| In Chinese ancient historical studies, family has always been a research topic which attracted the interest of the scholarly community. In recent years, following the rise of socio-family historical studies, the rise and decline of sole family, along with issues of the big local family's influence on region has received increasing emphasis. This study takes families related in 1595 prefaces or epilogues of genealogy in the books of series corpus of Ssu-ku as cases study, and discusses the upward social mobility of family in Ming dynasty, in order to clarify as a whole the pathways, condition, mechanisms and local effect of family rise in Ming dynasty. The main body of this thesis is divided into 6 chapters, and 3 parts.Chapter 1 is part 1. It reviews the geographical distribution of the family cases of this thesis. Among the 1595 prefaces and epilogues of genealogy, 1474 concerning 1370 families' location can be known. When we made overall statistics of these families at three different aspects such as province, prefecture and county, we found that the geographical distribution of these families were great imbalanced, and that it formed a basic pattern of more families in southeast China but few families in northwest and southwest China. Most of the families crowded in the back and south area of the Changjiang River. The three provinces, Kiangsi, Nanking and Zhejiang, located in the back area of the Changjiang River, are dense set. Kiangsi is the densest place. The two provinces, Fujian and Guangdong, located in the south of the Changjiang River, are vice-dense set. The other nine Provinces located in northwest and southwest China are sparse region. Yunnan,Guizhou and Guangxi are sparsest. The unequally geographical distribution also existed between different prefecture and county. The peculiar surroundings, flourished literati, mature family-lineage system and prosperous economy of the back and south area of the Changjiang River in Ming dynasty may be the key answers of that pattern of the geographical distribution.Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 constitute part 2. This part analyses the stratification and upward mobility of families in Ming. The main content of this part consists of two sides. One is describe from a static viewpoint the distributing proportion in social vertical structure of families related in prefaces or epilogues of genealogy in Ming dynasty, the other is review from a dynamic viewpoint the relationship of different social stratifications, especially the ways and mechanism of the movement of families from lower class to upper class. Complying with the crazy admiration of bureaucracy in Ming, considering the social mobility characteristic of most of families related in data, and referred to the three key measurement of social stratification theory of Max Web, Chapter 2 divides the families which existedin different social stratifications in Ming into three kinds-- bureaucracyfamily, pendent family,latent family. Based upon the discussion of the three kinds of families and their vertical combination ways, this thesis draws the outline of the social stratification of families in Ming dynasty. Chapter 3 emphasized to discuss some important ways of social mobility of families in Ming such as learning Confucian books, becoming army or doctor,doing business and marrying into the purple. It concludes that promotion in army is the quickest way for families to get political position, but it just occurred at the beginning of Ming dynasty. During the whole Ming time, acquiring official ranks through imperial examinations is the most primary, respectable and honorable way for upward mobility. Recommendation, enrollment of government schook becoming a doctor or a trader, marrying into the purple are all minor channels. And these minor ways would ultimately be attributed to learning Confucian books. Chapter 4 and chapter 5 of this thesis are talking respectively about the elements which affected the social movement of families from their interior mechanism and exterior surroundings. Modus operandi of Chapter 4 starts with paying in particular attention to the varieties and speeds of families from different backgrounds, then observe the proceed of the upward mobility of families in Ming. Firstly, it analyzes the background of bureaucracy families,and divides them into two styles--official style and civilian style. Thencompares their main upper paths, exposes their fundamental movement course, computes their common movement speed. Through all these, it observes that inner factors, especially some hereditary ones, influenced from all-sides on the families upward mobility. Compared with ordinary family, official family's upward movement was more quick and convenient. Some acquired factors could promote to some degree an ordinary family becoming into an official family, but the promotion is hard and slow. Generally speaking, prominent promotion of this kind of family might need 5 or 6 generations, the quickest also need 2 generation. Chapter 5 displaces the discussion to the influence of the regime and its circulation on family social mobility. It not only narrates the sinking down of traditional families' and the ascending of some new families by military achievements under conditions of the long-standing war and the collapse of system, but also analyzes the heavy and permanent infection of family social mobility from family migration which caused by war. Furthermore, It also discusses vertically the varied chances of family upward mobility provided by the implement of some important systematic regulations from establish, develop and maturity, and illuminates the causes of energy losing of Ming dynasty.Chapter 6 is part 3. It takes Tai-ho County, Kiangsi Province, in Ming dynasty China as a case study, showing the influence from the rise of families on regional social resources. Ming dynasty, especially the time before Hongzhi era, Tai-ho County in Kiangsi Province had dense distributing big families, a good many of literati and plenty of prefaces or epilogues of genealogy, which make this place can be chose from other 300 more counties, become the best case of this thesis. Through the studying of more than 100 big families in Tai-ho County, it validates the conclusion of the upper say about the qualification and mechanism of family upward mobility on the one hand, on the other hand, it considers that family belongs to region and region is the foundation for family existence. Although family hegemony on region lied in a great measure on the amount of their possession quotient of regional social resources, inasmuch, the process of family promotion went always with the plunder of political, economic and cultural and educational resources. However, when limited resources had been partitioned, and a stable force structure had formed, the big families would construct their existing place from culture and education, economy,patronizing the younger generations ,striving more resources from outside and so on, to improve the relationship of family and region, furthermore, to provide harmonious condition for their development. What they had done composed "the redounding phenomenon", and this kind of redounding behavior had surely exerted notable effect for regional stability and development. It may be the real cause that how ancient Chinese family could control region social.Besides the three parts, this thesis also discusses the relationship between imperial examinations and social stratification in the final part. It considers that as a system of choosing person with ability, imperial examinations in Ming, which erected the aim for pursuing justice and equality, had reached its goal at every program. However, the more perfect the examinations had became, the more fraudulent it was, and this fraudulence would make social inequality allowable and permanent. Compared with other choosing official system, imperial examinations had unexampled manipulating advantages in maintaining existing social stratification.
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