Jiāngshān

Jiangshan lay in the western country of old Laiyang County, in the area later administered as Laixi. During the late Ming, members of its Chi lineage entered the imperial examination and official world. Their careers connected a rural Jiaodong community with the court, while leaving names that remained important in local family memory.

Chi Dacheng obtained the jinshi degree during the Tianqi reign and served as an investigating censor. His nephew Chi Kuang passed the Shandong provincial examination in 1636 and became a jinshi the following year. The two men belonged to the final decades of Ming government, when examination success could carry a family from local standing into service far from home. Jiangshan's association with them provides a specific link between the village and that wider administrative culture. Chi Kuang moved to Nanjing around 1644, as the Ming dynasty collapsed. His movements carried this branch of the family story beyond Shandong at a moment of profound political disruption.