Where should ancient officials go after their term of office expires? Do they all have a pension in retirement? What did the ancient officials do after they retired?
The retirement system of ancient officials began in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and there are many sayings of official retirement, such as Zhishi, hanging cars, begging bones, etc. "Zhishi" generally refers to the age standard, or the officials who are really not in good health have the qualifications for retirement, this category is generally helped by others to propose retirement. The "begging skeleton" refers to the official's initiative to propose retirement, which is generally an official whose age has not reached the specified age, but whose physical condition is not suitable for continuing to serve, can take the initiative to retire on his own initiative.
The above two retirement statements belong to the voluntary retirement of officials, in addition to another kind of "compulsory retirement", in ancient times called "lingxiu" or "lehu", which means to order retirement, both of which are mandatory retirement methods taken when officials meet the conditions for retirement but do not apply, or even try their best to stay and continue to serve.
In ancient times, the retirement age of officials generally adopted the standard of "seventy and zhishi", this standard also continued to the later Tang, Song, Yuanming and Ming dynasties, with continuous development, the official retirement system in the Ming and Qing dynasties has been very perfect, like the Tang Dynasty, although there are provisions on the retirement age of officials, but there will also be some officials who do not meet the age standard, but the health is not very good and have to retire, and compared to the retirement age of civilian officials, the retirement age of military attaches will be a little smaller. Generally, when you are over 60 years old, you can apply for retirement and be managed by your own son, and after the Ming Dynasty, the age of retirement for officials has also been reduced, stipulating that military attaches can retire when they are over 60 years old, or if there are parents over 80 years old in the family, they can also apply for retirement in advance.
So what did ancient officials live on after retirement? Do they all have a pension after retirement?
The treatment of officials in each dynasty after retirement is different, before the Tang Dynasty there was no official pension system, in the Qin and Han Dynasties, except for a few officials who were originally aristocratic after retirement, most of the ordinary officials have no source of livelihood after retirement, it is equivalent to completely becoming a commoner, need to find a new job to make a living, because the officials do not have a pension system, resulting in many officials in order to be able to live in peace after retirement, so during the reign of the big money, Therefore, in order to solve this problem, the Tang Dynasty began to distribute some rice grains to retired officials, so that they could spend their old age in peace, and there would also be subsidies for retired officials in the form of field production, and during the Song Dynasty, the imperial court had regulations that regardless of the grade of officials during their reign, they could enjoy the treatment of "half a salary" after retirement, and since then the ancient official pension system has begun.
The Ming Dynasty as a well-known dynasty in history, although officials can apply for retirement at the age of 60, but only senior officials of the imperial court can enjoy the treatment of "half a salary" after retirement, ordinary officials originally have low salaries, and there is no pension after retirement, so some officials who are really too poor to survive have to apply to get two stone rice subsidies per month, the Qing Dynasty as a relatively perfect retirement system, there are also strict standards for the pension of retired officials. Officials will refer to the performance of officials during the reign and other circumstances, as the standard for them to receive pensions after retirement, if there is a non-standard assessment and are ordered to retire or dismissed by the emperor because of mistakes, these officials can not receive pensions, the rest of the officials will generally refer to the rank of the reign period, to determine how much pension can be taken after retirement, for example, officials with more than three pins can still receive the "full" pension after retirement, as for officials below the three pins can only receive a "half-paid" pension if they do not have the emperor's grace However, Qing officials can retain their rank and even promote Yin and their descendants when they retire, so the treatment given by the Qing Dynasty to retired officials is still very good.
So what do these officials do after they retire? Why do they all choose to return home?
The first is political reasons, in order to avoid retired officials interfering in government affairs, the interpretation of "retiring to Shi" in the "Ram Biography and Xuan A.D. Year" is "Zhi Shi, returning to the Jun", if the officials are highly respected in the imperial court, from the emperor's point of view, in order to eliminate their influence in the imperial court, they must hope that they can return to their hometown after retirement.
In addition, it is inevitable that there will be political enemies in the imperial court, and officials have no power after retirement, so in order to avoid these people taking revenge on themselves openly and secretly, it is the clearest choice to return to their hometowns and stay away from politics.
Secondly Chinese pay attention to the tradition of returning to the hometown and returning the fallen leaves to the roots, and the local feelings passed down from generation to generation, so after the officials retire, they choose to return to their hometowns to enjoy their old age and avoid the regret of dying elsewhere.
In ancient times, the capital was mostly land and gold, and the price was certainly much higher than in the countryside, for officials who could only receive a small amount of pension, in order to live a stable life in their old age, it was the best choice to retire to their hometown to buy land and real estate.