State on the Move: The Structures of Physical Mobility of Provincial Officials in the Qin and Former...

Maxim Korolkov

State on the move: Aspects of physical mobility of provincial

officials in the Qin and Former Han empires as reflected in

excavated manuscripts

Table of Contents

Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 2

1. Controversies of the state on the move ....................................................................... 5

2. Excavated documents as a source for the study of officials’ travels .................. 9 2.1. Official documents ................................................................................................................. 11 2.2. Semi-‐official records ............................................................................................................. 12 2.3. Private texts ............................................................................................................................. 14

3. Officials’ physical mobility and operation of government ................................. 15 3.1. Travel to the place of service .............................................................................................. 16 3.2. Maintenance of public order ............................................................................................... 20 3.3. Administration of justice ..................................................................................................... 21 3.4. Inspection tours ...................................................................................................................... 21 3.5. Supervision of conscript laborers and convicts ........................................................... 22 3.6. Delivery of documents, materials, and cash .................................................................. 23

4. Structure of physical mobility: economy and logistics of officials’ travels ... 24 4.1. Financing official travels ...................................................................................................... 25 4.2. Infrastructure of travel: transportation, accommodation, medical care ............ 34 4.2.1. Transportation .................................................................................................................................. 34 4.2.2. Accommodation ................................................................................................................................ 37 4.2.3. Medical care ........................................................................................................................................ 40

4.3. Efficiency control .................................................................................................................... 41 5. Experience of physical mobility: travel as a part of social lifeworld of Qin and Han officials .................................................................................................................... 46 5.1. Travel as common experience ........................................................................................... 47 5.2. Travel as an opportunity: official travels and social networks .............................. 48 5.2.1. Official’s travels as a setting for establishing and maintaining a social network . 49 5.2.2. Travel as a “focal point” for the local society ....................................................................... 52

5.3. Travel as a crisis: dangers and uncertainty ................................................................... 53 5.3.1. Dangers of travelling ...................................................................................................................... 53 5.3.2. Dealing with uncertainty: divination about travel ............................................................ 55

Concluding remarks ............................................................................................................. 59

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Introduction

The physical mobility, or the ability of humans to move around their environment,

may be considered as one of the key determinants of social life, and the capacity to

grant, restrict, or otherwise control this ability was, in all historical societies,

congruent with, and principal for social, political, and economic power.1 In fact, the

direct correlation between one’s social status and possibility to unrestrictedly move

across the space is one of the most enduring features of human society, with its top

members manifesting it through theatrical royal progresses across the country, and

those on the bottom of social ladder temporarily (convicts) or permanently (slaves)

stripped of their capacity to move.2 In the case of the later, immobility was in the

center of the phenomenon of “social death”, or complete deprivation of individual’s

status in the society.3

Not less importantly, physical mobility is one of the essential structures of the

reality of everyday life, as it is instrumental for creating individual’s web of human

relationships and also determines the scope of common-‐sense knowledge, thus

delineating the realm of resources and opportunities available to the individual, and

forming the mental frameworks within which these opportunities would be

actualized, and resources put to use.4 Common patterns of physical mobility are

likely to generate human groups with shared everyday life experience (including the

1 See http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Physical_mobility for the modern definition of physical mobility. 2 For the “peregrination” as constituent of monarchical charisma, see Clifford Geerz, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power”, in Clifford Geerz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 121-‐46. The literature on the ritual of royal procession is enormous – see, for example, Ian Dunlop, Palaces and progresses of Elizabeth I (London: Cape, 1962); Brigitte Streich, Zwischen Reiseherrschaft und Residenzbildung: der Wettinische Hof im späten Mittelalter (Köln: Böhlau, 1989); Mark Lewis, “The feng and shan sacrifices of Emperor Wu of the Han”, in Joseph McDermott, ed., State and court ritual in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 50-‐80. 3 For the concept of social death, see Orlando Patterson, Slavery and social death: a comparative study (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982). 4 In other words, physical mobility determines the “here” of everyday life – see Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, “The Foundations of Knowledge in Everyday Life”, in Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Penguin Press, 1967), 35-‐36.

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sense of time and space) and knowledge, which makes the understanding of such

patterns indispensable for the study of social life and political history.

This paper analyses the aspects of physical mobility of the officials – the only

social group in early imperial China that left over a variety of first-‐hand written

sources reflecting their everyday experiences, practices, and concerns. With the

level of literacy probably well above the average5, and with their claims to social

status and material wealth embedded in the mastery of written language, these

people used to include texts among the items to accompany them in the

netherworld, the custom to which we owe many of the recent discoveries of ancient

Chinese manuscripts.6 Moreover, the texts recovered from non-‐burial settings are

almost invariably related to the activity of state officials as well.7

The officials, or the professional, full-‐time government personnel who received

payment for their service, were a rather multifaceted group that included the

powerful decision-‐makers in the central government on the top, and petty clerks in

5 But see the revisionist accounts on the level of literacy in late pre-‐imperial and early imperial China: Xing Yitian, “Handai biansai lizu de junzhong jiaoyu: du “Juyan xinjian” zhaji zhi san” 漢代邊塞吏卒的軍中教育：讀《居延新簡》劄記之三, Dalu zazhi 87 (1993), 1-‐3; Ji Annuo 紀安諾 (Enno Giele), “Handai biansai beiyong shuxie cailiao jiqi shehuishi yiyi” 漢代邊塞備用書寫材料及其社會史意義, Wuhan daxue jianbo yanjiu zhongxin 武漢大學簡帛研究中心, ed., Jianbo 簡帛 2 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2007), 475-‐500; Robin Yates, “Soldiers, Scribes, and Women: Literacy among the Lower Orders in Early China”, in Li Feng and David Prager Branner, eds., Writing and Literacy in Early China: Studies from the Columbia Early China Seminar (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2011), 339-‐369; Anthony Barbieri-‐Low, “Craftsman’s Literacy: Uses of Writing by Male and Female Artisans in Qin and Han China”, in Li and Branner, eds., Writing and Literacy in Early China, 370-‐399. 6 For the relation between writing and authority, see the now-‐classic study by Mark Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999). For the convenient summary of excavated ancient Chinese manuscripts, see Enno Giele, “Using Early Chinese Manuscripts as Historical Source Materials”, Monumenta Serica 51 (2003), 409-‐438. For the introduction to a variety of issues in the study of texts in tombs, see Matthias Richter, “Hamburg Tomb Text Workshop: Introduction”, in Monumenta Serica 51 (2003), 401-‐408. 7 Such as the Qin administrative archive discovered in Liye 里耶, Hunan Province; the records of Han military administration at the north-‐western frontier represented by the documents from Juyan 居延 and Dunhuang 敦煌 areas in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Gansu Province, respectively; and the local government archive of the Three Kingdoms state of Wu 吳 (A.D. 220-‐280) unearthed at Zoumalou 走馬樓, Changsha, Hunan Province.

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remote counties on the bottom.8 The social background and daily life experiences of

these people should have varied immensely. Nevertheless, there is some evidence to

show that the group identity of officials was gradually forming through the early

imperial period, reflected in the shared communicative etiquette and social

networks that involved both high-‐ and relatively low-‐ranking officials.9 One purpose

of this essay is to explore the ways in which physical mobility contributed to the

formation of officials as a social group. By necessity, the paper focuses on provincial

officials, whose tombs yielded most of the manuscript material analyzed here.

Discussion is divided into five parts. In the first part, I consider the controversial

nature and miscellaneous manifestations of the state’s involvement in the issues of

physical mobility of its subjects during the late Warring States and early imperial

period. I argue that this controversy provides a background for understanding the

aspects of physical mobility of the officials as reflected in the Qin and Han

documents. The second part introduces the sources of this study: archaeologically

recovered manuscripts on bamboo slips and wooden tablets, which are

taxonomized under the categories of official documents (further classified as

normative and accounting documents), semi-‐official records, and private texts. In

the third part, officials’ travels are discussed as a part of the operation of local

government in early empires. They were a product of the attempted state

penetration into the countryside, but also of the growing regional integration and

cooperation between regional and local governments. The fourth part analyses the

8 The official history of the Former Han empire, the Hanshu 漢書, gives a figure of 130,285 officials on the pay roll of the central government in the end of the Former Han period – see Ban Gu 班固, Hanshu (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1962), 19a.743; Hans Bielenstein, The bureaucracy of Han times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 156, 205, n. 1. This corresponds well with the figures for the Donghai 東海 Commandery in the registers excavated at Yinwan 尹灣 – see Michael Loewe, The Men Who Governed Han China: Companion to A Bibliographical Dictonary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), 70-‐71. The Hanshu figure, however, does not include the lowest echelons of the bureaucracy such as canton (xiang 鄉) officials. 9 For a recent study of this process, see Maxim Korolkov, “‘Greeting Tablets in Early China: Some Traits of the Communicative Etiquette of Officialdom in Light of Newly Excavated Inscriptions”, T’oung Pao 98 (2012), 295-‐348.

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structures of physical mobility: economy and logistics of officials’ travels that

included financial arrangements and regulations for sponsoring travels; means of

transportation; accommodation and medical care provided to the travelling officials.

Another important structure to be looked at in this paper is the institution of

efficiency control designed to ensure that officials complied with requirements for

the speed of travelling. The last, fifth part regards physical mobility as a field for the

operation of agency.10 It demonstrates that travels provided a setting for the

formation of common experience of time and space among the officials; for

establishing and maintaining social relations, including those potentially subversive

for the current political order; and for developing and manifesting new identities. At

the same time, travels presented a challenge and crisis in the lives of those who had

to undertake them on a regular basis, and people dealt with this crisis using the

means that were available to them. I conclude the essay with the summary of its

findings that, I believe, allow to better integrate the grand picture of the early

imperial state with the realities of everyday life of its humble servicemen, and to

arrive at a better understanding of both.

1. Controversies of the state on the move

During the late Warring States and early imperial period, the state attitude towards

the physical mobility of its subjects was marked by ambivalence. On the one hand,

the emergence of territorial state that eventually evolved into the universalist

empire was accompanied by the economic and technological development (such as

introduction of iron agricultural tools), population growth, inner colonization,

outward expansion, formation of regional markets, and other processes that

involved relocation of large masses of people.11 By the first half of the Former Han

10 For the discussion of the concepts of structure and agency, see William Sewell, Jr., Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 124-‐151. 11 These are some of the most fundamental issues in social and economic history of the Warring States and early imperial period, and the related scholarship is substantial. For one of the most comprehensive surveys, see Yang Kuan 楊寬, Zhanguo shi 戰國史 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 2008). For the spread of iron metallurgy and tools in late Warring States

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period, the idea of population mobility being instructed by economic factors, and

recommendations for the state to make use of rather than to attempt to restrict such

moves, had already become a common place in economic argument. As a part of its

idealizing image of the policies in the beginning of Han, the Shiji narrates about the

“opening of custom posts” (kai guanliang 開關梁) to facilitate movement of both

people and merchandise.12

On the other hand, it was during this period that the state was becoming

increasingly concerned about the moves of its subjects and for the first time adopted

systematic policies to restrict such moves. This was one of the manifestations of the

increasing claims by the state rulers to the overarching control over natural and

human resources within their territory that characterized the political process of

the period immediately preceding the emergence of the imperial state in China.13

Rulers’ aspiration to the control over the moves of their subjects was implemented

through a number of policies, some of which are well known from the transmitted

historical record, while others have only recently been recognized in the wake of the

archaeological recovery of ancient legal and administrative documents.

Large-‐scale, compulsory resettlements have been advocated by the theoreticians

of the activist territorial state from as early as the middle of the Warring States era,

and became a reality during the Qin conquests in the late fourth – third century B.C.

China, see Joseph Needham and Donald Wagner, Science and Civilization in China. Vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology. Part 11: Ferrous Metallurgy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 115-‐170. For the population growth, inner colonization, and outward expansion, see Lothar von Falkenhausen, Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000-‐250 BC): The Archaeological Evidence (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, 2006), 244-‐288, esp. 284-‐287; Ge Jianxiong 葛劍雄, Zhongguo renkou shi 中國人口史. Vol. 1: Daolun, Xian Qin zhi Nanbeichao shiqi 導論、先秦至南北朝時期 (Shanghai: Fudan daxue, 2002), 291-‐300. For the regional markets in early empires, see Barbieri-‐Low, Artisans in Early Imperial China (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2007), 118-‐121. 12 See, for example, Li Xiangfeng 黎翔鳳, Guanzi jiaozhu 管子校注, Vols. 1-‐3, in Xinbian zhuzi jicheng 新編諸子集成 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2004), 1.2; Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 129.3255, 3261. The fragments of early Former Han legislation excavated at Zhangjiashan 張家山, Hubei Province, show that the custom control within the borders of empire actually existed in the beginning of Han. See Yang Jian 楊健, Xi Han chuqi jinguan zhidu yanjiu 西漢初期津關制度研究 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2010). 13 See Mark Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany: SUNY, 1990), 54-‐67.

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They culminated in the resettlement of the entire social groups of the destroyed

states after the proclamation of the Qin Empire in 221 B.C.14 Under the Han dynasty,

forced resettlement remained in the repertoire of government policies aimed at the

economic development as well as strategic control over border regions.15

Along with permanent relocations, temporal, though also compulsory,

population moves have been routinized through the systems of corvée (statute) and

convict labor, military service, as well as through the practice of working off debts to

the government at the official construction projects that was widely applied in the

Qin empire.16

14 “The Book of the Lord of Shang” (Shang-‐jun shu 商君書), a compilation of the mid-‐ and late-‐Warring States legalist political thought, recommends mobilization of the entire Qin population for the military service and settling Qin lands with relocated peasants from the conquered territories of Han, Zhao, and Wei – see Jiang Lihong 蔣禮鴻, Shang-‐jun shu zhuizhi 商君書錐指, in Xinbian zhuzi jicheng (first series) (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1986), 4.92. Archaeological evidence that Qin practiced populating the newly conquered regions with its own people and moving of local population elsewhere, both processes conceivably compulsory – see Teng Mingyu 滕銘予, Qin wenhua: cong fengguo dao diguo de kaoguxue guancha 秦文化：從封國到帝國的考古學觀察 (Beijing: Xueyuan, 2003), 127, 130-‐133. For the relocation of 120,000 of “powerful and rich” households of the conquered states to the Qin capital region in the wake of the proclamation of the empire, see Shiji, 6.239. 15 The Han founder Liu Bang 劉邦 (206-‐195 B.C.) moved various groups of population to the Guanzhong 關中 region in the Wei river basin that was devastated by war and needed settlers to bolster economic recovery – see Hanshu, 1b.58, 66, 72. The practice of resettlement of as much as hundreds of thousands of households to take care of the emperors’ burial complexes was practiced through the Han period – see, for example, Hanshu, 6.158, 170; for the economic aspect of such relocations that served the purpose of development of suburbs of the imperial capital, see Sergei Dmitriev, “Imperskie mavzolei v ideologii i ekonomike Zapadnoi Han” (Imperial mausoleums in ideology and economy of Western Han), in Aleksei Bokshanin, ed., Obshestvo i gosudarstvo v Kitae: XL nauchnaja konferencija (State and Society in China: XL scholarly conference) (Moscow: IVRAN, 2010), 45-‐58. For the relocation of population to settle the recently conquered frontier regions, see, for example, Hanshu. 6.170, 178, 187. 16 For the classic study of statute labor in early empires, see A.F.P. Hulsewé, “Some remarks on statute labor during the Ch’in and Han dynasties”, in Mario Sabattini, ed., Orientalia Venetiana I; volume in onore di Lionello Lanciotti (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1984), 195-‐204. For the more recent research on relations between the statute labor and military service, see Yang Zhenhong 楊振紅, “Yao, shu wei Qin Han zhengzu jiben yiwu – gengzu zhi yi bushi ‘yao’” 徭、戍為秦漢正卒基本義務—更卒之役不是“徭”, Zhonghua wenshi luncong 中華文史論叢 97 (Jan. 2010), 331-‐398. For the convict labor, see Barbieri-‐Low, Artisans, 212-‐256. For the system of working off debts by providing labor for the government construction projects, see Shihuang ling Qin yong keng kaogu fajuedui 始皇陵秦俑坑考古發掘隊, “Qin

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Although not involving such dramatic implications for one’s life, the techniques

of control over residence and restrictions on one’s moves beyond its immediate

location deeply pervaded the daily experience of common people in the Warring

States, Qin, and Han empires. The household registration system, defined by the

special legislation, the “statutes on households” (hu lü 戶律), demanded for every

individual to be registered under certain household.17 Every move was to be

immediately reported and eventually reflected in the household registers, and the

failure to do so resulted in punishment of varying degree both for the culprit and for

the officials who failed to enforce the system.18 Various other systems such as

mutual surveillance within the groups of five households have been designed to

ensure the efficiency of the registration.19 The special part of legislature instituted

punishments for those who dared to voluntarily “abscond” (wang 亡) from the place

of residence or service.20

The controversy of state’s attitude towards its subjects’ physical mobility was

particularly manifest in regard to one of the most mobile social groups – the officials

who staffed central, regional, and local bureaucracies. By virtue of their service, they

had to, and actually were required to be on the move for much of the year, and their Sjihuang ling xice Zhaobeihucun Qin xingtu mu” 秦始皇陵西側趙背戶村秦刑徒墓, Wenwu 文物 1982 (3). 17 For the recent survey of the excavated specimens of Qin and Han household registers, see Hu Pingsheng 胡平生, “Xinchu Han jian hukou buji yanjiu” 新出漢簡戶口簿籍研究, in Zhongguo wenhua yichan yanjiuyuan 中國文化遺產研究院, ed., Chutu wenxian yanjiu 出土文獻研究 10 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2011), 249-‐284. 18 For the detailed legal regulations concerning the household registering, see the early Former Han statutes from Zhangjiashan that probably largely coincide with the earlier Qin legislation – Peng Hao 彭浩, Chen Wei 陳偉, and Kudō Motoo 工藤元男, eds., Ernian lüling yu Zouyanshu: Zhangjiashan ersiqihao Han mu chutu falü wenxian shidu 二年律令與奏讞書：張家山二四七號漢墓出土法律文獻釋讀 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2007, henceforth referred as ZJS), 214-‐227, slips 305-‐346. 19 The system of surveillance groups of households is amply reflected in excavated documents from both Qin and Han – see, for example, Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu 睡虎地秦墓竹簡整理小組, Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian 睡虎地秦墓竹簡 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1990; henceforth referred as SHD), 88, slips 35-‐36; ZJS, 215, slips 305-‐306. The system is believed to have been introduced in the state of Qin in course of Shang Yang reforms – see Shiji, 68.2230. 20 See the “Statute on absconders” (wang lü 亡律) from the Zhangjiashan collection of statutes – ZJS, 153-‐158, slips 157-‐173,

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travels were sponsored by the government coffers and supported by facilities such

as inns and posts where they could stay on the way, and grain storages to provide

them with food rations. At the same time, the rulers and legislators of late Warring

States and early empires harbored keen anxiety about the fact that the very group

on which they relied to govern the territory and population of the state effectively

defied easy control by being able, and in fact obliged, to constantly move from one

place to another. Moreover, officials’ travels had a potential of devastating state

budget and wreaking havoc on finances. To counter these problems, sophisticated

accounting mechanisms were designed to monitor such travels, which are going to

be discussed later in this paper. It suffices to note here that the fundamental

ambivalence of the “state on the move” endured, as the opportunity to move across

the space molded new networks and identities that reshaped the early imperial

officialdom itself. First, however, let us consider the variety of documental sources

that facilitated our understanding of physical mobility of the officials in Qin and Han

empires.

2. Excavated documents as a source for the study of officials’ travels

This study is mainly based on the excavated texts from the Qin and Han periods that

nowadays constitute our major evidence for the functioning of local administration

in the early empires and for the daily life of the people who staffed this

administration. It is important to understand, however, that some limitations are

inherent to these documents. Firstly, we are talking about geographical limitations.

Due to the physical preservation conditions of wood and bamboo stationery of the

manuscripts, vast majority of them has been recovered either from the waterlogged

tombs or deserted wells in the lower Yangzi basin (mainly, but not limited to the

provinces of Hubei and Hunan), or in the remains of the Han border fortifications in

the extremely arid north-‐western regions (such as modern Gansu Province).21 Since

the latter findings reflect the very specific situation of the military administration at

the frontier and the life of garrisons, a lot of caution is due when deriving

21 Giele, “Using Early Chinese Manuscripts”, 417-‐418.

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conclusions about the rest of the empire from these materials. Manuscripts

discovered in the Yangzi basin, as well as in other inner areas of ancient Chinese

oecumene (such as the Shandong region) are probably more representative in this

sense. The evidence considered in this paper is mostly limited to the inner regions,

although we recognize that the rich data from the frontier regions deserve research

in their own right, and have a potential for contributing to the understanding of

general patterns of officials’ physical mobility and its social impact.

Secondly, due to the randomness of archaeological discovery, the available

excavated documents are very unevenly distributed in temporal terms. In case of

this study, we possess relatively abundant evidence for the short-‐lived Qin dynasty

(221-‐207 B.C.) and for the beginning of the Former Han. We also have an

extraordinarily versatile private “archive” of a provincial official dated from the late

years of the Former Han dynasty (around 10 B.C.). More than one and a half century

in the middle, however, that witnessed such important developments as the

consolidation of the Han imperial rule, territorial expansion, emergence of state-‐

sponsored Confucianism, and considerable economic and social changes, are poorly

elucidated by the already published excavated sources.22

Such temporal distribution renders any attempts to trace the changes in the

patterns of officials’ travels, or in the structures framing these travels, speculative at

least. Therefore, insofar as our evidence does not point at the contrary, we will have

to assume that some material foundations of physical mobility in early empires, as

well as the basic regulations for such mobility, remained essentially unchanged. In

some cases, this may be safely deduced from the source evidence, while in others

remains the matter of conjecture. Such conjectures, of course, should always be

22 Some of the recent finds may be hoped to change this situation in foreseeable future. For example, what has been described as an administrative archive dated from the reign of Emperor Wu 武帝 of the Former Han (140-‐87 B.C.) was discovered at Zoumalou, Changsha, Hunan Province – see Changsha jiandu bowuguan 長沙簡牘博物館, Changsha shi wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo lianhe fajuezu 長沙市文物考古研究所發掘組, “2003 nian Changsha Zoumalou Xi Han jiandu zhongda kaogu faxian” 2003年長沙走馬樓西漢簡牘重大考古發現, in Zhongguo wenwu yanjiusuo 中國文物研究所, ed., Chutu wenxian yanjiu 出土文獻研究 7 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2005), 57-‐64. When published, these documents would partially fill in the gap.

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explicated and open for correction or revision in view of new data becoming

available. On the other hand, some important changes seem to have occurred during

the period under consideration, although the precise date and context of these

changes remain the matter of future studies.

The documents analyzed in this paper may be classified under several categories,

each of which sheds light on one of the particular aspects of the physical mobility of

the officials.

2.1. Official documents

Official document are subdivided into the normative and accounting texts.

Normative documents include laws (lü 律) and other regulations (such as ordinances

ling 令) concerning the physical mobility of the officials. These are mainly known

from two excavated collections of legal documents: one from tomb #11 at Shuihudi

睡虎地 (tomb sealed ca. 217 B.C.) and another from tomb #247 at Zhangjiashan 張

家山 (sealed after 186 B.C.), both in modern Hubei Province. The first represents the

Qin, and the second the early Former Han legislature, and together they

demonstrate much continuity between Qin and early Han legal systems.23

Neither the Qin, nor the Han law had a special statute devoted to the travels or

relocations of the officials. Instead, the respective regulations were scattered across

a number of statutes that considered such matters as the appointment of officials,

provision of food rations and clothes, administration of granaries, management of

government funds, and some others. Moreover, some norms that are seemingly

unrelated to the physical mobility of the officials are also instructive because the

existence of similar norms for the officials may be inferred from other lines of

evidence. For example, two of the Zhangjiashan statutes establish the norms for the

23 For the recent survey of Qin legal documents, see Korolkov, “Arguing about Law: Interrogation Procedure under the Qin and Former Han Dynasties”, in Études chinoises, vol. XXX (2011), 40-‐46. For the continuity between the Qin and Former Han legislature, see Gao Min 高敏, “Han chu falüxi quanbu jicheng Qin lü shuo: du Zhangjiashan Han jian “Zouyanshu” zhaji” 漢初法律係全部繼承秦律說：讀張家山漢簡《奏讞書》札記, in Gao Min, Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi lunkao 秦漢魏晉南北朝史論考 (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 2004), 76-‐84.

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speed of travel to be observed by the post couriers and conscript laborers. As the

discussion in the fourth part of this paper shows, similar norms should have existed

for the travelling officials as well.

Accounting documents include the variety of official reports that circulated

within the bureaucracy, such as the records of judicial proceedings, and reports and

instructions concerning the conduct of travels. Some of these documents cannot be

strictly separated from the normative documents, as, for example, the judicial

records incorporated in the Zouyanshu 奏讞書 collection from the Zhangjiashan

burial #247. These texts, although essentially based on the accounts of criminal

investigation, were designed to set forth models for submitting ambiguous cases,

and in this sense were normative.24

2.2. Semi-‐official records

Semi-‐official records indicate texts that were most probably written down for

private use but were related to the official duties and could potentially be utilized

for official purposes. The type of semi-‐official documents most frequently referred

to in this study is the zhiri 質日, or “calendrical diaries”.25 The term shows up on

three bamboo slips from the collection of Qin documents acquired by the Yuelu

Academy 岳麓書院 of Hunan University26, which allowed scholars to identify the

previously known similar texts from Zhoujiatai 周家臺 and Yinwan 尹灣 as zhiri as

well.27 These are the calendars featuring lists of days of one year.

The known specimens are inscribed on bamboo slips that originally were bound

together in scrolls, and the list of days in the sexagesimal ganzhi 干支 cycle is

24 For the discussion of the nature of the Zhangjiashan collection of dubious cases and a similar collection dated from the Qin times, and for further reference, see Korolkov, “Arguing about Law”, 45-‐46. 25 As far as I know, no English translation has so far been offered for zhiri, therefore I have to offer a translation of my own that, as I hope, adequately reflects the nature of these texts. 26 Zhu Hanmin 朱漢民, Chen Songchang 陳松長, eds., Yuelu shuyuan cang Qin jian 岳麓書院藏秦簡, vol. 1 (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu, 2010), 3, slip 1; 10, slip 1b (“b” here for bei 背, the verso side of the slip); 19, slip 1b. 27 Li Ling 李零, “Qin jian de dingming yu fenlei” 秦簡的定名與分類, in Wuhan daxue jianbo yanjiu zhongxin 武漢大學簡帛研究中心, ed., Jianbo 簡帛 6 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2011), 5.

13

arranged in a number of horizontal registers, so that the record for the first day is

made on the top register on slip #1, the second on slip #2 and so on, until the final

slip of the scroll is reached, after which the list continues in the second register on

slip #1. Every new register starts with the new month. Each day serves as an entry,

with a blank space left under the ganzhi notation of the day. This could be filled in

with the record of an event that occurred (or, one may hypothesize, was scheduled

to occur) on that particular day. Therefore, the calendar effectively served as a diary,

and the excavated specimens contain more or less detailed records of activities of

their owners, all of whom were local officials of varied standing, through a number

of years. In particular, the calendrical diaries were keeping record of the officials’

travels.

One recent study is convincingly arguing that although the calendrical diaries

were the documents drafted by individuals for their private use, they should

nevertheless be understood in context of the official accounting procedure

instituted by the Qin and Han governments. Officials were rewarded and promoted

on the basis of the duration of their service (lao 勞, “labor”) and of the outstanding

performance of their duties (gong 功, “merit”).28 By keeping a diary, individuals

could match their records with the official record that was probably kept

independently. Another possibility is that some of the entries of the diaries could

have been copied from the officially issued schedules and served as a reminder for

the owners of these diaries about the tasks they had to perform on a particular

day.29

28 The terms have long been known from the records of Han administration of the frontier area of Juyan 居延 where many accounts recording gong and lao of the servicemen have been excavated – see, for example, Xie Guihua 謝桂華 et al., Juyan Han jian shiwen hejiao 居延漢簡釋文合校 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1987), vol. 1, 9.6-‐5; 10.6-‐13; 117.68-‐17. For the discussion of the terms, see Michael Loewe, Records of Han Administration. Vol. 2: Documents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 169. For the similar practice in the Qin empire, see SHD, 22-‐23, slips 13-‐13, n. 7. 29 For the detailed discussion, see Yu Hongtao 于洪濤, “Qin jiandu ‘zhiri’ kaoshi san ze” 秦簡牘“質日”考釋三則, Fudan daxue chutu wenxian yu guwen yanjiu zhongxin 復旦大學出土文獻與古文字研究中心, http://www.gwz.fudan.edu.cn/SrcShow.asp?Src_ID=2061#_edn1.

14

Calendrical diaries are extremely valuable source as they provide detailed

information about their owners’ travels around the year. However, there are also

some serious problems with interpreting this data that can hardly be solved with

certainty at present moment. Some slips of the diaries are damaged or have not

preserved at all. In all known specimens, many daily entries remain blank. Does this

mean that the official was staying in his office on these days? Or was he doing the

same activity as recorded in the last filled entry (this seems dubious, as many

successive entries actually contain identical records, testifying to the fact that

should any activity be carried out several days in a row, entries were to be made

every day)? Or was he staying home? Or did he use several calendrical diaries at one

time? Or was he just negligent in keeping his diary? Since we do not know

conventions that probably guided diary keeping, these and other such questions are

remaining open. This precludes us from reconstructing a full annual cycle of officials’

activities. Still, much relevant information can be retrieved.

2.3. Private texts

Private texts such as letters, divination texts, and “greeting tablets” offer a glimpse

into the emotional aspect of physical mobility.30 They demonstrate, in particular,

that frequent travels were associated with considerable stress that was addressed

through divination about the safety and outcome of the trip – one of the recurrent

topics in the divination almanacs of the Qin and Han era. On the other hand, these

texts reveal that official travels also served as a means for developing and

maintaining private networks of friendship and (possibly) patronage that integrated

influential officials and other persons of high standing across larger regions. The

transmitted historical record of the Han dynasty shows that such networks emerged

30 For the private letters, see Eva Chung, “A Study of the ‘Shu’ (Letters) of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – A.D. 220)”, PhD diss., University of Washington, 1982; Antje Richter, Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2013), 17-‐23. For an introduction to the divination almanacs, see Donald Harper, “Warring States, Qin and Han manuscripts related to natural philosophy and the occult”, in Edward Shaughnessy, ed., New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to the Reading of Inscriptions and Manuscripts (Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China, 1997), 223-‐252. For the “greeting cards”, see Korolkov, “‘Greeting Tablets’ in Early China”.

15

as a paramount political factor during the latter half of the Former Han period and

in the Latter Han.31 As the corpus of private documents is large and keeps on

growing, this paper admittedly suggests but a few ways of applying its data to the

study of the cultural (including psychological) and social impact of the “state on the

move”.

3. Officials’ physical mobility and operation of government

The “activist” states that emerged in East Asian oecumene during the second half of

the first millennium B.C. made the first attempt, in this region, to institutionalize a

systematic control over the countryside which allowed a direct access to its human

and natural resources. The extent of this control is debated. Some scholars believe

that a relatively comprehensive control was achieved in the Warring States kingdom

of Qin, while others argue that the state was never really able to effectively manage

resources within its own boundaries, and its control was spreading along relatively

thin lines of strategically important communication routes and frontier defenses,

around the urban seats of government and the locations of some commercially or

strategically important productions, such as iron mines and salt works.32

Even with this conservative estimate in mind, the increased state presence in

the countryside can hardly be denied and was manifest in the systems of land

surveying and taxation, household registration and records of population for poll

tax, corvée, and military service, as well as in numerous, documentary records of

official installations aimed at both economic exploitation of resources and upkeep of

public order outside of urban centers. These included cattle-‐breeding farms, mine-‐

managing offices (tieguan 鐵官), police posts (ting 亭), etc. Operation of such

31 See Mark Lewis, The Construction of Space in Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 212-‐229. 32 For the classic studies that lean towards the “maximalist” view of the state’s control over countryside resources, see Du Zhengsheng 杜正勝, Bianhu qimin: chuantong zhengzhi shehui jiegou zhi xingcheng 編戶齊民：傳統政治社會結構之形成 (Taipei: Lianjing, 1989); Lewis, Sanctioned Violence. For a more recent, and more conservative, view, see Su Weiguo 蘇衛國, Qin Han xiangting zhidu yanjiu: yi xiangting geju de chongshi wei zhongxin 秦漢鄉亭制度研究：以鄉亭格局的重釋為中心 (Harbin: Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe, 2010).

16

installations as well as interaction between various government agencies resulted in

regular, routinized travels by the officials across regions.

3.1. Travel to the place of service

The first travel for many of the provincial officials in the Qin and Han empires was

that to the place of service. Although the prohibition for the senior officials at the

commandery (jun 郡) and county (xian 縣) level to serve in their home regions was

presumably instituted not earlier than the middle of Emperor Wu’s 武帝 reign (140-‐

87 B.C.), the practice of transferring officials to serve far from their homes was

already wide-‐spread in the state and empire of Qin. This practice probably emerged

in the course of Qin conquests during the late Warring States period, when the

administration of the newly occupied regions was entrusted to the native Qin

officials rather than to the local residents whose loyalty was, often duly, doubted.33

Yan Gengwang’s 嚴耕望 meticulous analysis of transmitted record about the

origins and place of service of provincial officials confirmed the earlier observation

by the Qing (1644-‐1911) scholars that throughout the Han dynasty, senior

commandery and county officials were appointed from outside the commandery or

county of their service. Clerical personnel and all other officials at county and canton

level were enlisted from local residents and appointed by their direct superiors

rather than by the central government. In most cases, clerks at the commandery

court were residents of the respective commandery, while the county clerks resided

in the respective county.34

This analysis suggests that the vast majority of low-‐ranked provincial officials

were serving quite close from their homes, and only for the senior ones official

service involved relatively long-‐distance travel. However, this picture is

problematized by the observation that the administration of newly acquired border 33 Yan Gengwang 嚴耕望, Zhongguo difang xingzheng zhidu shi 中國地方行政制度史. Vol. 1: Qin Han difang xingzheng zhidu 秦漢地方行政制度 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo, 1961), 345. 34 Yan Gengwang, Qin Han difang xingzheng, 345-‐383. Several known exceptions to the principle of non-‐local appointments of the senior provincial officials are known from the beginning of the Former Han period. The principle was rigorously observed from the middle of Emperor Wu’s reign on.

17

territories was staffed at all levels with the officials from inner regions of the empire,

that is, from outside the region of their service.35 The documents from the archive of

Qin Qianling 遷陵 County (Hunan Province, Longshan 龍山 County) of Dongting 洞

庭 Commandery provide a notion of distances some of the petty officials had to

travel to their new place of service at the recently conquered imperial frontier in the

deep south.

A certain Fan 煩, an assistant (zuo 佐) at one of the offices in Qianling County,

had his home in Xunyang 旬陽 County of Hanzhong 漢中 Commandery, some 350

km to the north from his place of service.36 The household of another county-‐level

official, the Supervisor of Public Works (sikong sefu 司空嗇夫) in Linruan 臨沅

County that belonged to the same Dongting Commandery as Qianling, was

registered in Zitong 梓潼 County of Shu 蜀 Commandery (modern Sichuan Province),

about 500 km northwest to Dongting commandery.37 Yet another petty official, Ting

亭, the assistant at the Bureau of Lesser Treasury (shaonei 少內) in Qianling County,

also originated from Sichuan, with his home in Bodao 僰道 County of Shu

Commandery (about 400 km from Qianling; in all cases, the actual travel routes

should have been much longer than indicated distances – see Map 1).38

The Liye documents indicate that the families did not accompany officials to the

place of service, with wives staying in charge of the households in the absence of

their husbands.39 Serving far from home, officials were not able to reunite with their

35 Yan Gengwang, Qin Han difang xingzheng, 352-‐353. 36 See Hunan sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 湖南省文物考古研究所, ed., Liye Qin jian 里耶秦簡, Vol. 1 (Beijing: Wenwu, 2012), 13, tablet 8-‐63; Chen Wei 陳偉, ed., Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi 里耶秦簡牘校釋, Vol. 1 (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue, 2012), 48-‐51. For the location of Xunyang County, see Tan Qixiang 譚其驤, ed., Zhongguo lishi dituji 中國歷史地圖集. Vol. 2: Qin, Xi Han, Dong Han shiqi 秦、西漢、東漢時期 (Beijing: Zhongguo ditu, 1996), 11-‐12. 37 Liye Qin jian, 71, tablet 8-‐1445; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 327. For the location of Zitong County, see Zhongguo lishi dituji, 29-‐30. For the administrative geography of Dongting Commandery, see Hou Xiaorong 后曉榮, Qindai zhengqu dili 秦代政區地理 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian, 2009), 425-‐429. 38 Liye Qin jian, 12, 42-‐43, 49, tablets 8-‐60, 6-‐656, 8-‐665, 8-‐748; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 43-‐46. For the location of Bodao, see Zhongguo lishi dituji, 29-‐30. 39 The issue in the cases of all three abovementioned officials was that they owed debt to the government. In one of the cases, there was an attempt to collect the debt in official’s home

18

families on a regular basis. Indeed, it may be assumed that for those of them listed

above travel home and back to the place of service would probably take many weeks

and may be months. The early Former Han statute “On appointing officials” (zhili lü

置吏律) stipulates that the officials whose home was located more than two

thousand li (ca. 831 km) from their place of service could return home only every

other year, and were allowed 80 days absence from office.40 When they did travel

back home, they should have been spending most of this time on the road.

These observations are corroborated by the calendrical diary of the Qin official

excavated from tomb #30 at Zhoujiatai (Jingzhou 荆州 Municipality, Hubei

Province). The tomb is dated to around 209 B.C. and yielded two calendrical texts

indicating that its owner probably occupied a clerical position in the county

government. In the diary that records his activities throughout the year 214/213

B.C., there is no indication of this official returning home for vacation, something

that could be expected should the official be a local resident (see the following

passage).41 Although this area at the confluence of Han River and Yangzi had been

occupied by the Qin troops as early as 279/78 B.C., after sixty years it still remained

unpacified, as the letters of two Qin conscripts, dated from around 220 B.C. and

excavated from the same area, vividly depict.42 Unfortunately, the Zhoujiatai texts

provide no hint as for the place of origin, or permanent residence of the tomb owner.

The calendrical diary from Yinwan (Lianyungang 連雲港 Municipality, Jiangsu

Province) illustrates conditions of a local official whose “normal” household and

family life pattern was not disrupted by the need to travel to a distant place of

county from his wife – see Liye Qin jian, 12, 42-‐43, 49, tablets 8-‐60, 6-‐656, 8-‐665, 8-‐748; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 43-‐46. In two other cases, the wording of documents suggests that officials’ households were not relocated to their new place of service. 40 ZJS, 177, slip 217. 41 For the calendrical diary from Zhoujiatai, see Hubei sheng Jingzhou shi Zhouliangyuqiao yizhi bowuguan 湖北省荊州市周梁玉橋遺址博物館, Guanju Qin Han mu jiandu 關沮秦漢墓簡牘 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2001), 11-‐17 (photographs of slips), 93-‐99 (transcription and notes). 42 See Yang Fen 楊芬, “Chutu Qin Han shuxin huijiao jizhu” 出土秦漢信書匯校集成 (Ph.D. dissertation, Wuhan University, 2010), 19-‐23. In one of the letter, the region is denoted as xindi 新地, “the new lands”.

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service. Burial #6 in Yinwan belonged to Shi Rao 師饒, a clerk in the office of

Donghai 東海 Commandery. During the year 11 B.C., the owner of the diary spent at

least 36 days at home. The longest stay lasted for eight days, and there were a

number of short, one-‐day stays, attesting to the fact that his home was located in or

near the town of Tanxian 郯縣, the seat of Donghai governor’s office.43 In contrast,

the list of senior officials of the commandery and its counties retrieved from the

same burial, demonstrates that all of them originated from outside of Donghai,

mostly from the neighboring commanderies and fiefs.44 Their travel to the place of

service, therefore, was in most cases within 100 km across smooth terrain of North

China and Huanghuai Plains. Another record from Yinwan indicates that, if required

by family circumstances (such as mourning for deceased relatives), these officials

could apply for a vocation to travel home without interrupting the work of their

respective offices.45

It is tempting to conclude that the Qin Empire was characterized with a higher

degree of officials’ mobility caused by the reliance on Qin rather than local officials.

Evidence from the transmitted sources, however, indicates that the Qin government

extensively employed locals of some of the conquered regions to staff lower

positions in the provincial administrations.46 Nevertheless, we may assume that the

major administrative shift in the beginning of the Former Han when the entire

eastern part of the empire was divided into vassal kingdoms to be governed by

locals, 47 is explained by the painful Qin experience of excessive mobility of

43 Donghai xian bowuguan 東海縣博物館 et al., Yinwan Han mu jiandu 尹灣漢墓簡牘 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1997), 138-‐144. For the administrative geography of Donghai Commandery, see Zhongguo lishi dituji, 19-‐20. It should be noticed, that the actual duration of Shi’s stay at home might have been longer, as some of the bamboo slips that could have born relevant records are damaged. 44 Yinwan Han mu zhujian, 5, 85-‐95. 45 See Yinwan Han mu zhujian, 97-‐98. 46 The founder of the Han Empire, Liu Bang 劉邦, and one of his chief advisors, Xiao He 蕭何, are just two examples of the Chu individuals at service with the local administration of Qin. Their eventual participation in anti-‐Qin rebellion justified the suspicion the Qin rulers seemed to harbor towards such local functionaries. 47 The roster of county officials appointed and paid by the central government in the early years of the Former Han excavated at Zhangjiashan covers only the areas under direct

20

government functionaries that resulted in prohibiting transportation costs (to be

discussed in part four of this paper) and estrangement from both local society and

officials’ original social surroundings.

3.2. Maintenance of public order

Once they reached their place of service, officials found themselves on frequent

travels within, and sometimes beyond their administrative area. Maintenance of

public order, that is, suppressing bandits, rebels, and other organized mutinous

groups was one of the tasks that was often taking them afield, and also the one that

involved highest risk for life.

Although a specialized police force existed in the Qin and Han empires, dealing

with the bandits was essentially the task of all government personnel.48 The early

Former Han statute “On arrest” (bu lü 捕律) required all county officials to

participate in pursuit of bandits and to engage them if necessary.49 In the legal case

record dated from 220 B.C., for example, the government force dispatched to fight

the “bandits” (possibly a rebel group) in one of the counties in the southern Cangwu

蒼梧 Commandery was led by the senior clerk (lingshi 令史) of the county.50 In 201

B.C., another county clerk in Huaiyang 淮陽 Commandery was sent on a mission to

“take measures against robbers and criminals” (bei daozei 備盜賊).51 In 11 B.C., Shi

Rao, a commandery clerk whose tomb was excavated in Yinwan, participated in the

pursuit of “criminals” (sui zei 遂賊) in Donghai Commandery.52 When pursuing

bandits, the county officials were permitted and even required to cross the border of

imperial administration, indicating that vassal kings (zhuhou 諸侯) enjoyed the right to appoint officials in their kingdoms – see ZJS, 257-‐295, slips 440-‐473 (zhilü 秩律, “Statute on [officials’] salaries”). See also Chen Suzhen 陳蘇鎮, “Han chu wangguo zhidu kaoshu” 漢初王國制度考述, Zhongguo shi yanjiu 中國史研究 2004 (3), 34-‐35. 48 This specialized force consisted of “robber catchers” (qiudao 求盜) who staffed the police posts (ting) in the countryside. For an example of operation of the ting system, see ZJS, 343-‐344, slips 36-‐48. 49 ZJS, 148-‐149, slips 140-‐143. 50 ZJS, 363-‐370, slips 124-‐161. 51 ZJS, 354, slips 75-‐76. 52 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 140, slip 37.

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their county, if needed, something they were not allowed to do under other

circumstances.53

3.3. Administration of justice

Another task that was frequently taking county and commandery officials outside of

their offices, sometimes quite far away, was also related to maintaining public order.

This was the administration of justice. Texts excavated from the Qin official’s burial

at Shuihudi demonstrate that county clerks were regularly dispatched to investigate

legal cases, which required them to travel to remote villages in their counties.54

Another document, excavated at Liye, records an investigative tour by three

functionaries of Lingyang 零陽 County to the neighboring Qianling County.55

Commandery clerks (zushi 卒史) from time to time had to conduct criminal

investigation in neighboring commanderies.56 Such travels could take them several

hundred kilometers away from their office and last for many months. One

investigation by clerk Shuo 朔 from Nanjun 南郡 (“Southern Commandery”, situated

at the confluence of Han River and Yangzi) lasted for 449 days and required him to

travel some 5,146 li (about 2,140 km) by land and water.57

3.4. Inspection tours

Inspection tours were important for securing the efficiency of local administrations.

A judicial case form the Zhangjiashan Zouyanshu collection, dated 200 B.C., records

two such tours: one by the governor of Huaiyang Commandery who was inspecting

the counties under his jurisdiction, and another one by the county magistrate who

toured around his county to make sure that the sacrifices were being properly

staged to secure rain during the crop growing season.58

53 ZJS, 148, slips 140-‐141. 54 See, for example, SHD, 160, slips 73-‐74; 161, slips 84-‐85. 55 Liye Qin jian, 3, tablet 5-‐1; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 1-‐7. 56 For the regular regulation requiring commandery officials to investigate important criminal cases in the neighboring commanderies, see ZJS, 139, slips 116-‐117. 57 ZJS, 364, slips 127-‐128. 58 ZJS, 354, slips 75-‐76, 82-‐83.

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Inspections of various official facilities were a routine task for the county and

commandery clerks in charge for preparing annual accounts to the central

government.59 The calendrical diary from Zhoujiatai (213 B.C.) records that its

owner, a county clerk, conducted official business (zhi 治) in the “iron agency”

(tieguan 鐵官, government agency in charge of manufacturing iron tools).60 In about

ten day after the completion of the inspection tour, the owner of the diary submitted

a report to his superiors (zou shang 奏上).61

The diary of the Donghai Commandery clerk Shi Rao (11 B.C.) indicates that

much of his travel was within that commandery, which allows a speculation that he

was inspecting subordinate counties, a practice well known not only from excavated

but also from transmitted sources.62 Shi Rao was reporting to his superiors on

return from some of his tours around the commandery.63 On one occasion, he

submitted some kind of account (zou ji 奏記), possibly similar to the one mentioned

in the Zhoujiatai diary.64

3.5. Supervision of conscript laborers and convicts

The operation of unfree labor was pivotal for the political economy of the early

Chinese empires. Conscripted farmers and convict criminals were building the

imperial infrastructure such as roads, fortifications, granaries and armories, as well

as emperors’ palaces and mausoleums. Convicts were also performing a variety of

functions at local administration, such as delivery of official correspondence and

supervision of teams of fellow convict laborers.65 Officials at all levels were required

59 For the system of official accounting (shang ji 上計) in the Qin and Han empires, see, for example, Yan Gengwang, Qin Han difang xingzheng, 257-‐268. 60 Guanju Qin Han mu jiandu, 94, slips 16-‐30. 61 Guanju Qin Han mu jiandu, 95, slip 47. 62 See Cai Wanjin 蔡萬進, “Yinwan Han jian “Yuanyan er nian riji” suo fanying de Han dai lixing zhidu” 尹灣漢簡《元延二年日記》所反映的漢代吏行制度, Zhengzhou daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban) 鄭州大學學報（哲學社會科學版） 35.1 (2002), 118. For a transmitted account of inspection tours by commandery officials, see Hanshu, 83.3401. 63 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 141, slip 41. 64 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 140, slip 29. 65 I have recently addressed the role of convict labor in the local administration and economy of the Qin empire in Korolkov, “Convict labor in the Qin empire: A preliminary

23

to escort groups of conscripts and convicts to the place where they would work off

their corvée obligations and penal labor sentences.

Documents from Shuihudi record some duties of the Qin county officials in

regard to escorting convicts. One text shows that the county officials only had to

escort criminals to the neighboring county where their duties were taken over by

the officials of that county.66 Two hundred years later, at the end of the Former Han,

escorting convict criminals and corvée laborers to the destination point was one of

the main reasons for the county magistrates, deputy magistrates, and commandants

being absent from their office. In one case, a group of conscripts (tumin 徒民) was

escorted as far as to Dunhuang 敦煌, more than 2,000 km to the west (see Map 2).67

Documents recently excavated from the Han-‐era outpost at Dunhuang confirm that

large parties of laborers were, indeed, arriving to this region from other

commanderies.68

3.6. Delivery of documents, materials, and cash

The register of officials on leave excavated from the Yinwan burial #6 mentions

some other tasks for officials’ travels. Ten senior officials from different counties of

Donghai Commandery were involved in the shipment of cash (shu qian 輸錢), mostly

to the central imperial treasury (dunei 都內). Three officials were delivering

accounting documents (ji 計), while another three were dispatched to purchase

“materials” (shicai/caiwu 市材／財物).69

Identical or similar routine tasks related to the management of provincial

finances, are also attested by the Liye archive. One document, dated April 18, 220

B.C. and issued by the supervisor of the county storehouses (ku 庫), requires the

study of the “Registers of convict laborers” from Liye”. Paper presented at the conference "Excavated Texts and Ancient History", Fudan University, Shanghai, October 19-‐20, 2013. 66 SHD, 155-‐156, slips 46-‐49. 67 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 96-‐97, tablet 5. 68 See Chen Ling 陳玲, “Shilun Han dai biansai xingtu de shusong ji guanli” 試論漢代邊塞刑徒的輸送及管理, in Li Xueqin 李學勤, Xie Guihua, eds., Jianbo yanjiu 簡帛研究 2001 (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue, 2001), 369-‐370. 69 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 96-‐97, tablet 5.

24

Director of Public Works (sikong 司空) of Qianling County to order his subordinate

functionaries to assist in the shipment of armament.70 A number of “Registers of

convict laborers performing their tasks” (zuotubu 作徒簿) record convicts engaged

in the delivery of accounting reports along with officials (yu li shang ji 與吏上計).71

For many officials in the early Chinese empires, service itself was associated with

radical disruption of everyday life pattern and move far away from home and family.

In addition, almost every official, from commandery governor to petty clerk in one

of the numerous agencies of the county government, had to regularly voyage across

and beyond their commanderies and counties, sometimes spending months or even

years outside of their offices. Some of these voyages included much of the risk, such

as the pursuit of bandits, while others were relatively safe. However, as the

following part will demonstrate, travelling always presented a considerable stress,

not only because of the hardships typical for moving across space in preindustrial

conditions, but also because of the specificities imposed by the financial

organization of official travels and rigorous formal requirements that travelling

officials had to observe.

4. Structure of physical mobility: economy and logistics of officials’ travels

The theory of social structure as a patterned arrangement of social relations that

emerges from and determines the actions of the individuals was developed in the

French and German sociology of the nineteenth century and further refined within

the theory of structuration formulated by the British sociologist Anthony Giddens (b.

1938) who suggested that structures are enacted by “knowledgeable” human agents

by means of putting their structured knowledge to use. Hence, “structures must not

70 Liye Qin jian, 74, tablet 8-‐1510; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 341. 71 Liye Qin jian, 18, tablet 8-‐145; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 84-‐89. See also Robin Yates, “Bureaucratic Organization of the Qin County of Qianling 遷陵 in the Light of Newly Published Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi (diyi juan)”. Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Sinology, Institute for History and Philology, Academia Sinica, June 20-‐22.

25

be conceptualized as simply placing constrains on human agency, but as enabling”.72

Giddens also noticed that structure is a combination of rules and resources.73

William Sewell refines Giddens’ insight by introducing the concept of the dual

character of structure that is “composed simultaneously of schemas, which are

virtual, and of resources, which are actual”, with schemas being the effects of

resources, just as resources are the effects of schemas.74

The travelling experience of the Qin and Han officials was unfolding within the

structures that combined material resources of the command economy of the

territorial state and empire with the ideology of control over individual through the

system of quantifiable norms and standards. The move of state officials and other

personnel across the realm, and an infrastructure necessitated by such moves,

represented a mechanism for creating a new landscape and a new sense of orderly,

charted space, thus empowering the structure. On the other hand, the structurally

formed capacity to move was creatively used by its agents to produce new relations

and identities, and to come to terms with the challenging elements of structure itself.

This part of the paper first outlines the “rules” of the structure of the “state on the

move”. Then I will explore the individual agency as part of this structure.

4.1. Financing official travels

On the 8th of May, 212 B.C., the Supervisor of Granaries (cang sefu 倉嗇夫) of

Qianling County, Xian 銜, issued the following document75:

卅五年三月庚寅朔辛亥倉銜敢言之疏書吏徒上事尉府┙者牘北食皆盡三月

遷陵田能自食謁告過所縣以縣鄉次續┙食如律雨留不能投宿齎當騰=來復

傳敢言之（正）

72 Anthony Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretive Sociologies (London: Hutchinson, 1976), 161. 73 Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 92. 74 Sewell, Logics of History, 136. 75 Liye Qin jian, 74, tablet 8-‐1517; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 344-‐345.

26

令佐温

更戍士五城父陽翟執

更戍士五城父西中痤

手（背）

“On thirty-‐fifth year [of Qin Shihuang’s reign], in the third month [that] started

on day geng-‐yin, on day xin-‐hai, Xian, [Supervisor of] Granaries, dares to convey

the following. The official and servicemen listed on the back of this tablet are

serving at the office of Commandant [for Qianling County]. They have received

their food [rations] for the third month in full. [While in] Qianling County, they

can feed themselves at the [Bureau of] Agricultural Fields. I request to report the

[names of] counties they are going to pass on their route, so that they are

[issued] food [rations] by the counties and cantons as they pass them in

[prearranged] sequence, according to the statutes. If there are delayed by rainy

[weather] and they are not able to reach their [next] accommodation, supply

[them with rations]. [This] should be copied [whenever it is necessary to take]

copy.76 [This is the] passport for travel for two ways. Dare to convey this.”

(Recto)

Wen, Assistant to the [County] Magistrate

Zhi, conscripted soldier, commoner [rank], [from] Chengfu County77, Yangzhai

[village]

Zuo, conscripted soldier, commoner [rank], [from] Chengfu County, Xizhong

[village]

Drafted by <scribe’s name> (Verso)

76 Our translation of the formulaic phrase dang teng teng 當騰騰 follows interpretation put forward in Hu Pingsheng 胡平生, “Du Liye Qin jian zhaji” 讀里耶秦簡札記, Jianduxue yanjiu 簡牘學研究 4 (Lanzhou: Gansu renmin, 2004), 9. 77 Chengfu 城父 County was located to the north of Huai River 淮水, in the north-‐western corner of modern Anhui Province, at the border with Henan Province. In the Qin times, it belonged to Sishui 泗水 Commandery – see Zhongguo lishi dituji, 7-‐8. The two servicemen travelled some 1,000 km to their place of service.

27

This and similar documents have been excavated in Liye and present the earliest

known samples of passports (chuan 傳).78 The passport translated above was issued

by the Supervisor of Granaries who was in charge of issuing monthly food rations to

officials, servicemen, and other personnel at service with the local government, as

well as corvée laborers and convicts.79 The document indicated administrative

affiliation of the official and servicemen who travelled outside of the county, and

required the counties they were to pass on their route to supply them with grain

rations in accordance to the relevant legal regulation (see below). In case of

unexpected delays caused by heavy rainfall they were entitled to additional rations.

Should the travelling personnel leave Qianling County before the end of that

month (the document was issued on the 22nd day of the month, so they had another

week to do so), officials in other counties were put on notice that no grain is to be

issued until the beginning of next month – rations for the third month have already

been issued in full. On the other hand, should they linger in Qianling into the fourth

month, they were to be supplied by the Bureau of Fields (tianguan 田官) of Qianling

County.80 Finally, the document requests the county officials (probably commandant

or deputy magistrate) to provide an accurate travel itinerary (guosuoxian 過所縣).81

78 Other specimens are tablets 5-‐1, 8-‐50+8-‐422, 8-‐169+8-‐233+8-‐407+8-‐416+8-‐1185 – see Liye Qin jian, 3, 12, 21, 24, 30-‐31, 62; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 1-‐7, 40-‐41, 102-‐103. 79 As reflected by the Qin “Statute on Granaries” from Shuihudi – see SHD, 25-‐35, slips 21-‐63; for the English translations of this statute, see Hulsewé, Remnants of Ch’in Law: An annotated translation of the Ch’in legal and administrative rules of the 3rd century B.C. discovered in Yün-‐meng Prefecture, Hu-‐pei Province, in 1975 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 30-‐46, A10-‐A35. 80 Although the organization of grain-‐storage facilities at the county level has not yet been studied sufficiently, it is clear that the grain was stored not only by the Granaries (cang 倉), but also by the Bureau of Fields. Document on tablet 8-‐672 mentions the “Register of those feeding themselves from the official fields” 官田自食簿 drafted by the temporary supervisor (shou 守) at the Bureau of Fields – see Liye Qin jian, 45; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 199. It may be assumed that the Bureau of Fields operated some storage facilities across the county where the grain collected at the government-‐managed farms was stored before being processed to the county granaries, as well as seed grain was stored. This allowed grain to be issued to the personnel travelling within the county, rather than requiring them to carry their rations with them. 81 The term guosuoxian 過所縣 clearly indicates a document to be transferred between the counties in relation to the official travels – see document on tablet 5-‐1 from Liye, analyzed later in this section of the paper (Liye Qin jian, 3; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 1-‐7).

28

As we will see in brief, together with the passport, this itinerary validated the

financial arrangement for this particular travel.

Although the Liye documents for the first time provided a picture of the actual

operation of a passport system in the Qin Empire, the system itself has long been

known from both Qin and Former Han legal texts. The “Statute on Granaries” from

Shuihudi orders that the personnel “on an official mission where they receive food

on (the strength of) their passport… will have their rations stopped at the next new

moon and will be given food rations as from the day of their return”.82 This is exactly

the arrangement mentioned in the Liye passport text: the ration for the third month

was issued, and further supplying was stopped until the return of the officials back

to Qianling County.

Another Qin statute, “On food rations for holders of passports” (chuanshi lü 傳食

律), relates food rations to the rank (jue 爵) and official post of the receiver.83 The

early Former Han statute with the same title was excavated from the Zhangjiashan

burial #247. The size of rations is summarized in the following table.84

Table 1: Food rations for the holders of passports in Qin and early Former Han statutes

Rank, office Daily ration size Source

Dafu 大夫 ranks (from 5th to 7th)85 1.5 dou (c. 3 litres) of

refined grain, ¾ sheng (c. ZJS

82 SHD, 31, slip 46; translation follows Hulsewé, Remnants of Ch’in Law, 44, A33. 83 The Shuihudi statute prescribes that “those who possess a rank, from the fifth rank and above are fed according to their rank” – see SHD, 60, slip 179; translation follows Hulsewé, Remnants of Ch’in Law, 83-‐84, A 92, with some modifications. 84 SHD, 60, slips 181-‐182; ZJS, 184, slips 232-‐237. 85 ZJS, 184, slip 233. The word used in the text is chedafu 車大夫, which is not among the twenty Han ranks listed elsewhere in the Zhangjiashan collection of statutes. We provisionally interpret it as referring to one or all of the three dafu-‐level ranks.

29

150 g) of sauce, 3/22

sheng (c. 27 g) of salt86

From 4th bugeng 不更 to 3rd mouren 謀人 (?),

eunuchs

One dou (c. 2 litres) of

refined grain, ½ sheng

(c. 100 g) of sauce,

vegetable soup

SHD

Below 2nd shangzao 上造, office assistants

(guanzuo 官佐), clerks (shi 史), diviners (bu

卜), chief-‐coachmen (siyu 司御), attendants (si

寺/侍), storehouse keepers (fu 府)

One dou of husked grain,

vegetable soup, 1/11

sheng (c. 18 g) of salt SHD

Soldiers (zuren 卒人) serving as messengers

for the Royal/Imperial Secretary (yushi 御史)

½ dou (c. 1 litre) of

refined grain, ¼ sheng

(c. 50 g) of sauce, leeks

and onions for soup

SHD

Incomplete and fragmentary as it is, this data gives a notion of the diet of officials on

travel. Simple and monotonous, it provided sufficient nutrition in most of cases, but

hardly much beyond that. Some rough calculations show that the Qin and Han

lawgivers had a relatively accurate notion of how much food one needs to stay alive

and employable, and were eager to provide their men just about that much.87 Since

86 Differently from the Shuihudi statute, the article from the Zhangjiashan statute determines the size of ratio issued for one meal, and then adds that three meals should be provided per day, instead of giving the size of ration per day. 87 It has been calculated that 100 g of cooked millet contains 119 calories – see http://www.nutritionvalue.org/Millet%2C_cooked_nutritional_value.html. One dou (c. 2 litres), therefore, should be worth about 2,380 calories, while the energy consumption of an adult individual per day is estimated at over 2,000 calories (check http://www.my-‐calorie-‐counter.com/Calorie_Calculator.asp). The diet of a travelling official was further augmented by vegetable soup (cai geng 菜羹) and meat sauce (jiang 醬). For the discussion of the latter see Wang Zijin 王子今, Qin Han shehui shi lunkao 秦漢社會史論考 (Beijing: Shangwu yishuguan, 2006), 283-‐291. One possible reason for messengers’ smaller rations could be that they travelled on horseback and should have expended less energy that other travelling officials, many of whom probably had to walk on foot.

30

most of the travels were likely associated with higher energy expense, they might

have presented challenge, and possibly even some form of physiological stress.

The system of staple finance continued through the Former Han period. A cache

of official documents excavated from the remains of the Han frontier outpost at

Xuanquanzhi 懸泉置, Dunhuang (in the west of modern Gansu Province), yielded a

number of records of grain rations issued on the strength of passports similar to

those excavated from Liye88:

六四出粟二斗四升，以食驪軒佐單門安將轉，從者一人，凡二人，人

往來四食，食三升。

#64: “Issued millet, two dou and four sheng (c. 4.8 litres), to feed Danmen An,

Assistant to [the magistrate] of Lixuan [County]89, who was leading [a group of

soldiers, laborers, convicts? on their] transfer. He had one follower, altogether

two persons. On their way there and back [each of] them had four meals, each

meal three sheng [of millet]”.

This document attests to the practice of issuing food rations for every meal

separately, which conforms to the Zhangjiashan statute, and it may be assumed that

three meals were issued per day (see note 86). The volume of grain issued per day

would have been 9 sheng (c. 1.8 litres), approximating the Qin standard of two litres.

The document also demonstrates that the followers (congzhe 從者), most likely,

servants, of the senior county officials were receiving rations. The early Former Han

statutes from Zhangjiashan specify the number of followers the government

functionaries were allowed to take on official travels. At the top of the bureaucratic

ladder, officials with the salary of 2,000 shi 石 or more were entitled to ten followers;

88 Hu Pingsheng, Zhang Defang 張德芳, eds., Dunhuang Xuanquan Han jian shicui 敦煌懸泉漢簡釋粹 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2001), 62, V1311-‐3:226. 89 Lixuan County belonged to Zhangye 張掖 Commandery located to the west of Dunhuang Commandery, in the central part of modern Gansu Province – see Zhongguo lishi dituji, 33-‐34.

31

those with the salary of 1,000 to 600 shi could travel with up to five followers; those

with the salary of 500 to 200 shi – with two; and those with the salary below 200 shi

– with one follower.90 According to the Hanshu, the county magistrate’s salary

varied from 1,000 to 300 shi depending on the size of the county.91 In any event, our

official was not violating the legal norm by travelling with only one follower.

Insofar as the management of grain supplies was fundamental for the finances of

early Chines empires, expenses associated with officials’ travels were subject to

meticulous planning and accounting. The fragmented article of the Zhangjiashan

“Statute on food rations” demonstrates that the distance of each travel was

estimated to determine the locations where one should receive his rations on the

route.92 Another article stipulated that messengers (shizhe 使者), who were among

the fastest official travellers and could make use of relay horses, were not entitled to

receiving more than one meal in the same county, unless they had a legitimate

reason to stay for longer.93

Yet another document from Liye provides a sample of the bureaucratic

procedure for ratifying the disbursement of grain rations in Qianling County to three

low-‐ranked officials from another county conducting criminal investigation. The

record on tablet 5-‐1, dated 209 B.C., represents a “file” that includes a report from

the Provisionary Supervisor of Granaries of Qianling County which copies passport

of the three incoming officials; and a summary of relevant proceedings at the office

of County Magistrate; a response from the county office to the original report.94 The

following table summarizes the procedure.

Table 2: Procedure for the issue of food rations

90 ZJS, 184, slips 235-‐237. 91 Hanshu, 19a.742. 92 ZJS, 183, slip 229. 93 ZJS, 184, slip 234. 94 Liye Qin jian, 3; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 1-‐7.

32

Date (209 B.C.) Summary of events

August 16

Three officials from Lingyang County95 arrive at the Bureau of

Granaries of Qianling County and present their passport.

Provisionary Supervisor of Granaries copies the passport and

forwards the copy to the office of County Magistrate.

August 17 The itinerary for the Lingyang officials’ travel sent by the County

Magistrate of Lingyang arrives at the county office of Qianling.

August 20

The Provisionary Deputy Magistrate of Qianling orders the

Bureau of Granaries to issue rations to the three Lingyang

officials as prescribed by the law. Most likely, a copy of the

itinerary of the three officials was also forwarded to the

Granaries.

August 23

Starting from this day, three Lingyang officials are authorized to

receive rations from Qianling granaries. Before this date, they

were using rations received from the Bureau of Granaries of

Lingyang County prior to the travel.

August 24 Confirmation of the disbursement of grain rations is delivered

from the Granaries to the county office of Qianling.

September 7

On this day, the issue of grain rations by Qianling County to the

three Lingyang officials is terminated, as they are supposed to

travel to their next destination.

Table 2 demonstrates how the budget of an official travel was prepared and

implemented. Three Lingyang officials were authorized by their passport to receive

grain ratio at Qianling County. The passport also indicated that the officials have

already received grain from Lingyang County for the period till August 23. No

matter how early they arrived, only from that date on would they be able to collect

their rations at Qianling. At the end of the accounting year (the eighth month), both

95 For the location of the county, see Zhongguo lishi dituji, 22-‐23. Under the Qin, Lingyang belonged to Dongting Commandery – see Hou Xiaorong, Qindai zhengqu dili, 426-‐427.

33

Lingyang and Qianling counties had to submit annual financial accounts, and any

overlap between the two accounts as for the issue of grain to the personnel would

lead to penalties for the responsible officials.96 Therefore, Qianling granaries only

start to issue rations to the Lingyang guests on August 24, and continued to do so for

fifteen days, till September 7 (the last day of the seventh month of the first year of

Second Emperor of Qin), which was when the itinerary prescribed the three officials

to leave Qianling. The early Former Han legal norm, which probably copied the

earlier Qin regulation, required each county to keep detailed records about the

amount of grain issued to officials arriving from outside of the county.97

This reconstruction offers some background for understanding the calendrical

diaries with their meticulous record of itinerary and duration of travels outside of

an official’s county of service. One of the reasons for tracking one’s moves in writing

was to have a reliable, independent record in case of possible mistakes in the official

files that could lead to accusation. Now we can also offer a tentative explanation for

the seeming contradiction in the Zhoujiatai diary that records its owner first lodging

(su 宿) in Jiangling on April 1, 213 B.C. and then arriving (dao 到) there the next day,

April 2.98 In view of the Liye account, conjecture seems justified that the owner of

the diary started receiving his rations in Jiangling from April 2, which would be the

date of his official “arrival” for the purpose of financial accounting.

Essential as it was, staple finance was not the sole form of financial arrangement for

officials’ travel. Money was also used from at least as early as the beginning of the

Former Han. The Zhangjiashan “Statute on food rations” stipulates that the

96 For the officials charged for irregularities found when checking their account, see, for example, SHD, 39, slips 80-‐81. For the recent detailed study of financial accounting interaction between the local governments in order to make their annual financial account match, see Jiang Feifei 蔣非非, “Razionalnoje upravlenije v drevnekitajskoj imperii: zapisi o “zhertvoprinoshenijah Pervomu Zemledelcu” iz cinskogo archiva v Liye” (Rational administration in early Chinese empire: The records of “sacrifices to the First Agriculturalist” from the Qin archive in Liye), tr. Maxim Korolkov, in Segei Dmitriev and Anatoly Viatkin, eds., Sinology mira k jubileju Stanislawa Kucheri. Sobranije trudov (Festschrift for the 85. Anniversary of Stanislaw Kuczera) (Moskva: IVRAN, 2013), 303-‐309. 97 ZJS, 184, slip 235. 98 Guanju Qin Han mu jiandu, 94-‐95, slips 33-‐34.

34

messengers not authorized to receive grain rations should be “charged in cash

according to the established price” (yi pingjia ze qian 以平賈（價）責錢).99 This

regulation does not necessarily suggest that some official travellers had to buy their

food at the market; rather, they were charged for those same rations that their

colleagues with valid passports would receive without payment. Also, the wording

of the article does not mean that they actually had to pay cash. It has been

demonstrated that much of the Qin financial system operated on credit, and no cash

transactions were needed as long as the two bureaus involved recognized debt

obligations of their employees.100

By the end of the Former Han, however, we have a more explicit evidence for the

cash financing of an official’s travel. The calendrical diary from Yinwan contains

seven records of its owner collecting what seems to be reimbursement of

accommodation expenses (fang qian 房錢) incurred during his travels. At least three

of such payments were received while Shi Rao was staying home on vacation after

returning from a lengthy business trip. Throughout the year, he was paid the total of

3,780 cash.101 It is unclear whether Shi Rao was receiving no food rations at all and

paid all his travel expenses in cash, or if this amount represented only part of his

travel finance.

If not illusive, the increase of monetary financing by the end of the Former Han

period might have introduced some flexibility to the travelling pattern. Instead of

being tied by itineraries and reduced to scanty rations barely sufficient for

maintaining one’s life and health, officials could now improve their conditions

within reasonable limits by paying for food and accommodation in cash.

4.2. Infrastructure of travel: transportation, accommodation, and medical care

4.2.1. Transportation

Deployment of a reliable, efficient transportation system was among top priorities

for the founders of early Chinese empires. Some of the most ambitious construction 99 ZJS, 183, slips 229-‐230. 100 See Jiang Feifei, “Razionalnoje upravlenije”, 307-‐309. 101 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 138-‐144.

35

projects during the reign of the First Emperor of Qin were related to the road

infrastructure, such as the famous “Direct Highway” (zhidao 直道) which connected

the metropolitan region in the Wei River basin with the northern frontier.102 Several

other major highways traversed the empire north to south and east to west,

connecting the imperial center with the eastern coastal regions, Yangzi basin, and

Chengdu Plain in Sichuan. The routes of most of these roads can be reconstructed

from the terse reports in transmitted sources in very general outlines.103 These

highways, however, were restricted to the elite travellers, military, and emergency

messengers, while the vast majority of ordinary users, including provincial officials,

hit the local roads and paths about which hardly anything is known.104 In the

southern regions, extensive use was made of waterways. 105 The previously

mentioned clerk Shuo who spent almost one and a half year on investigation in the

neighboring commandery, is reported to have travelled more than 2,000 km on

horseback and in the boat.106

The reason why this clerk was able to use horses was the high importance and

urgent nature of his mission: he was investigating what appears to be a large

rebellion against the Qin rule in one of the recently established southern

commanderies. Qin and Han laws strictly regulated the use of the government-‐

owned horses by the official travellers. Horses were stationed at special stations

called chuan 傳, the same term as used for the passports. The early Han statute “On

102 For the Direct Highway, see, for example, Shi Nianhai 史念海, “Qin Shihuang Zhidao yiji de tansuo” 秦始皇直道遺跡的探索, Wenwu 1975 (11), 44-‐54. 103 See Wang Zijin, Qin Han jiaotong shi gao 秦漢交通史稿 (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao, 1994), 28-‐32. 104 It is quite clear, nevertheless, that the Qin government was concerned with the state of smaller provincial roads, and special ordinances and statutes were issued to have these cleaned and repaired – see, for example, Sichuan sheng bowuguan 四川省博物館, Qingchuan xian wenhuaguan 青川縣文化館, “Qingchuan xian chutu Qin gengxiu tianlü mudu” 青川縣出土秦更修田律木牘, Wenwu 1982 (1), 1-‐21; Hulsewé, Remnants of Ch’in Law, 211-‐215. 105 One of the Liye documents reflects an attempt by the Qianling county officials to recover a boat lent to a certain Lang 狼 who used it for the transportation of tiles he traded elsewhere – see Liye Qin jian, 16-‐17, tablet 8-‐135; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 72-‐76. 106 ZJS, 364, slips 127-‐128.

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appointing officials” from the Zhangjiashan collection defines the group allowed to

use these horses107:

郡守二千石官、縣道官言邊變事急者，及吏遷徙、新為官、屬尉、佐

以上毋乘馬者，皆得為駕傳。

Commandery governors [and other] officials with the salary of 2,000 shi [of

grain], county and march108 officials hurrying with the emergency reports

about the events on the frontier, as well as the officials transferred to the new

place of service, and newly [appointed] officials with the rank of [county]

commandant, assistant, or higher, in case they are not riding horses [of their

own], should receive horses at the stations.

It may be noticed that neither of the officials we have encountered in the previous

section was authorized to use government horses. How did they travel? One hint is

offered in the article from the Qin “Statute on Currency” (jinbu lü 金布律) from

Shuihudi, according to which an ox cart with an ox herd was provided for every ten

or fifteen assistants (zuo 佐) and clerks (shi 史) in various county-‐level offices,

depending on the level of the office.109

While some officials could probably make use of the ox carts for their travels,

especially when the task involved carrying large amounts of material or documents,

others travelled on foot. The Liye document on tablet 5-‐1, analyzed above, does not

indicate that the three Lingyang officials applied for fodder rations for their ox or

oxen, something they would probably do would they have any.110

107 ZJS, 174, slips 213-‐214. 108 Under the Han dynasty, marches (dao 道) were administrative units equivalent to counties with prevailing non-‐huaxia (or “barbarian”) populations – see Hanshu, 19a.742. 109 SHD, 37, slips 72-‐74; Hulsewé, Remnants of Ch’in Law, 47-‐48, A37. 110 The early Former Han statutes fixed fodder rations for the government-‐owned cattle – see ZJS, 251-‐252, slips 421-‐423. Additionally, an article from the Shuihudi “Statute on agriculture” (tian lü 田律) stipulates: “As regards rations for (official) carriage horses and draft oxen, if for more than two months rations have not been issued or forwarded, they are all to be stopped; they must not be issued or forwarded. Those who are given rations by the

37

4.2.2. Accommodation

The calendrical diary excavated from the Yinwan burial #6 that belonged to the

commandery clerk Shi Rao provides a comprehensive record of the accommodation

options available for an official on travel, as summarized in the following table.111

Table 3: Accommodation options for travelling officials

Accommodation type Number of mentions %

Station lodge (chuan she 傳舍) 37 (at 14 locations) 37%

Police post (ting 亭) 28 (at 17 locations) 28%

Post relay station (you 郵) 1 1%

Outpost (zhi 置) 1 1%

Canton town (?) (xiang 鄉) 2 2%

Official residence (di 邸) 1 1%

Unspecified housing (zhai 宅) 28 (at one location) 28%

Private houses (jia 家) 2 2%

Total 100 100%

Three types of accommodation account for 93% of the available records: station

lodges, police posts, and unspecified housing. The last is limited to only one location,

Nanchun 南春, most likely in the vicinity of Pengcheng 彭城, the seat of the

Main (Office of) Agriculture without having a permanent record are to be given rations as from the day of the arrival of the certificate; one must not exceed (the stipulations of) the certificate” (SHD, 22, slip 11; translation follows Hulsewé, Remnants of Ch’in Law, 24-‐25, A5). The “certificate” (zhi 致) appearing in this article was probably similar to a “file” of passport and itinerary that authorized officials to receive grain rations at the counties where they were temporarily staying. The article, therefore, is talking about the official horses and oxen receiving fodder rations outside of their home county. 111 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 138-‐144; similar calculations have been attempted in Cai Wanjin, “Han dai lixing zhidu”, 118-‐119; Su Weiguo, Qin Han xiangting zhidu yanjiu, 163, rendering somewhat inconsistent figures.

38

government of the Princedom of Chu 楚國.112 Chu was an administrative unit

neighboring to Donghai Commandery, and the single most frequented destination of

Shi Rao’s travels: all three lengthy travels recorded in his calendrical diary were to

Pengcheng, one of which lasted for two and a half months. It seems reasonable that

a special housing arrangement was due in view of such frequent and lengthy stays.

Police posts (ting) were probably the most available official facility in the

countryside. The “Collected Registries” (ji bu 集簿 ) of Donghai Commandery

indicates that there were 688 such posts scattered across the commandery.113

According to the transmitted sources, the density of the police post network was

one post every ten li (c. 4 km).114

On the average, each police post was staffed with four servicemen (zu 卒), and

probably had sufficient room to accommodate one or several travelling officials.115

The evidence for the use of police posts as accommodation for the travelling

provincial and local government personnel is evenly, though loosely scattered

across the excavated and transmitted sources. The earliest known specimen of

calendrical diary, included in the Yuelu Academy collection of Qin bamboo slips,

records its owner staying at a police post on June 24, 220 B.C.116 A document from

Xuanquan outpost, dated 2 B.C., lists police posts among the facilities used to house

travelers.117 Another fragment appears to be listing various types of accommodation

already familiar to us: canton towns, post relay stations, and police posts (xiang you

ting 鄉郵亭).118 The “Biography of Bao Xuan 鮑宣” in the Hanshu mentions police

112 See Zhongguo lishi dituji, 19-‐20. 113 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 77, tablet 1. 114 Hanshu, 19a.742; Wei Hong 衛宏, Han jiu yi 漢舊儀, 2.81, in Sun Xingyan 孫星衍, ed., Han guan liu zhong 漢官六種 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1990). 115 Yinwan document provides the total number of 2,972 police post servicemen, which gives an average of 4.3 per post. For the in-‐depth study of the police post system, see Su Weiguo, Qin Han xiangting zhidu yanjiu. Unfortunately, no clear archaeological evidence for the structure and spatial organization of the Qin or Han police post is available so far. 116 Yuelu shuyuan cang Qin jian, 7, slip 40. 117 For the analysis of this document, see Su Weiguo, Qin Han xiangting zhidu yanjiu, 165-‐166. 118 Dunhuang Xuanquan Han jian shicui, 71-‐72, II0314-‐2:235.

39

posts as one of the most common types of accommodation for travelling officials.119

Interestingly, this last text indicates that police posts were considered fit only for

low-‐ranking personnel, and the fact that the senior inspecting official was staying at

such posts turned into a scandal.

Post relay station (you) was another unspecialized accommodation facility used

by low-‐ranked officials. The “Collected Registries” from Yinwan mention that there

were only 34 such stations in Donghai Commandery, which explains why Shi Rao

made so much less use of the relay stations than of the police posts during his

business voyages.120 In contrast, the owner of the Qin calendrical diaries from the

Yuelu collection stayed at relay stations at least five times during his travels in

213/212 B.C.121 Since the relay system was deployed along the main highways, I

assume that officials made use of this type of accommodation when travelling along

such highways, but could only use police posts when travelling on smaller roads.

The Zhangjiashan statute “On forwarding [official] documents” (xingshu lü 行書

律) offers a rare description of amenities available at such accommodation. The

ordinary relay station was supposed to have twelve rooms (shi 室); a stock of straw

mats (xi 席); a well; and a grinding stone for grain. The staff offered cooking service

to the government functionaries travelling on official business in case they had no

servants to cook for them. If they were accompanied by servants, the staff had to

provide them with kitchen utensils and broth (jiang 漿) for cooking.122 The article

indicates that travellers had to carry their food rations, which they collected from

the granaries (see previous section), as these were not disbursed at the relay

stations (neither at police posts, one would assume).

The station lodges (chuanshe) probably offered the most comfortable

accommodation, as they were the place where high-‐ranking officials were waiting

for their weary horses to be changed for fresh ones.123 Unfortunately, almost

119 Hanshu, 72.3086. 120 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 77, tablet 1. 121 Yuelu shuyuan cang Qin jian, 19, slip 6; 20, slips 9, 13; 22, slips 28, 29, 31. 122 ZJS, 199-‐201, slips 265-‐267. 123 ZJS, 183-‐184, slips 229-‐230.

40

nothing is known about the amenities provided by such lodges.124 Nevertheless, the

diary from the Yuelu collection indicates that travelling officials used them as early

as in the reign of the First Emperor of Qin.125

Finally, we should bear in mind that other official facilities, unspecified in the

known specimens of calendrical diaries, were frequently used for accommodation

purpose. The Zhoujiatai diary, for example, never indicates the type of

accommodation used by its owner. The typical entry in this text only specifies the

location: “stayed at Jiangling” (su Jiangling 宿江陵).126 This pattern is also used in

the Yuelu and Yinwan diaries. One possibility is that the travelling officials could

stay at the dormitories where local officials were living. In the Yinwan calendrical

diary, such dormitory is indicated as simply “accommodation” (she 舍).127 By the

end of the Former Han period, officials could stay at their acquaintances rather than

in the government-‐run facilities, something I am going to discuss in the next part of

this paper.

4.2.3. Medical care

As the topic of health risks associated with travelling will be addressed in the fifth

part of this paper, here suffice it to notice that the Qin and Han legal and

administrative regulations appreciated the physical stressfulness of travels, and

considered some elementary medical care. “Statute on grants” (ci lü 賜律) from the

Zhangjiashan collection prescribes local authorities to take care of the officials who

fell ill during their voyages by providing them necessary food and warm clothes, and

transporting them back to their offices where more comprehensive treatment could

124 As recognized in the recent study of the station lodge system – see Hou Xudong 侯旭東, “Han dai lulling yu chuanshe guanli” 漢代律令與傳舍管理, in Bu Xianqun 卜憲群, Yang Zhenhong 楊振紅, eds., Jianbo yanjiu 2007 (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue, 2010), 158. Su Weiguo believes that station lodges offered a kind of multi-‐room apartments – see Su Weiguo, Qin Han xiangting zhidu yanjiu, 164. 125 Yuelu shuyuan cang Qin jian, 14, slip 33. 126 Guanju Qin Han mu jiandu, 94, slip 33. 127 See, for example, Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 139, slips 24, 25.

41

be offered.128 When the ailment was not serious, an individual would be allowed to

stay indoors for some time, and to proceed with his business after recovery. To

account for a one-‐day delay during his travel to the neighboring Princedom of Chu,

Shi Rao, the owner of the Yinwan calendrical diary, made an entry pointing out that

he was ill on that particular day.129

Excavated texts demonstrate that all essential elements of the official travel

infrastructure were already in place by the time of the Qin Dynasty: roads with

police and relay posts suitable for stay; basic means of transportation to allow the

transfer of bulky documents and other materials; and, though minimalistic, legally

formalized concern about travelling officials’ wellbeing. While no numerical data

exists for the initial period of early Chinese empires, by the end of first century B.C.

the network of official accommodation facilities in the countryside was impressively

dense, and although most of them lacked but the very basic amenities, the guests

were guaranteed safety, protection from the elements, and water and kitchen

utensils to cook their meal. The sheer number of posts and lodges attests that, at

least in populous and economically developed eastern regions, travelling officials

could be confident about having a place to stay every night, something that was not

taken for granted by their counterparts in the southern commanderies some two

hundred years earlier. However, as the next section will show, concern about

accommodation was by no means the only painful travel-‐related experience for the

officials in the Qin and Han empires.

4.3. Efficiency control

During the Warring States period, the Qin lawgivers devised a complex system of

standards to measure and evaluate the efficiency of the state economy and

administration, which continued into the Han period. The standards (cheng 程)

were applied to various spheres of state activity, such as agriculture, construction, 128 ZJS, 209-‐210, slip 286. The Qin documents from Shuihudi indicate that county governments employed professional physicians (yi 醫) – see SHD, 156, slips 52-‐54; Hulsewé, Remnants of Ch’in Law, 197-‐198, E19. 129 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 143, slip 61.

42

transportation, military training, and so on. In this section, we are concerned with

the operation of standards for the speed of travel used to evaluate the performance

of the government personnel dispatched on official missions.

The early Former Han statute “On forwarding [official] documents” sets up the

speed standards for the delivery of official correspondence130:

郵人行書，一日一夜行二百里。行不中程半日，笞五十；過半日至盈一

日，笞百；過一日，罰金二兩。

The relay postmen delivering [official] documents should cover two hundred li

(c. 83 km) per day and night. If they fail to comply with this standard by half-‐day,

[they should be given] fifty strokes [with a bamboo stick]. [If they are late] by

more than half-‐day and up to one day, [give them] one hundred strokes. [If they

are late] by more than one day, [they should be] fined two ounces of gold.

Similar standards applied to the government personnel and corvée conscripts

involved in transporting goods and grain131:

委輸傳送，重車、重負日行五十里，空車七十里，徒行八十里。

When transporting [goods], the heavy cart or loaded cart should cover fifty li (c.

21 km) per day; the empty cart should cover seventy li (c. 29 km); and

conscript walking on foot should cover eighty li (c. 33 km).

Although we do not presently possess similar regulations for the travelling officials,

the existence of such standards is inferred from some of the known travel accounts.

A criminal investigation record, dated 218 B.C. and included into the Zhangjiashan

130 ZJS, 203, slip 273. 131 ZJS, 248, slip 412.

43

collection of doubtful cases, contains the following summary of the investigative

mission by clerk Shuo132:

凡四百六十九日。朔病六十二日，行道六十日，乘恒馬及船行五千一百

冊六里，（率）之，日行八十五里，畸（奇）冊六里不（率）。

Altogether, [his tour lasted for] 469 days. Shuo was ill for 62 days, and spent 60

days on the way. He covered [a distance of] 5,146 li (c. 2,140 km) on horseback

and in the boat. [It is] reckoned that he made 85 li (c. 35 km) per day with a

remainder of 46 li.

The only reason for including this data in the investigation account was its

instrumentality for evaluating the performance of clerk Shuo. Apparently, certain

standard existed for such evaluation to be possible.

Along with the set of standards of speed, another instrument for planning and

evaluating the duration of official travels were the itineraries. We have already seen

that travelling officials were required to submit travel itineraries to receive food

rations in the counties they were passing on the way. To compose such itineraries,

their supervisors had to have a clear notion of the distance between the

administrative units of the empire, to estimate the time their subordinates would

spend travelling through each county. A number of such lists have been excavated

from Qin and Han sites. The earliest of them was inscribed on a wooden tablet from

Liye133:

鄢到銷百八十四里

銷到江陵二百卌里

132 ZJS, 364, slips 147-‐148. 133 Published in Ma Yi 馬怡, “Liye Qin jian xuanjiao (lianzai san)” 里耶秦簡選校（連載三）, Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan lishi yanjiusuo xuekan bianweihui 中國社會科學院歷史研究所學刊編委會, ed., Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan lishi yanjiusuo xuekan 中國社會科學院歷史研究所學刊, No. 4 (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2007), 185.

44

��江陵到孱陵百一十里

��孱陵到索二百九十五里

索到臨沅六十里

臨沅到遷陵九百一十里

□□千四百卌里

[From the County of] Yan to [the County of] Xiao, 184 li (c. 76 km)

[From the County of] Xiao to [the County of] Jiangling, 240 li (c. 100 km)

[From the County of] Jiangling to [the County of] Chanling, 110 li (c. 46 km)

[From the County of] Chanling to [the County of] Suo, 295 li (c. 122 km)

[From the County of] Suo to [the County of] Linyuan, 60 li (c. 25 km)

[From the County of] Linyuan to [the County of] Qianling, 910 li (c. 378 km)

… 1,440 (?) li134

This itinerary indicates the distances between the county seats to be passed on

the way from what is now the vicinity of Yicheng 宜城 Municipality in the northern

part of Hubei Province to Qiangling County in the north-‐western corner of the

modern Hunan Province (see Map 3).135 The distances refer to the roads or

waterways, and it may be noticed that in the mountainous terrain of the Xiangxi 湘

西 region of western Hunan, the travel route between Linyuan and Qianling counties,

which are 180 km apart, was about 378 km long.

134 It is impossible to determine whether the distance in the last line is one or more thousand, because several graphs are missing. One is inclined to assume that the final line provides the total distance between the counties of Yan and Qianling. However, this does not appear to be the case, since the sum of the distances in this list is 1,799 li. Alternatively, one or more lines in the beginning of the list could have been erased, or cannot be read due to poor preservation. It is difficult to make any judgment in this regard without seeing the original tablet. 135 Zhongguo lishi dituji, 22-‐23.

45

Similar itineraries have been excavated from the Han frontier fortifications and

outposts in Juyan 居延 and Dunhuang.136 Apparently, the county-‐level governments

in Qin and Han empires employed such itineraries for estimating the time necessary

for the transportation of material and documents, but also for the voyages of their

officials. With all this evidence, we can now summarize the efficiency control

procedure as follows:

1) Before the beginning of a travel, an estimate for its duration was made based

on the itineraries like the one translated above, and the official speed

standards that should have varied depending on the means of transportation

(horse; ox cart; boat; travelling on foot).

2) A travel itinerary (guosuoxian 過所縣) was drafted, in which the duration of

officials’ stay in each county on their travel route was specified. As we have

already observed, this was basic for the budget of any particular travel.

3) On the completion of the voyage, officials had to submit an account to

demonstrate that they complied with the travel itinerary. To do so, they

probably relied on the records in their private calendrical diaries. Their

accounts, of course, could be crosschecked against the records kept by every

county, and probably also at every police post, relay station, or

accommodation lodge they stayed on the route.

4) The evaluation of performance was made, with ensuing promotions or

penalties.

Along with the itineraries, travel speed standards, and calendrical diaries, the

mechanism of efficiency control generated other documents such as maps, some of

which have been excavated from the burials of Qin and Han officials and

136 See Gansu sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 甘肅省文物考古研究所 et al., eds, Juyan xin jian 居延新簡 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1990), 395-‐396, E.P.T.59:581, 582; Dunhuang Xuanquan Han jian shicui, 56-‐59, II0214-‐1:130.

46

dignitaries. 137 This control was designed to render the “state on the move”

calculable, and thus controllable, for the central authorities. Every travelling official

was becoming a part of an enormous accounting machine that reinforced the

existing rules, norms, and hierarchies. Moreover, it established a peculiar “mental

map” of an ordered universe, which was maintained not only through prescriptive

regulations but also through the routinized effort of its every participant. On a more

down-‐to-‐earth level, such control certainly contributed to the continuous stress that

government functionaries experienced every time they were setting out to travel.

These experiences, and the ways to deal with them, are considered in the last part of

this paper.

5. Experience of physical mobility: travel as a part of social lifeworld of

Qin and Han officials

The stone carvings excavated from the Han burials point at the physical mobility as

an important feature of the elite identity. The stock motifs of these carvings include

a travel, representing a group of men, some of them in official’s garment, riding

horses or carts.138 Somewhat surprisingly in light of what we have learned from the

previous part of this paper, travels were celebrated as a hallmark of dignity and high

status rather than lamented for their hardships and depressing supervision exerted

by the state over those of its subjects who dared, or were obliged, to move. In this

part of the paper, I try to address this seeming contradiction by examining the role

of travelling in the formation of identity and socio-‐cultural experience of the officials

in early Chinese empires.

137 See Ge Jianxiong, Zhongguo gudai de ditu cehui 中國古代的地圖測繪 (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1998), 21-‐55. 138 See, for example, Chang Renxia 常任俠 et al., eds., Zhongguo meishu quanji: Huihua bian: Huaxiangshi, huaxiangzhuan 中國美術全集：繪畫編：畫像石畫像磚 (Shanghai: Shanghai meishu, 1988), xiii, 7, 9, 11.

47

5.1. Travel as common experience

In the previous part of the paper, we have noticed that the structures of physical

mobility of the officials in early Chinese empires were particularly designed to

integrate government functionaries into the state-‐sponsored hierarchies and

systems of supervision and control. However, it was also through these structures

that a peculiar experience of space developed that characterized officials as a

distinct social group, and which eventually became a part of their group identity.

Travel was an experience of the empire. Map 2 reminds us that provincial and

even local officials had to, from time to time, literally traverse the empire on their

journeys of duty. Long-‐distance travels were a routine, but also socially an

important part of the service. In one particular year at the end of the first century

B.C., nine county officials of Donghai Commandery were delivering money to the

imperial capital of Chang’an, some 800 km to the west, while another three were

escorting convict laborers to Shanggu 上谷 Commandery (modern Hebei Province),

about the same distance to the north.139

Travel was recognized as a big event by the local society (see 5.2.2 below), but it

also manifested the transcendence of the local society, and a universalistic

aspiration of the imperial bureaucratic government. Being an immediate experience

of the scale of the empire, the travels were to a no lesser degree an experience of the

imperial order. Officials were not simply moving across the space. The itineraries,

maps, schedules, and laws were transforming the terrain of danger and uncertainty

into that of order and predictability, in which one always could, or were at least

supposed to be able to, arrive in a certain destination at a certain time without

getting lost. The common experience of being controlled by the anonymous

supervisory power was in the same time the experience of being in control over the

powers of space, time, and nature that, in premodern societies, were forcefully and

persistently preventing men and women from leaving their homes. In this sense,

ability to routinely travel hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away, and

139 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 96-‐97. See also Zhonnguo lishi dituji, 27-‐28.

48

safely return each time, truly deserved celebration as an almost supernatural

privilege bestowed on those who were associated with the state.140

In reality, of course, a lot of uncertainty and danger was still lying in wait. The

chartered, civilized terrain was often more of a mental construct than an actual

matter, which, however, does not devaluate its importance as the common

experience of the imperial officialdom. This experience of direct access to the

imperial order contributed to the molding of a new elite identity that crosscut the

bureaucratic hierarchies and manifested itself in the novel social configurations, to

be examined in the next section.141

5.2. Travel as an opportunity: official travels and social networks

One of the reasons for the state’s uneasiness about the high mobility of its

functionaries should have been the opportunity it provided for the emergence of

private connections and networks. Such networks included provincial bureaucrats

and local elites and challenged the central government’s attempts to reduce the

society to an aggregate of nuclear households connected directly to the state by ties

of obligation, punishment, and reward.142 By developing and maintaining unofficial

links between households that were usually based on real or imagined bonds of

kinship and on marriage alliances, locally powerful lineages sought to dominate the

140 It is interesting to notice that in the opposite part of the continent, in the Roman empire, around the same time, the itineraries very similar to those excavated at Liye, Juyan, and Dunhuang pursued the same role of preventing one from getting lost on the long travel, rather than conveyed a systematic geographical knowledge. Although a more detailed discussion of these issues would require a special study, it should be noticed that such itineraries probably possessed some kind of sacred value as guides through the otherwise unknown and chaotic space, which conferred semi-‐divine power on their owners or holders. In the Roman context, too, the itineraries were often associated with officials – see Colin Adams, “‘There and back again’: getting around in Roman Egypt”, in Colin Adams and Ray Laurence, eds., Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 159-‐163; Ray Laurence, “Afterword: travel and empire”, in Adams and Laurnce, eds., Travel and Geography, 168. 141 For the formation of the bureaucratic elite identity in the early imperial period, see Korolkov, “‘Greeting Tablets’ in Early China”, 335-‐336. 142 For a recent discussion, see Yuri Pines et al., “General Introduction”, in Yuri Pines et al., eds., Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2014), 24-‐27.

49

economic and political life of their respective regions.143 Such networks were even

more disturbing for the state when they involved not only the local “great families”

but also the officials with their access to strategic resources, knowledge,

communication channels, and power to manipulate the systems of justice and

taxation.

A number of policies were devised to prevent such development, some of which

have already been mentioned in this paper. Senior officials at the county and

commandery levels were banned from taking positions in their home regions and

were subject to regular rotations. The Qin documents from Shuihudi and Liye

demonstrate that in the beginning of the early imperial period, all supervising

officials in charge of bureaus and offices were frequently changed. The meticulous

regulation of timing and budget of officials’ voyages was also instrumental to

preventing unauthorized communications between the travelling officials and their

local counterparts or general populace.

All these measures appear to have been efficient to some extent. However, by the

end of the Former Han period, we have clear evidence for travels as a means for

developing and maintaining the communicative network of provincial officials and

dignitaries across the large region in eastern China that encompassed several

commanderies and princedoms. The very act of travelling served as a focal point for

the manifestation of solidarity within the influential groups in the local society. The

data derives from the private documents excavated from the tomb of a senior scribe

at Donghai Commandery, Shi Rao, and has been analyzed in my previous study.144 In

what follows, I summarize the earlier findings, and add some additional

observations.

5.2.1. Official’s travels as a setting for establishing and maintaining a social network

The scholars have previously noted that the geography of Shi Rao’s travels within

and outside of his home commandery overlap with that of his communicative

143 See Lewis, The Construction of Space in Early China, 215. 144 See Korolkov, “Greeting Tablets in Early China”, 311-‐325. See also Cai Wanjin, Yinwan Han mu jiandu lunkao 尹灣漢墓簡牘論考 (Taipei: Taiwan guji, 2002), 45-‐168.

50

network as reflected by the collection of greeting tablets excavated from his

burial.145 The following table summarizes this overlapping.146

Table 4: Travels and social network of Shi Rao (11 B.C.)

Date of travel Destination of travel Network participant

1st month, days 17-‐30 Pengcheng 彭城,

Princedom of Chu 楚

Zheng Yan 鄭延,

Chancellor of Chu

2nd month, days 6-‐12 Wuyuan 武原 County,

Princedom of Chu

2nd month, day 15 – 3rd

month, day 6

Pengcheng 彭城,


Zheng Yan, Chancellor of

Chu

3rd month, day 21 – 6th

month, day 4

Pengcheng 彭城,


Zheng Yan, Chancellor of

Chu

6th month, day 24 Liangcheng 良成

Marquisate (?)

Liu Min 劉閔, Marquis of

Liangcheng

11th month, day 26 –

12th month, day 5

Dongwu 東武, Langye 琅

邪 Commandery

Yang Xian 楊賢, Governor

of Langye

12th month, days 9-‐15 Princedom of Chengyang

城陽

Zhu 諸 County, Langye

Commandery

Yang Xian 楊賢, Governor

of Langye

Shi Rao’s calendrical diary also records his contacts with some other individuals

that are known to be, or may be assumed to be the members of his communicative

network. During his long stay in Pengcheng, the administrative center of the

145 Cai Wanjin, “Han dai lixing zhidu”, 117. 146 The table is based on the calendrical diary of Shi’s travels in 11 B.C., and the collection of his greeting tablets – see Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 133-‐144. For the diagram of travels, see the appendix to Su Weiguo, Qin Han xiangting zhidu yanjiu.

51

Princedom of Chu, certain Mr. Xue 薛 and Mr. Dong 董 paid visits to his lodging at

Nanchun (probably the suburb of Pengcheng).147 While on official voyages in his

home commandery of Donghai, Shi Rao himself made use of hospitality of two other

individuals, Chen Wenqing 陳文卿 and Chen Shaoping 陳少平, staying at their

houses for one night each time.148 Two “Registers of men who donated money”

(zengqian mingji 贈錢名籍; the title has been offered by the editors of the text)

excavated from the same Yinwan tomb demonstrate that at least some of these men

were permanent members of Shi’s network and participated in fundraising for

important events in his life. The name of Chen Shaoping shows up in both

registers.149 The registers feature a number of individuals surnamed Xie, one of

whom might well have been Mr. Xie who visited Shi Rao in Nanchun. Although I was

unable to identify any individual with surname Dong, the graph for one of the

surnames that appears in the registers, Xiao 蕭, resembles the graph dong 董, and

one may speculate that the person whom Shi Rao met in Nanchun was the Xiao

recorded in the donation register.150

Illuminating as they are, the documents from Shi Rao’s tomb are unique in the

archaeological record. To what extent were the official travels a medium for

developing private networks of social relations in the earlier periods? The Qin

calendrical diaries from Zhoujiatai and those from the Yuelu collection offer no

single case of their owners staying at private houses or being visited by private

individuals in the course of their official journeys. However, the divination manual

from Kongjiapo 孔家坡, dated from the early years of the Former Han Dynasty,

indicates that, at least for some officials, receiving guests while on travel was quite

common (for translation and discussion of the relevant passage of the text, see

section 5.3.2 below).151

147 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 139, slip 25; 140, slips 28, 29. 148 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 143, slip 67; 142, slip 55. 149 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 119, tablet 7; 122, tablet 8b. 150 Poor quality photos of the original bamboo slips resist any further analysis. 151 Hubei sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 湖北省文物考古研究所, Suizhou shi kaogudui 隨州市考古隊, Suizhou Kongjiapo Han mu jiandu 隨州孔家坡漢墓簡牘 (Beijing: Wenwu, 2006), 146, slips 147-‐150.

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Another curious document, a calendrical diary excavated from tomb #5 at

Huchang 胡場 (modern Hanjiang 邗江 County, Yangzhou 揚州 Municipality, Jiangsu

Province), is provisionally dated from the early decades of the first century B.C. The

wooden tablet is inscribed on both sides and seems to be an excerpt from a

calendrical diary, or an independent record of events that occurred on twelve

different days of the eleventh and twelfth months of a certain year. This text, largely

neglected in scholarship, lists a number of meetings of various individuals

assumedly with the owner of the tablet (and burial), Wang Fengshi 王奉世. The

identity of the latter remains unclear, but he might have been an official, as the text

mentions him (?) travelling in company of a clerk.152 Unfortunately, the lack of a

photo of the tablet precludes further analysis and leaves open the question about

the accuracy of already published transcription.

5.2.2. Travel as a “focal point” for the local society

As in the previous case, our data is essentially limited to the extraordinarily rich

collection of the private documents from the Yinwan burial #6. “The registers of

men who donated money” record several events that involved such donations. The

upper register on the recto surface of board #8 is a list of four names followed by an

amount of cash donated and an indication of the purpose of fundraising – “journey

to Chang’an” (zhi Chang’an 之長安). The characters in this register are rendered in

significantly larger and bolder script than in the other registers on the same board,

possibly emphasizing the significance of the event.153 One may conjecture that the

trip to the imperial capital Chang’an was important not only for Shi, but also for the

participants of his communicative network, and it was celebrated and manifested

through displaying the tablet with the inscription in some sort of public setting.154

152 Yangzhou bowuguan 揚州博物館, Hanjiang xian tushuguan 邗江縣圖書館, “Jiangsu Hanjiang Huchang wu hao Han mu” 江蘇邗江胡場五號漢墓, Wenwu 1981 (11), 17-‐18. 153 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 19 (photograph), 121 (transcription). 154 For the discussion of Shi’s travel to Chang’an and its possible significance for his status in the local society, see Korolkov, “‘Greeting Tablets’ in Early China”, 317-‐324.

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5.3. Travel as a crisis: dangers and uncertainty

5.3.1. Dangers of travelling

On August 9, 201 B.C., clerk Wu 武 of Xinqi 新郪 County, Huaiyang Commandery, left

on a mission to “take measures against robbers and criminals”, from which he never

returned. It was eventually discovered that he had been murdered at the order of

his direct superior, the County Magistrate Xin 信, who had an old grudge against

him.155 Although being assassinated by the henchmen of one’s fellow official was

probably quite extraordinary, the timing of crime is elucidating: the journeys were

considered dangerous, and Xin therefore calculated that disappearance of Wu would

not stir up too much suspicion. However, the matter was accidently brought to the

attention of the Governor of Huaiyang who ordered a careful investigation.

Although the years in the wake of the war of Qin succession were particularly

turbulent, the safety of travels has always been an issue in early empires. Safety

rather than comfort considerations might have been the reason for the officials to be

entitled to a number of followers. The passport on tablet 8-‐1517 excavated at Liye,

the translation of which has been provided in the beginning of section 4.1, records

that a clerk was accompanied by two soldiers who probably were his bodyguards.

The direct assault by bandits or rebels was only one among the dangers of

travelling in the Qin and Han empires. Another one was illness. As we have observed,

the law prescribed provision of simple medical care to the government

functionaries who fell ill while on official journeys, and transporting them back to

their place of service. The previous analysis suggests that the travelling conditions,

in particular, poor nutrition, Spartan accommodation conditions, the fact that most

of the officials had to travel on foot, and the tough requirements for the speed of

travel were among the possible reasons for the travels being particularly demanding

in terms of health.

The available record of official travels indicates that illness, indeed, was often a

part of travelling experience. Scribe Shuo who investigated the sensitive case of an 155 The details of the case are rendered in the Zouyanshu manual recovered from the early Former Han tomb in Zhangjiashan – see ZJS, 354-‐359, slips 75-‐98.

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inadequate government action during the local rebellion in 220 B.C., spent over two

months of his more than one year-‐long trip laid up.156 Shi Rao, the Donghai

Commandery clerk, fell ill during his journey to the neighboring Princedom of

Chu.157 One may speculate that frequent travels and emerging health issues was the

cause of the particular interest for medical literature manifest in the burial goods of

Qin and Han officials.

Finally, the compliance with the efficiency requirements should have been

contributing to the pressure. The Liye archive contains a lengthy list of fines

imposed on the local officials, along with the fragments of other similar

documents.158 Although the text does not explain the reason for these fines, it may

be assumed that most of them were caused by violation of one or more of the

numerous standards and requirements introduced by the central government,

including those associated with travels. The most dramatic illustration of possible, if

unintended consequences of the excessive sternness of travel-‐related requirements

is the case of Chen Sheng 陳勝 and Wu Guang 吳廣, the squad leaders of a group of

conscripts heading to their garrison on the north frontier. According to the Shiji,

they were caught in a heavy rain on the way. After realizing that they were failing to

arrive on time, the two decided to launch the rebellion that eventually shattered the

Qin Dynasty, rather than waiting to be executed.159 It is hard to judge to what extent

the death penalty was indeed inevitable for the soldiers: the Liye documents clearly

suggest that heavy rain was taken into consideration by the Qin law as an acceptable

reason for delays. Nevertheless, Chen and Wu were able to masterfully manipulate

the fears of their fellow conscripts, which, in turn, were the product of the rigid

system of control over physical mobility practiced by the early Chinese empires.

156 ZJS, 364, slip 127. 157 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 143, slip 61. 158 Liye Qin jian, 19, 27,28, 35-‐36, tablets 8-‐149+8-‐489, 8-‐300, 8-‐356; Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi, 89-‐91, 131, 137. 159 Shiji, 48.1950.

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5.3.2. Dealing with uncertainty: divination about travel

In China, from Neolithic times on, divination has been one of the major ways to deal

with crisis situations.160 Both common people and elites in the early Chinese

empires used a variety of divination techniques, only part of which is known from

the transmitted texts and divination manuals, charts, and devices excavated from

the Qin and Han tombs. The so-‐called daybooks (rishu 日書) and other divination

texts have been recovered from the burials of the officials, including tomb #11 at

Shuihudi, #30 at Zhoujiatai, and #6 at Yinwan that also yielded numerous other

materials related to the everyday life activities of their occupants. It has already

been noted that many of the divination topics in these manuscripts are related to

the professional needs of the bureaucrats, such as taking up a post, pursuing and

arresting absconders and criminals, and registering households.161 Travelling also

belonged to such topics.

The earliest known Qin daybooks that give recommendations about the

appropriate time of travelling are dated from the later Warring States period.

Entries for the zhi 執 days of the twelve-‐day cycle in the two divination manuals

excavated from burial #1 at Fangmatan 放馬灘 (modern Tianshui 天水 Municipality,

Gansu Province) advise to refrain from travels (xing 行) on the zhi 執 days of the

twelve-‐day cycle, for the risk of being arrested and reduced to penal servitude (zhi

er ru gong 執而入公).162 The tomb also yielded a writing brush, a set of counting

rods (suan chou 算籌), and the maps of the Tianshui region, allowing to identify its

occupant as a local official.163

160 See, for example, a study of divination as an answer to the social crisis in a mid-‐first millennium B.C. salt-‐producing community in the Three Gorges area – Rowan Flad, Salt Production and Social Hierarchy in Ancient China: An Archaeological Investigation of Specialization in China’s Three Gorges (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 204-‐218. 161 Robin Yates, “The Empire of the Scribes”, Introduction to Part II of Pines et al., eds., Birth of an Empire, 152. 162 Gansu sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo, Tianshui Fangmatan Qin jian 天水放馬灘秦簡 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2009), 84, slip 18; 88, slip 18. The same phrasing is used in the Shuihudi manual to be discussed next. 163 See Tianshui Fangmatan Qin jian, 72-‐76.

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Next in chronological order, two daybooks from the Qin burial at Shuihudi

contain more elaborate recommendations. To take the example of Daybook A, an

advice not to travel on the zhi days is given, similarly to the Fangmatan texts.164

Moreover, it is explained that some of the twenty eight lunar lodges (or “stars”, xing

星, in the terminology of the daybooks) also present danger, while others, on the

contrary, are auspicious for travelling.165 Several thematic sections in the manual

are specially devoted to listing the days inauspicious for travelling; describing

taboos one should observe when setting out on a journey; and indicating directions

not to be travelled on particular days.166 The “Demonography” chapter of the

daybooks considers some of the dangers that one might encounter on the way, and

puts forward a method to deal with the demon who blocks the road and does not

allow to pass.167 The examples of travel-‐related issues in the Shuihudi daybooks can

be easily multiplied, but those already provided sufficiently demonstrate the

importance of the topic for both compilers and consumers of such manuals. In case

of Shuihudi, the latter can be clearly identified as the clerk at the county government

in the commandery of Nanjun.168

The content of the daybook excavated from the early Former Han burial #8 at

Kongjiapo (in modern Suizhou 隨州 Municipality, Hubei Province) largely overlaps

with that of the Shuihudi Daybook A. According to the “Report to subterranean

officials” (gao di shu 告地書) excavated from this tomb, it belonged to a certain Bi 辟,

Supervisor of Storehouses (ku sefu 庫嗇夫) in the marquisate of Tao 桃.169

The text is not only warning against travelling on the inauspicious zhi days,170

but also, as in the Shuihudi Daybook A, a number of thematic sections of the

164 SHD, 183, slip 19. 165 SHD, 192, slips 81, 94. 166 SHD, 200-‐201, slips 127-‐135. 167 SHD, 215, slip 46. For the genre of “demonography”, see Donald Harper, “A Chinese Demonography of the Third Century B.C.”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 45, #2 (1985), 459-‐498. 168 For the record of important life events of this clerk, Xi 喜, see SHD, 3-‐10, slips 1-‐53. 169 Suizhou Kongjiapo Han mu jiandu, 197. 170 Suizhou Kongjiapo Han mu jiandu, 129, slip 18. Interestingly, although the content of the wording remained essentially the same as in the Fangmatan and Shuihudi manuals, the

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Kongjiapo manual are dealing with travels and related dangers and taboos. One of

these sections, provisionally dubbed by the editors “Arriving at a lodge” (dao shi 到

室), deserves quoting at some length, as it illustrates the detailedness of such

recommendations171:

千里外毋以丙丁到室，五百里外毋以壬戌、癸亥到室。十里外□□□

□□、丁亥、壬戌、癸亥行及歸。丙申、丁亥、戊申、戊戌、六日、

旬二，龍日也，以到室，有客。西大母以丁酉西而不反（返），緰以

壬戌北而不反（返），禹以丙戌南而不反（返），女過（媧）與天子

以庚東而不反（返）。子日忌不可行及歸，歸、到、行，亡。

When one is thousand li away, he should not arrive at the lodge on days bing

and ding. When one is five hundred li away, he should not arrive at the lodge

on days ren-‐xu and gui-‐hai. When one is ten li away… days ding-‐hai, ren-‐xu,

gui-‐hai, travel and return. Days bing-‐shen, ding-‐hai, wu-‐shen, wu-‐xu, [as well

as] the sixth days in the second decade [of the month] are “dragon days”, if

one arrives at the lodge [on these days], he will [also] have guests. The Great

Mother of the West travelled west on the day ding-‐you and did not come back.

Tou travelled north on the day ren-‐xu and did not come back. Yu travelled

south on the day bing-‐xu and did not come back. Nüwa and the Son of Heaven

travelled east on the day geng and did not come back. The zi days are to be

avoided, one should not travel or return [on these days]. [If he] returns,

arrives, or travels, he will abscond.

wording of the phrase changed considerably. The Kongjiapo entry specifies that if one decides to travel on the zhi days, even if he does not abscond (wang 亡), he will be arrested and handed in to the government (zhi ru xianguan 執入縣官). In both the Fangmatan and Shuihudi manuals, the same meaning is expressed with the phrase zhi er ru gong 執而入公. It is possible that this is due to the officially promulgated terminological change that effectively reached the level of private, casual writings. 171 Suizhou Kongjiapo Han mu jiandu, 146, slips 147-‐150.

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Although here is not the place to discuss this text in more detail as it deserves, it

should still be pointed out that the first phrase with its concern about the

correspondence between distances and inauspicious days is reminiscent of a similar

obsession with numerical accuracy observed in the official regulations. While in the

latter such precision was conveying the sense of an omnipresent supervisor always

ready to punish for the slightest deviation from the norms, in the daybook entry it

bestowed the similar power upon the reader, explaining how to avoid disaster

through accurate quantification. Thus, in the context of travelling, the same

mechanism of control over and potential oppression towards a petty official was

reversed to empower and comfort this same official.

A number of other manuals, as the one from Zhoujiatai, also contain entries

related to travelling. Apart from the daybooks, other divination methods were

applied to determine auspicious and inauspicious days for travelling. One wooden

board excavated from the Yinwan burial #6 presents divination by the “method of

sacred turtle” (shen gui zhi fa 神龜之法). After describing the method that required

identifying the prediction for a particular day by locating this day according to the

rotation of the turtle drawn on the same board, the text lists five topics for

divination, which conceivably represented the main concerns of a large portion of

common population in the Han Empire. These were marriage; travelling; litigation;

illness; and absconding.172

One seemingly perplexing question about the use of these divination manuals in the

context of the official travels is: How could people abide by the recommendations of

the daybooks and at the same time comply with the official requirements that

seemingly did not take auspiciousness of a particular day into consideration? There

is no clear, straightforward answer to this question, partly because the relations

between the administrative and religious practices are not yet sufficiently

understood at the moment. However, a couple of concluding observations is due.

172 Yinwan Han mu jiandu, 123-‐126, tablet 9.

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Firstly, the law accommodated at least some of the popular beliefs about the

auspiciousness of some particular days. The Zhangjiashan statute “On households”

prescribed to lock the gates of settlements on the fu 伏 days when demons and

ghosts were believed to be especially dangerous, and explicitly stated that no travels

or field works should be undertaken on these days.173 One may speculate that

similar regulations restricted travelling on the zhi days that are consistently

characterized as inauspicious in the extant daybook specimens.

Probably even more to the point is an insight into the mutual contradiction as an

inherent feature of the day selection system. In his recent study of the Qin popular

religion, Poo Mu-‐chou observed that “the compilers might have realized that there

were inconsistencies in the various texts, so that a particular day might be

auspicious according to one text, yet inauspicious according to another… [I]t gave

the user of the daybook an opportunity to find a way out and not to be confined to

one system”.174 Such behavior fits neatly into the opportunistic life philosophy of a

bureaucrat who is obliged to comply with numerous regulations none of which is

usually perceived as a moral imperative, and all of which, consequently, being open

to manipulation. Should we think that daybooks as such were a by-‐product of the

emerging bureaucratic culture (remember that all know specimens were excavated

from the tombs of mostly low-‐ranked officials), rather than a manifestation of

beliefs common to the entire population as is commonly assumed? Or was the

bureaucratic behavior itself a sublimation of certain strata of popular culture? Such

questions, if they are to be answered at all, definitely require a separate study.

Concluding remarks

In his seminal study of the origins of social power, Michael Mann famously observes

that the novel forms of social organization that provide new opportunities to their

173 ZJS, 215, slip 306. 174 Poo Mu-‐chou, “Religion and Religious Life of the Qin”, in Pines et al., eds., Birth of an Empire, 201.

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participants emerge in the interstices of the dominant configurations of power.175

The controversy of the “state on the move” illustrates how the mechanisms of

control and domination elaborated by the centralized government, and the

infrastructure supporting these mechanisms, provided physical and mental

conditions for consolidation of social networks and emergence of group identities

intertwined with but also subversive towards the state-‐sponsored order. To use the

language of the structuration theory, the resources (roads, logistical organization)

and schemas (ideology of a universal empire and social status being determined by

one’s relation to that empire) of early Chinese imperial structure were reorganized

in a way to make possible the developments that eventually transformed this

structure.

In this paper, I tried to investigate the ways in which the everyday experience of

the travelling officials instructed their agency within the “state on the move”. The

experience itself by no means remained unchanged over more than two hundred

years under review. In spite of the deficit of sources, some important shifts are

discernible: the web of accommodation facilities was getting denser; monetary

finance came to complement and partly replace the staple finance, at least in the

inner, economically developed regions of the empire; and state was becoming more

lenient towards particular informal arrangements such as the stay at private houses

during the official travels.

Other fundamental elements remained in place. Travelling was still

associated with danger, uncertainty, and physical strain. It resulted in lengthy

disruptions of habitus, officials being obliged to spend weeks and months far from

their homes and familiar environment. The supervisory mechanisms endured, and

travelling bureaucrats continued to meticulously fill in their calendrical diaries to be

ready to counter possible accusations of negligence and failure to comply with

norms and standards.

Yet, paradoxically, it was through the combination of the physical danger and

uncertainty with the oppressing machine of supervision that the travelling 175 Michael Mann, The sources of social power, Vol. I: A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 28.

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experience was converted from the one of challenge to the one of opportunity. The

uncertainty and danger intrinsically associated with long-‐distance journeys under

the pre-‐industrial conditions of infrastructure were mirrored by the certainty of

social status confirmed by and manifest in the ability to move. Access to the official

structures of physical mobility, including itineraries, passports, and other

mechanisms of control, expressed the association with the imperial order that was

reenacted even within the informal social networks created and maintained in the

course of travels.176 The very mechanism of control through quantification and

measurement was reimagined within the divination system to provide a screening

against the uncertainties and dangers of distant travel.

All of this urges us to reconsider the nature of the Chinese imperial structure

that emerged in the second half of the Warring States period and consolidated

during the four centuries of early empires. This system is often imagined as a

gigantic act of government-‐sponsored political and social transformation associated

with particular individuals such as Shang Yang 商鞅 or the First Emperor. Even in

archaeology that tends to “emphasize grand continuities over time and connections

among different areas over singular individuals and one-‐time historical events”177,

the Qin “revitalization” of the mid-‐forth century B.C. is perceived as a sudden shock,

thus contributing to the general picture of an imperial teleology.178 The paradox of

the “state on move” summarized in the previous passage suggests that this narrative

deserves revision, unless we are satisfied with this and other such paradoxes to

effectively remain barely more than a historical curiosity inviting intellectual

exercises. Instead, I would argue that the “schemas” of the imperial state were

embedded in the reality of everyday life of the “common populace” (for the present 176 The greeting tablets of Shi Rao’s correspondents, in particular, carefully indicate their ranks and administrative affiliation, in a striking contrast with the wording of the inscriptions that emphatically downplays the hierarchy of subordination – see Korolkov, “‘Greeting Tablets’ in Early China”, 316-‐317. 177 Lothar von Falkenhausen and Gideon Shelach, “Introduction: Archaeological Perspectives on the Qin “Unification” of China”, in Pines et al., eds., Birth of an Empire, 37. 178 This tendency is observable even in the most insightful and methodologically refined discussion of Chinese archaeology – see Falkenhausen, Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000-‐250 BC): The Archaeological Evidence (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, 2006), 319-‐320.

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lack of better, sociologically more precise term), with both challenges and

opportunities of the structure eventually crystallizing from this socio-‐intellectual

matter. In my view, this conjecture leaves us with a more dynamic, and ultimately

intellectually more plausible, even if more complex, understanding of the process of

formation and operation of social structures than the heretofore prevailing picture

of government input (social reform) and popular reaction (mechanisms of

accommodation and resistance). Needless to say, it would take much more research,

and probably a good deal of theoretical elaboration as well, for these reflections to

develop into something more than an exercise in inductive reasoning from a very

specific premise.

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Map 1: Travels of the Qianling County officials to the place of service

Map 2: One long travel (late first century B.C.)

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Map 3: Liye itinerary (late third century B.C.)

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