Neizhusi is short in prose and huge in implication. After the palace architecture of Entry 04, Meng lists the machinery that kept the inner court functioning. The interesting thing is the range: policy papers, foreign envoys, weapons, treasure, alcohol, medicine, clothing and the imperial garden all sit inside the same restricted administrative world.
1. The palace is full of offices, not empty grandeur.
內諸司皆在禁中，如學士院、皇城司、四方館、客省、東西上閤門、通進司、內弓劍鎗甲軍器等庫、翰林司（茶酒局也）……
The inner departments were all located within the forbidden precinct. Meng begins with the Academy of Scholars, the Imperial City Office, the Four Directions Hostel and Guest Reception Office, the East and West Upper Gate offices, the office for transmitting documents, internal stores for bows, swords, spears, armor and other weapons, and the Hanlin Service — which he explicitly glosses here as the tea and wine bureau.
Writing, diplomatic reception, document transmission and weapons storage appear in one breath. The forbidden city is a political communications hub and a security zone at the same time.
Meng's parenthesis on the “Hanlin Service” matters. Here he is not naming the scholarly Hanlin Academy again; he identifies this unit as a tea-and-wine bureau. Similar names can hide very different functions inside the palace.
2. Treasury and domestic service sit beside high politics.
……內侍省、入內內侍省、內藏庫、奉宸庫、景福殿庫、延福宮、殿中省六尚局（尚藥、尚食、尚輦、尚醞、尚舍、尚衣）……
The list continues with the Palace Attendants' departments, the Inner Treasury, Fengchen and Jingfu Hall stores, Yanfu Palace, and the Six Bureaus under the Palace Directorate: medicine, food, palanquins, fermented drink, accommodation and clothing.
The six bureaus turn the emperor's daily life into administrative categories. Eating, taking medicine, moving in a palanquin, drinking, lodging and dressing all require staff, stores, procedures and accountability.
History of Song describes the Palace Directorate as responsible for imperial food, medicine, clothing, canopies, palanquins and accommodation, and gives the six bureaus matching functional responsibilities. Meng's compressed list is therefore a street-level inventory of a real institutional service system.
學士院 · 通進司 · 天章等閣
Drafting, transmitting documents and preserving court texts or archival material.
四方館 · 客省 · 東西上閤門
Envoys, guests and controlled movement through court-facing reception systems.
皇城司 · 軍器等庫
Imperial-city control and stored weapons inside the restricted precinct.
內藏庫 · 奉宸庫 · 景福殿庫
Stores and treasuries supporting court property, valuables and palace consumption.
六尚局 · 翰林司
Food, medicine, transport, drink, lodging, clothing, plus tea-and-wine service.
醫官局 · 後苑作 · 翰林書藝局
Medical care, garden work and specialist artistic or technical service.
3. The last offices reveal how many kinds of expertise the court absorbs.
……諸閤分、內香藥庫、後苑作、翰林書藝局、醫官局、天章等閣、明堂頒朔布政府。
Meng closes with various palace divisions, the inner aromatics and medicines store, the imperial garden workshop, a Hanlin calligraphy and arts bureau, the Medical Officials' Bureau, the Tianzhang and related pavilions, and the Mingtang office associated with promulgating the calendar and distributing governmental directives.
The court consumes expertise as much as it consumes goods. Doctors, calligraphic specialists, gardeners, storekeepers, document handlers and attendants all become part of the palace's permanent operating system.
This is why the phrase “inner departments” can mislead modern eyes. These offices are not a small domestic staff tucked behind state government. They are one layer of state capacity, concentrated around the emperor's body and access to him.
History of Song describes the Palace Directorate as overseeing the Six Bureaus of Food, Medicine, Fermented Beverages, Attire, Accommodation and Palanquins, with each bureau responsible for the corresponding imperial service. That later institutional compilation supports reading Meng's list as functional bureaucracy rather than decorative nomenclature. Chinese Text Project / Songshi ↗