What was the social status of a man who failed the civil service exams in Imperial China ( 1200 - 1800 AD )?
Upvote:1
The civil service exam was the main route to upward mobility in China. Anyone who "passed" it who be a candidate for official posts in China. There were several levels, and the higher the level of the pass, the higher the level of eligibility. A person who had passed an exam and held no post was ranked higher socially than a person who had not passed an exam, and held a good post in "private" life, because the first person was eligible to be an official, and the second person wasn't. In parts of Europe, for instance, an academic is held in higher esteem than a businessman, even if the latter is richer.
One such exam passer at the highest level was this man, who happens to be my father's maternal uncle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_Shiyi.
A person who didn't pass a civil service exam would revert to his original status, peasant, laborer, merchant, or member of the gentry. For people at the bottom, passing an exam was basically an "all or nothing" proposition, because there were few other avenues of advancement in China.
Upvote:8
I think it would be more appropriate to ask "what were the social statuses of men who failed the civil service exams?
For this I would point you to the Wikipedia article on Imperial Civil Service Exams
Even though only a small fraction (about 5 percent) of those who attempted the examinations actually passed them and even fewer received titles, the hope of eventual success sustained their commitment. Those who failed to pass did not lose wealth or local social standing; as dedicated believers in Confucian orthodoxy, they served, without the benefit of state appointments, as teachers, patrons of the arts, and managers of local projects, such as irrigation works, schools, or charitable foundations.
It seems as though, especially in your area of interest roughly the Yuan Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, failure of the exams was not viewed with particular disdain. Rather, while failure was obviously not as prestigious as passing the exams, the fact that one had sat for the exams at all was a powerful indicator of relative social standing. Often, study periods for the exams would last several years and consume much of the waking hours of an exam candidate. The very fact that one had been able to afford and then undertake such an expensive and time-consuming endeavor points to relative wealth, intelligence and perseverance.
EDIT
Through some correspondence with an acquaintance of mine who specializes in Chinese and Tibetan History, I stand by the answer above with one small caveat. Although the exams were difficult to pass the amount of money, time and effort invested in them meant that failure could be a huge loss of face. Many examinees were crushed and became bitter and disenfranchised.
Note also that there were multiple levels of the exams. Think of them as the local or municipal level, provincial level and nation wide level exams. It was statistically much easier to pass the local level exams than the imperial level exams and getting a local certification could make you the local big man on campus.
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