Calculations as to lengths of careers on the Grand Council
were not made by Fu Tsung-mao. Mine are based on the table
in Ch'ing-shih (History of the Ch'ing dynasty; Taipei, 1961),
IV:2486-2512, and that, largely based on Ch'ing-shih-kao, in
Fu Tsung-mao, Ch'ing-tai chün-chi-ch'u tsu-chih chi chih-chang
chih yen-chiu (A study of the functions and organization of
the grand council of the Ch'ing dynasty; Taipei, 1967), pp.
529-683. To avoid worrying about fractions of a year, I have
roughly determined the length of each career (many were con-
tinuous, but far from all) by counting the number of times a
person is found on those lists which each give all members for
a particular year, and then subtracting one year, except in the
case of those names found on only one such list. The latter
persons may well have served for only a month or two, and I
count them as "about one year or considerably less." My con-
servative bias is reinforced by the fact that if a person appears
on two lists, he may well have served for almost two years, but,
again, I give him only one year. Also the careers at the very
end of the dynasty were abnormally short, being cut off by the
abolition of the Grand Council. As a further precaution to pre-
vent undue inflation of my figure for the length of the average
career on the Council, I have counted the forty-four men whom
I list as serving about 1 year or considerably less as having alto-
gether served only 22 man-years; thus I arrive at a total of 951
man-years on the Council, which, divided by 146, yields 6.5
years as the average length of a career.

On the other hand, I have not subtracted time spent by a
grand councillor outside the Council (often outside the capital)
on a special mission, after which he often returned to the
Council. Since the job of grand councillor was legally not a
regular post but simply a condition of hsing-tsou (to perform
certain administrative functions not defined as a regular office),
being ordered to do something else was about equivalent to
leaving the Grand Council; one's place there apparently lacked
any other residual legal form. However, from a practical point
of view, such missions outside the Council, although sometimes
taking several months, can be looked at as temporary leaves,
and that is how I have regarded them. Fu Tsung-mao, chün-
chi-ch'u, p. 145, also takes this view.

As for the reasons given in the table of the Ch'ing-shih for

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