Fig. 2. A map of Ch'ii-fu Cou
the county.
 

', fVoiH Fan Taiig-ltian's history, Cli'ii-fn liaien rh 'ill, unusual in showing the roads in
 

gois, the literate and office-holding elite of
C:]hina reoriented itself in some part away
from hea\'\' reliance on go\ernment office as
the basis of status and towaixl local ambitions
and local prestige. New local institutions
emerged—among them the local academy or
shu-yuan. Extra-governmenial schools that de-
emphasized study centered on (he civil service
examinations and stressed learning for its
own sake, the shu-yuan became centers of
oppositional intellectual or political activity.
Some of these academies became the sites of
local history projects. Other local histories—
books in some ways like the older t'u-ching—
 

were compiled not bv administrators for
official use but by local gentry for their own
consumption, or as often by congenial admin¬
istrators and gentry in collaboration.

Later dynasties, and in particular the
Ch'ing (1644—1911), under which Fan Tang-
luan and Li Chung-chien wrote, recognized
the localist and potentialh' oppositional char¬
acter of independent academies and gentry-
run local histories. They tried with some suc¬
cess to co-opt both by absorbing them into the
centralized structtu'e of imperial governance.
Thus the Ch'ing emperors ordered the com¬
piling of histories for every prefecture and
 

[17]