ABSTRACT
It is well known that late imperial China's literati or degree-holders occupied a strategic position both within Chinese society and within its polity. The Chinese bureaucracy that manned the central government and the field administration was largely drawn from among degree-holders who had obtained the jinshi and the juren degrees. Taiwan-based degree-holders, of both Hakka and Fujian origin, had what is now Tainan City as their administrative center. The Guangdong tablet list of contributions sheds light on several interrelated issues involving interconnections between what we might essentialize as state and as society in Taiwan during the Qing dynasty. From the list as recorded on the stela, in the absence of additional information, it is not at all apparent that the contributions involved large-scale solicitation throughout the Hakka settlement zone, especially in South Taiwan. The push towards imperial legitimation was also conditioned during this period by the ongoing tension in Taiwan between Hakka and Hokkien.
