Some time during the tenth year of the reign of the Chenghua emperor (1474 in conventional rendering), a certain Li Zongxian of Changzhou prefecture (Southern Metropolitan Region) was handed the unenviable assignment of serving as prefect of Xunzhou in central Guangxi. Unless Li was exceptionally brilliant or especially unfortunate, the prefect-designate was probably in his late twenties or early thirties in 1460 when he obtained the much-esteemed metropolitan graduate (jin shi) degree. It is unclear what Li's earlier appointments had been or how well he had performed in those capacities, but as he was ranked a middling 62 (out of 156) in the metropolitan examinations, it was unlikely he would have been placed on a career fast track in the Ming officialdom. Although the post of prefect was accompanied by a respectable rank of 4a (on a descending scale from 1a to 9b), it is not difficult to imagine how disappointed Li Zongxian must have been, especially when one realizes that the prefecture of Xunzhou had been the site of major clashes between the Ming military and the local “Yao” population less than a decade earlier and that neither his predecessor nor successor for the position even possessed the jin shi degree.