Landed gentry in China
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. As a social class they included retired
mandarins or their families and descendants. Owning land was often their way of preserving wealth.
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