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A Career between Two Cultures: Guo Yu, a Chinese Literatus in the Yuan Bureaucracy

After the Mongols overthrew the Jurchen Jin dynasty in 1234, the leaders of the emergent Mongol Empire established bureaucratic systems that differed from those of previous dynasties in China. The Mongols suspended the civil service examinations, which had been the main avenue for Chinese literati to access to government posts since the eleventh century. The Mongol rulers instead favored personal connections in recruiting government officials. How, then, did Chinese literati succeed in the new bureaucratic systems under Mongol rule (1234–1368)? This article seeks to answer this question by examining the experience of a Chinese official, Guo Yu [郭郁] (ca. 1259– ). There are two reasons for focusing on him. First, he was a Chinese scholar who successfully coped with the Mongolian patronage system. Second, he left unusual texts that provide historians with a rare opportunity to learn in detail about the bureaucratic and scholarly life of a Chinese literatus that would normally have passed unrecorded and thus unnoticed. The Mongol Yuan dynasty developed a dual bureaucratic system evolved from Mongolian and Chinese institutions. While conventional Chinese administrative divisions with the ranked bureaucracy persisted, Mongols assigned a non-Chinese supervisor called daruγači (Chin. Dahuhuachi [達魯花赤])