Landed gentry in China

The gentry, or landed gentry in China was the elite who also held additional privileged status through passing the Imperial exams, which made them eligible to hold government office. These literati, or scholar-officials, (shenshi紳士 or jinshen縉紳), also called 士紳shishen "scholar gentry" or 鄉紳xiangshen "local gentry", held a virtual monopoly on office holding, and overlapped with an unofficial elite of the wealthy. The Tang and Song dynasties expanded the civil service exam to replace the nine-rank system which favored hereditary and largely military aristocrats. As a social class they included retired mandarins or their families and descendants. Owning land was often their way of preserving wealth.