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This paper discovers the names of five governors of the Qin dynasty Dongting commandery, and finds that there were four possible locations of the commandery capital. Having determined that the “Qianling yi you xing Dongting” bamboo manuscripts were envelopes delivered from Dongting commandery to Qianling county, and Dongting commandery controlled over at least fourteen counties, we can draw a map on this basis. Based on these findings, this paper argues that the counties interacted with each other through document delivery, transportation, logistics, judiciary, official disposal, migration, and prison labour. This paper then indicates that in the Dongting commandery, all of the soldiers and officials, even at the lowest level, came from places other than the Dongting area. Non-native officials, soldiers, civilians, and criminals together constituted an immigrant community. Considering that the locals seemed to have no legitimate military power, political power or living space within the city, the Dongting area could be regarded as a colonial society. The Dongting commandery is typical of the “strong government, weak society” phenomenon. For the Qin government, the commandery system was a powerful institution to monitor regional society. However, implementing such harsh rules upon the remote south also reflected the excessive state apparatus, which might explain the quick collapse of the Qin dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Song dynasty, the Secretariat Clerk ... was the highest ranking clerk ... in the Administration Chamber ... under the Secretariat-Chancellery .... Although the official title was changed to Office Manager (... and ...) during the Yuanfeng ... reforms, most documents and protocols continued to use the name Secretariat Clerk. This office played a very important role in the transmission of official documents: its duties included reviewing documents written by scribe assistants ..., assistant clerks ..., and secretaries ..., and passing them on to the Bureau Director ... for approval. Since this office ranked highest among all clerks and was charged with handling important administrative affairs, the Secretariat Clerk was well rewarded in terms of promotion, salary, benefits, and awards. As such, most clerks aspired to being promoted to this position. However, during their reigns, both Taizu ... and Taizong ... noticed that lower-ranking clerks who were promoted to this position were prone to corruption and tended to ignore or violate the rules of the land. As a result, these emperors offered strong incentives to members of the literati to encourage them to take the post of Secretariat Clerk. Ultimately, however, this attempt failed to produce any results due to the attitude among members of the literati that being a clerk in the civil service was disgraceful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]