The Research On The Government Official Vacation System In Ming Dynasty

The development of feudal society is accompanied by a variety of institutionalchange, and the official holiday system is one of the change. Throughout the wholefeudal society, the official holiday system has a long history. In the process ofcontinuous development in Han dynasty, the political system continuing to improve,and the official holiday system also gradually formed. The development of this systemhas reached a stage of relatively complete until the Ming dynasty, and graduallybecomes a way of the feudal rulers to supervise the officials. At the same time, thesystem is also becomes an important part of official management system. Theimplementation of the official holiday system, showing that the official holiday has animportant position in the whole feudal society. It is not only ensured the officialsfocusing on politics, but also has a certain security to promote the social stability andeconomic development. The official leave system in Ming dynasty inherited itsprevious leave system and established a new model with some features of its own.From the political point of view, the evolution of this system is a microcosm of thesociety in Ming dynasty official management system.With the development of theofficial leave system, the types gradually reduced. In the Ming dynasty, routineofficial holidays and accident holidays was the main types and there had anotherholidays that official was rewarded by the emperor and dropping out holidays. Thesetwo type holidays belongs to special holiday. The routine official holidays includingregular holiday and festival holiday. The accident mainly including leave for personalaffairs and the sick leave. For special holiday, it mainly because the official wasrewarded by the emperor, so they has the holiday in order to be leave. But there has aspecial phenomenon, because of the death of officials, the emperor himself droppingout government affairs in the funeral. Due to different personal interests, officials hadvarious kinds of lives during holiday times. Aside the private party-Tong Nianhui (同年会) between officials, some of them were doing composing works and givinglectures during the period of filial mourning (丁忧). What’s more, there were someofficials writing poetry and so on at holiday times.It is beneficial to strengthen the management of officials to carrying out the leave system of Ming dynasty. Government officials will adjusted working status to dealingwith government affairs. And the leave system had a positive effect on strengtheningthe government’s work efficiency. However, certain shortcomings can be found, suchas officials would not to back assumption of duty and so on. Nevertheless, the offlcialleave system of Ming dynasty could serve as a valuable lesson and experience for ourmodern festival holiday system.