Excerpt from The Chinese Government: A Manual of Chinese Titles, Categorically Arranged and Explained, With an Appendix The object with which the present work has been undertaken is sufficiently expressed in its title to leave little to be said in explanation of its intended scope. A happily increasing interest in Chinese studies, and the necessity which is becoming more and more widely felt for an enlarged appreciation of the modes of action adhered to by the Chinese Government, justify the belief that every new contribution to the means of reference will meet with welcome whilst, in the present instance, the labour of which the results are embodied in the ensuing pages has been stimulated by an obvious requirement of the public service. The urgent need of the key to the designations in use, in both Chinese and English, for the titles of public functionaries, which might be accepted by translators as a common rule, was represented several years ago by Sir Walter Medhurst, at that time Her Britannic Majesty's Consul at Shanghai, in an official communication addressed to Her Majesty's Minister; and the writer, who had long contemplated the preparation of some such work, owes to this circumstance the immediate inducement which has hastened the fulfilment of 'his design. As in many other tasks of a like description, however, the plan originally conceived soon betrayed the necessity of development in a degree unlooked for at the outset; and a variety of circumstances, besides, have intervened to delay its execution for a considerable length of time. A period of comparative leisure having allowed the design to be once more taken in hand, it has now been carried to a conclusion on a scale the tendency of which has been continually toward enlargement. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.