China's household registration system has existed since ancient times. The earliest can be traced back to the Xia Shang Zhou period. When Dayu controlled the water, it carried out population registration. "Yuping Water and Soil, Ding Kyushu, Counting the People". At that time, the registered population was 13.55 million, equivalent to the population of a megacity. By the time of the Qin Dynasty, the household registration system was already very standardized, and the content of household registration was more detailed, including name, gender, occupation, residence, height, physical condition, marital status, property status, and life and death, migration, and flight. In the Two Han Dynasty, it was further improved, and the physical characteristics of individuals were also registered to facilitate identity verification.
During the Song Dynasty, people also had "household registration books" in their homes, called household stickers. According to the amount of family property, it is divided into "five-class Ding property books". Generally, the first and second classes are the upper households, the third class is the middle household, and the fourth and fifth classes are the lower households. If there are 100 acres of land, it can be counted as a middle household. The information on the household sticker is very detailed, generally there are heads of households, other population of the family, how many fields in the family, how many houses, and how many cows, chickens, ducks, pigs and other poultry and livestock. Even the boundary location of the field and the location of the house are clearly remembered. Therefore, the household registration book of the Song Dynasty is equivalent to the real estate certificate and land certificate. In addition, only men's names are on the hukou, and women are not.
During the Song Dynasty, there was a difference between urban hukou and rural hukou. Those who live in the city are called "Fangguo households", and those who live in the countryside are called "village households". According to whether the residents have real estate, they are divided into main households and customers. For example, if the family has land or property, it belongs to the main household. Those who rent other people's fields or work for others in the city are customers.
If you don't want to stay in the same place, but want to move your hukou to live somewhere else, is it okay? Da Song is still quite free in this regard. During the Song Dynasty, there was a rule: stay for one year, that is, listen to the annex. What does that mean? No matter where you are, as long as you have lived and worked for one year, you can settle into the local hukou. And this policy was common to the entire Song Dynasty, even the big city of Bianliang City, Tokyo. So the Song Dynasty was still very humane in terms of freedom of movement. This also facilitates the management of the migrant population.
So, if such freedom is so, will it cause the problem of "college entrance examination immigration"? In the Song Dynasty, the imperial examination was held every three years, and it was prescribed that the examination be applied locally. But if you have lived in the capital for a long time, far from home, and have no time to go back, you can also take the exam at Guozijian through the guarantee of local officials. However, the Song Dynasty imperial examination was also admitted by region, and each region had a fixed number of admission quotas, called the quota. For example, 100 people are admitted in Beijing. Outsiders can take the exam in Tokyo City, but it's not easy to get the 100 people. In order to obtain the qualification of local candidates, you must first obtain a household registration in Beijing, and have actually lived in Beijing for more than seven years, or have a field property in Beijing, before you can occupy the admission quota in Beijing.