Landed gentry in China

Wang family home, a prominent Shanxi gentry family, in Lingshi County
The art of gentleman scholars tended to idealize retreat into the beauties of nature and contemplation, an idea parallel to the travel literature of Su Shi and Yuan Hongdao; painting by Song dynasty artist Ma Yuan, c. 1200–1230.

The "gentry", or "landed gentry" in China was the elite who held privileged status through passing the Imperial exams, which made them eligible to hold office. These literati, or scholar-officials, (shenshi 紳士 or jinshen 縉紳), also called 士紳 shishen "scholar gentry" or 鄉紳 xiangshen "local gentry", held a virtual monopoly on office holding, and overlapped with an unofficial elite of the wealthy. The Tang and Song dynasties expanded the civil service exam to replace the nine-rank system which favored hereditary and largely military aristocrats.[1] As a social class they included retired mandarins or their families and descendants. Owning land was often their way of preserving wealth.[2]

  1. ^ Brian Hook, ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China (Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed. 1991), p. 200 ISBN 052135594X
  2. ^ Chang Chung-li [Zhongli Zhang], The Chinese Gentry: Studies on Their Role in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1955).