1. Wan Yan, 1:16a-b, 27a, 31b, 35a-36a; Li Yesi, 3:1a, 21a, 33b; Ningbo fuzhi, 1 7 :49a, 19:26a-27a, 20:62a-b, 29:4b; Hummel, 353-354, 803-804. [BACK]

2. The political context of gentry hegemony is skillfully analyzed in Shigeta Atsushi, 335-385. [BACK]

3. On Ningbo and its history, see Davis, 21-31; Shiba Yoshinobu 1977; Tsur. Other details are from Ningbo fuzhi and Yin xianzhi 1788. [BACK]

4. My principal sources for degrees were Ningbo fuzhi, juan 17 (note that the first two names in the 1565 cohort were Yin natives, though not marked as such); Yin xianzhi I877: juan 23; Yinxian tongzhi , 1:319b-530b; Rankin 1986, 314. [BACK]

5. Rankin 1986, 7. [BACK]

6. Mann (1987, 90) has noted that the gazetteer section on filial paragons was where editors might place biographies of merchants, whose occupation did not recommend them for public commendation under any other category: an "umbrella of historical respectability shielding entrepreneurial offspring who stayed home to mind the family store." [BACK]

7. Ningbo fuzhi , 24: 12a, 24a. [BACK]

8. Quan Zuwang 1803, 2:4b. The two Sun lineages are listed on 12b-13a, although I have not been able to identify conclusively Sun E with either of them. I am grateful to Mi Chü Wiens of the Library of Congress for providing me with a photocopy of this work. [BACK]

9. Yin xianzhi 1877, 43:20a, 46b; 44: 12b, 20b.

10. Ibid., 43:40b. [BACK]

9. Yin xianzhi 1877, 43:20a, 46b; 44: 12b, 20b.

10. Ibid., 43:40b. [BACK]

11. Yin men are not conspicuous in commercial circles: none of the most prominent Ningbo merchants who were active both at home and in Shanghai in the nineteenth century was a native of Yin. The merchants came from outlying counties like Zhenhai (Jones 1974, 84-85). In such places one finds families simultaneously pursuing banking and business interests and examination degrees; e.g., the Fangs: Shanghai qianzhuang shiliao , 733-734; Zhenhai xian xinzhi beigao , 27: 14b. [BACK]

12. The one institution that overrode this principle was the yin privilege granting office to first- (and sometimes second-) generation progeny of high officials. Although much restricted from its use in earlier dynasties, the privilege was conferred on members of twenty-three Yin lineages in the Ming ( Ningbo fuzhi , 17b: 46a-49a). On the yin privilege in the Song, see Davis, 16-17. [BACK]

13. Robert Hartwell (1982, 419) has warned against overstating the openness of the elite in the Song, pointing out that elites manipulated the examination system to favor established families. [BACK]

14. Ai Nanying, 7:26b. Ai (1583-1646) made this remark in an encomium to an acquaintance who was setting off to become registrar of Dinghai wei , a military district on Ningbo's offshore islands in the Zhoushan Archipelago. [BACK]

15. Pan Guangdan, 94. The translation of the former is from Ping-ti Ho 1962: 166. [BACK]

16. E.g., Ping-ti He, 1962; Marsh 1961. [BACK]

17. In a parallel fashion, scholars of early modern Britain have argued that there was a high degree of continuity within the British elite. Membership in the elite changed considerably in certain areas of Britain, but elite families outside the

immediate political and commercial orbit of London tended to survive for many centuries (Holmes, 12, 231). The Civil War, once considered a major catalyst for the emergence of new gentry and the decline of old, may in fact have had only negligible impact: in south Wales three-quarters of the leading gentry families entering the eighteenth century had dominated local political office under the Tudors (Jenkins, 29, 42). High continuity among the greater English gentry into the nineteenth century has been most energetically argued in Stone and Stone. Their methodology and conclusions have been questioned in Spring and Spring, who argue that lower-level gentry pedigrees and marriage mask nouveaux-riches origins. [BACK]

18. Beattie 1979b, 88; Dennerline 1981, 113; Hymes 1986b, 132, 133. [BACK]

20. Ping-ti Ho 1962, 166-167. [BACK]

21. Ebrey 1986, 41-42. [BACK]

22. Yin xianzhi 1788, 1: 18a. [BACK]

23. For the role of the gentry in creating lineage institutions during the Ming, see Brook 1988, 73-75, 78. [BACK]

24. Early modern European elites by contrast sought to sustain their continuity through a wide range of strategies—law, marriage, entail, bachelor- and spinsterhood, birth control, and careful management of their fortunes. But they lacked the extended kinship ties that made the Chinese lineage, and its status-conscious strategies, possible. For Chinese elites, entail through primogeniture was unavailable and fertility restriction unacceptable. We are grateful to Robert Forster for pointing out this contrast. [BACK]

25. Shiba Yoshinobu 1977, 434; Tsur, 18-19, 36-37; Cole 1986, 160; Zhang Xingzhou, 237. [BACK]

26. Yin xianzhi 1788, 29, 31a, from an anthology of local verse by Li Yesi. On the four Song lineages, see Walton for the Lous and Davis for the Shis. [BACK]

27. Pan Guangdan, 94-110. [BACK]

28. My reconstruction is based on Quan Zuwang 1814 and the comprehensive lineage tables in Yinxian tongzhi, juan I. On the basis of these sources plus inferences from local writings, I have identified 198 lineages with Ming or Qing holders of the jinshi or juren degree. This survey is not complete because I have been unable to identify roughly one-quarter of Ming-Qing jinshi by lineage. A few surnames were particularly resistant to lineage identification (Chen, Wang, Xu, Ye, Yuan, Zhang, and Zheng). [BACK]

29. I have excluded the Yingfang Chens and the Haohe Lings, each of whom garnered three jinshi plus several juren and gongsheng degrees, during and immediately after the Taiping Rebellion when degree quotas were eased; also the Geluo Mas, the Dali Wangs, and the Junziying Zhus, whose degrees were acquired within less than sixty years. [BACK]

30. The data on these families are from Quan Zuwang 183, 8:566, 589, 687; Ningbo fuzhi , 20:46a, 59b, 78a; 24: 33b. [BACK]

31. Williams 1977, 110. [BACK]

32. Lu Hsün, 217. I thank Jonathan Lipman for calling my attention to this story. [BACK]

33. Yin xianzhi 1788, 29:31b-32a. [BACK]

34. A lack of genealogical data concerning the Zhu surname makes it difficult to

distinguish Zhu lineages. The Zhus in this verse are probably the Madong Zhus, Madong being just south of Jiangshan (the Chens' home village) in the southern part of the county. [BACK]

35. Wan Yan, 2: 70a. For another reference to the importance of proximity in sustaining gentry friendships see Ningbo fuzhi , 26: 31b. [BACK]

36. Yin xianzhi 1788, 18: 10b. [BACK]

37. Ningbo fuzhi , 7a: 260, 30a-b; 7b: 21a; 10: 10b; 35: 36a; Yin xianzhi 1788, 25: 7a; Dinghai xianzhi , 6: 10a (see also 12a, 15b). [BACK]

38. Ningbo fuzhi , 20: 45a; Yin xianzhi 1788, 27: 39b. [BACK]

39. Tu Long, 4:14a. [BACK]

40. Yongshan Lu shi Jingmu Tang zongpu , 3: 2b. [BACK]

41. Quan Zuwang 1803, 8: 577.

42. Ibid., 8: 600. The Discarded Silk Society also excluded those who collaborated with the new regime. Chai Degeng, 102. [BACK]

41. Quan Zuwang 1803, 8: 577.

42. Ibid., 8: 600. The Discarded Silk Society also excluded those who collaborated with the new regime. Chai Degeng, 102. [BACK]

43. Yin xianzhi 1877, 43: 24a; Jiang Xueyong was a Heyi Jiang. For the "Eastern Zhejiang School," see Struve. [BACK]

44. Concerning the Jiangjing Hui and Huang's relationship with the Dingyuan Wangs, see Elman, 115-117. [BACK]

45. Wan Yan, 2: 70a; Ningbo fuzhi , 26: 26b; Yin xianzhi 1877, 41: 32b. [BACK]

46. Kuhn 1970, 215-216; Rankin 1986, 93-97; Min Tu-ki, chaps. 4-5. Kuhn has shown how the mobilization of local militias ( tuanlian ) against the Taipings made the power of the local gentry less informal. Gentry in Yin also formed anti-Taiping tuanlian ( Yin xianzhi 1877, 44: 33a). [BACK]

47. Mann, 83. Gentry operation of markets in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Shandong was confined to lower gentry, mainly shengyuan and jiansheng . Yamane Yukio, 558. [BACK]

48. Yin xianzhi 1788, 29: 27a. [BACK]

49. Yin xianzhi 1877, 43: 7a. [BACK]

50. Rankin 1986, 106. [BACK]

51. Zhou Rong, the leading Ningbo poet of the mid-seventeenth century, offered to take the place of his patron captured by pirates. The pirates accepted, then crippled Zhou to prevent him from escaping, which he later did anyway ( Ningbo fuzhi , 26: 26b). [BACK]

52. Yin xianzhi 1877, 43:9b. [BACK]

53. Gentry patronage of Buddhist monasteries is treated in Brook (forthcoming). Shiba Yoshinobu (1977, 423) points out that most non-Buddhist urban temples and shrines in Yin were under the patronage of commercial and residential groups rather than the gentry. [BACK]

54. Ningbo fuzhi , 9: 35b. [BACK]

55. Yin xianzhi 1788, 2: 4a. [BACK]

56. Ningbo fuzhi , 35: 28a, 36b; Zhou Daozun, 4: 12b. [BACK]

57. Ningbo fuzhi , 10: 6b; Yin xianzhi 1877, 23: 23b. Zhaoshen (cemetery benefactures list) could be a typographical error for Zhaojia (degree list). [BACK]

58. Sasaki Masaya, 185-299; Liu Guangjing, 354-359; Yinxian tongzhi , 1:447b-448a. [BACK]

59. By the nineteenth century, a lineage possessing one or two lower degrees had little hope of rising into the greater gentry. The term gentry is stretched too far if one includes, for instance, a family in a 1927 genealogy that shows the lineage had acquired no more than one or two shengyuan degrees every few generations since its most recent juren degree in 1489. Yongshang Leigongqiao Wu shi jiapu, juan 3. [BACK]

60. Liu Guangjing, 359. After the magistrate left Yin for a subsequent posting, local people raised a shrine in his honor. It was also the site of sacrifices in memory of Zhou Xiangqian, whose uprising had prompted the magistrate to deal with the tax inequity. [BACK]

61. Kobayashi Kazumi (223-224), commenting on the involvement of lower elites in tax resistance, uses Zhou as an example of ''rectifying the unfairness of the tax assessment administered by the county magistrate," although he does not mention Zhou's personal interest. [BACK]