My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 427 A Centennial Plan
Of course Liu Rong didn't know what was happening on the grassland.

——At least I don’t know the specific details and the exact time.

Or it should be said that those delegations sent to the Hexi region can actually be regarded as Liu Rong's idle moves in the Hexi chess game.

What is idle hands?

It's similar to venture capital.

For a project with extremely high risks and correspondingly high returns, it is a good idea to make an investment that can significantly affect the direction of the project but will not cause any harm to you and you can completely afford the loss.

Just like these caravans, did Liu Rong invest a lot?

——The caravans already existed, and whether or not Liu Rong invested in them did not affect whether or not these caravans would go out of the border;

The only investment Liu Rong made was to mix some spies from the Embroidered Uniform Guard into a caravan that was originally going to go out of the Great Wall for business, and to go to the Great Wall to gather intelligence as "caravan guards".

Of course, these people may not come back. They may die on the grassland for various reasons, or they may be wiped out together with the caravan, and even their identities may be exposed.

But for Liu Rong, this investment is obviously not too big.

Every year, dozens or even hundreds of people from the Embroidered Uniform Guard die.

Some died of illness, some died in accidents, or their identities were exposed and they were killed in a trap - there are dozens of such people almost every year.

In troubled times, such as the eve of the Wu-Chu Seven Kingdoms Rebellion, the Embroidered Uniform Guards even had people dying every day;

From the second year of Emperor Xiaojing's reign before the rebellion broke out to the third year of Emperor Xiaojing's reign when the rebellion was quelled, it was only a little over a year, and the number of deaths of the Embroidered Uniform Guard's spies lurking in Guandong County and the country was as high as 600!
There's nothing we can do about it.

Intelligence work itself is an extremely high-risk job.

In this era when people worry about never seeing their loved ones again when they go on a long journey, it is impossible to lower the death rate of Embroidered Uniform Guard spies, who often change their workplaces and generally work with dangerous people day and night.

Once we got to the grassland, let alone the spies of the Embroidered Uniform Guard or the real caravan guards;

Even the nomadic people on the grassland themselves were dying at any time.

Natural disasters, man-made disasters, dietary problems, and even acclimatization can all be fatal.

Therefore, Liu Rong's investment was almost zero - he simply sent the Embroidered Uniform Guards, who were already doing high-risk work, to the even more dangerous grassland to perform their own work.

As for the rewards, Liu Rong's original idea was to understand the general situation in Hexi, especially the situations within those medium and large tribes, as well as the situations between each other, which would be acceptable.

I didn't expect that the evil tribe would suddenly appear and give Liu Rong an unexpected surprise.

But in the final analysis, this was just Liu Rong's idleness.

If it succeeds, that’s great; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter.

At the moment, Liu Rong's attention is still focused on Chang'an - the first imperial examination in Chinese history which is about to end.

After the first two rounds of examinations, Liu Rong basically understood the era and the level of acceptance of this new thing called examinations.

——In the first round of the imperial examination, more than 14,000 candidates registered, and nearly 11,000 passed and entered the second round.

This means that the most basic and almost effortless questions in the first round of the imperial examination also stumped more than 3,000 candidates who called themselves "scholars".

After getting this data, Liu Rong was originally very confused.

But after specifically looking at the test papers of those candidates who failed the first round, Liu Rong felt relieved.

Among these three thousand people, a considerable number were judged to have failed because their handwriting was so illegible that it was impossible to discern.

The reason for this situation is most likely that problems occurred due to copying others' ideas.

It is similar to this: A farmer's son accidentally found an abandoned bamboo slip used by a child of a local wealthy family to practice calligraphy among the garbage thrown away by the local wealthy and powerful, and he immediately regarded it as a treasure.

After asking someone for the meaning of each character, he went home and copied and practiced on the ground with tree branches. Eventually, he mastered his unique handwriting.

Or, it could be a young master who had never read much or practiced calligraphy since childhood, but was pampered and coaxed by the whole family, and came to take part in the imperial examination with overflowing self-confidence.

But in the imperial examination, no one tolerated these young masters' bad habits.

After understanding the reasons why those 3,000 people failed the exam, Liu Rong didn't think about it any more.

Immediately afterwards, something happened that Liu Rong had never expected and could not understand.

——Among the nearly 11,000 candidates who had passed the first round and qualified for the second round, nearly half gave up the exam and gave up participating in the second round of the imperial examination!
This made Liu Rong a little confused.

Good guy!
The first round was a blind sweep, and after sweeping nearly a quarter, I won't say anything;

After passing the first round, nearly half of the candidates gave up the exam?
What?
Look down on me?

Or do you still look down on the annual salary of 400 shi (stones) that I give you?
After being angry, Liu Rong went to investigate the cause of the incident.

After finding out the reason, Liu Rong sighed helplessly again.

——Among the more than 5,000 candidates who withdrew from the exam, more than 3,000 were Confucian scholars!

Some people are self-righteous and think that they have proved their ability in the first round of the imperial examination, and that the official position of 400 shi is not worthy of them, so they give up the examination arrogantly;

Some were sweating profusely after the first round, worried that they would get single-digit scores in the second round, and felt that they did not need to humiliate themselves;
Of course, after internal research, the Confucians finally decided: in order to prevent Confucians from becoming the first to stand out in this imperial examination, they will select the best candidates to take the second round and eliminate an appropriate number of them internally.

All these were within Liu Rong's expectations and within an acceptable range.

What made Liu Rong secretly upset and feel powerless was that in addition to the above reasons, there was another situation, whether it was Confucianism or other schools of thought such as Legalism, Mohism, Huang-Lao, etc.

——I feel that passing the first round is enough.

With the resume of "passing the first round of the imperial examination", it is enough to return to the local county and be appointed as an official by the local officials, or become a retainer of the powerful.

What’s the point of taking the exam then?
Gone and gone...

This made Liu Rong feel really angry. He wished he could tie up all these good-for-nothings and hang them out outside the East Market to show them off to others.

Look at your potential!

No ambition at all!
No matter how angry he was, it was not a matter of principle, and Liu Rong could only respect their choice and destiny.

While comforting himself by saying "it's just sending talents to the local area", Liu Rong did not forget to secretly ask someone to do a statistics.

——For those losers who voluntarily gave up the exam and thought that passing the first round was enough, every single one of them, don’t even think about becoming a respectable official!

This is blatant political oppression from the highest ruler of the Han Dynasty!

But no one thinks there is anything wrong with this.

The emperor finally came up with the imperial examination, and you don't even give the emperor face?
You deserve to never pass the political review! And then, naturally, it will be the second round of imperial examinations.

According to Liu Rong's original plan, the first round of the imperial examination should have eliminated less than 10% of the candidates;

Of the nearly 15,000 candidates, at least 13,000 should enter the second round.

In the end, only more than 6,000 people took the exam, and the court was relieved. They set up several examination halls near Chang'an and completed the second round of imperial examinations.

Compared with the "literacy" nature of the first round of imperial examinations, this second round of imperial examinations had some meaning and momentum of selecting officials.

——The same arithmetic problems are no longer simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, but are integrated into actual administrative application scenarios.

For example, in the second round of the imperial examination this autumn, the only major question in the arithmetic module was: There was a family with 100 acres of land, registered in Guanzhong;
The annual yield is 330 dan of millet and 180 dan of wheat;
The family consists of five people: husband, wife, son, and daughter;
In that year, the price of millet was 40 coins per stone, and the price of wheat was 55 coins per stone.

Question: The farmland owned by this household is 100 mu. How many steps are there in length and width? (5 points)

Question: After deducting the agricultural tax, how many dan of millet and wheat does the farmer have left? (5 points)
Question: This household does not eat wheat, and wants to sell all its wheat, and keep 50 dan of millet for the winter. How much money will it get after selling all its grain? (ten points)
This question is very typical of the second round of imperial examinations. It is disguised as an arithmetic question, but in fact it tests the numerical application ability of candidates.

The answer is not too difficult, but it also has some screening effects.

For example, the standard answer to the first question is: Guanzhong has a large mu, which is one step wide and 240 steps long;

Therefore, a field of one hundred mu is one hundred steps wide and two hundred and forty steps long.

Second question: The agricultural tax is 330/11, millet is 319 dan, dan of agricultural tax is paid, and the remaining is dan;
180 dan of wheat, 6 dan of agricultural tax paid, and 174 dan remaining.

The complexity and amount of calculation required for the third question also deserve a ten-point score.

——174 dan of wheat, 55 coins per dan, a total of 9750 coins;
There were 319 dan of millet, of which farmers kept 50 dan for themselves and sold 269 dan at 40 coins per dan, for a total of 10760 coins.

Adding the two together, we get 20510 coins.

If we remove the five people in the family, each with an annual tax of 40 coins, and subtract 200 coins, we will still have 20310 coins left...

...

Of course;
If you can mention in the process of answering the questions, "The agricultural tax is one in fifteen, and the oral tax is one (120 coins). Emperor Taizong of Meng, Xiaowen, and Emperor Xiaojing were benevolent, and your Majesty has benefited the people. You have reduced the agricultural tax by half and reduced it to one in thirty," it will be a definite ideological and political plus point.

The question above is already a relatively difficult question in the second round of imperial examinations.

This question alone is worth 20 points - if you can get extra points for ideological and political education, it will be as high as 25 points!
If you can solve this problem, you will definitely be able to solve the previous four multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions, which will earn you another 20 points.

For the mathematics module alone, you can get 45 points. The remaining 15 points are basically just filling up the answer area regardless of whether the answer is right or wrong.

Liu Rong originally thought: Since I am confident in taking part in the second round of imperial examinations, the pass rate for the second round of imperial examinations should be more than 80%, right?

After all, Liu Rong had already let slip the composition of the second round of imperial examination questions;

Those who don’t have some knowledge and confidence will not come back to participate at all.

But the final result still surprised Liu Rong.

——1378 people.

More than 1378 candidates took part in the second round of the imperial examination, but only of them scored points out of , a passing score.

Among them, there were dozens or even hundreds of descendants of meritorious officials who passed the first round on their own and therefore received 10 points of 'care points' in the second round.

If Liu Rong was depressed, angry, and helpless at the same time because of the passing rate in the first round of the imperial examination and the dropout rate of those who passed in the second round,

The passing rate in the second round of the imperial examination really made Liu Rong question his life.

No!

Not buddy!
The most difficult arithmetic problem only looks relatively complicated, but it actually still tests the mathematical application of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division!

You still can’t pass this exam?
Is the value of scholars so low?
Liu Rong, who refused to believe in evil, once again brought in hundreds of failing test papers.

Then, Liu Rong felt numb.

——Of the nearly 5,000 candidates who failed the second round of the imperial examination, at least 90% did so because of the arithmetic section, which had a total score of 40 points. These people got almost no points.

The better answer is that if you get all the multiple-choice questions right, you get 20 points, or if you get one wrong, you get 15 points, and you get basically no points for the big questions that follow.
The worst ones got all the answers wrong. They lost the full 40 points in the arithmetic module, and failed directly if they lost one or two points in other sections.

And these people, without exception, failed to get even one point on the question or application question that was worth 20 points in theory and actually had a chance of getting 25 points.

Question 1: What is the length and width of one hundred acres of land in Guanzhong?
they do not know.

The second question is, 330 shi of millet and 180 shi of wheat, how much is left after paying the agricultural tax?
They couldn't answer.

They even didn't get the hidden ideological and political points they could have gotten by writing a flattering sentence like 'Thanks to the kindness of Emperor Taizong, Emperor Xiaojing, and your majesty, the agricultural tax was reduced by half.'

No wonder they failed the exam.

——On a test paper with a score of 100, some people lose more than 30 points at the beginning, and some even lose 40 points directly!
Still wanting to pass the exam is like a toad wanting to eat swan meat - you are ugly in appearance, but you have wishful thinking.

What is even more depressing is that these people’s scores in other sections are really not low.

For example, those who could not get any points in arithmetic and lost 40 points directly could get a final score of over 40 or even over 50.

In arithmetic, there were quite a few people who could get 5 or 10 points, and only lost 30 points. They were only 35 points away from passing!
That is to say, if the arithmetic section is not included in the grade, the scores they get in other sections may even be higher than those who have passed!

After the test results came out, people inside and outside the court - including close ministers around Liu Rong such as Ji An - were all urging Liu Rong to show leniency and not to keep these poor students out of the Han system just because of the so-called score line.

But in the end, Liu Rong gritted his teeth and accepted this depressing and terrifying result.

——This was the first imperial examination in the history of the Han Dynasty and even in the history of Chinese civilization.

Almost every detail of this imperial examination will set rules for future imperial examinations in any dynasty.

The rules that Liu Rong wants to establish, in addition to the 100-point test paper, the 60-point passing score, and comprehensive questions for each subject, the most important point is: fairness.

It is true that the children of nobles and the descendants of heroes have a share of care;
But even if they are given preferential treatment points, they are not admitted directly. Instead, ten points are added to their official scores.

It can even be said that Liu Rong's efforts in this imperial examination were in vain.

Liu Rong could accept that this imperial examination would not be able to select even one decent official for the Han Dynasty, or even that he could not select any decent grassroots officials at all.

But the rules must be established and maintained for the first time.

Otherwise, if someone really gets "exemption from certain subjects" in this exam in the future, then Liu Rong's efforts in establishing the imperial examination would have been in vain.

——If it weren’t for Liu Rong, the Han Dynasty would have worked in vain;
It was Liu Rong who was busy working for Huaxia Wenming...

(End of this chapter)