Mandarin (bureaucrat)

Mandarin
Three Ming Dynasty mandarins of varying ranks.
Chinese name
Chinese
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyinguān
Bopomofoㄍㄨㄢ
Wade–Gileskuan1
IPA[kwán]
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanizationgūn
Jyutpinggun1
IPA[kun˥]
Southern Min
Hokkien POJkoaⁿ / koan
Tâi-lôkuann / kuan
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese alphabetquan
quan lại
Chữ Hán
官吏
Korean name
Hangul
Hanja
Transcriptions
Revised Romanizationkwan
A 15th-century portrait of the Ming official Jiang Shunfu. The cranes on his mandarin square indicate that he was a civil official of the sixth rank.
A Qing photograph of a government official with mandarin square embroidered in front
A European view: a mandarin travelling by boat, Baptista van Doetechum, 1604
Nguyễn Văn Tường (chữ Hán: 阮文祥, 1824–1886) was a mandarin of the Nguyễn dynasty in Vietnam.

A mandarin (Chinese: ; pinyin: guān) was a bureaucrat scholar in the history of China, Korea and Vietnam.

The term is generally applied to the officials appointed through the imperial examination system.