ABSTRACT
The district grain prices were sent up from the district yamen to the next higher yamen in the form of ten-day lists and monthly price reports. The lowest level of administration at which grain prices were gathered were the markets in or serving the district towns. Commodity price reporting appears to have been abandoned in practice during the Ming. Nor was it reintroduced during the Ch’ing except insofar as the occasional guidelines which have already been mentioned were promulgated by the Board of Works and other Boards. The operation of such granaries for price control purposes required all kinds of price reports and price summaries during the Ch’ing. In the grain price lists submitted by the governor of Shantung in 1772 the gloss ‘rising prices’ had been added in most cases. The price quotations surviving from the different levels of the system have to be handled with great care for their accuracy depended upon the efficiency of non-specialized clerks.
