ABSTRACT
In the China of 2,000 years ago, being a state official was a great privilege that brought with it access for you, your friends and families to power, prestige and the sort of wealth that government contracts could bring. Originally the only way you could be part of such an elite was, basically, already to be part of this elite. A system of relationships and recommendations known as ‘Ta you guanxi’ translated as ‘He has some connections’ was what determined who received the top jobs and who didn’t. But then in AD 85 Emperor Zhang of Han1 set out an annual quota of officials drawn from erudite Confucian scholars and this selection process began to involve not just who you knew but what you knew. This selection process now included a procedure called ‘shece’ or ‘lot strip’ in which candidates drew bamboo strips at random on which was written an examination question.2
