In Ming and Qing novels, in many modern costume film and television dramas, the image of the "master" in the county court can be described as not many good people. Either an accomplice of the county master, or a sinister and cunning villain. But if you want to ask: Are these "masters" the same as modern civil servants? Are they all serving iron rice bowls from the state? Not really. Today, I will talk about whether "Master" is a civil servant or not.
To say that the origin of "Master" can be traced back to the Zhou Officials and Curtains in the Zhou Dynasty, and there have been developments in successive dynasties since then. Limited by space, today we will only talk about the "master" of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, "shiye" was a relatively common grass-roots civil servant in the prefects and counties, and belonged to the category of officials, specifically referring to those who read but did not excel in reading, but turned to study and master administrative affairs. Most of the people appointed by the imperial court as prefects and county orders were from the imperial court, and although most of them could write a good letter and memorize the Four Books and Five Classics, they said that they had to deal with a complex administrative affairs that were not familiar with the place (press: The officials of the ancient imperial court were generally officials in different places), and there were many people who did not know anything. Therefore, in order to complete government affairs, local officials must recruit people who are familiar with local social conditions and public opinions, that is, "masters" to assist them in handling government affairs and affairs. The role played by the "master" is roughly equivalent to that of the secretary general in the modern government, and he is specifically responsible for the "official office book" and so on.
Generally speaking, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the number of officials who were included in the administrative establishment, supported by the imperial court, and commonly known as "eating imperial grain" was as high as eight or nine. At the county level, at most to the county order subordinate head (county lieutenant), similar to the modern public security bureau chief. For the civil servants further down, the imperial court did not pay the court. In other words, the imperial court did not pay the "porcelain rice bowl" of the "master" and the servants at the grass-roots level who accounted for more than 90% of the ranks of the officials of the imperial court, who worked in the official palace at all levels, and who served the "public family" at the grass-roots level, did not pay the "porcelain rice bowl" without the "master".
So, who pays the salary of the "master"? Of course, who hires them and who gives, that is, the county commander or prefect who hired them. Those who are rich and generous will give a little more; those who have no money and are miserly will give a little less, and there is no accurate head, and the salaries of "masters" across the country are also very different. And what is the level of wages? According to Shen Bang (1540-1597), who served as the commander of Wanping County for three years during the Ming Dynasty, in his "Miscellaneous Records of Wanping Bureau", it is recorded that the soap in the Ming Dynasty's Wanping County Yali (that is, Ya Gong) could receive "worker food" three or two or six dollars per year, which was exactly one-half of the "master". It can be inferred from this that the annual income of the "master" is seven or two dollars, and the low salary can be seen. But those "masters" will certainly not just point to this "salary" life, they work around the county grandfather, their "gray income" must be a lot, so the living standards of the "master" are still guaranteed.
There are also some lawless "masters" who go up and down their hands to specifically loot corruption, and they are even more corrupt than those corrupt county orders.
As a group, the "Shiye" became more active in the Qing Dynasty. The upper self-governor and the lower self-prefecture and county all hired shi ye to handle government affairs. In the late Qing Dynasty, the shogunate of Zeng Guofan flourished, forming a modern warlord shogunate, and the influence continued until the Republic of China. The staff of the Republic of China is the epilogue and inertia of the Qing Dynasty master.
So, how did the "Master" disappear? Since "Shiye" was not an official recognized by the imperial court, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the famous Western-style official Zhang Zhidong played a song to the imperial court: calling for the reform of the shiye system, that is, the abolition of the "shiye" throughout the country, that is, it was adopted, and the history of shiye ended.
It can be said that Zhang Zhidong is the terminator of the master system.