Of course they received salaries. Being a government functionary was an occupation first and foremost, even if it also meant honor. In China, all official salaries were measured in piculs of rice (dan) - the higher the office, the more piculs of rice they received. I'll use the Ming Dynasty as an example, since I'm most familiar with it, but the salaries paid to Ming officials were (on paper, more on this later) comparable to previous dynasties.

According to the Ming Hui Dian, the Ming had two kinds of salaries:

Ben Se (本色) - this is further subdivided into three types:

• A monthly stipend of 1 dan of rice, paid to all officials regardless of rank.
• 1 bolt of silk fabric, later changed to 0.7 taels of silver per bolt, paid ten times a year.
• 0.65 taels of silver (equivalent to 1 dan of rice), paid twice of year.

Zhe Se (折色) - this is paid twice a year. During the first half of the year, the government paid officials with paper cash. The second half of the year, the government gave out peppers and sappan wood. Later this was changed to silk fabrics, and later was again changed to cotton cloth. The original conversion formula was that every dan of rice was equal to 20 strings of paper cash. 200 strings of paper cash was equal to 1 bolt of cloth. Later, it was changed to 1 bolt of cloth was equal to 0.3 taels of silver. Sometimes, when there was not enough paper cash, the zhe se salary would be paid in confiscated materials and surplus silk and garments.

Table of Annual Salaries By Rank

• Grade 1a - 1,044 dan of rice, roughly equal to 222 taels of silver
• Grade 1b - 888 dan of rice, roughly equal to 184 taels of silver
• Grade 2a - 732 dan of rice, roughly equal to 152 taels of silver
• Grade 2b - 576 dan of rice, roughly equal to 121 taels of silver
• Grade 3a - 420 dan of rice, roughly equal to 89 taels of silver
• Grade 3b - 312 dan of rice, roughly equal to 64 taels of silver
• Grade 4a - 288 dan of rice, roughly equal to 62 taels of silver
• Grade 4b - 252 dan of rice, roughly equal to 55 taels of silver
• Grade 5a - 192 dan of rice, roughly equal to 43 taels of silver
• Grade 5b - 168 dan of rice, roughly equal to 38 taels of silver
• Grade 6a - 120 dan of rice, roughly equal to 35 taels of silver
• Grade 6b - 96 dan of rice, roughly equal to 30 taels of silver
• Grade 7a - 90 dan of rice, roughly equal to 27 taels of silver
• Grade 7b - 84 dan of rice, roughly equal to 26 taels of silver
• Grade 8a - 78 dan of rice, roughly equal to 24 taels of silver
• Grade 8b - 72 dan of rice, roughly equal to 23 taels of silver
• Grade 9a - 66 dan of rice, roughly equal to 21 taels of silver
• Grade 9b - 60 dan of rice, roughly equal to 20 taels of silver

The taels of silver was something I computed myself using the formula mentioned in the Ming Hui Dian. In addition, there were also subsidies paid to officials for servants, fuel, and travel.

I mentioned earlier that these salaries were comparable to previous dynasties on paper. What does that mean? Well in the early Ming, these salaries were pretty good. The problem was by the end of the Hongwu reign, the government stopped paying salaries exclusively in rice. From that point after, the proportion of rice paid as part of the salary started to decline. As you can see above, the government supplemented the salary with paper cash, silk, cotton cloths, peppers, and later silver, but the value of paper money declined to almost nothing by the later Ming due to inflation. According the Cambridge History of China volume of the Ming, "the real value of the converted portions of the salary never exceeded 20 percent of what the grain stipends had been worth; most of the times it fell below 5 percent of the salary's original value in grain." Moreover, the exchange rate of rice to silver was not based on market prices, but were artificially very low. That meant what the officials' real income was much less than what they were paid on paper. 62 taels of silver was barely enough to sustain a family of four, and 27 taels of silver was even less than the emperor's daily allowance for food. The Ming Shi recorded that, "Since antiquity, official salaries have never been as meager as this!"

As if that was not bad enough, officials were often not even paid on time. Towards the end of the dynasty, the government frequently ran on a deficit. I went over Ming revenue in this thread, and you can see that the Ming military expenditures made up almost half of the revenue. So between upkeep of the military, the corruption of the late Ming, and the upkeep of the Ming emperors' own extravagant lifestyle, payment of salaries were often delayed.