Study On The System Of Welcoming And Seeing Off Officials In Song Dynasty And Its Implementation

The official greeting and seeing off system gradually matured and improved in the Song Dynasty.In the early days of the Northern Song Dynasty,the country was not unified,and the official welcome and send off system was mainly aimed at military generals such as Jiedushi.With the relative unity of the country and the failure of Song Taizong’s attack on Liao,the rulers turned their focus to internal affairs,and the official welcoming and sending system was included as a part of the national system.During the reign of emperor Zhenzong of the Song Dynasty,the official welcome system was no longer mainly aimed at military officials,especially in the fifth year of Dazhong Xiangfu,the rulers formulated a unified official welcome system according to the grade of officials.Since then,the official welcome system in the capital area has been basically established.With the attention paid by the imperial court to civil officials and the appointment of civil ministers as local governors,the formulation of the official welcome and send off system gradually shifted to civil officials,and the system of welcoming and sending off officials at the banquet was established in the period of song Renzong.During the reign of Emperor Shenzong of Song Dynasty,the system of official reception and delivery appeared new changes under the influence of Wang Anshi’s reform,but mainly aimed at official reception and delivery and official reception and delivery costs.In fact,hiring people to pick up officials has appeared in Song Renzong,but it has not been large-scale.With the failure of the reform,the anti-reform group led by Empress Dowager Gao tried to restore the welcoming and sending system of officials back to before the reform,but it was difficult to achieve.After Song Zhezong took office,part of the measures taken during the reform were gradually restored,and the welcoming and sending system of officials developed in a new direction.During the reign of Emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty,the system of welcoming and seeing off officials was summarized as a whole.The Southern Song Dynasty made new adjustments on the basis of inheriting the official welcome and send off system of the Northern Song Dynasty,especially the legal compilation of the Southern Song Dynasty "Qingyuan legal affairs" systematically recorded the official welcome and send off system of the Song Dynasty.The official welcoming and seeing off system in Song Dynasty mainly includes two parts:Central and local.The official welcoming and seeing off system in the capital region was first established.Due to the limitations of economic conditions,the local official welcoming and seeing off system was gradually established after the national economy was on the right track.The official welcoming and seeing off system in the capital area mainly includes two parts: the emperor gives a banquet to welcome and see off officials,and the welcoming and seeing off between officials and officials.The emperor’s welcome and farewell officials are mainly for senior officials.The welcome and farewell range among officials is more extensive,including colleagues,relatives and friends.The main content of official reception is feasting,which has fixed rituals,including merrymaking,drinking and seating order.The treatment and scale of welcoming and sending officials are mainly affected by the rank of officials,but the implementation process is more complex.It is a choice made by officials after weighing the pros and cons,especially demoted officials.In order to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages,officials mostly do not participate in welcoming and sending dismissed officials.In the local official welcoming and seeing off,there is a dual track operation of system and local customs.The local welcoming and seeing off custom is established in the process of longterm local implementation and is not uniformly formulated by the central government.Following customs or respecting the law has become a major problem faced by local officials.Usually,local customs play a major role in official greeting and seeing off.The Song Dynasty official greeting and seeing off system has strict requirements on the personnel,distance and content of official greeting and seeing off,but there are many problems in the implementation process.It led to a series of problems,such as people working hard,people fleeing to be displaced,financial shortage and so on,especially the cost of official welcoming and seeing off,which became a major disadvantage perplexing the two Song dynasties.In order to ensure the smooth official travel of officials,the imperial court provided corresponding pick-up and drop off people for officials,mainly including officials,public officials and soldiers.According to the distance,the pick-up and drop off people in the Song Dynasty can be divided into close pick-up,close drop off,remote pick-up and remote drop off people.When officials go to the post or leave the post,they are generally picked up or sent away by remote people,and the patrol of supervisory officials is picked up or sent away by close people.Officials have different official travel tasks and different types of pick-up and drop off people.Officials must send pick-up and drop off people in strict accordance with the regulations.The official in charge of sending and receiving people must send and receiving people within the specified time,so as to ensure that the travel official can start on time,and the official must return them within the specified time limit after arriving at the destination.The establishment of the pick-up and drop off system marked the gradual improvement of the official welcome and drop off system in the Song Dynasty.The imperial court not only provided personnel pickup and drop-off,but also provided corresponding means of transport.The number of means of transport varied with different grades of officials.However,in the process of implementation,officials often exceed the quota of transfer,private transfer,and a variety of reasons for the loan,resulting in soldiers unable to return to camp on schedule,displaced.Different from the previous generation,the Song Dynasty set up a special fee for welcoming and seeing off officials.At first,the official greeting and seeing off expenses mainly came from the public funds warehouse.The quota of public money means the quota of official welcome and see off expenses.However,with the increase of official welcome and see off frequency,the official special welcome and see off expenses are not enough to support the official welcome and see off.In order to increase the official welcome and see off expenses,officials have to expand the source of welcome and escort expenses,such as operating public money.The sources of official welcome and escort expenses are becoming more and more extensive,resulting in high official welcome and escort expenses and difficult to supervise.In order to solve the problem that the cost of greeting and seeing off officials is too high,officials put forward many solutions,such as strengthening supervision,limiting the amount of official gifts,reforming the official system,advocating long-term appointment,etc.,but with little effect.On the whole,the official welcoming and seeing off system in Song Dynasty presents two characteristics: one is the fuzziness of thewelcoming and seeing off regulations,and the other is that there are great regional differences in the official welcome system in Song Dynasty.Although the official welcoming and seeing off system in the Song Dynasty has been relatively complete,there are still many problems in the process of implementation,resulting in the farreaching impact of the official welcoming and seeing off system in the Song Dynasty and its implementation on all levels of society.