Pingyao County Yamun Travel Guide

Pingyao County Yamun is located on the center of Pingyao Ancient City with 600 years history. It is the largest existing county yamun in China.

County Yamun is the ancient China county goverment office, it is always located in the best spot of a town or city, so do Pingyao. The yamun in Pingyao was first built in Beiwei Period (386-534 AD) and now the oldest existing hall is with more than 600 years history, from the Ming Dynasty. So now the Pingya County Yamun is the best place to discover how the county government work during the Ming and Qing Dynasty.

There are six main office during the Ming and Qing period:
Official Management Office
This office was in charged of the assessment of administrative officials -- appointment, removal and promotion; record the major events during the term of local officials; register the local people who have passed the imperial examinations at all levels.

Population and Taxation Office
Their duty include: check the population and cultivated land in ancient Pingyao, collect taxes. Part of the tax was handed over to the emperor and the rest was handed to the head magistrate. They had another job is to handle disaster relief.

Etiquette and Imperial Examination Office
The office presided and organized all important ceremonies in Pingyao. Such as sacrifice Confucius, sacrifice the City God, sacrifice the god of the land and grain, welcome the spring banquet, welcome the imperial banquet.
About the imperial examination, the office organized the county level imperial examination, contact the person who passed the county examination to take the next level exam, arranged their further study and exam preparation. If the local people who passed the higher lever exam, the office would send happy news to examiner's family.
At the same time, this office was also responsible for good things conduct propaganda in Pingyao.

Prison Administration Office
The office responsible for the paperwork of the cases, find the applicable provisions in the national laws for the head magistrate, writing and reporting the judgment. Also they were in charged of putting up the wanted.
Also the prison daily administration is another job of this office.
Furthermore, the legal medical expert of this office could verified the condition of the injuries of the plaintiff and defendants, or conducted an autopsy.

Military Office
This office administers the daily drills of military soldiers, and oversee the manufacture of weapons.

Construction and Fabrication Office
This office was in charge of municipal engineering construction. Such as altars for sacrifice, Confucius temple, water conservancy projects, bridges, roads, passes, etc. Further more, their work include gold ingot and silver tael fabrication, weapons and detention fabrication, etc.