Memorial to the throne

Submission of a memorial was a right theoretically available to everyone from the crown prince to a common farmer, but the court secretaries would read them aloud to the emperor and exercised considerable control over what was considered worthy of his time.

[3] Under Emperor An, however, Zhang Heng was placed in charge of reception of the memorials as part of his post as Prefect of the Majors for Official Carriages under the Ministry of Guards.

In AD 1375, Ru Taisu, a bureau secretary of the Ministry of Justice, was flogged by the Hongwu Emperor for two harsh comments of his 17,000-character memorial.

Having the remainder read aloud the next day while in bed, the emperor instituted four of Ru's proposals and praised the last 500 characters as a model memorial for all future submissions.

[8] Memorials were delivered by the imperial courier network and copied, summarized, and entered into official registers by the clerks of the Grand Secretariat.