Chü-jen was the traditional civil service examination used in premodern China. The exam was open to any male and tested them on writing and knowledge of literary classics. People like Huang Liu-hung would become scholars and receive government posts like magistrate based on how well they did on their exam (13). Chin-shih was the highest rank one could achieve on the exam, as demonstrated by Feng K’o-ts’an, the chief editor of the Local History of T’an-ch’eng (2).

One way of paying taxes in 17th-century China was through labor on public works. This system is referred to as corvée. Any “adult male aged between sixteen and sixty” was “liable to corvée labor” (38).