get into power during the whole period.

While we will discuss the individual developments later in some detail,
a few words about the changes in general might be given already here.
The wars which followed Huang Ch'ao's rebellion greatly affected the
ruling gentry. A number of families were so strongly affected that they
lost their importance and disappeared. Commoners from the followers of
Huang Ch'ao or other armies succeeded to get into power, to acquire
property and to enter the ranks of the gentry. At about A.D. 1000 almost
half of the gentry families were new families of low origin. The state,
often ruled by men who had just moved up, was no more interested in the
aristocratic manners of the old gentry families, especially no more
interested in their genealogies. When conditions began to improve after
A.D. 1000, and when the new families felt themselves as real gentry
families, they tried to set up a mechanism to protect the status of
their families. In the eleventh century private genealogies began to be
kept, so that any claim against the clan could be checked. Clans set up
rules of behaviour and procedure to regulate all affairs of the clan
without the necessity of asking the state to interfere in case of
conflict. Many such "clan rules" exist in China and also in Japan which
took over this innovation. Clans set apart special pieces of land as
clan land; the income of this land was to be used to secure a minimum of
support for every clan member and his own family, so that no member ever
could fall into utter poverty. Clan schools which were run by income
from special pieces of clan land were established to guarantee an
education for the members of the clan, again in order to make sure that
the clan would remain a part of the _élite_. Many clans set up special
marriage rules for clan members, and after some time cross-cousin
marriages between two or three families were legally allowed; such
marriages tended to fasten bonds between clans and to prevent the loss