Notes: Ranks are given in square brackets where the rank did not derive from the office held within the salt administration. See text for details. Dates are provided to indicate the creation of a new office or, in the case of the yanglian yin, a new grant or reduction in grant. Most grants originated in 1728, when the yanglian system was created: see Ch'u T'ung-tsu, op.cit., p.215, n. 36. Details given for the administration of the salt yards area represent the status quo as of 1768. See text for details of former salt yards. Chinese titles are given only for the first citation of each office.
the bulk of paperwork in the yamen.9 The office of salt censor as such was ungraded, the appointee retaining his official rank.10 Until the Yongzheng period, appointment to this office was for a one year term only, but beginning with the incumbency of Gaertai, who took office in
1724, the duration of the appointment fluctuated.*11
The salt controller (yanyunshi) headed a very much larger establishment, located in the New City. His offices housed, in addition to himself, four subordinate ranked officials, these being the salt secretary {jinglisi) , with a rank of 7b; the archivist {zhishi) , 8b; the treasury keeper (guangyingku dashi), 8a; and the Baita Canal salt investigator (Baitahe xunjiansi). Under the salt controller was a staff of ten 'clerks of documents', who in theory must have served as the head clerks of an original ten bureaux {fang) in the salt controller's offices. They were categorized under the functions of appointments (ii), population {hu), rites (li), military affairs {bing), works {gong), treasury {guangying k u), sundries {zake), receipts {shouzhi), despatches
{chengfa) and secretariat {jingli), for each of which there was also a
9Ibid.
10QCTD, 35.2213.
11LHYFZ, 1905, 131.16b.
12Ibid., 129.15a-19a; HZBY, 8.4b-6a. The title of the salt investigator stemmed from the fact that he had originally been stationed at the Baita Canal, east of Yangzhou. During the seventeenth century there had been the additional staff of one assistant salt controller {yuntong), 4b; one deputy assistant salt controller {yunfu), 5b, and one sub-assistant salt controller {yunpan), 6b. The offices of yuntong and yunfu were abolished in 1677 and that of yunpan in 1699: Xu Hong, op.cit., p .12.
specific bureau. By the beginning of the Daoguang period there were a total of twenty bureaux, new bureaux having been created both to handle the overflow of work from the original offices (in particular from that of treasury) and to manage new areas of responsibility. There was no quota for the subordinate clerks who filled the twenty bureaux, but their numbers must have been substantial. In addition, the secretary, archivist and salt investigator each had his own clerical assistant
(cuandian).
The salt controller, whose office was ranked 3b, had responsibilities which pertained more closely than those of the salt administrator to the substance of the salt industry. While the latter "directed" (tongli) the operation of the monopoly, the former actually "managed" (changli) it.115 ************* His duties involved the close surveillance of salt workers and salt production, scrutiny of weights and sales of salt,
1 ^
HZ B Y, 8.3a-4b. The dates for the creation of the new bureaux are unfortunately not provided. The total number of bureaux was formally nineteen (see Ho Ping-ti, "Salt Merchants," p.131), but the population bureau (hufang) which handled the business of the local salt ports (shi'an) was actually composed of the beifang (north bureau) and nanfang (south bureau), the former dealing with Huaibei local salt and the latter with Huainan.
14Ibid., 8.4b-7a. LHYFZ, 1905, 129.15a-19. The distinction between dianli and cuandian as it pertained within the field administration is explained by C h ' (i T'ung-tsu: the former title was given to clerks serving in the yamens of district magistrates and superior officials up to the level of the provincial treasurer or judge, the latter to clerks "in the treasury office and the granary office and (to) those who served in the yamen of the magistrate's subordinate officials." Ch'ü, op.cit., pp.225-226, n.14.
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1 ft the speedy return of salt taxes and reporting on backlogs of salt. Further, it was at his door, as we shall see, that responsibility for a variety of matters not directly or solely connected with the operation of the salt monopoly came to rest.
Outside of Yangzhou the salt administration was most strongly concentrated in the salt production zone, where spatial organization ran counter to the normal district, departmental and prefectural divisions and where to some extent the salt administration impinged on the workings of the civil administration. Huainan salt was produced along the inner coast of central Jiangsu, the production zone being defined by borders which extended either side of the Fangong dyke. The zone passed through the six district-level jurisdictions of Tongzhou, Rugao, Dongtai, Xinghua, Yancheng and Funing and was internally divided into a number of yards {chang) of which there were twenty-five at the beginning of the eighteenth century but, due to a process of amalgamation, only twenty by its end [see Table 6.1]. In Tongzhou, from south-east to north-west, lay Lusi, Jinsha (incorporating Xiting as of 1768), Yudong, Yuxi
(incorporating Yuzhong as of 1736) and Shigang. Shigang chang was in 1736 enlarged by the addition of the territory of Matang, which actually lay in Rugao district; in its new form the yard straddled the Tongzhou-Rugao border. Wholly within Rugao lay Juegang and Fengli. In Dongtai (or Taizhou prior to 1736) were the eight yards of Bingcha, Jiaoxie, Fuan, Anfeng, Liangduo, Dongtai, Heduo and Dingji; a ninth yard, Xiaohai, was amalgamated with Dingji in 1768. Caoyan and Liuzhuang, the
former incorporating Baiju as of 1736, lay partly within Dongtai and partly within Xinghua. Wuyou and Xinxiang lay in Yancheng district while Miaowan lay in Funing. The yards varied in size but together covered a considerable area, stretching either side of the seven hundred or more li
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