Flattery and Sycophancy

Living shrines dotted the Ming landscape. They appear in Ming local gazetteers, the collected works of individuals, stele collections, biographical compilations such as Guochao xianzheng lu, and the Veritable Records of the imperial court. Pre-mortem shrines were normal (contra Goodrich and Fang Reference Goodrich and Fang1976, 775). Song scholar Cheng Dachang ([1123–95] 1991, 5/6–7) had complained:

Only Cheng worried about the logic of making offerings to a living person, which fits with findings about Chinese religion: the lack of a need for a fully articulated logic of worship (Jordan Reference Jordan1972), the variety of views of life after death (Bokencamp Reference Bokencamp2007), and the fine line between gods and humans (Hansen Reference Hansen1990, 57). In fact, an enshrined Ming ex-magistrate's sore healed when his statue was repaired (Goodrich and Fang Reference Goodrich and Fang1976, 1356). And death turned pre-mortem shrines into post-mortem shrines overnight, so some sources list the two types together without distinction (A. Wang 1506, chap. 27). (That complicates counting, although, as with many phenomena, it appears that there were more living shrines in late Ming than earlier.) Pre- and post-mortem shrines shared a similar layout, offerings, and memorial purpose (Brown Reference Brown2007, 134–37; Neskar Reference Neskar1993, 23, 81–83). Yet the recipient's still being alive did cause a particular kind of unease: political.

The official Ming History treats the best-known living shrines, those to the late-Ming eunuch dictator Wei Zhongxian, with horror and derision (Fryslie Reference Fryslie2005, 104; T. Zhang et al. [1739] 1974, esp. 26/360/7868-70). But it also reports respectable pre-mortem shrines, for instance to early Ming officials Gu Cheng, military governor of Guizhou, and Tao An, a prefect popular for moderating taxes and protecting people from bandits and soldiers (T. Zhang et al. [1739] 1974, 13/144/4073-5, 13/136/3925-6). Wei's being alive in 1626 was not the issue; rather, his shrines shock by their number and extravagance, the crystal-clear sycophancy and abuse of power behind them, Wei's presumptuous position at court, his illiteracy, and possibly his not-quite-male gender. Perhaps taking their cue from this extreme case, many post-imperial historians treat all pre-mortem shrines as exemplifying only sycophancy, vanity, and cronyism: Kung-chuan Hsiao, for instance, argues that local gentry stage-managed living shrines and all other such honors to magistrates (Hsiao Reference Hsiao1960, 436–37).

Some late-imperial sources indeed justify scornful charges of corruption. Late-Ming missionary Matteo Ricci noted that “the cities are full” of shrines housing images of departing officials, built by themselves or their friends, even when they have “no claim to the honor” (Ricci Reference Ricci and Gallagher1953, 71, 243). The opera Peony Pavilion mocks a blowhard prefect awarded a living shrine (Volpp Reference Volpp, Der-wei Wang and Wei2005, 48). The early-Qing institutional thinker Gu Yanwu expressed a complaint that had appeared at least by 1530 when he described pre-mortem shrines as ubiquitous but often short-lived, meant merely to flatter an incumbent (Osabe 1944, 36; Zhao Reference Zhao2006, 128). Flattery meant personal relations leading to nepotism, factionalism, or other official corruption of the kind rulers feared would undermine the service to the people on which the Mandate depended. Historian Zhao Kesheng (Reference Zhao2006) argues that earlier living shrines truly expressed commoners’ gratitude to good officials, especially as tax reforms, local disturbances, and eunuch abuses unsettled the times; but that as later Ming officials began to demand shrines, the now-hollow honor burdened the people.

Early-Ming lawmakers, too, worried that the enshrinement of living men might produce flattery and abuses of power. They therefore outlawed undeserved living shrines, shrines to incumbents, those initiated by the official himself, and those not authorized by the government. Article 141 of the Great Ming Code (1397) reads:

Shrines had to be both proper and authorized (the Tang already had a procedure [Lei 2004, 34]), so the law also implied the criteria for authorization. Living shrines were legal only for departing (not incumbent) local officials who truly had contributed to their jurisdictions (not those with no achievements), and whom grateful locals wished to honor with steles or shrines (not those who arranged for toadies to make the petition). Ming people knew and cited the law, and saw its loopholes (Zhao Reference Zhao2006, 127–28).

Shrines were legal. And Ming writers read about them in every dynastic history and in the works of famous literati, such as Sima Guang (Brown Reference Brown2007, 135). Yet they knew that the classics did not justify the institution directly; as thinker Zhan Ruoshui (1466–1560) put it, “Living shrines are not ancient” (Zhan [1580] 1997, 18/45-6). They substituted an indirect classical connection by referring to the Gantang tree in the Book of Odes, carefully preserved in memory of the lord who had meted out justice under its boughs:

By the time a Yuan scholar wrote that “upon reading the Gantang poem I knew why later generations made living shrines,” it had long been a cliché for a reciprocal relationship, local, but extended in time beyond the term of office (Zhao Reference Zhao2006, 126). A typical Ming example:

In Ming times, therefore, living shrines were common, honorable, and legal so long as the bureaucracy had authorized them as representing popular sentiment about the real contributions of an outgoing local official.

But the recognized possibility of abuse required combating skepticism about each particular living shrine's propriety. Steles surrounding shrines, presumably drawing on the petitions to the state, therefore present (retuned by the author) a number of voices: not only of the authorities, but also the local gentry, other local leaders, and commoners. Thornton (Reference Thornton2007) argues that it is precisely when trying to extend control that the state must explicitly articulate the basis of its authority. Similarly, justifying the propriety of a questionable institution may mean the open expression, even the evolution, of ideological claims. Steles for pre-mortem shrines speak of central autocracy delegating authority through bureaucracy, scholar-officials’ autonomous moral authority, and the legitimacy of local approval and disapproval of government.

Chu Bao's Living Shrine

In 1544, outside the north gate of the yamen of Linqu County, Shandong, locals built a shrine to former magistrate Chu Bao (js. 1529, Fengtai native). The case is fairly typical of shrines everywhere, and the gazetteer compiled eight years later contains sufficient records to make some explication possible, so a close look will illuminate some of the dynamics in pre-mortem shrines across the Ming empire. Chu's shrine stood near the Shrine to Eminent Officials that Chu himself had built during his tenure as magistrate from 1530 to 1534 (cf. Carlitz Reference Carlitz1997). Chu did not earn a tablet in every home in Linqu, as did one magistrate elsewhere (Sheng 1873), but neither, unlike the sub-prefect in “Mr. Lu's Living Shrine,” did he merely share the porch of a Daoist temple (A. Wang 1506, 28/13). Chu had, for some decades, his own independent shrine.

A late-Ming pamphlet diagrams just such a shrine: a roofed gate in front with a horizontal plaque reading “Mr. Gong's Living Shrine”; beside the gate a stele engraved with an account of his deeds in office and a lament at his departure (a qusi bei); two buildings of one bay each, facing the courtyard and with a tree in front of each; a main building of three bays, set on a platform raised three or four steps; an offering table visible through the central doorway; and two horizontal plaques over this door, referring to his virtuous legacy (T. Zhang 1621–27). When Chu's shrine was built, the record for his academy and his qusi bei were probably placed by the gate.

Such records were typical honors for a typical high-Ming activist magistrate (Schneewind Reference Schneewind2006, chap. 4). Chu had renovated and built government shrines, the county school, community schools, and an academy; had migrants open up uncultivated land; promulgated the law; enforced mutual responsibility units and community compacts; opened or revived twin pavilions to display goodness and warn the wicked; destroyed “improper shrines” and attacked Buddhism and Daoism; and effectively prayed to bring rain and expel locusts (cf. Sutton Reference Sutton2004). But for all that, a pre-mortem shrine was by no means certain; in fact, the gazetteer records part of a debate over a shrine to Lei Qidong, magistrate of Linqu in 1511–12. First comes an account of Lei's tenure by Instructor Yan Yi, who drafted the gazetteer before being promoted out of the county. Then comes a comment by second-generation degree holder Feng Weimin (1511–90), who finished the draft, which misquotes the pre-Han Discourses of the States (Guoyu), saying that those who have been able, for the people, to prevent great disasters deserve sacrifice. The original does not include “for the people” (cf. Yu Reference Yu2005, 43–44). Magistrate Lei made great contributions and deserves placement in the ritual statutes, but this has not been done. “I really don't know what public opinion (gong yi) in Linqu is based on!” Feng exclaims indignantly. Magistrate Wang Shijia, who oversaw the compilation of the gazetteer, responds in the next line:

The conversation records not only the voices of Yan, Feng, and Wang, but of an old text remade, of “everyone,” of “public opinion,” and of the surveillance commissioner; such multi-vocality, echoing real debates, reappears in the steles the gazetteer incorporates.

As the flattery model would suggest, relations with gentry helped get Chu his shrine. The stele records were written by degree holders who had studied under Chu: Chi Fengxiang and Zhang Bangchan, both from official families. By the time the gazetteer was compiled, Zhang and Chi had arches honoring them as the latest metropolitan degree holders. The flattery may have gone two ways: the timing is unclear, but Chu may have been the one who enshrined Bangchan's grandfather, Yi, in the Shrine to Local Worthies.

Yet recognizing these personal connections leaves a puzzle. Many pre-mortem shrines came at departure. A common formulation is “on the day he left, the crowd/the people set up a shrine to make offerings to him (qu zhi ri zhong/min li ci si zhi)” (e.g., three examples in Jin 1684, 32/13-14). By contrast, Chu's shrine came a decade after he left town. A relationship with a bureaucrat moving up might have been useful, but Chu had merely become a director (rank 5a) in the Ministry of Justice, and he retired with the same title and rank in the Ministry of War. His most notable action the year the shrine was built was setting up a county granary (H. Li 1871, 35/15b). No advantage lay in reforging a tie with him at that moment. Why was the shrine built? Let us turn to the records.

Praise

The first inscription written for Chu Bao's living shrine, by then provincial graduate Zhang Bangchan, opens with a pedantic explanation of the Gantang cliché, but then uses it to turn the tardiness of enshrinement into a greater compliment:

The exchange of loving governance for long, loving remembrance does not exhaust the Gantang tree's meaning. Zhang relates it to three other themes in the Mandate of Heaven ideology:

Zhang first raises the parental metaphor: Zhou officials “looked after the common men and women of within the seas even beyond their own bones and flesh, fathers and sons.” Secondly, Zhang relates good officials to a center good enough to select them; as the court honors such men, local praise for them honors the court. Third, a good official does not just control, but transforms, his subjects: it is presumably this moral transformation that enables them to feel and express appropriate gratitude.

The positive tone continues as Zhang moves from generalities to Chu himself: dynastic leadership and the magistrate's transformation of the people appear again in the specifics:

Good all around: good dynasty, good official, good community.

Blame

But the tone quickly shifts as Zhang explains why the shrine is being established now:

Whatever Zhang's personal relation to Chu, the stele he wrote at the request of his townsmen signals a different purpose to the shrine. Incompetent successors have made Linqu people miss Chu. More praise, and hope, follow; but they camouflage complaint:

And when locals see students studying, Zhang continues, they think of Chu, to whom the gazetteer attributes Linqu's educational accomplishments (J. Wang [1552] 1990; Y. Yao 1884): with justice, as he oversaw not only Zhang and Chu but four brothers Feng who earned degrees. (Not yet having earned his last degree, Zhang Bangchan will not say that Chu's educational accomplishments have ended.)

But the next paragraph complains more sharply:

Now we know why Linqu built Chu's shrine late. The three magistrates succeeding him were mere National University students, without the clout to get much done. Then in 1544 came Jia Dongshan of Puzhou, a provincial graduate. Linqu people had an opportunity to influence a magistrate with career prospects enough to care about administration (Nimick Reference Nimick1993, 71). They expressed resentment of recent bad government and nostalgia for Chu precisely to send Magistrate Jia a message.

Thus a shrine ostensibly in praise of one official blamed others and instructed yet another. Similarly, a post-mortem stele for a former prefect elsewhere explicitly criticizes his four successors, saying “the people only feared that they would not leave office soon enough.” The stele, put up just in time to greet a new incumbent, concludes pointedly: “Because I am writing the stele record for His Honor, I ought also to inquire into the later men who have acted as ‘father and mother to the people’” (Zheng [1491] Reference Zhenman and Hesheng1995). A second stele by the same author proclaims that its purpose is to “warn” those who take up the post (Zheng [1498] Reference Zhenman and Hesheng1995). Locals praised and blamed earlier officials to influence their successors.

The Rhetoric of Popular Initiative

Zhang Bangchan now recounts how Linqu decided to grant Chu a shrine. First, “elderly commoners” (qimin) gathered as a group. Recalling how Chu had cherished them, so that people still remembered him after a decade, they asked and answered themselves:

The second stele I will discuss was requested by “local elders” (xiangqi). Probably these were roughly the same people as the “elderly commoners” of Zhang's stele. Who were they? The referent of the term “elders” has been debated (Hansen Reference Hansen1990, 96), though not as extensively as have the limits of the “gentry” (e.g., Heijdra Reference Heijdra1995, 329ff.; Miller Reference Miller2009). In this gazetteer, elders are distinguished from gentry. “Local elders” appear frequently as spokesmen requesting recognition of worthy locals, such as chaste widows, but even when their names are given, there are no titles, the men are not listed as degree holders, nor did they leave poems. The gazetteer entitles even marginal gentry men holding only the first degree: for instance, the chaste widow reports came from an old gazetteer owned by government student Li Sihui (J. Wang [1552] 1990, 3/16b). If the “elderly commoners” or “local elders” had been members of Linqu's sparse gentry, the steles and gazetteer would have surely named them as they name other gentry. And the gazetteer frequently—but not here—uses the term “gentry”: Magistrate Wang's preface, for instance, explains that the draft was “discussed and corrected by the great gentry of the county (yi zhi dashifu)” (J. Wang [1552] 1990).

So the “elderly commoners” were probably men of some local wealth and power; but all such people, whether or not they had dirt under their fingernails, were legally commoners with no official voice in government. Indeed, local gentry themselves had no such voice, being legally “non-enfranchis[ed]” at home (Brook Reference Brook, Esherick and Backus Rankin1990, 28). Yet here not only gentry man Zhang but also “elderly commoners” set in stone their judgments on the officials set above them.

Steles for living shrines often distinguish action by “commoners.” For instance, when one Prefect Jiang was promoted, “the gentry and commoners of the prefecture missed his virtue and did not put it aside, and arranged to enshrine His Honor” (G. Li Reference Zhenman and Hesheng1573–1619). Elsewhere, the common people came in such numbers with their hoes and spades to work on the shrine that their feet ground against one another (Yao [c. 1585, 1596] 1925, 9/16–7). Pre-mortem shrines mentioned briefly in gazetteers and biographies are established often by “the people” (ren) or “commoners” (min), and sometimes by “everyone” (zhong) (e.g., Jin 1684, 32/13–14). The early-Ming Yuan History records that the policies of one official “followed the yearnings of everyone (zhong),” so “the common people (baixing) of the place built him a living shrine” (Song [1370] 1983, 13/168/3942, 3944). Good officials dealt with commoners sincerely, and they responded sincerely: that was the basis for a proper pre-mortem shrine (cf. Sutton Reference Sutton2004, 39–40).

Post-mortem shrines, by contrast, did not require popular support. A stele for a shrine to Zhu Xi speaks only of gentry supporters and visits, of students and Confucian learning, of “this culture of ours”; the common people do not appear (Z. Chen [1389] Reference Zhenman and Hesheng2003). Again, one Fujian writer commemorated without objection a post-mortem shrine to a local man, initiated by gentry and supported by officials (Huang [1577] Reference Zhenman and Hesheng2003). Yet when gentry requested a record for a pre-mortem shrine for an important official, he objected: “to have provincial degree holders and gentry praising this jurisdiction's [former] big chief: is this not merely flattery (yu)?” He changed his mind when some “literate elders” (wenxue qilao) spoke at length about the official's specific contributions (Huang [1592] Reference Zhenman and Hesheng2003). Their evidence, and their non-gentry status, made the shrine proper.

If gentry indeed, as Hsiao put it, “stage-managed” pre-mortem shrines, commoners were among their prominent actors. Steles for pre-mortem shrines commonly report conversations among commoners, as Zhang Bangchan does. For instance:

The conversation among the local “little people,” carefully placed in a concrete landscape, may be entirely imaginary, reported verbatim, or somewhere in between. The tension between real honor and flattery, acute because the official was still alive to distort governance through nepotism and corruption, produced the requirement that commoners initiate shrines.

Were popular words or intent merely invented to prevent accusations of impropriety? Maybe not. Shrines with detailed steles represent only a fraction of those whose creation is tersely recorded. The stone at a commemorative pavilion set up by locals led by a named elder read only “Mr. Zhang Loved the People Like a Parent”; without gentry participation even Zhang's full name was not recorded, until a gentry man from his home county happened along six decades later (Fu [1540] Reference Zhenman and Hesheng2003). The pre-mortem shrine to former prefect Yang Jizong (js. 1457) was proposed by students upset by villagers’ “sacrilegiously” worshipping him in the open fields (Fan [1564, 1596] 1925, 9/4a). The historical record may overemphasize the role of high-elite men. Moreover, to demand even the invention of specific popular views is a long step from seeing, for instance, popular ditties only as a kind of obscure omen that requires interpretation, as would a palace fire, a double melon, or an eclipse (Birrell Reference Birrell1993, 100ff.). In fact, popular participation in these political Ming shrines could be more deeply theorized.

Theorizing Popular Participation

Zhang Bangchan's stele continues with a discussion, real or invented (but would he have put words in the mouths of his neighbors and betters?) that sets out four modes legitimating popular judgment of officials:

First, to label the feelings of local people for their magistrate “qing” was to update gratitude and align it with the highly valorized stress on deep feeling in personal relations that characterized some sixteenth-century discussions of human relations and of the basis for “moral autonomy” (Y. Cheng Reference Cheng2009, 46). Beginning with Wang Yangming's insight that good sprang from innate moral knowledge, a movement valorizing human feeling over elite learning spread dramatically down the social scale with Wang Gen's teachings that “the streets are full of sages” from about 1519, gathered strength with enormous “discussion and study” revival meetings through the 1550s, and finally petered out politically about 1580 (Dardess Reference Dardess2011, 90–93), relegated to validating the passions. The stele dates to 1544, when the egalitarian moral movement was in full swing; qing labels the people's response to Chu authentic and meaningful.

Second, this popular feeling did not lead to disorder. It was expressed and transmitted in fa. This could mean that people set up Chu as a model or standard for later magistrates. But even if it meant only that the shrine was legal, Ming law did not merely control subjects, but aligned the human world with cosmic principles, guiding adherence to heaven-sent principles of reciprocal human relations (Jiang 2011). Taizu had promulgated this vision of law, cosmos, and society in more public texts than any ruler before Mao Zedong (Dardess Reference Dardess2011, 29; Farmer Reference Farmer1995). The invocation of law aligns the shrine's expression of the popular will with the national constitution.

Thirdly, the stele calls commoners’ establishing the shrine “righteous” (yi). “Righteous” could label founders of charitable community institutions, bridge builders, or grain donors; in the late Ming, yi developed into benevolent associations, often gentry-led, but through which non-gentry with little wealth could also “wield moral authority to win cooperation from their community for worthy goals” (Smith 2009, 10). Righteousness enabled non-officials to take the realm as their personal responsibility (cf. Dardess Reference Dardess2011, 76, 80), whatever their social standing. Smith calls yi “slippery”: it may label merely filial deeds, for instance (Smith 2009, 7). But the Linqu gazetteer lists as “filially righteous” two exemplars precisely not recognized by the state; a recognized yi donor appears separately (J. Wang [1552] 1990, 3/15b). Yi asserted the right of the community itself to adjudge virtue.

Finally, this legal and righteous joint action springing from popular emotion is institutionalized in a ritual space (li). The stele renders proper non-gentry judgment of officials by pointing to its ritual correctness in a way reminiscent of anthropologist Catherine Bell's concept of “ritualization” as a process. Bell presents ritualization as an effective way to negotiate power relations when, first, the relationships of power are based not on “direct claims” like superior force or wealth but on “indirect claims of power conferred,” for example by divine will; and second, “the hegemonic order being experienced must be rendered socially redemptive in order to be personally redemptive.” In other words, each individual's sense of empowerment must fit into a vision that also reinforces the community's moral order as a whole (Bell [1992] Reference Bell2009, 116). Both conditions apply here. First, the state explicitly claimed authority by Heaven's approval. Secondly, building a living shrine, unlike rioting or even petitioning, empowered local people to judge and warn their rulers precisely by confirming that community interests were shared and that the community was properly ordered and in harmony with the government. Celebrating the personal virtue of a magistrate, as practiced on local people (thereby morally transforming them), ritualized relations between magistrates (past, present, and future) and locals (gentry and commoners), in a sacred space where the community placed texts of praise and an image, and made ritual offerings.

The steles themselves contributed to ritualization (cf. Chau Reference Chau2006, chap. 4). The Gantang trope, for instance, raised yet camouflaged contradictions in and struggles over power and values, for it evoked other Odes. The Odes were in Sima Qian's words “the expression of the anger of the sages” (Campbell Reference Campbell2010, 47), and many, such as “High-Crested Hills” (Waley Reference Waley1996, 165-7), criticized both local and central rulers. Quoting an Ode also evoked the long tradition of rulers collecting ditties to learn commoners’ political views (Nylan Reference Nylan2001, 80–82, 292–93). Yet the Gantang ode itself only celebrated gratitude for a past good ruler. Ritualization enabled shrines to challenge and then reaffirm ruler-subject harmony.

The four terms thus fairly completely theorize commoners’ legitimate political participation through living shrines. A positive view of commoners was not the only rhetorical stance available, of course. Linqu gazetteerist Yan Yi wrote a stele for a temple to a Tang prefect that laments how “stupid husbands and stupid goodwives” pray for blessings despite their bad behavior (Yan [c. 1445, 1552] 1990). Once Chu was enshrined, commoners may well have worshipped in ways the gentry scorned; indeed, that is one reason Song commoners were excluded from shrines to local worthies (Neskar Reference Neskar1993, 34; cf. Katz Reference Katz1995, 3–4). But that is a topic for another paper.

Challenging and Reconfirming Hierarchy

To properly establish a living shrine required treating commoners’ voices respectfully. But the stele recorded other voices as well. In Bell's model, a ritualized process may question but then reaffirms social hierarchy. Here, commoners initiated the action, gentry approved it, and now the magistrate has his say:

The response of the newly arrived incumbent reflects his awkward position: he is immediately bullied by those he must govern. Quoting a line from Han scholar Liu Xiang that suggests Chu was indeed the right man for the job, or perhaps that he himself is, Magistrate Jia protests that he will gladly be guided by the reports of Chu's policies. And perhaps he was: the gazetteer praises him (J. Wang [1552] 1990, 2/50). But for now he reasserts his authority:

Magistrate Jia accepts the proposed shrine, but for his own reasons:

Under pressure from gentry and commoners, Jia acquiesces. He presents the shrine as an admonition to Linqu people, knowing perfectly well that they mean it to admonish him. To drive the point home, Zhang writes that the stele will be seen by all subsequent officials:

The final result of the ritualization of local discontent with the interim magistrates is a stone record for all to see of what Chu did right and they did wrong, along with an equivocal but implied admission by another official of locals’ right to judge.

Topping off the reaffirmation of hierarchy, Zhang concludes by explicitly connecting local good governance and its popular recognition with the Ming's Heavenly Mandate, denigrating other dynasties along the way: the Han had some good officials, the Tang and Song fewer, and the “cruel, insatiable” invading dynasties fewer still. Zhang exaggerates:

Zhang then outlines Chu's career and character, dwelling on his own personal experience of Chu's teaching. Finally, he returns to Magistrate Jia:

Jia's tone had not been happy, so this last compliment rings hollow. But praising Jia was hardly the point. The shrine and stele had other tasks. Indeed, it flatters the Ming's delegate Chu, but even that was secondary: Chu was gone, and had little to offer the community or Zhang, even as the stele publicized Zhang's personal connection with him (cf. Takacs Reference Takacs2003) and his own erudition. But more importantly, the shrine stele points to general public dissatisfaction with Chu's successors, mentions specific ways in which they failed, and admonishes the new incumbent. To avert charges of mere flattery, it validates the shrine with genuine, popular gratitude, and goes beyond the implied justification of locals, including commoners, passing judgment on those set above them to theorize that legitimate participation through a number of moral modes.

A Second Shrine Stele

Chi Fengxiang earned his provincial degree later than Zhang (1543) and his metropolitan degree earlier, in 1544. When that very year the shrine was completed, local elders (xiangqi) traveled to Beijing to ask Chi for a stele record. Since Zhang Bangchan had already written one—indeed, the elders came bearing a pile of earlier records—what, Chi asked them, was the use of his writing another, apart from his duty as a gentleman to honor his teacher, of course. The elders replied:

Thus urged to make completely clear what it was that locals wanted later magistrates to do, Chi acquiesced and gave a detailed account of Chu's work in Linqu.

The shrine, Chi wrote, would help people preserve not only Chu's reputation, but the blessings (fu) he had bestowed on the county. Having hinted that Zhang's choice of Duke Shao as an illustration was a bit too southern for Linqu, Chi injected a defensive note of local pride:

Southerners may have had Duke Shao, but the Duke of Zhou himself once ruled Linqu, and his transformative influence has lasted under the most discouraging circumstances. For like Zhang, Chi sees few good officials from the Han onwards, and he asks, “How could there have been such worthies and yet their records and transmission have been lost?” Despite Zhang's Ming boosterism, “One cannot get many such ‘good officials.’” Chi lists five good ones: three from the Jin and Yuan dynasties enshrined earlier, and two from the Ming enshrined by Chu himself. Chi writes that Chu far surpassed these men, who had only two or three good qualities: it is right to celebrate him.

Chi then explicitly enumerates the purposes of his own record, and by extension the shrine that will house it. First and second, he reverses his earlier excessive flattery of Chu and implied reservations about the dynasty whose highest examination honor he had just won: “This record is not only to praise His Honor; it really is to display our Sagely Dynasty's flourishing ability to attract [talented] men as thick as brambles.” Third, the record ensured that later magistrates would have a “complete model”:

Again, the point is less to praise the former magistrate than to guide future ones. And what was the special characteristic of Chu's governance? It was that he accorded with local views and customs. That is the legacy Chi commends to Chu's successors, lest “the men chosen [as magistrates] follow their own usages.” If the shrine meant only that Linqu people commemorated Chu, Chi explains, that would run contrary to Chu's intentions (in governing) and to his (in writing).

This stele, too, does a number of tasks. It boasts about Chi's hometown; draws attention to his success; and distinguishes his essay from that of his classmate Zhang, now a giant step behind him on the ladder of success. In 1565, Chu was moved into a group shrine with five other earlier and later magistrates, including Lei Qidong. The stele record for the Shrine to Six Magistrates of Three Dynasties was written by none other than Chi Fengxiang, living modestly in retirement back in Linqu after a successful career (Y. Yao 1884, 14/29a). He also, perhaps later, wrote a song about the six men. While he praises the others for saving refugees, for fair judgments, for succoring the starving, and for keeping out locusts and bandits, Chi praises Chu for contributing to gentry education: he fixed up the school and personally marked practice essays, so that “the linked fragrance of the examination lists was all due to his own greatness” (Zhou 1935, 5/15). Perhaps it was, after all, Chi's gratitude for his degree that led him to write for Chu in 1544.

But whatever his personal motivation, his 1544 original essay repeats key points throughout: that good administrators are few and far between; that Chu outshone the earlier good magistrates and feudal rulers already enshrined in Linqu; that his accomplishments have already been recorded, so that there must be another purpose in writing again; and that that purpose is precisely to guide future Linqu magistrates. And like Zhang, Chi also reports a conversation with non-gentry elders, whose requests legitimate his writing and the shrine itself.

In setting up a shrine to former magistrate Chu while he was still alive, the people of Linqu followed a national custom. In fact, a couple of Linqu gentry received them themselves elsewhere. The people of Chongxin County made one for a contemporary of Chi Fengxiang, Nie Xiang (Y. Yao 1884, 14/32a), and gazetteerist Feng Weimin's brother had his image modeled for worship by Jiangxi people grateful for his efficient management of the production of sacrificial porcelain vessels (Y. Yao 1884, 14/24-6). Chu's living shrine, as a normal Ming institution but one that needed justification in terms of popular sentiment to deserve government authorization, has shown some of the ways in which Ming people could articulate aspects of Mandate discourse to make political claims, ritualizing those claims to further domesticate and safeguard them.