Shen Shixing

• Born: 1535
• Died: 1614
• Chinese: 申時行 (Shēn Shíxíng)

Shēn Shíxíng served as Grand Secretary during the last several decades of the reign of the Wanli Emperor, from the 1580s until his death in the 1610s.

Shen achieved the top position among 299 examtakers who passed the 1562 Chinese imperial examinations, and was appointed to the Hanlin Academy. He served in the Hanlin Academy for fifteen years, as literary editor and reader-in-waiting, serving in a non-academic post (vice-minister) for only seven months, and never taking any post outside of the capital. He served for a time as imperial lecturer to the Longqing Emperor, and lecturer and tutor to the Wanli Emperor, and contributed to the compilation of sections of the Ming shi-lu (Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty) covering the reigns of the Longqing and Jiajing Emperors, reading through countless documents in order to compile the official histories. He was named junior grand-secretary in 1578.

Following the death of Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng in 1582, his successor Zhang Siwei held the position for only a very short time; he was influential in reversing many of Juzheng's policies, but within the year, his father passed away. Shen Shixing, then a junior grand-secretary, was appointed to substitute for Zhang Siwei while Zhang attended to mourning rites for his father. However, Zhang never returned from having gone to mourn his father; before long, he fell ill and died himself, leaving Shen Shixing to replace him on a more permanent basis, becoming (senior) Grand Secretary in 1583 or 1584. In 1585, he was granted by the Emperor the privilege of wearing a buzi (chest badge) featuring the python, a symbol of position above the First Rank.

By 1587, Shen was considered an elder statesman, despite being younger than both the Second Grand Secretary Xu Guo and Third Grand Secretary Wang Xijue. His extensive experience sifting through documents, lecturing on matters of policy, and so forth, made him well-equipped to know the proper procedures and precedents for a myriad of matters and situations. While Zhang Siwei had worked to expose Zhang Juzheng's gross mistakes in governance, Shen Shixing was a loyal devotee of Zhang Juzheng; he recognized and acknowledged that mistakes were made, but upheld that these were not intentional abuses of power. Described in documents from the time as a "mellow" and "stable" man, Shen seems to have believed chiefly in the maintenance of authority and harmony through political rituals and shows of sincerity. The emperor had to be shown to be actively engaged in caring about the bureaucrats and about the matters of the realm, and the hierarchy had to be enacted through regular rituals, performing and thus reaffirming, reconstituting, the officials' position beneath the emperor, and the emperor's in service to the cosmic order and moral law.

References

• Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No Significance, Yale University Press (1981), 42-74.