Memorials to the throne

A memorial to the throne (Chinese: 章表, zhāngbiǎo) was an official communication to the Emperor of China. They were generally careful essays in Classical Chinese and their presentation was a formal affair directed by government officials. 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. They were used in imperial China as a means of regulating corrupt local officials who might otherwise have escaped oversight.

Under the Han dynasty, generally, the reception of memorials was the responsibility of the Imperial Secretary tasked with overseeing provincial administration. He generally needed to present any formal memorials, but could reject them for improper formatting. Masters of Writing under the Minister Steward then copied and processed these prior to submission to the emperor. 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.

During the early Ming dynasty, an Office of Report Inspection was established in AD 1370.

In AD 1375, Ru Taisu, a bureau secretary of the Ministry of Justice, was flogged by the Hongwu Emperor for the annoyance of his 17,000-character memorial. At the time he was summoned for his punishment, however, the emperor had only gotten to the 16,370th one. Having the remainder read aloud the next day, the emperor instituted four of Ru's proposals and praised the last 500 characters as a model memorial for all future submissions. Ru was nonetheless again castigated for having forced the emperor to listen to thousands of words before getting to the substance of his request.

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