Middle Taiyuan Nobles

The purpose of this article is discussing the Tai-yuan scholar-official families of early imperial China. By the means of mutual appraisal Tai-yuan District became the famous town at the end of the Later Han Dynasty. The Great houses seem to have been as likely to oppose others as to support them. The political career of the Tai-yuan scholar-official families, during the generations between the Cao Wei Dynasty and the Western Jin Dynasty, directly decides the political status and the social prestige in the Western Jin Dynasty, when the famous people of the Tai-yuan scholar-official families keep in connections each other, creating the circle of the upper class who intermarried. Till the Western Jin Dynasty disintegrates the circle of connections splits. While Liu Kun being appointed Acting Grand Administrator of the Bing-zhou, few members of the Great houses take part in his organization. The historical sources pay less and less attention to Tai-yuan scholar-official families during the period of Invasions and Disorders(311-c.400). In the Northern Wei Dynasty the rise of the Tai-yuan scholar-official families most probably depended on the conjunctions of mutual aids, however they struggle to obtain the fist place in the Bing-zhou Prefect between the Wang family and the Guo family. The period from the division of the court in 534 to the founding of the Sui-Tang Dynasties witnessed a major divergent routes in the Tai-yuan scholar-official families, even the schism appeared in one family. Several people joined the Western court at Chang- an, the most of which obtained the high political office. The scholar-official families who stayed in the East became less stable as it was more difficult for them to maintain their roles as bureaucrats. The Guo families during the Sui-Tang era divided into three branches: some moving away from Tai-yuan to Chang-an, some to Luo-yang, while others staying in the Bing-zhou Prefect who migrate between Tai-yuan and Shang-dang Prefect. The Guo families moving to Chang-an rapidly became the bureaucrats; the families to Luo-yang have to choose between the bureaucrat in the court and in the Prefect; the rest staying in the Bing-zhou struggled to maintain the strong local base and social prestige, but they lacked the ability to finish it.