There are also always individual family members who are not interested in official careers or who failed in their careers and live as free "literati" either in the big cities or on the home farms.

If difficulties arose in the estates either by attacks of bandits or by war or other catastrophes, the family members in official positions could use their influence and power to restore the property in the provinces.

If, on the other hand, the family members in official positions lost their positions or even their lives by displeasing the court, the home branch could always find ways to remain untouched and could, in a generation or two, recruit new members and regain power and influence in the government.

Some authors believe that Chinese leading families generally pass through a three- or four-generation cycle: a family member by his official position is able to acquire much land, and his family moves upward.

But some of the branch families, created often by the less able family members, show a tendency towards downward social mobility.

This means that gentry families produced more children than was necessary to replenish the available leading positions; thus, some family members had to get into lower positions and had to lose status.

T'an-yao, head of the state church since 460, induced the state to attach state slaves, i.e. enslaved family members of criminals, and their families to state temples.

They paid great attention to their genealogies, had the state keep records of them and insisted that the dynastic histories mentioned their families and their main family members.

When a craftsman or soldier died, another family member had to replace him; therefore, families of craftsmen were not allowed to separate into small nuclear families, in which there might not always be a suitable male.

The icing on the cake is however to inveigle into a chief minister's coterie thereby ensuring government contracts for self or family members.

These, together with other family members not reported as engaged in gainful occupations, constitute the agricultural population, and comprize more than one third of the total population of the country.

This personal parasitism of property owners is aggravated by provisions of property law under which the owners of property can give, sell or bequeath these sources of unearned income to family members, friends, associates.