48. Ibid., 25:1440-41. When provincial chü-jen quotas were raised in 1440 (Kiangsi's to sixty-five), the idea was to generate more B-list chü-jen to fill teaching vacancies. It was the opinion of the authorities that the "tribute students" ( sui-kung ) in the imperial colleges, having failed all exams themselves, made very poor government teachers.

49. The quotas and the numbers of degree candidates, can be found out for many of the exams given in the Ming. See Wada Masahiro, "Mindai kyojinso no keisei katei ni kansuru ichi kosatsu," Shigaku zasshi 87, no. 3 (March I978): 43; Ming-tai teng-k'o-lu hui-pien , 14:7339, 15:7943, 18:9123; Yang Shih-ch'i, B6.9b-11a, I3b-15a, B9.9b-10b; and Ch'en Hsun, B2.15a-16a and A3.43b-45a (see table 6).

50. Ch'en Hsun, A3.43b-45a; Ming shih-lu , 63:868.

51. Ch'en Hsun, A3-43b-45a (message for Instructor Hsiao, on his departure for Ch'ang-chou).

52. See Ho Ping-ti, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (New York, 1964), 246 ff.

53. Yang Shih-ch'i, B6.9b-11a, B6.13b-15a, and B9.9b-10b.

54. Ch'en Hsun, B2.15a-16a (message on the departure [from Peking] of Assistant Instructor Lo Ching-hsun).

55. See Tani Mitsutaka, "Mindai kansei no kenkyu," Shigaku zasshi 73, no. 4 (April 1964): 56-81; 73, no. 6 (June 1964): 69-82.

56. This count is taken from the Ming shih-lu , entries for the Chia-ching reign period (1522-66) and later, passim.

57. Ibid., 23:779-80.

58. See Ma Tai-loi, "The Local Education Officials of Ming China, 1368-1644," Oriens Extremus 22 (1975): 11-27. Despite the handicaps, some famous men in Ming China spent at least a part of their careers as government teachers; see Wu Chih-ho, Ming-tai ti ju-hsueh chiao-kuan (Taipei, 1991).

59. Yang Shih-ch'i, A6.3a-4b (message for Wang Ching-hsien).

60. The ages of four T'ai-ho men at the time they entered one of the imperial colleges as sui-kung chien-sheng are known. The ages are 34, 34, 50, and 69. Four men (not necessarily the same four) are known to have spent 1, 3, 5, and 16 years, respectively, as college students. The data include five ages at the time of first official posting; 35, 39, 40, 50, and 57.

61. Ou-yang Te, Ou-yang Nan-yeh hsien-sheng wen-chi (woodblock ed., 1558.), 24.37b-40b (epitaph).

62. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 1.29b-31b (inscription for the temple). The county was Ch'ing-yuan, but the gazetteer of Kuang-chou Prefecture fails to list Tseng among the assistant instructors appoi+nted to Ch'ing-yuan County in Ming times.

63. Ming shih-lu , 68:3003-4.

64. Ibid., 80:4211, 86:6569-70.

65. Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, 5.80a-82a (epitaph).

66. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , B9.3a-5a (epitaph).

67. Ming shih-lu , 56:2128; T'ai-p'ing hsien-chih (1540; reprint, Shanghai, 1981), 4.7a. The quotation is from the latter source.

68. For the mathematics of such "economic hierarchies," see Nathan Keyfitz, Applied Mathematical Demograpby , 2d. ed. (New York, 1985), 199-200.

69. Ho Ping-ti, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China , 231, 246-8. In the Ch'ing dynasty, T'ai-ho County produced a total of eighteen chin-shih , about a 90 percent drop from its level of achievement in the Ming. See Hans Bielenstein, "The Regional Provenance of Chin-shih during Ch'ing," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities , no. 64 (1992): 5-178, 46.

70. Lo Ch'i, Kuei-feng chi (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 5.26a-27b (message for Kiangsi Education Intendant Su, on his departure).

71. James B. Parsons once considered from a national perspective the prominent success of certain "clans" (common-descent groups and lineages) in placing their members in Ming bureaucracy. His study focused on central bureaucracy, plus a small sample of the rest of the bureaucracy. He identified as a clan everyone with the same surname living in the same county. Nine T'ai-ho clans appear in his tables (pp. 211-2). The Hsiao, for example, appear as a single clan; however, in fact, there were at least twenty wholly distinct common-descent groups of the Hsiao surname in T'ai-ho. Similarly, there were several completely distinct groups of the other surnames—Ch'en, Wang, Liu, Tseng, Kuo, Li, Yang—that he listed. Of those that he listed, only the Ou-yang was a recognized single common-descent line. See Parsons, "The Ming Dynasty Bureaucracy: Aspects of Background Forces," in Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies , ed. Charles O. Hucker (New York, 1969), 175-232.

72. Some well-to-do landowners and family managers of sixteenth-century T'ai-ho opposed the idea of encouraging sons to take up Confucian studies. They argued that it was a waste of resources to support their education, and the belt-tightening penury of a Confucian lifestyle was unacceptable to them. See Yang Yin-ch'iu, Lin-kao wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 2d ser.), 2.20b-24a (epitaph for T'ung Ni, 1531-95).

1. There is substantial evidence to support this assertion. The great Neo-Confucian theorist Wu Ch'eng (1249-1331), a native of Fu-chou Prefecture, Kiangsi, complained about the behavior of men from Chi-an Prefecture in several places in his collected works. One occasion was his epitaph for K'ang Jui-sun of T'ai-ho's Shen-ch'i Ward (township 4). The rich landowners of K'ang's area were hot-tempered and grasping, he noted. The merchants were much too aggressive. Quiet and shy people were laughed at by the predatory majority. K'ang Jui-sun himself had been hard-drinking and violent in his youth. See Wu Ch'eng, Wu Wen-cheng chi (SKCSCP ed., 2d ser.), 63.1a-4a. The works of T'ai-ho natives Hsiao Ch'i, Ch'en Mo, and Liu Sung sustain this theme.

2. The example of Lo Fu-jen, ''honest Lo," from Chi-shui County, is discussed in L. Carrington Goodrich and Fang Chaoying eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography (New York, 1976), 1:974-75.

3. The civil war and usurpation have been well handled in Edward L. Dreyer, Early Ming China: A Political History , 1355-1435 (Stanford, 1982), chap. 5.

4. T'an Ch'ien, Kuo ch'ueh (reprint, Beijing, 1958), 1:844.

5. Ku Ying-t'ai, Ming-shih chi-shih pen-mo (1658; reprint, Taipei, 1956), 1:209.

6. T'an Ch'ien, Kuo ch'ueh , 1:849; T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 6:2580-84 (Liang Ch'ien, account of conduct for Chou Shih-hsiu); Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu (1594; reprint, Taipei, 1965), 8:4740 (Yang Shih-ch'i, biography of Chou) and 8:4740-42 (Kuo Tzu-chang, biographical notes on Chou).

7. Ku Ying-t'ai, Ming-shih chi-shih pen-mo , 1:211. The belief was strongly held that there had been such a pact, and many later writers condemned Yang Shih-ch'i for moral cowardice in backing out of it. See, for example, Wu T'ing-han, Wu T'ing-han chi (reprint, Beijing, 1984), 106.

8. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 6:2409-12 (Chou Shih-hsiu, letter to general editor Fang Hsi-chih [Fang Hsiao-ju]).

9. Yang Shih-ch'i recited parts of his life story to Ch'en Shang, a young T'ai-ho protégé See Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 1:402-4 (Ch'en Shang [1378-1413], biography of Yang Shih-ch'i).

10. Ibid.

11. T'an Ch'ien, Kuo ch'ueh , 1:815.

12. Ibid., 1:845.

13. The point is elaborated in John W. Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (Berkeley, 1983), chap. 5.

14. T'an Ch'ien, Kuo ch'ueh , 1:937; Ming shih-lu (reprint, Taiwan, 1965), 10:581; Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 1:398 (Wang Chih, biography of Yang Shih-ch'i).

15. Yen Wei (1280-1355, from T'ai-ho city), arrogant and ambitious as a youth, ended up a private tutor in the households of several high ranking Mongol elites in the Yuan capital of Ta-tu; there he authored a text called the Wu-ching ta-i (General idea of the Five Classics). Several people had a look at the manuscript; some thought it better than Chen Te-hsiu's Ta-hsueh yen-i, a widely read Neo-Confucian text of the Sung. Someone showed Yen's work to emperor Tugh Temür (Wen-tsung, r. 1328-32). People said the emperor liked it, but nothing came of it. Hsiao Nan-k'o was an uncle of Liu Sung's, who lived most of his life as a private tutor in the Kiangsi provincial capital of Nan-ch'ang. Liu Sung met him in an inn in Hsing-kuo County, southeast of T'ai-ho, probably in the 1340s. "He took out his annotations to the Four Books and Five Classics and he let me look at them and he said: 'I'm old now, and soon I'll give all these to you.' Then he pounded on the table and called for rice-beer. He drank several tens of cups and devoured a plateful of meat. He was loud and spirited and arrogant. I never saw him again after that." Cf. Liu Sung, Ch'a-weng wen-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 17.18b-22b (epitaph for Yen Wei) and 10.22b-25b (preface to the Hsiao genealogy).

16. Liu Ch'iu, Liu Liang-ch'i wen-chi (Ch'ien-k'un cheng-ch'i chi ed.), 228(7).6ab, 11b-12a (prefaces to banquet poems).

17. Wang Chih, I-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 8th ser.), B29.44a-46a (epitaph).

18. Liang Ch'ien, Po-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 6th set.), 6.47a-48b (preface to poems in honor of Ou-yang Hsien's departure); Wang Chih, B30.1a-3b (epitaph for Ou-yang Hsien).

19. Yang Shih-ch'i, Tung-li ch'üan-chi (SKCSCP ed., 7th ser.), B38.16b-18a (epitaph).

20. Ibid., A18.23b-25a (epitaph).

21. Liang Ch'ien, 13.7b-9a (preface to an appreciation of Ch'en Lien); Yang Shih-ch'i, A18.16b-18a (epitaph).

22. Yang Shih-ch'i, B30.12b-15b (epitaph); also Wang Chih, B30.29a-31a (epitaph), and Ch'en Hsun, Fang-chou wen-chi (printed ed., 1593), A10.1a-2b (biography).

23. Yang Shih-ch'i, B39.3b-4a (a partially damaged epitaph).

24. Native-place hostels are discussed in Ho Ping-ti, Chung-kuo hui-kuan shih-lun (Taipei, 1966).

25. Wang Chih, B3.40b-41b (inscription for the I-ching t'ang).

26. Yang Shih-ch'i, A16.1a-3a (epitaph for P'eng Hsu); Wang Chih, B23.25b-27a (postface to poems written in honor of Hsiao Yu-lung's departure). P'eng Hsu's experiences as a fatherless child in danger of becoming a slave were discussed in an earlier chapter.

27. Wang Chih, A4.9b-11a (preface to poems celebrating his moving house).

28. Yang Shih-ch'i, B46.1a-4b; Wang Chih, A9.21a-23a (epitaph).

29. Yang Shih-ch'i, B31.19a-21b (epitaph for Kuo Ting).

30. Ibid., A4.4a-5a (preface to poems in honor of Yin Neng-ching's departure).

31. The Yin Ch'ang-lung case is not covered by the Veritable Records . In connection with a petition to rehabilitate Yin Ch'ang-lung and place his tablet in the T'ai-ho hall of honor (Hsiang-hsien tz'u) in 1516, a number of documents, biographies, testimonials, and other materials were collected, and these are gathered in ch. 9 of Yin Ch'ang-lung, Yin Na-an hsien-sheng i-kao (ms. ed). See also Shen Te-fu, Wan-li yeh-huo pien (1619; new ed., Beijing, 1980), 2:709, 807.

32. Ch'en Hsun, A10.8b-9a (colophon on handwriting by Jen-tsung).

33. Ibid., A10.10b-11a (colophon to a scroll).

34. Ming shih-lu , 14:2094-95; Yang Shih-ch'i, A17.8a-12b (epitaph) and A913.b-14b (colophon to autograph poems by Jen-tsung); Ch'en Hsun, B5.4b-5b (same subject); see also Ch'en Hsun (Wang Hsiang, nien-p'u for Ch'en Hsun), s.a. wu-hsu (1418).

35. Yang Shih-ch'i, A22.12b-15b (biography of Lo Tzu-li), A22.6a-8a (biography of Yang Cho), A9.15b-18a (colophon to the lucky fungus poems of the Peach Spring Hsiao), B7.1a-2a (message for District Medical School Principal Teng Ch'ien), and B9.15a-16b (message for Teng Chia-mou); Ch'en Mo, 5.4b-5b (message for Yang Cho); Ch'en Hsun, A3.33b-35a (message for Wang Tzu, appointed T'ai-ho assistant instructor); Wan-li T'ai-ho chih (1579; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 465-67 (biographies of Yang, Lo, and Teng).

36. Ch'en Hsun, A3.23b-24b (preface to poems done at a "literary meeting") and A10.13ab (colophon to poems done aboard ship, and kept by Wang Tzu).

37. Ch'en Hsun (Wang Hsiang, nien-p'u for Ch'en Hsun), s.a. i-wei (1415).

38. Ming shih-lu , 25:1526; Yang Shih-ch'i, B27.21a-24a; Wang Chih, A9.30a-32b (epitaphs for Tseng Hao-ling); Liu Ch'iu, Liang-ch'i wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 11th ser.), 22.19a-22a (account of conduct for Tseng); Liang Wei-shu, Yü-chien tsun-wen (reprint, Shanghai, 1986), 2:665-66. Tseng was a surprise choice for such high grades on either exam. He impressed outsiders as reticent and dull, and when he died in office as Han-lin academician expositor-in-waiting, his official obituary merely commended his affability, sincerity, and good writing style. There wasn't much more to say.

39. Ming shih (Kuo-fang yen-chiu-yuan ed.), 3:2002-4 (biography of Wang Chih); Shen Te-fu, Wan-li yeh-huo pien , 1:181. One theory has it that Yang resented Wang Chih's repeated warnings about the evil doings of his beloved oldest son, Yang Chi. Cf. Ho Liang-chün, Ssu-yu-chai ts'ung-shuo (reprint, Beijing, 1983), 60.

40. Wang Chih, B33.65b-68b (autobiographical epitaph). In this piece, Wang states that he was indeed made a grand secretary sometime early in the Yung-lo era. He doesn't say how he lost that status.

41. Ming shih-lu , 26:2017.

42. Yang Shih-ch'i, B6.9b-11a (message for Liu Ting). Much the same sentiment is expressed in B9.9b-10b (message for Lo Ching).

43. Ming shih-lu , 29:2952-55; Ming shih , ch. 71.

44. Ming shih-lu , 28:2850-52.

45. Ibid., 33:4866-69, 4872-73; 34:5381-82.

46. Ibid., 26:1973; 27:2082-83, 2439; Yang Shih-ch'i, C3.28a-29b (regarding the suit filed by the T'ai-ho plaintiffs).

47. Ming shih-lu , 32:4551.

48. Ibid., 32:4415; Chiang-hsi t'ung-chih (Kiangsi, 1881), 127.10b; Ch'en Hsun, A9.28b-31b (epitaph for Kuo Miao-chih).

49. Ming shih-lu , 32:4492-93, 4496-97, 4498, 4664-65, 4759.

50. Shih Chien, Hsi-ts'un chi (SKCSCP ed., 3d ser.), 7.29b-33b (epitaph for Chu Sheng, 1396-1457). Chu Sheng was the principal investigator of these crime rings. See also Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 1:498-503, 561-62 (biographies of Han Yung and Hsing An).

51. Ming shih-lu , 35:5710-15, 5718-20. This exam controversy is also discussed in Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 1:970-71 (biography of Liu Yen).

52. Ph. de Heer, The Care-Taker Emperor: Aspects of the Imperial Institution in Fifteenth-Century China as Reflected in the Political History of the Reign of Chu Ch'i-yü (Leiden, 1986).

53. Besides de Heer, cf. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 7:2868-72 (Kuo Tzu-chang, preface to Ch'en Hsun's collected works) and 5:1769-71 (Hsiao Tzu, memorial against changing the succession); Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 2:1358-61 (biography of Wang Chih).

54. Ming shih-lu , 38:6853-57; Ch'en Hsun (Wang Hsiang, nien-p'u for Ch'en Hsun), s.a. jen-wu (1462). The nien-p'u of Ch'en Hsun was written by Assistant Instructor Wang Hsiang, who was not a T'ai-ho native, but he was evidently a protégé eager to present his subject in his best light. The shih-lu , or Veritable Records , for the Cheng-t'ung, Ching-t'ai, and T'ien-shun reigns (1435-64) were compiled in 1467, and these spare no effort to show Ch'en Hsun in his worst moments. For the compilation of the shih-lu , see Wolfgang Franke, An Introduction to the Sources of Ming History (Kuala Lumpur, 1968).

1. There was a distant blood relationship between the Hung-fu Yin and Yin Ch'ang-lung's people, who lived some miles away in Kuan-t'ang Ward (township 14). This relationship had no known bearing upon Yin Chih's career.

2. Chu Kuo-chen, Yung-ch'uang hsiao-p'in (Pi-chi hsiao-shuo ta-kuan ed., reprint, Taipei, 1962), 2:2069.

3. Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu (1594; reprint, Taipei, 1965), 1:455-59 (Ch'eng K'ai, biography of Yin Chih). Yin was still alive when Ch'eng K'ai wrote this.

4. Wang Chih, I-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 8th ser.), B37.26b-27a (portrait appreciation) and B9.17b-19a (preface to poems in honor of Yin Tzu-yuan's departure).

5. Ch'eng Min-cheng, Huang-tun wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 3d ser.), 40.4a (account of conduct for Li Hsien).

6. Yin's Ch'eng-chiang pieh-chi survives, but it consists mainly of official papers, which he edited and published in order, as he states in the preface, to show his descendants how high he had risen in his career.

7. L. Carrington Goodrich and Fang Chaoying, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography (New York, 1976), 2:1521; Ni Yueh, Ch'ing-ch'i man-kao (Wu-lin wang-che i-chu ed.), 16.16a-17b (account of a group portrait of Han-lin year-mates).

8. Yin Chih, Chien-chai so-chui lu (Li-tai hsiao-shih ed.), 8b-9b; Wang Chih, A7.35b-37b (epitaph for Liao Mo); T'an Ch'ien, Kuo ch'ueh (reprint, Beijing, 1958), 2:1563-64. There was a common belief in the realm that Yang Shih-ch'i had abetted the rise of eunuch power; different stories, some of them probably apocryphal, circulated to show that he had done so. See, for example, Cheng Hsiao, Chin yen (1566; reprint, Taipei, 1969), 164-65.

9. Ming shih (Kuo-fang yen-chiu-yuan ed.), 3:1998-99.

10. Fei Hung, T'ai-pao Fei Wen-hsien kung chai-kao (1555; reprint, Taipei, 1970), 3:1509-17 (epitaph for Yin Chih).

11. Ming shih-lu (reprint, Taiwan, 1965), 40:371; 42:1219, 1269-73; 45:2536-37; Ming shih , 3:1996, 2080-82 (biographies of P'eng Hua and Li Ping); Sun Hsu, Sha-ch'i chi (SKCSCP ed., 8th ser.), 14.39ab (comment on Hsiao Yen-chuang).

12. Yin Chih, Chien-chai so-chui lu (Li-tai hsiao-shih ed.), 28a-30a.

13. See Ming shih-lu , 12:1238, for the rule barring Chekiang and Kiangsi men from holding positions in the Ministry of Revenue. The rule certainly worked in the case of T'ai-ho men; none was ever assigned a regular post in the Ministry of Revenue.

14. Yin Chih, Chien-chai so-chui lu (Li-tai hsiao-shih ed.), 30a.

15. Detailed inside information on these connections may be found in Hah Pang-ch'i, Yuan-lo chi (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 19.7ab.

16. Li Tung-yang, Li Tung-yang chi (new ed., Changsha, 1984), 3:39-40 (preface to poems on the group portrait); Goodrich and Fang, eds., Ming Biographical Dictionary , 1:881; Ming shih-lu , 61:62-3 (obituary note for Chang Ta).

17. Ni Yueh, Ch'ing-ch'i man-kao , 19.11b-13a (message for Tseng Yen on his retirement).

18. Ming shih-lu , 45:2705.

19. Ming shih , 3:1998-99 (biography of Yin Chih).

20. Wang Shu, Wang Tuan-i kung wen-chi (reprint, Taipei, 1970), 61-64 (departing message for Vice Minister of War Yin Chih).

21. Ming shih-lu , 59:3741-43 (obituary for Lo Ching). See also Ming shih-lu , 50:4757-58 and 51:178-80; Li Tung-yang, Huai-lu t'ang kao (reprint, Taipei, 1975), 7:3401-6 (epitaph for Lo Ching).

22. See Hung-lam Chu, "Intellectual Trends in the Fifteenth Century," Ming Studies , no. 27 (spring 1989): 1-33. In 1470, Yin Chih's proposal to compile a Ming history and a Ta Ming t'ung-tien (Comprehensive encyclopedia of Ming institutions) was accepted by the throne. See Ming shih-lu , 42:1453-54. Fei Hung's epitaph for Yin Chih lists all his statecraft publications.

23. Ming shih , 3:1995-96 (biography of Wan An).

24. Yin Chih, Chien-chai so-chui lu (Li-tai hsiao-shih ed.), 46ab.

25. Ming shih-lu , 50:4733-34; Ming shih , 3:1998-99 (biography of Yin Chih) and 3:2149 (biography of Min Kuei); Wang Ao, Chen-tse chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 29.14a-17b (epitaph for Min Kuei). The quotation is from the Ming shih-lu .

26. Tsou Chih, Li-chai i-wen (SKCSCP ed., 9th ser.), 1.1a-7b (memorial of impeachment). Tsou Chih was soon arrested on a charge unrelated to this me-morial, and he died of disease in exile in Kwangtung.

27. Ming shih-lu , 51:116-117.

28. Ibid., 63.868; Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 1:233-34 (biography of Chiao Fang).

29. Ming shih , 5:3447 (biography of Chiao Fang); Ming shih-lu , 64:1313-14. The quotation is from the Ming shih .

30. Yang Hsi-min, Shih-wu-chia nien-p'u (reprint, Taipei, 1966), 4:1526. There is a large literature about Wu Yü-pi and his disciples. There is a biography of Wu in Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 2:1497-1501. See also Wing-tsit Chan, "The Ch'eng-Chu School of Early Ming," in Self and Society in Ming Thought , ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York, 1970), 29-51; and Helmut Wilhelm, "On Ming Orthodoxy," Monumenta Serica 29 (197o-71): 1-26.

31. T'an Ch'ien, Kuo ch'ueh , 2:2072-73.

32. Yin Chih, Chien-chai so-chui lu (Li-tai hsiao-shih ed.), 23ab. For the events of Wu Yü-pi's disastrous visit, see Ming shih-lu , 36:6217-19, 6224-26, 6251-52; and T'an Ch'ien, Kuo ch'ueh , 2:2057, 2069, 2072-73.

33. Cf. Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 2:1500.

34. Ibid., 1:154 (biography of Ch'en Hsien-chang). See also Jen Yu-wen, "Ch'en Hsien-chang's Philosophy of the Natural," in Self and Society in Ming Thought , ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York, 1970), 53-92.

35. For a memorial that recommends fervently that Ch'en be invited to Peking, see P'eng Shao, P'eng Hui-an chi (SKCSCP ed., 3d ser.), 1.8b-ff. Ch'en's appearance is described in Lin Chün, Chien-su chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), A10.14a-16a (inscription for a memorial temple in honor of Ch'en Hsien-chang).

36. Yin Chih, Chien-chai so-chui lu (Li-tai hsiao-shih ed.), 45ab. Cf. Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 1:896-98 (biography of Liang Fang). Yin Chih neglected to state that the request to the palace to confer the Han-lin appointment upon Ch'en Hsien-chang was prepared by his archenemy Yin Min, the minister of personnel. See Lin Chün, Chien-su chi , D1a-2b (chronological biography of Lin Chün). The official Veritable Records are hostile to Ch'en Hsien-chang, remarking unfavorably upon his philosophical unorthodoxy and upon his eagerness for fame and recognition. Ming shih-lu , 48:4128-30.

37. Yin Chih, Chien-chai so-chui lu (Li-tai hsiao-shih ed.), 44b.

38. Ibid., 54b-55a.

39. Ning-po fu-chih (1741; reprint, Taipei, 1957), 3:1380.

40. Yin Chih, Chien-chai so-chui lu (Li-tai hsiao-shih ed.), 36a.

41 Ibid., 53b.

42. Ibid., 54a.

43. Ibid., 53b-54a.

44. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser.), 15.1ab.

45. Cf. Irene Bloom, trans., Knowledge Painfully Acquired: The K'un-chih chi by Lo Ch'in-shun (New York, 1987), 146-47.

46. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao , 13.16b-19b (epitaph for Li Mu). Cf. Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 1:1269, for the "club of candid directness" as a sometime elite social institution in Ming China.

47. Ming Wen-hai (SKCSCP ed., 7th ser.), 466.21a-23a (Liu Chieh, epitaph for Kuo Hsu); Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, Lung-chin-yuan chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 1.16b-20a (biography of Kuo Hsu).

48. Fei Hung, T'ai-pao Fei Wen-hsien kung chai-kao , 17.25b-30b (epitaph for Yin Chih).

49. Ming shih-lu , 55:2073-74

1. Okada Takehiko, Oyomei to Minmatsu no jogaku (Tokyo, 1971).

2. Wang's exceptional moral courage was remarked upon admiringly by the late Ming historian Shen Te-fu. Cf. Shen Te-fu, Wan-li yeh-huo pien (1619; new ed., Beijing, 1980), 2:508.

3. Wan-li T'ai-ho chih (1579; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 535; Also cf. Irene Bloom, trans., Knowledge Painfully Acquired: The K'un-chih chi by Lo Ch'in-shun (New York, 1987), 4.

4. See also Bloom, "On the 'Abstraction' of Ming Thought: Some Concrete Evidence from the Philosophy of Lo Ch'in-shun," in Principle and Practicality. Essays in Neo-Confucianism and Practical Learning , ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom (New York, 1979), 65-125.

5. Lo Ch'in-shun, K'un-chih chi (reprint, Beijing, 1990), 113-115, 170. Bloom has not dealt with Lo Ch'in-shun's relationships with contemporaries, relationships about which there remain quite a few letters written by him and to him.

6. Lo Ch'in-shun, K'un-chih chi , 133.

7. Translated in Bloom, Knowledge Painfully Acquired , 175-85. See also Wing-tsit Chan, trans., Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang Yang-ming (New York, 1963), 263-64.

8. Chan, Instructions , 157-65.

9. Ibid., 188.

10. Lo Ch'in-shun, Cheng-an ts'un-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser), 15.4b-5a.

11. Ts'ui Hsien, Huan tz'u (SKCSCP ed., 6th ser.), 10.13a-14b (on Lo's seventieth birthday); 10.14b-15b (letter to Lo); and 6.15a-16a (reply to Lo).

12. Hsu Chieh, Shih-ching-t'ang chi (Ming printed ed.), 19.32a-38a.

13. Wang Yang-ming, Wang Yang-ming ch'üan-chi (reprint, Taipei, 1964), 425; T'ai-ho chih , 554.

14. Chan, Instructions , 66-67, 194-95, 235.

15. Wang Yang-ming, Wang Yang-ming ch'üan-chi , 425.

16. Chan, Instructions , 150-57.

17. Ming shih-lu (reprint, Taiwan, 1965), 74:1815, 76:2474, 76:2486.

18. Yen Sung, Ch'ien-shan-t'ang chi (ms. ed.), fu-lu , portrait appreciations, composed and signed in 1532 by T'ai-ho men Ou-yang Te and Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, and in some later year by Ch'en Te-wen, a vice director in the Ministry of Works. Ou-yang Te's written works also contain a number of flattering messages for Yen Sung.

19. Hsu Chieh, Shih-ching-t'ang chi , 19.32a-38a; also reprinted in Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu (1594; reprint, Taipei, 1965), 2:1390-92.

20. Ou-yang Te, Ou-yang Nan-yeh hsien-sheng wen-chi (woodblock ed., 1558), 1.14a-18b, 18b-24a, 24ab; Lo Ch'in-shun, K'un-chih chi , 117-21, 121-23.

21. Ou-yang Te, 2.29ab and 3.21ab.

22. Lo Ch'in-shun, K'un-chih chi , 124-27,132-33, 176-77, 182-83.

23. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser), A26.9b-14a (epitaph for Hu Shun-chü); L. Carrington Goodrich and Fang Chaoying, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography (New York, 1976), 2:1382-85 (Julia Ching, biography of Wang Ken).

24. Ou-yang Te, 1.33b-34b (response to Hu Yang-chai, i.e., Hu Yao-shih). Ou-yang's philosophical letters are not individually dated; his editor places this one along with a number of others in a section that he dates to the years 1529-34.

25. Lo Ch'in-shun, K'un-chih chi , 160-61.

26. Ming shih-lu , 76:2524-26. Hu Yao-shih's memorial is given in T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 5:1818-22.

27. Ou-yang Te, 17.4a-6a (message to Hu [Yao-shih], on his departure for the south).

28. Ch'en Po-ch'üan, ed., Chiang-hsi ch'u-t'u mu-chih hsuan-pien (Nan-chang, 1991), 368-70 (Hu Shun-chü, epitaph for Hu Yao-shih).

29. Chan, Instructions , xxv.

30. Lo Ch'in-shun, K'un-chih chi , 208; Ming shih-lu , 71:352-53.

31. The Great Rites dispute has been thoroughly studied in Carney T. Fisher, The Chosen One: Succession and Adoption in the Court of Ming Shizong (Sydney, 1990). On this and other protests in Ming history, cf. John W. Dardess, "Ming Officials and Modern Intellectuals: Some Enduring Configurations of Moral-Political Protest in China" (paper presented at the research conference entitled The Continuing Relevance of Traditional Chinese Institutions and Values in the Context of Modern China, East-West Center, University of Hawaii, May 1993).

32. Tsou Shou-i, Tung-kuo hsien-sheng wen-chi (Ming printed ed.), 3.1a-3a (preface to the Kai-chai wen-chi ). The Kai-chai wen-chi , the collection of Wang Ssu's written works, is apparently now lost.

33. Ming shih-lu , 66:2215-17; Ming shih (Kuo-fang yen-chiu-yuan ed.), 3:2242 (biography of Wang Ssu).

34. Ming shih , 3:2242; See T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 5:1788-90, for the full memorial.

35. Ming shih-lu , 66:2348; Wan-li T'ai-ho chih , 548-49. The account of his lectures (a yü-lu or ch'uan-lu ) appears no longer to be extant. The academy he lectured at was the Ching-han Academy in Ch'eng-hai County; I have not been able to find much information about it. The quotation is from the Wan-li T'ai-ho chih .

36. Ming shih-lu , 71:599.

37. T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 5:1790-92, 1792-96.

38. Hsia Liang-sheng, Tung-chou ch'u-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th ser), 14.48a (poem of lament for Wang Ssu). Wang Ssu had a wife, a concubine, and two daughters.

39. Chu Che, T'ien-ma shan-fang i-kao (SKCSCP ed., 4th set.), 2.18b-19b (postface to the Kai-chai hsueh-lu ). The work is now apparently lost. Chu Che noted a particular argument in it—that "the vacuity in the Way of Heaven consists solely of mind, and that the vacuity in the human mind consists solely of desire. The learner's job is done when he is no longer burdened by private desires, such that the substance of the mind engages the world with clear immediacy and in each instance according to principle."

40. Ming shih-lu , 82:5269-70; Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 4:2180-81 (T'ang Po-yuan, biography of Liu K'uei). T'ai-ho hsien-chih (1826), 5:1804-7, contains the text of Liu K'uei's memorial.

41. Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 4:2180 (T'ang Po-yuan, biography of Liu K'uei).

42. Ming shih , 5:3190 (biography of Yu Shih-hsi); Huang Tsung-hsi, Ming-ju hsueh-an (reprint, Taipei, 1965), 187. The quotation is from Huang Tsung-hsi.

43. Yang Chueh, Yang Chung-chieh chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 6.12b-13a.

44. Ming shih-lu , 84:5736; T'an Ch'ien, Kuo ch'ueh (reprint, Beijing, 1958), 4:3676.

45. The minister of personnel here was Hsiung Chia (1478-1554). Ming shih , 3:2297-98 (biography of Hsiung Chia); Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 2:1033-34 (Chang Ao, epitaph for Hsiung Chia). The other prisoner was Chou I (1506-69). Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 5:3042 (Chiang Pao, epitaph for Chou I).

46. Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 4:2180.

47. Yang Chueh, 2.10b-16a (prison diary); Wan-li T'ai-ho chih , 539-42 (biography of Liu K'uei).

48. Lo Hung-hsien, Nien-an wen-chi (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 11.48a-51a (message to Liu Ch'ing-ch'uan [Liu K'uei] on his sixtieth birthday). In 1541, Lo Hung-hsien had himself offended the emperor in a memorial that touched on the sensitive question of the imperial succession. He was admonisher to the heir apparent (6B), and was dismissed from civil service for his remarks. He spent the rest of his life at home, engaging in tax and service reform, conducting car-tographical and other research, and developing and teaching his own version of the Wang Yang-ming doctrines. See Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 1980-84.

49. Hsu Chieh, Shih-ching-t'ang chi , 12.6a-7a (message for Yang Tzu-hsu [Yang Tsai-ming]).

50. A prefectural judge by the name of Kuo Lai-ch'ao was placed on the Ministry of Personnel's promotions list. Yang Tsai-ming thought Kuo quite acceptable. Why not? Yang had read and admired Kuo's writing, and Kuo also had an "outstanding" rating attached to his personnel file. Censors, however, discovered disrespect in Kuo's preparation of a routine memorial to the emperor, and they furthermore reported that Kuo had been "unreasonably greedy and oppressive" in his work as judge. The high officials of the ministry acknowledged their error and issued an apology. The emperor ordered them fined, but he considered Yang Tsai-ming the main culprit, guilty of evilly and deliberately misrepresenting Kuo's record. See Ming shih-lu , 87:7100-01; Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A23.36b (epitaph for Yang Tsai-ming).

51. Ou-yang Te, 5.43b-44b (letter in reply to Yang Wu-tung [Yang Tsai-ming]).

52. Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 2:1392-93 (Li Ch'un-fang, stela for the imperially authorized temple in honor of Ou-yang Te).

53. Hsu Chieh, Shih-ching-t'ang chi , 19.32a-38a (spirit-way stela for Ou-yang Te); also in Chiao Hung, ed., Kuo-ch'ao hsien-cheng lu , 2:1390-92.

54. Huang Tsung-hsi makes this and other regional groupings of the Wang Yang-ming school in his Ming-ju hsueh-an . Ch. 16-24 of that work provide excerpts of the thought of no fewer than twenty-nine Kiangsi men, only three of which were from T'ai-ho (Ou-yang Te, Liu K'uei, and Hu Chih). Kandice J. Hauf, "The Jiangyou Group: Culture and Society in Sixteenth-Century China" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1987) is a pioneering attempt to study the lives and ideas of four leading figures: Nieh Pao, Tsou Shou-i, Ou-yang Te, and Lo Hung-hsien.

55. Described in John Meskill, Academies in Ming China: A Historical Essay (Tucson, 1982). Around 1542, Ou-yang Te attended one of the "meetings of the comrades of the nine counties" held at Ch'ing-yuan Mountain, and there discussed differing interpretations of Wang Yang-ming's thought with Nieh Pao, Tsou Shou-i, and Lo Hung-hsien. Ou-yang Te's son Ou-yang Shao-ch'ing accompanied him and "got to hear things he had never heard before, which he faithfully recorded, eventually amassing a container full of notes." The notes are lost. See Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A24.4a (account of conduct for Ou-yang Shao-ch'ing, 1517-74). The account also relates that as a boy in Nanking in the company of his father in the 1530s, Ou-yang Shao-ch'ing was attracted to the philosophy of Chan Jo-shui, who was living nearby, until one night Ou-yang had a mystical experience. He dreamt that he rode a horse past Chan's house and soon came upon a strange new place, where Wang Yang-ming sat at the the gate. Wang called him over, smiled, and impressed a seal upon the palms of the young man's hands; Wang then pulled open his jacket and impressed the seal over his heart.

56. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A8.27a-30a (a generational account of the Hu); Lo Hung-hsien, Nien-an wen-chi , 15.40a-42b (epitaph for Hu T'ien-feng).

57. Lü Nan, Ching-yeh-tzu nei-p'ien (reprint, Beijing, 1992), 87-88, also cf. 52. The five T'ai-ho men were K'ang Shu (1495-1569) of T'ai-ho city; Ou-yang Ch'ien-yuan, a distant relative of Ou-yang Te's; and three Ch'en men from Willow Creek, including Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, who prefaced the Ching-yeh-tzu nei-p'ien . All five were provincial degree holders at the time of the discussions; only Ch'en Ch'ang-chi later achieved his chin-shih .

58 . Lü Nan, Ching-yeh-tzu nei-p'ien , 87-88, 121-22. The five T'ai-ho men were K'ang Shu (1495-1569) of T'ai-ho city; Ou-yang Ch'ien-yuan, a distant relation of Ou-yang Te's, and three Ch'en men from Willow Creek, including Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, who prefaced Lü's work. Ho Liang-chün tended to agree with Lü about Wang Yang-ming; he asserted that Wang Yang-ming was a true genius, whom "middling talents" simply could not follow, struggle as they might. Cf. Ho Liang-chün, Ssu-yu-chai ts'ung-shuo (reprint, Beijing, 1983), 32.

59. Wei Chiao, Chuang-ch'ü i-shu (SKCSCP ed., 5th ser.), 3.73ab, 4.6b-7a, 4.25ab, 4.55b-56a, 14.5b-6b. There is only one letter to Wei Chiao in Ou-yang Te's works, and it does not seem to bear directly on Wei's objections. Ou-yang Te, 3.9ab. Ou-yang also wrote Lü Nan. Ou-yang Te, 2.25ab. Wei Chiao's T'ai-ho disciple was Wang Tsung-yin of Nan-fu Ward (township 61), a chü-jen of 1528 and later a magistrate. Wei Chiao, Chuang-ch'ü i-shu , 4.53b-54b, 69b-70b.

60. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , B8.20a-25a (epitaph).

61. Ibid., B11.29b-37a (biographies of Ch'en Liang-ching [I518-61], Lo Meng-fu, and Lo P'eng).

62. Hu Chih, K'un-hsueh chi , in Ming-ju hsueh-an , ed. Huang Tsung-hsi (reprint, Taipei, 1965), 221.

63. The Buddhist temple in question, the Hai-chih ssu, is not given in the gazetteers, at least not under that name. But it seems to have been located close to Hu Chih's home in township 51, as one of his poems suggests. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A7.1ab.

64. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A24.1ab (account of conduct for Ou-yang Shao-ch'ing). Hu Chih was three months older than Ou-yang Shao-ch'ing.

65. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , B11.23a-25a (biography of Yang Hai).

66. Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 1:983.

67. Hu Chih, K'un-hsueh chi , 221.

68. Such letters are among those included in Lo Hung-hsien, Nien-an wen-chi , ch. 2-4. His T'ai-ho correspondents included Hu Chih, Wang T'o, Ou-yang Ch'ang, Tseng Yü-ch'ien, Tseng Yü-chien, Tseng Yü-hung, and Tseng Yü-yeh (the Tsengs were kinsmen from Moon Hill Ward, township 32).

69. Hu Chih, K'un-hsueh chi , 222; Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , B8.20a-25a (epitaph for Tseng Yü-ch'ien, 1520-62). The other members were Lo Ch'ao, Hsiao Lung-yu, Wang T'o, and Ou-yang Ch'ang. Except for Hu Chih, all failed in their careers: Tseng became a primary tutor, Hsiao eventually purchased a post as a county vice magistrate, and Ou-yang Ch'ang was still a sheng-yuan when he died. So too, it appears, were Lo and Wang.

An older friend of Hu Chih's was successful in Fukien, however. Wang Chu (1500-54, of Hollow Street, in T'ai-ho's western suburb) won his chü-jen degree in 1525, but he spent the next quarter century as a private teacher in T'ai-ho and an active member of the local study groups that gathered to develop and spread the ideas of Wang Yang-ming. In 1549, he was appointed instructor in P'u-t'ien County in Fukien. The provincial education intendant was Chu Heng, from Wan-an County, just south of T'ai-ho. Chu Heng set up a series of venues for intensive discussion of Wang Yang-ming's thought, and he had Instructor Wang run these sessions in P'u-t'ien. Hundreds of sheng-yuan attended, and ''their old habits of clinging to classical text and commentary [in the Ch'eng-Chu tradition] were completely changed." Local scholar-officials were highly impressed. Wang died suddenly in 1554; a public mourning ceremony was held at the P'u-t'ien school. It turned out he was so poor that all he owned was a ragged blanket and a tattered mat, and the costs of his funeral and burial had to be met by contribution. Wang Shen-chung, Tsun-yen chi (SKCSCP ed., 8th ser.), 24.20b-21a (letter to Wang Wu-yang, i.e., Wang Chu) and 19.5ab (eulogy); Ch'en Ch'ang-chi, Lung-chin-yuan chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 3-74a-75b (message for Wang on his departure for P'u-t'ien); P'u-t'ien hsien-chih (1879; reprint, Taipei, 1968), 268. The quotation is from the P'u-t'ien hsien-chih .

What Wang Chu tried to do at the county level was mirrored by what, at the same time, Ou-yang Te and others tried to do at the national level, in Peking. Information about the mass meetings held in Peking from 1553 to 1554 seems inexplicably scarce, but Ou-yang Te (minister of rites) and several other high officials conducted a series of lecture-discussions over a period of two months at the Ling-chi kung, a Taoist temple inside the Imperial City, for the purpose of introducing a younger generation of officials to Wang Yang-ming's thought. "Thousands" attended these affairs. See Hsu Hsueh-mo, Shih-miao shih-yü lu (reprint, Shanghai, 1991), 21.14a-15a; Lo Ju-fang, Hsu-t'an chih-ch'üan (reprint, Taipei, 1960), 297-98. The Ling-chi kung sessions are mentioned only briefly by Meskill, Academies in Ming China , 131, and Joanna E Handlin, Action in Late Ming Thought: The Reorientation of Lü K'un and Other Scholar-Officials (Berkeley, 1983), 43.

70. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A26.20a-31a (biographical account, written while Chang was still alive); A25.20b-22b (epitaph for Madame Liao, 1524-69); A10.15a-17b (preface to the reprinting of the Wang Hsin-chai i-lu ); Ou-yang To, Ou-yang Kung-chien kung i-chi (Ming woodblock ed.), 11.2a-3b (message for Chang Feng).

71. Wan-li T'ai-ho chih (1579; reprint, Taipei, 1989), 557-58; Wan-li Chi-an fu-chih (1585; reprint, Beijing, 1991), 375-76 (biographies of Kuo Ying-k'uei); Shou-chou chih (1550; reprint, Shanghai, 1981), 5.78a.

72. There was, stated Hu, an "original mind." It was Mencius's "mind of not being able to bear others' [misfortunes]." Certain lofty-minded men (surely he meant Lo Hung-hsien and Tsou Shou-i here) erred by drowning themselves in ''vacuity and tranquillity." Men of low mind (Grand Secretaries Yen Sung? Hsu Chieh?) engaged in the power-based manipulation of others. Only Ou-yang Te's "original mind," when made manifest, steered the student away from either of those errors. See Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A21.16b-17b (tomb report).

73. Ibid., A10.22a-26b (preface to the Ou-yang Nan-yeh hsien-sheng wen-hsuan ).

74. Ming shih-lu , 94:1233.

75. Rodney L. Taylor, "Acquiring a Point of View: Confucian Dimensions of Self-Perception," Monumenta Serica 34 (1979-80): 145-70.

76. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , B9.18a (epitaph for Hsiao Jun-chuang, 1517-81).

77. These were Lo Ju-fang (1515-88), Tsou Shah (Tsou Shou-i's son), Keng Ting-hsiang (1524-96), and Chiang Pao (1514-93). Lo Ju-fang served alongside Hu Chih in the Ministry of Justice (his career as lecturer and teacher has been dealt with by Joanna E Handlin in Action in Late Ming Thought , 41-54). Keng Ting-hsiang, another major intellectual figure, would later write Hu Chih's epitaph, as well as an earlier piece celebrating key phases in Hu Chih's intellectual development. See Keng Ting-hsiang, Keng T'ien-t'ai hsien-sheng wen-chi (reprint, Taipei, 1956), 3:1205-8, 1225-43. Chiang Pao was a Han-lin junior compiler. They were all among Ming bureaucracy's brightest and best.

78. Kuo Tzu-chang, Pin-i sheng Yueh-ts'ao (printed ed., 1590), 6.1a-20a (account of conduct for Hu Chih).

79. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A20.17a-19a (letter to Chang).

80. Chang Chü-cheng, Chang T'ai-yueh wen-chi (reprint, Shanghai, 1984), 262 (22.2ab, letter to Hu Chih).

81. Hu Chih was on his way to Peking when he was informed that his mother was ill, and he then decided to retire. He sent an i-nan (foster son, i.e., personal bondservant) by the name of Hu An ahead to Peking with a written retirement request. He also sent Grand Secretary Chang a long letter, in which he raised issues he said he had originally planned to raise with him in person. tie urged that more be done to acclimate the young Wan-li emperor to his moral role. He argued that officials should not be promoted solely on the basis of their concrete accomplishments. He asked that Chang intervene to heal a growing partisan split between followers of Chu Hsi and followers of Wang Yang-ming. He demanded that Chang rescind his tax reforms because they were causing hardship all over China. Chang seems to have ignored the letter. Hu's request to retire was approved. His mother soon recovered from her illness. Cf. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A20.40b-42a (memorial requesting retirement) and A20.21b-25b (official letter to Chang).

82. One gifted student who came for a short while in 1568 to take instruction was Kuo Tzu-chang (1543-1618, of Kuan-ch'ao Ward, township 31). Hu's lesson for him dwelt on "seeking benevolence," which Hu explained as a quest without intentionality or emotion, where "the learning of the Sages begins." Another gifted student, and future national luminary, who studied with Hu Chih around this time was Tsou Yuan-piao (1551-1624) of Chi-shui County. Cf. Kuo Tzu-chang, Ch'ing-lo kung i-shu (T'ai-ho, printed ed., 1882), 5a ( nien-p'u ); Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 2:1312-14; Ming shih , 4:2763-65 (biography of Tsou Yuan-piao).

83. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , B5.5b-7b (preface and appreciation for the portrait). The two contributors were K'ang Tsung-wang, probably of Chueh-yü Ward (township 52) and Yueh I-ning, of Ho-ch'i Ward (township 65).

84. Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , B4.5a-7a (letters to Kuo Hsiang-k'uei [Tzu-chang]). Kuo was serving in Fukien at this time and may have published the Hu-tzu heng-ch'i there. It was also published in Ch'ang-chou, with a preface by the famed litterateur Wang Shih-chen (1526-90). See Wang Shih-chen, Yen-chou shan-jen hsu-kao (reprint, Taipei, 1970), 6:2581-85. The Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu chen-pen edition of Hu Chih's works contains the entirety of the Hu-tzu heng-ch'i , under the label tsa-chu , or "miscellaneous writings." Hu Chih, Heng-lu ching-she ts'ang-kao , A28.1a-A30.117b.

85. Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography , 1:624-25 (biography of Hu Chih).

86. A phenomenon noted by Handlin, Action in Late Ming Thought , 14, and, indeed, throughout the book.

1. For the late Ming Buddhist revival, see Pei-yi Wu, "The Spiritual Autobiography of Te-ch'ing," in The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism , ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York, 1975), 67-92; Kristin Yü Greenblatt, "Chu-hung and Lay Buddhism in the Late Ming," in ibid., 93-140; Chün-fang Yü, The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis (New York, 1981); Hsu Sung-p'eng, A Buddhist Leader in Ming China: The Life and Thought of Han-shan Te-ch'ing (University Park, Pa., 1979). Late Ming Buddhism preached a kind of social gospel of good works and positive engagement with the world.

2. The Buddhist revival was a China-wide phenomenon. Timothy Brook has argued that it constituted a social challenge, the construction of a new world of local social action that was disengaged from the long-dominant embrace of the imperial state. See his Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China (Harvard, 1993).

3. T'ang Hsien-tsu, T'ang Hsien-tsu shih-wen chi (new ed., Shanghai, 1982), 2:1177-86 (epitaph).

4. Kuo Tzu-chang, Ch'ing-lo kung i-shu (T'ai-ho, printed ed., 1882), 12.10b-11a, 11b-12a; 26.19b-20a, 25a-26a, 26a-27a; 28.14b-15b (inscriptions and other pieces).

5. Cf. Joanna E Handlin Smith, "Gardens in Ch'i Piao-chia's Social World: Wealth and Values in Late-Ming Kiangnan," Journal of Asian Studies 51 (February 1992): 55-81.

6. Hsiung Ming-yü, Wen-chih hsing-shu (printed ed., 1660), 2.52a-55a (inscription for the Hsiao-yuan).

7. Li Ying-sheng, Lo-lo chai i-chi (Ch'ang-chou hsien-che i-shu ed.), ch. 3 (letter to Li) and 7.24ab, 8.18b-19a (letters to Hsiao); Miao Ch'ang-ch'i, Ts'ung-yeh-t'ang ts'un-kao (Ch'ang-chou hsien-che i-shu ed.), appendix, 14ab (poem from Hsiao).

8. Hsiao Shih-wei, "Random notes from the Spring Floating Garden," quoted in Mao Hsiao-t'ung, ed., T'ang Hsien-tsu yen-chiu tzu-liao hui-pien (Shanghai, 1986), 2:1162-63. As young men, Hsiao Shih-wei and Ch'en Chi-t'ai (1567-1641) attended a banquet at T'ang's home; the host praised Hsiao's literary talent, and Hsiao remained for the rest of his life an aficionado of T'ang's dramas. See T'ang Hsien-tsu, T'ang Hsien-tsu shih-wen chi , 2:1100-01.

9. Ch'ien Ch'ien-i, Mu-chai yu-hsueh chi (Ssu-pu ts'ung-k'an ed.), 18.7a-8b (preface to Hsiao's Ch'un-fou-yuan chi ) and 15.6b-8b (poem); Chou Liang-kung, ed., Lai-ku-t'ang ch'ih-tu hsin-ch'ao (reprint, Taipei, 1972), 3:498-500 (short letters by Hsiao to Ch'ien Ch'ien-i and others).

10. See William E Atwell, "From Education to Politics: The Fu She," in The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism , ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York, 1975), 333-67; Jerry Dennerline, The Chia-ting Loyalists: Confucian Leadership and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century China (New Haven, 1981), which has much to say about the Restoration Society; Hsieh Kuo-chen, Ming Ch'ing pi-chi t'an-ts'ung (Beijing, 1962), 48-53, on Hsiao Shih-wei; and Hsieh Kuo-chen, Ming Ch'ing chih chi tang-she yun-tung k'ao (Taipei, 1967), 155 ff., on the Restoration Society in Kiangsi. See also Ch'en Chi-t'ai, I-wu chi (reprint, Taipei, 1977), 1:17-18, 177-78, 2:459-60 (notes for T'ai-ho club members); Chi-an fu-chih (Kiangsi, 1875), 37.40b. The Fu-she hsing-shih chuan-lueh (printed ed., 1831) lists nineteen T'ai-ho members (Chi-an Prefecture had forty-five total, and Nan-ch'ang ninety-five). Information about the K'uai-ko club and its members is very scarce, owing to the heavy Ch'ing purge and destruction of late Ming writing. T'ai-ho writing was hit hard. Cf. Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu tsung-mu (reprint, Taipei, 1964), 8:12, 36, 158, and passim.

11. The famous names include Wei Hsi (1624-81), P'eng Shih-wang (1610-83), Fang I-chih (1611-71), Mao Ch'i-ling (1623-1716), Shih Jun-chang (1619-83), and Wu Wei-yeh (1609-72).

12. Wu Wei-yeh, Mei-ts'un chia-ts'ang kao (reprint, Taipei, 1970), 2:623-25 (message for Hsiao Meng-fang [Po-sheng] on his fiftieth birthday).

13. Chiang-hsi t'ung-chih (Kiangsi, 1881), 153.13a-14a (inscriptions by P'eng Shih-wang and Chang Chen-sheng).

14. Liu Hsien-t'ing, Kuang-yang tsa-chi (reprint, Beijing, 1985), 83.