In the Ming and Qing dynasties I know that salaries for government officials were especially low, which sometimes led to widespread corruption. Also funding for local government was also pretty bad which led some officials to pay out of their own pocket or raise extralegal taxes just to maintain the government.
Given this, why was being a mandarin official so coveted?
Second question is: Nowadays, there is a stereotype (especially among the Chinese diaspora) that parents push hard for their kids to become doctors and lawyers. How did service in government fall out of favour as a coveted job?
Delicious, a question on Imperial China's bureaucracy.
Local officials were not particularly well compensated (officially anyways) but there were a number of extremely enticing factors that came with passing the civil service examination.
By the mid-late Ming, it became basically absolutely mandatory to hold the 進士 - jinshi degree if you wanted to attain the highest levels of office (like a 4th grade or higher official) and there was actually an extraordinary excess of the lowest degree levels (tongsheng, shengyuan, etc.) so those holding degrees from the lowest levels of the exam tier had little or no chance of actually holding any form of governmental office but nevertheless, were still granted the social privileges afforded to a member of the scholarly class - the same social caste all members of the Imperial government belonged to.
The point I'm getting at is that it isn't even necessarily being a mandarin that was coveted, but it was the ownership of a degree that marked an individual as a member of the social elite. Holding a degree and office did offer a stable income, and benefits much like federal jobs today (when there isn't a shutdown), but even degree holders who did not have office were eligible to receive governmental benefits and statutory exemptions like reduced taxes, immunity from receiving corporal punishments and the ability to be excused from forced labor for Imperial works. Those degree graduates also were looked up to in their local villages and residential areas as well, and deferred to as a sort of Imperial liaison due to their education and shared understanding of Chinese culture with Imperial officials. Even the sons of wealthy merchants (merchants are quite a bit below scholars on the Confucian social hierarchy, regardless of wealth) aspired to hold degrees and civil office as a means with which to elevate their own social standing, and to be seen as socially acceptable and not be frowned down upon by the social elites of Imperial China. I know that there were even cases of wealthy merchant families just straight up purchasing degrees for their sons.
In short, social standing and benefits made passing the Imperial Examination an extremely enticing prospect for the citizens of Imperial China.
Edits: Clarification and wording
P.S. : As an asian dude I don’t really recall my parents pushing me to become a doctor or lawyer. My girlfriend says she also was never subject to such pressures. We both were just sternly encouraged to aspire to Ivy League schools and earn a respectable living. Granted my sample size is 2 but I think it isn’t so much that parents specifically want their children to be doctors, but more that they want children who are well-educated and who will live comfortable lives, which may or may not be a cultural vestige of the Examination system.
To add to what /u/beepybeetle has said, it's important to add, also, that because corruption was rife, civil servants could accumulate absolutely vast sums of money through various illicit means. Funds would be embezzled going both up and down the chain: by 1900, 40% of the likin tax collected on goods in transit went unreported, lining the pockets of the various officials in charge,^1 whilst by the 1840s, perhaps 10% of the funds earmarked for the Yellow River Conservancy were not being used for different purposes.^2 When the Qianlong Emperor's favourite, Heshen, fell from grace upon the death of his patron in 1799, he was put under investigation, and his personal wealth was in some cases alleged to be so vast it would have amounted to four times the GDP of the United States at the time (said estimate was off by an order of magnitude, but even so, his actual wealth, the equivalent of $150,000,000, would have been no paltry sum – indeed, that was an amount of personal wealth comparable to the emperor himself, and larger than the treasury surplus in 1796 just before the White Lotus Revolt broke out.)^3
To give an idea of the general perception of the mandarin's potential wealth, Zhang Zuyi's Qingdai Yeji, published in 1914, recounted his service with Shengbao, a general who rose to prominence after the Xinyou Coup of 1861, and had this to say regarding a Manchu official, Mukedengbu:
The person of Mukedengbu, styled Shaoruo, used to be a Manchu Bannerman stationed at Jinzhou. He was the seventh son of the late Nanjing General Kuiyu... and he later climbed up to the Governorship of Jiangsu. He asked for an additional inspector to supervise taxation. He stated that since the Dao [circuits] and Fu [prefectures] had their own duties, it was not proper for them to supervise it. To prevent corruption and with the Emperor's consent, he would take up this responsibility. A term was four years and it was said that he received 300,000 liang [taels; 1 tael ≈ 37 grams] of gold. He built great mansions in Nanjing, bought land in the most prosperous areas along the river; he also had big capital in money-lending and salt transportation. He was the richest among all the inspectors in Jiangnan... The abundance of his opium stock amounted to several thousand jin [catty; 1 catty ≈ 600 grams]. When the Taiping Army captured Nanjing [1853], his opium was thrown out on the roadside and it was impossible to count.^4
Yes, we may question the reliability of this source: it describes events at least eight or more years in the past at the time of writing and over sixty years by the time of publication; it has a clear reliance on hearsay; it occasionally resorts to hyperbolic language; et cetera. However, the key thing is this is what a prominent official was perceived to be capable of, by a highly literate man with significant experience in both court and bureaucratic politics. For sure, this is not behaviour Zhang encourages, and he does implicitly point to Mukedengbu's background not only as a Manchu but also the son of a general in getting him where he got, but the entire situation is posited as entirely conceivable and, notably, Mukedengbu is only singled out as the 'richest of the southern inspectors'. Is Zhang implying that there were northern ones who were richer? Or that Mukedengbu was only the most prominent of a whole slew of corrupt but incredibly affluent southern officials? Whatever the case, the nature of Mukedengbu's behaviour was not by any means unexpected or extraordinary, only its extent.
Sources, Notes and References