> If you wanted to gain influence in the government, you took the imperial examination, became a bureaucrat, rose through the Nine Ranks, and hopefully, by the

> If you wanted to gain influence in the government, you took the imperial examination, became a bureaucrat, rose through the Nine Ranks, and hopefully, by the time you reached the top, you had enough governing experience to see merit in the old way of doing things. Yes but this was a huge source of instability for the Qing regime. Arguably, the Qing's failure to adapt to the modern world came in part from a cabal of bureaucrats that opposed reforms.