Yamen
| Yamen | |||||||||||||||
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The former yamen in Kowloon Walled City Park, Hong Kong. | |||||||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 衙門 / 牙門 / 官衙 | ||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 衙门 / 牙门 / 官衙 | ||||||||||||||
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| Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||||
| Vietnamese alphabet | Quan nha / Nha môn | ||||||||||||||
| Chữ Hán | 官衙 / 衙門 / 牙門 | ||||||||||||||
| Korean name | |||||||||||||||
| Hangul | 관아 | ||||||||||||||
| Hanja | 官衙 | ||||||||||||||
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| Manchu name | |||||||||||||||
| Manchu script | ᠶᠠᠮᡠᠨ | ||||||||||||||
| Möllendorff | yamun | ||||||||||||||
A yamen (ya-men; traditional Chinese: 衙門; simplified Chinese: 衙门; pinyin: yámén; Wade–Giles: ya2-men2; Manchu: ᠶᠠᠮᡠᠨyamun) was the administrative office or residence of a local bureaucrat or mandarin in imperial China, Korea, and Vietnam. In some places, such as Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, it was named as almshouse. A yamen can also be any governmental office or body headed by a mandarin, at any level of government: the offices of one of the Six Ministries is a yamen, but so is a prefectural magistracy. The term has been widely used in China for centuries, but appeared in English during the Qing dynasty.