To trace the changing social and political meaning of the term ‘the Ts'uis of Po-ling’ one must start in the Han, for it is in this period that the Ts'uis first appeared in history. The Ts'uis who lived in the Han were very different than their descendants in later centuries. Although one of the ‘powerful families’ often mentioned by historians of the Han, they were not yet a coherent lineage with a defined relationship to the government. The Ts'uis were rather an upper-class family which for several succeeding generations produced men who gained prominence in the capital; their status seems to have depended largely on informal factors such as local influence and style of life. Besides helping to clarify the meaning of the term ‘Po-ling Ts'uis’, study of the Ts'uis in the Han provides a valuable comparative perspective. A large number of the characteristics which the Ts'uis and other aristocratic families displayed in later centuries were already possessed by the Han Ts'uis and thus should not be considered the distinctive product of aristocratic privilege.

Genealogists in the T'ang and Sung dynasties traced the origin of the Ts'ui family to a grandson of T'ai Kung, a semi-mythical recluse of Shantung at the time of the Chou conquest (c. 1100 B.C.) This grandson was enfeoffed at Ts'ui city, in the state of Ch'i, and took his name from the fief.