Court

Author: Guo Junchen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features: The term "yamen" is how the Chinese people refer to government offices. In reality, no government department was named "yamen." It wasn't until the late Qing Dynasty that the "Office for the Administration of Foreign Affairs" () appeared. The Office for the Administration of Foreign Affairs is the only official body in China's thousands of years of history to include "yamen" in its name—so the term "yamen" is more of a habitual and psychological designation rather than an actual name. It hides people's reverence, admiration, and even disdain for officialdom, with the latter evolving over the ages but still being referred to as "yamen" in people's mouths. The emergence of yamen coincided with the rise of the state. Where there is a yamen, there must be officials. It is a bureaucratic institution between the emperor and the people, serving the entire empire but consistently causing discomfort to the common folk and idealistic officials, and leading officials to systematically become corrupt. So, why is this the case? Beyond being alarmed and helpless about its darkness, we need to know more about yamen. The Elegant and Popular China series selects topics such as Chinese figures, social classes, historical sites, cultural relics, folk customs, and daily life to vividly recreate the rich historical and cultural heritage and traditional cultural elements of China through highly visual images and text. Whether in content or expression, it strives to break the boundary between elegance and popular culture, absorbing the latest academic research while maintaining a sense of reading enjoyment, comprehensively interpreting Chinese culture, and serving as a classic visual and textual read for both the refined and the popular. This book is one of them—Yamen.