More than three hundred “steles of appreciation for departed officials” (qusi bei, or “steles of benevolent administration,” dezheng bei) remain from the Yuan dynasty, while only about thirty were passed down from the Tang and Song dynasties combined. This article investigates this Yuan phenomenon in terms of the concept of “social writing” and its relation to the formation of literati identity. These steles were not only physically erected, but their texts were also circulated in social networks of the literati through various forms of writings. An array of qusi bei and related inscriptions, prefaces, poems, biographies, and other genres in which officials were praised formed a kind of “laudatory culture.” Focusing on works dedicated to and about the mid-Yuan official Guo Yu, this article also shows how these various texts depicted a person and became a record of his life. It finally argues that the material form of the scroll (juan) and the mode of “postfacing” (tiba) were the key elements in this laudatory culture.
Yuan dynasty, literati, steles of benevolent administration, genre, social network
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