. . "Scholar-officials, also known as Scholar-gentlemen, Scholar-bureaucrats or Scholar-gentry (Chinese: \u58EB\u5927\u592B; pinyin: sh\u00EC d\u00E0f\u016B) were civil servants appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance from the Han dynasty to the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912, China's last imperial dynasty. After the Sui dynasty these officials mostly came from the scholar-gentry (\u7EC5\u58EB sh\u0113nsh\u00EC) who had earned academic degrees (such as xiucai, juren, or jinshi) by passing the imperial examinations."@en .