Han Qi and his Brothers

To understand Han Qi's role and place in his family requires a brief introduction of his family situation. Han Qi was born in 1008 in Quanzhou 泉州 (in Fujian), where his father, Han Guohua 韓國華 (957–1011), was the prefect. Guohua died on his way back to the capital in Kaifeng in 1011, leaving Han Qi and his older brother, Han Qu 韓璩 (1002–1042), age four and ten sui respectively, in the care of their concubine mother, Miss Hu 胡 (968–1030).Footnote ⁵ Information about Han Qi's early life is scarce. In all likelihood, Miss Hu and her two sons remained in Kaifeng, where the boys received an education. Both took and passed the civil service examination in 1027, with Han Qi placing second in his class.Footnote ⁶

Han Qi had four older brothers by his legal mother, Miss Luo 羅 (?–early 1010s), who passed away soon after her husband. The oldest of Miss Luo's sons, Han Qiu 韓球 (978–1011), died several months before Han Guohua.Footnote ⁷ Han Xuan 韓瑄 (986?–1012?), the second oldest, was never married, and he drowned at twenty-seven on his way to Xuzhou 許州 (in Henan), where Miss Luo moved after her husband's temporary burial.Footnote ⁸ The third son, Han Ju 韓琚 (990–1040), was the only degree-holder (jinshi 1013) of Miss Luo's sons.Footnote ⁹ Han Chong 韓珫 (n. d.), the youngest, died at his post at twenty-seven in the 1020s.Footnote ¹⁰

After the passing of Han Guohua and Han Qiu, Han Xuan took charge of the family's affairs. Han Qi depicted his second brother as a filial son and excellent household manager. Xuan's unexpected death, followed by that of Miss Luo, must have caused chaos in the family.Footnote ¹¹ Due to the young ages of Han Ju and Han Chong, and their preoccupation with their scholarly and official pursuits, the family suddenly found itself without a base and a leader. Han Qi recollected that “Ever since my father's death, no one was in charge of the family's genealogy and assorted documents.” Han Chong, his fourth brother, took Han Guohua's collected works to Mengzhou 孟州 (in Henan). When Chong died there, his wife returned to her natal family with the material. “Because her family did not recognize its importance, all was lost.”Footnote ¹²

The deaths of Han Qiu, Han Xuan, and Han Chong meant that Han Ju, the third and oldest of the three surviving brothers, became the family head. Han Qi remembered,

In this passage, Han Qi portrayed Han Ju as the caretaker of the physical, scholarly, and moral development of himself, his fifth brother, and their multiple nephews. He further underscored Han Ju's contribution to the family in other contexts. In a memorial, Han Qi wrote that “Losing my parents at a young age, I was raised by my brothers.”Footnote ¹⁴ Han Qi especially singled out Han Ju's love for and influence on Han Gongyan 韓公彦 (1008–1059), Han Qiu's son. “At a young age, Gongyan followed my third brother on his official trips. Having witnessed his uncle's pure and restrained comportment, Gongyan was inspired and determined to emulate his uncle.”Footnote ¹⁵ In Han Ju's xingzhuang, Han Qi further highlighted Ju's impact on himself and other junior members: “His brothers and nephews were inspired by his upright behavior and strove to establish themselves” (弟姪感其義, 競自樹立).Footnote ¹⁶

As brief as it is, the above account demonstrates the magnitude of the adversities that the Han family suffered in the 1010s and 1020s. The death of his parents and three brothers made Han Ju, still in his twenties, the only adult man in the family. Due to Han Qi's young age and the strong presence of his mother, he might have been spared most of the hardships. The family tragedies nonetheless had significant consequences for his life: Han Qi, for example, had no recollections of his father and enjoyed substantial relationships with only two of his five brothers, Ju and Qu, who were eighteen and six years his senior, respectively. Han Qi's epitaph for Han Qu portrayed Qu as a talented scholar and a competent official but included no evidence of a strong, affectionate relationship between the two brothers.Footnote ¹⁷ In comparison, Han Qi was much closer to Han Ju. When he lost his concubine mother, Miss Hu, in 1030, Han Qi went to stay with Han Ju. This decision was especially significant considering that Han Qu and Han Qi, both sons of Miss Hu, were given a leave of absence and could have mourned their mother together. Instead, Han Qi joined Han Ju at Haozhou 濠州 (Fengyang, Anhui) and, when Ju was relocated to Huangzhou 黄州 (Huanggang, Hubei), followed Ju there before returning to the capital in 1032.Footnote ¹⁸

Han Qi's time in Haozhou and Huangzhou was a rare chance for him to enjoy the company of a brother. In Haozhou, Han Qi compiled Han Ju's works (wenji 文集), naming the collection Jingyu 荆玉 (“Jade from Chu”). In his preface to the collection, Han Qi praised Ju's prose and poetic work, lamenting that few recognized Ju's talent.Footnote ¹⁹ In Huangzhou, the two brothers entertained guests, wrote poetry, and frequented scenic locations together. Han Qi's collected works contains eleven letters that he wrote on behalf of Han Ju. The purposes of the letters varied, ranging from standard exchanges of greetings to self-recommendations and addresses to former and prospective superiors.Footnote ²⁰ That Han Ju delegated these tasks to Han Qi confirms their close relationship and Ju's confidence in his younger brother's literary and scholarly credentials.

The time he shared with Han Ju meant a great deal to Han Qi. In a poem composed long after Han Ju's passing, Han Qi recollected:

Especially noticeable in this stanza is the overall tone, which heightens the reverence of a helpless junior to a respected senior person. By equating joining Ju with “returning” home and “waiting on” Ju with tending to a parent, Han Qi made Ju a father figure rather than an older brother. Considering that Han Qi lost his father at four and Han Ju was the only adult man in his youth, the blurring of these two roles becomes easily understandable.

Given Han Qi's attachment to his third brother, Han Ju's death in 1040 at the age of fifty-one must have been devastating. This was followed by the passing of Han Qu two years later. In Han Qu's epitaph, Han Qi recounted,

To summarize, born into an established scholar-official family, Han Qi lost his father at four sui, his legal mother a few years later, and his birth mother at twenty-three. He and his older brothers did not seem to receive much external help in the wake of one family tragedy after another, as extant records mention no affines or agnatic kin. In other words, even though terms such as “clansmen” and “clan affairs” appeared in his writing, Han Qi was using them as generic references to the members and affairs of his immediate family and those of his deceased brothers. By 1042, at thirty-five, Han Qi had a highly successful career and brought the Hans to new levels of power and prestige. Challenges awaited him on both fronts, however. As the lone survivor of his generation of six men and the most senior member of a large and growing family, he would have to deal with multiple tasks.

Becoming the Family Patriarch

In the two decades between Han Qu's death in 1042 and the late 1050s to early 1060s when Han Qi's oldest son, Han Zhongyan 韓忠彥 (1038–1109), earned the jinshi degree and began to take on important family duties, Han Qi was the undisputable family head, a role that he may never have anticipated.Footnote ²³ Once he assumed the position, however, he remained extraordinarily methodical and dedicated.

The first project that Han Qi initiated was his parents’ and brothers’ funeral, a major undertaking that was long overdue. Between Han Guohua's death in 1011 and Han Qu's in 1042, the family suffered a dozen or so losses. All but a few of the deceased perished far from home, making transporting their bodies and arranging for temporary burials extremely time-consuming and expensive endeavors. To lay a growing number of people to rest also required a sizable graveyard, large sums of money, and thorough preparations. These factors partly explain the long delay in the funeral.Footnote ²⁴ Another thorny issue, Miss Hu's status, further complicated the matter. As a concubine, Miss Hu was not entitled to be buried next to Han Guohua. It is unclear whether this issue caused any contention between Han Ju and Miss Hu's two sons. What we do know is that, as soon as Han Ju passed away, Han Qi acted. In a memorial, dated 1043, Han Qi recalled a request he submitted in 1041:

The above memorial reveals that as soon as Han Ju died in 1040, Han Qi acquired a plot of tomb land in Xuzhou. This was where his legal mother, Miss Luo, lived after the death of Han Guohua, suggesting that the family had planned to start a graveyard there. After a pause in funeral planning following Han Qu's death, Han Qi turned to his nephew, Gongyan, son of Han Qiu and the oldest Han man in the next generation. The purpose of the 1043 petition was for Gongyan to be given a position in Xuzhou or a neighboring prefecture so that he could directly supervise the burial event. Han Qi's entreaty failed. In 1044, he made a third request, asking to be posted to Xiangzhou 相州 (Anyang, Henan), where he planned to entomb his parents. This time, the court was more accommodating, allowing him to travel there for the funeral.Footnote ²⁶

Han Qi's three memorials confirm the extent to which civil service and government policies impacted office-holders’ family life. More relevant to this study are the following questions: Why did Xiangzhou replace Xuzhou as the site of the new graveyard? Who was in charge of the event in Xiangzhou? How involved was Han Qi in its actual planning? Extant sources do not offer straightforward answers. We are certain, however, that the 1045 funeral involved thirteen people from three generations, including Han Qi's father and legal as well as concubine mothers, five older brothers and one sister-in-law (Miss Li, Ju's first wife), and two nephews, a daughter-in-law, and a nephew's wife.

With the completion of this massive event, Han Qi accomplished three things that might not have been possible had his third brother, Han Ju, been the head of the family: first, the graveyard was moved from Xuzhou to Xiangzhou, where his grandparents and great grandparents had been buried. Second, Han Qi entombed Miss Hu next to his father and legal mother, an unusual treatment for a concubine.Footnote ²⁷ Third, he authored seven funerary inscriptions to honor the deceased and had a detailed account of the event inscribed on stone.Footnote ²⁸

Han Qi would supervise two more large-scale burials in 1062 and 1071, respectively. The first was for his wife and eleven other family members. The second honored his sister-in-law, Miss Chen (Han Qu's wife), and five other junior men and women. In the three decades between 1045 and his death in 1075, Han left many records about visiting the family graveyards and offering seasonal sacrifices.Footnote ²⁹ All these efforts were central to his self-identification as the patriarch and role model for the younger generations.

Helping his Nephews Establish Themselves

Han Qi proved himself to be a filial son and good brother by completing the family burial only a few years after he became the head of the family. A more formidable responsibility awaited him: supporting his brothers’ families. This task connected well to two literati ideals in the Northern Song. In hundreds of epitaphs, elite men and women were praised for playing a crucial role in their nephews’ and nieces’ education, official careers, and marriages. Similarly, they were lauded as being remarkably frugal in their personal lives but exceptionally generous to family and clan members.Footnote ³⁰ As hyperbolic as some of the descriptions may seem, Han Qi's experience confirmed the centrality of these issues in family life and the specific challenges that they posed. Han's xingzhuang and muzhiming authors highlighted that he regularly offered assistance to clansmen and helped arrange marriages for orphaned girls. Given his political status and social connections, Han Qi must have played key roles in the marriages of his nephews and nieces, but his own writing is silent on this topic.Footnote ³¹ The only extant reference I have found is an anecdotal story: when Han Qi was serving in Dingzhou (in Hebei) from 1048 to 1053, he was so impressed with a visitor, Li Qingchen 李清臣 (1032–1102), that he later married Li to his niece, the daughter of Han Qu.Footnote ³² The reliability of the story aside, Li's biography confirmed that Han Qi did marry his niece to Li out of admiration for Li's talent.Footnote ³³

Altogether, Han Qi had seven nephews by three brothers: Han Qiu's two sons, Wei 暐 (n. d.) and Gongyan 公彦 (1008–1059); Han Ju's four sons, Jingrong 景融 (1027–1043), Fangyan 方彦, Zhiyan 直彦 (1030–1054), and Xiaoyan 孝彦; and Han Qu's son, Zhengyan 正彦 (1031–1069). All of them lost their fathers at relatively young ages. Wei died in boyhood. Xiaoyan's name only appeared in his father's biographies. This study subsequently focuses on Han Qi's interaction with his other five nephews.

It should be pointed out that the large age differences between the Han brothers meant that Han Qi's nephews varied greatly in age. Gongyan, the oldest in his generation, was born in 1008 and Zhengyan, one of the youngest, was not born until 1031. In fact, Gongyan and Han Qi were of the same age. Both lost their fathers at four sui. The uncle and nephew even went to school together.Footnote ³⁴ Han Qi was substantially older than his other nephews. He was in his early thirties when Zhengyan, son of his fifth brother, lost his father at eleven. Fortunately, Zhengyan had his mother, Miss Chen, to rely on. Han Ju's four sons were struck the hardest. The boys lost both parents in the same year when Jingrong, the oldest, was only fourteen. This disaster necessitated Han Qi's direct involvement in their lives. That he was the closest to Ju out of all his brothers must have further contributed to his attentiveness to these young men.

A major commitment that Han Qi took on was to bring Han Ju's sons to his official posts to make sure that they received a good education. Han's biographers stressed that he “treated his nephews’ education the same way he did his sons',” a topic that he addressed extensively.Footnote ³⁵ This approach was in no way unique to Han Qi. Extant records on this practice, however, tended to feature elite men reminiscing about traveling with fathers, uncles, and older brothers at young ages, often with nostalgic sentiments.Footnote ³⁶ Han Qi's experience allows us to see the same phenomenon from a different perspective, especially in terms of an uncle's assistance with his nephews’ education and career development.

Jingrong, the oldest of Han Ju's sons, was the first to benefit from Han Qi's attention. Han Qi remarked that Jingrong “wrote very well. I loved him and thought that he would surely continue to establish the family.”Footnote ³⁷ Subsequently he took Jingrong to Jingzhou 涇州 (Jingchuan, Gansu) in 1042 during the Song–Xia War, presumably to prepare Jingrong for official service. Han Qi did the same when Zhiyan, Han Ju's second son, was old enough for formal education. In Han Qi's depiction, Zhiyan was

Zhiyan was not only Han Ju's favorite, but also Han Qi's. When Han Qi was appointed prefect of Yangzhou in 1045, Zhiyan, and very likely his younger brothers, moved with their uncle and continued their education there. Zhiyan was also entrusted with a major undertaking: to compile his father's collected works. In the postscript to the collection, Han Qi recounted that, after Han Ju's death, his work and draft compositions were scattered to different places. “Dreading that they would be lost and not transmitted, I ordered his younger son, Zhiyan, to assemble them into a number of chapters and entitled the collection Jingyu houji [Later Collection of Jade from Chu].” (大懼亡失，不永其傳，乃命其少子直彦復集為若干卷，題曰《荆玉後集》). Han Qi continued, “Alas! I will never get to see or hear my brother again. What can be preserved is his life's work. How could you youngsters not cherish and treasure it!” (嗚呼！兄之狀貌語言，今不得而見之矣。其得見者，生平所為文章耳。諸子輩得不寶而惜之哉!).Footnote ³⁹

The compilation project must have brought back fond memories for Han Qi. After all, less than two decades before, he had assembled the first installment of Han Ju's work by Ju's side. Given that Zhiyan was only eighteen at the time, the compilation project must have been an uncle–nephew collaboration. Han Qi attributed additional significance to the endeavor when he pointed out that the collection was to commemorate a much-loved brother, talented writer, and father who died too young to see his sons establish themselves. Moreover, he wanted to make sure that Ju's sons would have a tangible memento of their father.

Among his nephews, Han Qi maintained the most substantial relationship with Zhiyan. Zhiyan followed his uncle north when Han Qi was relocated to Dingzhou 定州 in 1048. The uncle–nephew relationship, however, did not always go smoothly. Eager to see Zhiyan succeed in the examinations, Han Qi seems to have grown impatient with his nephew's indulgent behavior. His long poem, entitled “Instructions for Zhiyan” (示直彥), opens with a generic statement encouraging all the young men in the family to work hard and take their studies seriously, then turns to Zhiyan directly:

To some extent, Han Qi's poem bears resemblance to Song family instructions, in which authors routinely urged sons and nephews (erzhi 兒侄 or zizhi 子侄) to glorify the family through examination success and civil service.Footnote ⁴¹ This poem stands out in one respect: written in the fall of 1051, with the next examination on the horizon, Han Qi went beyond giving only generic guidance. Rather, he “itemized” Zhiyan's indulgences, then chided him in unforgiving language, calling Zhiyan a lazy, selfish, and irresponsible person. At the end of the poem, Han Qi tried to entice Zhiyan with the prospect of success.

With its vivid language and personal undertone, the poem illuminates Han Qi's determination to keep Zhiyan “on the right track.” Han's decade-long effort paid off when Zhiyan earned the jinshi degree in 1053 at the age of twenty-four.Footnote ⁴³ Han Qi must have been tremendously proud of and reassured by this landmark achievement: Zhiyan was the first degree-holder in the next generation of Han men.

In addition to personally monitoring their study and examination preparations, Han Qi helped his nephews more directly through the yin 蔭 (menyin 門蔭, yiubu 蔭補, protection) privilege. To put it in the simplest terms, in the Northern Song, yin allowed high-ranking officials to use their own “merit” to qualify their sons and other male relatives to enter and be promoted into officialdom. The court bestowed the privilege widely on major festivals and celebrations as well as individually at senior officials’ deaths and retirements. This practice, by expediting the careers of men from office-holding families and letting them bypass the increasingly competitive examination system, further limited the prospect of those without family connections. So many civil servants entered government through this channel that, as early as Emperor Zhenzong's reign (997–1022), yin-related privileges had become a hotly contested policy.Footnote ⁴⁴

With a long and successful career, Han Qi had many yin opportunities and made good use of them to bring a large number of Han men into the government. His oldest nephew, Gongyan, was granted official status based on his own father's merit, then promoted on the occasion of Han Qi's appointment to Shaanxi.Footnote ⁴⁵ Similarly, all four of Han Ju's sons benefitted from their father's yin privilege. Later, Jingrong was also promoted at Han Qi's request. Before earning the jinshi degree, Zhiyan had already been protected by his father once and Han Qi twice.Footnote ⁴⁶ Not only did Han Qi bring Zhengyan into officialdom through yin, but he also obtained honorary titles for his sister-in-law and Zhengyan's mother, Miss Chen. Moreover, he secured official status for Gongyan's sons, Han Que 韓確 (1038–1058) and Han Tian 韓恬 (1042–1063).Footnote ⁴⁷ These yin-related references are limited to those mentioned in Han Qi's epitaphs for family members and are almost certainly an incomplete list. It should be noted that Han Qi's sons took the same path. His oldest son, Zhongyan (1038–1109), entered government service through protection before passing the examination.Footnote ⁴⁸

In summary, after his brothers’ deaths, Han Qi provided his nephews with both personal attention and much-needed professional development, making him a father figure to them. In return, Han fully expected the young men to succeed and maintain the family's prominence in politics and society. This wish was especially strong in the 1040s and 1050s when his own sons were young and their career prospects unclear.

Mourning his Nephews and other Junior Family Members

Han Qi's high hopes did not materialize. None of his nephews became prominent scholars or officials. Four out of five of them predeceased him. These tragedies, not unlike losing his parents and brothers, took a heavy emotional toll on Han Qi. What made him extraordinary was his meticulous effort to mourn and commemorate these junior relatives.

Of his nephews, Jingrong was the first to perish, at seventeen, far away from home on the western frontiers. The calamity struck Han Qi profoundly. His epitaph for Jingrong characterized his nephew as “talented” and underscored two most unfortunate facts: Jingrong died without a son and not having taken the examinations. Han Qi lamented, “These are what sadden everyone in the world as well as the entire clan!” (此世之人共哀, 矧宗族之哀!).Footnote ⁴⁹ Jingrong was entombed in the family graveyard in Xiangzhou in the 1045 burial event.

If Han Qi bemoaned Jingrong's unrealized personal and career goals, Zhiyan's death in 1054 at the age of twenty-five, only a year after he had earned the jinshi degree, completely devastated Han Qi. Stationed in Bingzhou 并州 (Taiyuan, Shanxi), Han Qi was so utterly crushed by this news that he “fell gravely ill due to mounting grief” and almost died.Footnote ⁵⁰ In some ways, Han never completely recovered from this heartbreaking event: starting in 1054, he began to refer to multiple health problems in both official and personal records. In Zhiyan's epitaph, composed three years later, Han revealed what distressed him the most about his nephew's passing: first, Zhiyan had not even received his first official appointment following his examination success; second, just like Jingrong, Zhiyan passed far away from home in the capital. To Han Qi, that such a promising life was cut short without any family member at his side was simply an unbearable misfortune. From the standpoint of the family's future, the loss was almost unspeakable.

If Jingrong and Zhiyan were like sons to Han Qi, Gongyan was more of a brother. When Gongyan was gravely ill in the capital in 1059, Han Qi was at his nephew's deathbed and recorded their last conversation: “Through my tears I said to him, ‘If the unmentionable happens, I will be here. Don't worry about your children.’ Gongyan replied, ‘I would be most grateful. It is just that I will not know how they will turn out.’ He remained calm and died that evening.” (乃泣而諭之曰: “萬一有不可諱, 汝叔在, 勿以兒女為慮.”公彦曰: “是誠感。然兒女之榮與否, 公彦莫得而知之矣.” 色殊不動，是夕卒).Footnote ⁵¹ Gongyan died knowing that his family would be cared for and that his uncle, then grand councilor, was capable of fulfilling this promise. For Han Qi, Gongyan's death symbolized the end of an era: Gongyan was the last person with whom he shared intimate memories of growing up and studying together. He wailed, “I am growing old and have lost the one I could count on. How can I endure such sorrow? … One's destiny must be predetermined. What else could explain why the retribution is so hard to bear? Who would hear my appeal to Heaven?” (余且老, 失其所託, 可勝其哀哉! … … 命其默定, 不然何為報之戾哉. 訴于天兮孰聽!).Footnote ⁵² To demonstrate his special relationship with Gongyan, Han Qi was meticulous in Gongyan's posthumous matters. Gongyan's first wife, Miss Jia, was interred during the 1045 funeral. Han Qi had Gongyan buried with her in 1062. When Gongyan's second wife, Miss Zhang, died in 1063, Han Qi authored an epitaph and had her entombed with Gongyan and Miss Jia in 1071.Footnote ⁵³

Han Qi continued to suffer more losses from the third generation. Of Gongyan's four sons, three died in their early twenties. Han Que 韓確 (1038–1058) passed away in 1058, following the death of his wife and two young children, a series of tragedies that might have contributed to Gongyan's death in 1059. In Que's epitaph, Han Qi could not help but lament: “Alas! Heaven's excessive punishment is extreme. It caused the deaths of the husband and wife in their prime and cut off the line of descent. Even strangers would be saddened and horrified to hear of such disasters. One can only imagine how distraught my clan is!” (嗚呼! 天之肆罰也, 其甚矣乎. 使夫妻盛年俱殞, 而又絶其所繼, 此行路聞者, 孰不傷駭, 則於吾族其哀何如哉!).Footnote ⁵⁴ Que's younger brothers, Kai 韓愷 (1041–1060) and Tian 韓恬 (1042–1063), died three years apart in the early 1060s.Footnote ⁵⁵ Han Tian's passing at twenty-two distressed Han Qi in particular. Tian died after the demise of his parents and two older brothers. Moreover, his wife, Miss Dong, returned to her natal family and presumably remarried. In Han Tian's epitaph, Han Qi wrote: “One after the other, your parents and older brothers died before you. The younger of your two daughters followed. Your wife, with nothing to hold on to, returned to her family. I am here alone to bury you. What crime have I committed to deserve such punishment? Or is this a coincidence? Heaven is mysterious, where do I get answers?” (父母諸兄兮, 相繼亡於前; 二女之幼兮, 一復夭于後. 妻無以守, 歸其家爾. 獨于兹瘞其柩, 何罪而當此罰邪? 豈數之適相偶邪, 天乎冥冥, 吾安以究?).Footnote ⁵⁶

Compared to his contemporaries, Han Qi was unrivaled in writing about and commemorating junior members of the family. This commitment lasted for almost three decades, seen in his funerary biographical writing from 1045 to 1071. This also included two collective epitaphs for four baby boys and three little girls, respectively. In addition to depicting the children as “beautiful,” “bright,” and “lovely,” both texts listed and explained the origins of their names and protested against Heaven for causing their premature deaths.Footnote ⁵⁷ Han's diligence in this respect allows us to see him in “continual mourning” over the losses of his brothers and their children. Equally important, the epitaphs served as a good way of family recordkeeping, another of Han Qi's major concerns.

The Uncle Preserving the Memory of the Younger Generation

No matter how difficult it was to cope with the many and frequent deaths in the family, Han Qi did not merely grieve for them. Mimicking his work for the deaths of his parents and older brothers, Han preserved the memories of the junior Han men and women in detailed muzhiming. Of the several hundred Northern Song muzhiming writers, none authored more for family members than Han Qi. Even more significant is his willingness to honor those in the younger generations. While some Song scholar-officials were known to have composed an occasional muzhiming for a beloved child, Han Qi was extraordinarily diligent and thorough in this respect. Altogether, Han composed thirteen epitaphs for eighteen members of the younger generations. These included three nephews (Jingrong, Gongyan, and Zhiyan), three nieces-in-law (Gongyan's two wives, Misses Jia and Zhang, and Zhengyan's wife, Miss Wang), and one daughter-in-law (Zhongyan's wife, Miss Lü), as well as eight boys (three of Gongyan's, one of Zhengyan's, two of Fangyan's, and two of Zhongyan's sons) and three girls (two of Gongyan's and one of Zhengyan's daughters) from the third generation. The two collective accounts of the four boys and three girls and the epitaph for Miss Jia, who died within months of her marriage into the Hans, are terse. The rest are all of considerable length.

First and foremost, Han Qi's epitaph work followed conventions in commemorative texts to glorify the deceased as moral exemplars, praising them as filial sons and mature and proper young men.Footnote ⁵⁸ He especially highlighted their superior qualities in two areas. First, all his nephews and their sons were intelligent, hardworking, and promising young scholars. Statements such as “skilled in writing” (shan zhuwen 善屬文or shan weiwen 善為文), “strong at memorizing” (qiangji 強記), and “loved learning” (xixue 喜學) remained staple phrases.Footnote ⁵⁹ To give one example, Han Qi recounted that Han Tian, Gongyan's son, “was outstanding and loved learning. He was good at memorizing and quick in composition. Of all of Gongyan's sons, I thought that Tian would be the first to earn the degree and establish himself based on his talent and literary reputation” (幼雋邁喜學，讀書強記，而為文辯速。余嘗較公彦諸子，謂恬他日必能先取科第。以才名自立).Footnote ⁶⁰

Another trope that Han's epitaphs utilized was praising the Han men as loyal and dedicated officials. Han Qi had the most to say about Gongyan in this respect. In addition to remembering Gongyan as a learned and righteous person, Han went to great length to depict Gongyan as a compassionate, capable, and principled civil servant. Han Qi wrote, Gongyan

As mentioned above, Han Qi credited his third brother for Gongyan's growth into an able and upright local official. In addition to honoring his uncle as a role model, Gongyan devotedly followed other family traditions.

By listing Gongyan's words and deeds, Han Qi depicted his nephew as a modest and conscientious person. The family's previous misfortunes did not overwhelm him, nor did its subsequent rise corrupt him. In this way, Gongyan emerged as a worthy descendant.

Han Qi similarly portrayed the Han women as embodying ideal female virtues. The most frequently used terms included gentle (rou 柔), obedient (shun 順), quiet (jing 静), and virtuous (shu 淑).Footnote ⁶³ Han further applauded the women as appropriate and humble individuals, filial daughters-in-law, and able and prudent housekeepers.Footnote ⁶⁴ Beyond these generic-sounding descriptions, Han Qi made each of them unique and memorable individuals. His portrayal of Gongyan's wife, Miss Zhang, highlighted the great lengths to which the couple went to live a simple life. In Gongyan's epitaph, Han Qi mentioned that Gongyan stressed to his wife the importance of frugality. “She had to tell him if she spent one penny.” In Miss Zhang's epitaph, written several years later, Han Qi greatly expanded on this theme: “Gongyan was honest and upright as an official and lived a humble life. Miss Zhang was used to being thrifty, and so was able to help him in the inner quarters. Nothing was wasted in their household. For this reason, after paying for [necessary] expenditures, there was often a surplus from his salary” (公彦在官潔廉, 自奉菲薄, 而張氏素淳約, 能内為之助, 治家無一横費. 故用度自給而俸常有餘). In fact, Miss Zhang went above and beyond Gongyan's expectations.

To what extent was this description reliable, since Song women were routinely praised for being thrifty? Hyperbolic language aside, there is no reason for us to question Miss Zhang's reputation as a simple and frugal person. She married into the family when its finances and prospects were poor. Experiencing hardships together with Gongyan must have shaped her attitude about money-related issues. That she managed to wring a surplus out of Gongyan's modest salary further testified to her talent in household management.

Han Qi saw a similar quality in his nephew Zhengyan's wife, Miss Wang. Because Zhengyan only held low-ranking positions, the couple never lived an affluent life, to the extent that Miss Wang “had to wash clothes and consume poor food, but she was never dissatisfied.” Han's most memorable account of Miss Wang, however, concerned an unusual talent: her interest in medicine.

In contrast to Miss Zhang's rigid frugality, Han Qi remembered Miss Wang as an intelligent, capable, and caring woman. Frustrated with the lack of competent doctors, she took it upon herself to study medicine and became an important resource for the entire family. Women played a key role in the family as caregivers throughout imperial times.Footnote ⁶⁷ Many must have accumulated extensive medical knowledge. Some even became professional practitioners.Footnote ⁶⁸ In singling out Miss Wang's genuine interest in medicine and her dedication to the welfare of the family, Han Qi showed nothing but approval.

Han Qi's epitaph work applauded the family's young men and women as models of male and female virtues. Their sentimental and commemorative purposes aside, these funerary biographies were part of a larger mission, to preserve and consolidate the family and its reputation, the topic of the next section.

Preserving and Elevating the Family

Compared to his peers, Han Qi was extraordinarily diligent and organized in dealing with family affairs and family preservation. His dedication to this lofty cause explains several major undertakings that lasted his entire adult life. In addition to supervising three large-scale burial events that laid to rest thirty-four Han men and women from four generations, he recovered and rebuilt the tombs of multiple remote ancestors in the 1050s. These construction endeavors were followed by the compilation of a sixty-chapter jiaji 家集, a collection of writings by and about his ancestors of five generations.Footnote ⁶⁹ As a strong advocate for proper family rituals, he grew frustrated with the lack of an official code and eventually came up with his own version in 1070, entitling it “The Hans’ Family Ritual, Compiled Based on Ancient and Present Protocols” (韓氏參用古今家祭式).Footnote ⁷⁰

Han's relationships with his nephews and their families as well as his responses to the untimely deaths of many junior relatives should be considered in this context. To Han Qi, the continuation of the family depended as much on cultivating industrious and competent descendants as it did on proper ritual performance and maintenance of family history. His epitaph for Han Zhiyan best illustrates his belief in this regard. Written in 1057, Han Qi reported that

Here Han Qi made it clear that his love for Zhiyan went beyond Zhiyan being his third brother's favorite son and having been in his care for many years. His attentiveness to Zhiyan was partly due to his and Han Ju's conviction that Zhiyan was destined for a great cause: to continue to elevate the family for decades to come.

Seen from this perspective, Zhiyan's death meant more than the premature demise of a son-like nephew. It signified an unbearable loss for the entire family. Han Qi continued:

Here Han Qi described the most distressing scenario for a family head: the fear of spoiled and irresponsible children wreaking havoc and causing the downfall of the family. His long poem addressed to Zhiyan, cited above, echoed this very concern. The poem made it clear that Zhiyan's reckless behavior distressed Han Qi tremendously, resulting in Han's intervention and condemnation of his nephew. Fortunately for the Hans, Zhiyan corrected his behavior and turned his attention to examination preparation. Han Qi continued,

Han Qi admitted that Zhiyan was his favorite among the young men in the second generation. In addition to the special attention and affection that he showered on Zhiyan, he arranged for Zhiyan to receive his own “private” funeral in 1057. Considering that all the other Han men and women were laid to rest in one of the three “collective” burials, this was an exceptional treatment for a junior family member. Han Qi's favoritism might have created discontent and even resentment in the family, hence his juxtaposition of his sentiments for gong and si purposes: he loved Zhiyan the most because Zhiyan had shown the capability to elevate the family. In a way, Han's statement can be read as a “motivational” speech, intended to inspire his junior relatives at a time when the family was in desperate need of a second Zhiyan to ensure the family's continual success.

A long poem, dated 1056, conveyed Han's innermost thoughts from a different perspective:

Han Qi wrote this poem right before he began his most influential years in national politics, his decade-long grand councillorship (from the mid-1050s to the 1060s). His personal success in the previous two decades had guaranteed his sons and nephews a privileged life. Those same advantages were also sources of concern. Han Qi worried that his sons and nephews, just like the spoiled children he described above, would take their good fortune for granted, stop setting high standards in their personal and public life, and, most importantly, weaken or even sever their connections with the family and native place. While the goal of the poem and Zhiyan's epitaph was similar, they were distinguished by the differences in their tones. If the epitaph represented a “positive reinforcement” of the family's traditions and strengths, the poem sounded much sterner and less forgiving. In the most straightforward manner, Han Qi reminded his descendants of their good luck as well as their obligations. Anyone who ignored his advice and put the family at risk was to be held accountable and punished severely by the family and by supernatural powers.

Han's rigid stance was based on his conviction that he had set a good example for the young men. All that was needed was for them to follow his guidance. Upon the completion of the collected family writings, he wrote, “I ordered that all my sons and nephews keep a hand-copy of this volume at home. If later on anyone irresponsibly causes its loss, then Heaven so brilliant and the ancestors so spiritually powerful will surely send down disasters to chastise the unfilial. Be warned, be warned!” (命諸子姪人録一本, 以藏於家. 後主之者, 或不謹嚴, 使失其傳, 則上天至明, 祖宗至靈, 是必降殃, 以懲不孝. 其戒之哉. 其戒之哉).Footnote ⁷⁵ In another document, Han Qi expressed a similar wish that “Those who are virtuous will surpass me in diligence and the unfilial will be able to use my dedication to motivate themselves” (賢者必能過吾勤, 而不肖者亦當師吾勤而自勉也).Footnote ⁷⁶

To summarize, Han Qi saw the mid- to late 1050s as an uncertain time for the Hans. His nephews were dying before him. His oldest son, Zhongyan, did not seem to hold as much potential as Zhiyan. The times when the family suffered from scarcity were long gone but new worries, in the form of incompetence, complacency, and indulgence, had emerged. His epitaph for Dannu, son of Fangyan, addressed this issue directly.

Han Qi stopped short of asking: if the Hans continued to raise their children this way, who would succeed him and strive to prevent the family's ruin and decline? With multiple promising young men in the second and third generations dying prematurely, this question must have been on his mind frequently, causing great fear and anxiety. Fortunately, Han Qi lived long enough to be assured of the family's continual prosperity in the following generations. His son Zhongyan followed in his father's footsteps to become a grand councilor in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.

Concluding Remarks

What have we learned from this discussion of Han Qi as a brother, uncle, and patriarch? How did specific family situations shape his role in the Han household and his interaction with his younger relatives in particular? In what ways was Han's performance representative of contemporary rhetoric on and practices of family relationships? Did Han consider himself a competent family man?

Several aspects of Han Qi's life and family draw our immediate attention. Even though Han Qi had five older brothers, he was only able to enjoy a substantial relationship with two of them and had lost both by his thirties. This left Han with no alternative but to take on the role of the family patriarch. What he took over was a large, multi-generational family, with many of its members regularly dispersed across the country due to career-related endeavors. Han Qi himself similarly performed the various duties of family head over long distances. The large age differences between him and his brothers also created generational “abnormalities,” further complicating his task at hand: Han Qi had a brother who was more of a father figure and a nephew, Gongyan, of the same age, making Gongyan more like a brother to Han Qi and uncle to the much younger men in the second generation. Given the common practice of remarriage and concubinage as well as the centrality of office-holding in scholar-official life, these occurrences were anything but abnormal for elite families in the Northern Song. All of these issues understandably posed great challenges to the family head.

Despite these difficulties, Han outperformed most of his peers both in terms of his active involvement in family affairs and lifelong attentiveness to its preservation. Han's relationships with his nephews both fit into this agenda and further illuminate his dedication to this vital cause. For almost two decades, Han Qi provided his junior relatives with a variety of assistance to advance their personal growth as well as their educational and professional endeavors. When several of them died before him, he mourned, buried, and commemorated them, honoring each with an epitaph. This entire process was tremendously emotional for Han Qi, yet he did it with striking consistency. In his epitaphs, Han Qi the (grand-) uncle lamented his (grand-) nephews’ premature deaths, unfulfilled dreams, and the severance of family branches.

Above all, this case study illuminates the challenges that even the most successful elite families faced in their hopes of perpetuating political prominence and family solidarity over more than a generation or two. With Han Guohua and Han Qi's ranking and service record, the younger generations enjoyed relatively easy access to office through the yin privilege, so continuing the family's civil service tradition was not an immediate concern. The very same privilege also created tremendous anxiety in Han Qi's mind: his nephews (and, of course, sons) might become complacent and lose sight of the long-term interests of the family. To Han Qi, examination success remained the most ideal passage to distinguish oneself and the family. It was also the surest method to make the yin privilege available to later generations. For these reasons, Han expected each generation of Han men to produce at least one jinshi degree holder, who would live long enough to advance himself in officialdom and continue to elevate the family. Seen from this perspective, Zhiyan's success in 1053 and sudden death in the following year must have been among the most emotional events in Han Qi's life.

Compared to other elite families, the Hans had another advantage in achieving long-term prosperity: its abundant number of male descendants. Yet multiple circumstances, including early deaths, unsatisfactory examination results, and the lack of literary and scholarly talent, posed genuine threats to the family's good fortune. For at least two decades in the 1040s and 1050s, the thought that he might not see a successor as accomplished as he was must have crossed Han Qi's mind countless times. In the end, his son Zhongyan's successes in the examination and officialdom alleviated his doubts, ensuring the family's standing as a national elite family in the remaining decades of the Northern Song. The trend continued in the Southern Song, with the rise of his great-grandson, the grand councilor Han Tuozhou 韓侂胄 (1152–1207), even though Han Tuozhou led a controversial career and was later executed.Footnote ⁷⁸ The Hans were remembered as one of the most successful families in the history of the Song dynasty. During Han Qi's lifetime, however, this legacy was not guaranteed at all.

In this context, we can better appreciate Han's attention to and high hopes for his nephews as well as his heartbreak and disappointment in their failures and premature deaths. This same consideration also makes the increasingly diverse strategies that elite families used to sustain their status more understandable. Han Qi knew too well that failure in this respect would have dire consequences.Footnote ⁷⁹ Consequently, if the Northern Song witnessed a growing interest in articulating and systematizing proper practices in family and kinship-related matters, Han Qi was perhaps its most devoted practitioner.Footnote ⁸⁰ His life-long undertakings, from ritual writing and graveyard construction to recordkeeping and attentiveness to the younger generations, touched on every major aspect of family management and preservation, making him a true Confucian at heart as well as pragmatic activist.

Two other issues merit some deliberation. The first concerns the sources for this study. While Han Qi projected himself as a generous caretaker and supporter of all of his nephews and their families, we cannot help but wonder how those junior members might have felt about their uncle. Even with the absence of their personal voices, it is plausible to assume that, depending on their ages, closeness to Han Qi, and Han's expectations of them, the uncle–nephew relationship varied case by case. The dynamic between Han Qi and Gongyan, for example, differed greatly from that between Han Qi and Zhengyan, son of Han Qu. Unlike Gongyan, who lost his father at four sui, Zhengyan was a teenager when Han Qu passed away and had his mother, Miss Chen, to rely on. In fact, Han Qi gave his sister-in-law much credit for “diligently guiding and instructing” Zhengyan, implying that he did not have to worry about Zhengyan as much as his other nephews.Footnote ⁸¹ Among Han Ju's four sons, Jingrong and Zhiyan seemed to have enjoyed a much more intimate relationship with Han Qi than their younger brothers, largely because they were old enough and needed the personal attention to be ready for the examinations and court service. The differences in their relationships with Han Qi aside, given that all the Han men in the second and third generations were direct beneficiaries of Han Qi's personal and professional help, they likely would have portrayed their uncle in a highly positive light. This in no way suggested a lack of discord, jealousy, favoritism, or resentment—sentiments that were frequently discussed in lively yet generic language by scholars like Yuan Cai 袁采 (?–1195), but rarely in personal accounts about parent–child, brother–brother, and uncle–nephew relationships.Footnote ⁸²

Note 1: In the “Year Buried” column, N/A means that the time of the person's burial was not specified in Han Qi's writing. Most of them, however, were entombed in the 1045, 1062, and 1071 events. In the “Epitaph or Xingzhuang by” column, N/A indicates that a person died before Han Qi, but Han did not write an epitaph for him or her.

Note 2: The blank spaces in the “Year Buried” and “Epitaph or Xingzhuang by” columns indicate that the person outlived Han Qi.

This observation leads to the second issue: how did Han Qi reconcile his role as uncle and family head? In other words, did Han treat his nephews as orphaned young men in need of an uncle's support or prospective examination candidates and government officials to serve the family's long-term interest? Han Qi's writing and actions leave us with little doubt about his priority to preserve and advance the family's solidarity, reputation, and standing in society. He expected the same from the younger generations. This explains why Han attributed to his nephews all the standard, conventional virtues for elite men. Han Qi condemned Zhiyan's indulgence in a long poem, yet portrayed Zhiyan in the most positive light for the deceased as well as the family's sake.

Han Qi's ambition and strategic approach to family perpetuation, however, did not prevent him from showing genuine fondness of and devoting personal attention to his nephews. In more than one way, Han proved to be exceptional at a time when Song men were generally reticent in writing about strong feelings toward junior family members. In Gongyan's and Zhiyan's cases, we see the expression of candid care from Han Qi. His justification that his love for Zhiyan was not si (personal or private) but for the sake of the family and therefore gong (public or collective) in nature not only implied his deep affection for Zhiyan but also blurred the boundary between an uncle's adoration and the family's interests.