Taichang Ming Dynasty

Chapter 382 Enke Countdown

Beijing Imperial Examination Hall, a place that is almost completely isolated from the outside world during the imperial examination.

The reason I say "almost" is because the examination halls weren't always closed. For example, during the Guichou year of the Wanli reign, Ye Xianggao, as the only cabinet member, had to juggle the duties of both chief examiner and prime minister. Therefore, during the Guichou period, the Imperial Examination Hall wasn't just open; it even became a "cabinet duty room," with officials coming and going and memorials being sent in and out. This was a remarkable phenomenon during the Ming dynasty. But once something remarkable happened, it became less surprising.

In the 44th year of the Wanli reign, Fang Congzhe and Wu Daonan served simultaneously in the cabinet. Although Wu Daonan had repeatedly claimed illness and requested to resign, effectively leaving Fang Congzhe in sole charge, he nonetheless managed to take on the duties of chief examiner during the Bingchen joint examination, returning the situation to a semblance of normalcy. However, in the 47th year of the Wanli reign, the cabinet was again left with only one person, forcing Fang Congzhe to follow Ye Xianggao's example and draft memorials in the Imperial Academy.

Fang Congzhe, while drafting proposals and presiding over the examinations, also had to worry about events in Liaodong. Managing three separate lines of work, Fang Congzhe suffered from near-constant headaches and sleepless nights. Ultimately, all three lines of work collapsed. At court, the vast majority of proposals remained unreported, leaving the court in a state of semi-paralysis. In the imperial examinations, the palace examination misprint incident led to the resignation of Shi Jixie, the other chief examiner, and Zhuang Jichang, the top scorer that year. In Liao, the Battle of Sarhu was a disastrous defeat, with the Ming army losing troops on three fronts, and Liaodong was in dire straits.

This year, everything seemed normal. The outside world's disturbances were completely blocked out by the patrol officers of the Jinyiwei. Apart from the ringing of the bells and drums to tell the time, no other sound could get in.

Even so, the examiners weren't necessarily idle. The number of candidates for the imperial examinations during the Ming Dynasty continued to rise for 250 years. From just over a thousand in the early Ming Dynasty, when everything was in ruins, it gradually rose to an average of 4,500 to 5,000 in the middle of the dynasty. By the second year of the Wanli reign, Zhang Juzheng oversaw the reconstruction of the Imperial Examination Hall, converting the examination halls into primarily brick and tile rooms. This also increased the number of rooms to over 10,000, demonstrating the sheer number of candidates during the Jiaqing and Longqing eras. Despite this surge in candidates, the number of examiners remained the same: two chief examiners and eighteen co-examiners.

Nearly ten thousand people took the imperial examination in the first year of the Taichang reign. Each examiner had to review over five hundred papers. Furthermore, to ensure fairness, the same paper often required multiple examiners to grade it. This meant the daily workload was at least 100,000 words. Combined with the workload of the two chief examiners, the workload was even greater.

People were coming and going in the president's court, but not much noise could be heard.

After more than ten days of almost non-stop reviewing, Xu Guangqi's eyes, which had lost their brilliance due to age, had become dull and almost lifeless. However, the results of his efforts were also obvious. Both the desk in front of him and the shelf behind him were filled with reviewed papers.

Although Xu Guangqi was exhausted, he still read each answer sheet carefully. After reading the current one, Xu Guangqi picked up his pen and wrote his own comments next to the examiner's comments, which meant that the owner of this answer sheet had a high probability of making it onto the gold list this year.

"Huh!" Xu Guangqi put down his pen and was just about to take a breath when the clerk in charge of delivering the answer sheets brought him another batch of answer sheets that had been reviewed by the same examiner.

"Is there anything else?" Xu Guangqi murmured with a wry smile.

Xu Guangqi's voice was so soft that the clerk couldn't hear clearly. He only thought the president seemed to have said something. So, the clerk stepped forward and asked softly, "Does President Xu have any instructions?"

Just as the clerk stopped to speak, the Jinyiwei standing in the hall also cast a subtle gaze over here.

Xu Guangqi rubbed his eyes. "No instructions, go ahead."

"I'll take my leave," the clerk bowed and left. Xu Guangqi silently opened a new answer sheet.

Like the previous batch of answer sheets that were being sorted and stored by another clerk, this answer sheet was still written in red ink and in standard Taige style.

To prevent examiners from deciphering the handwriting and to eliminate the possibility of collusion, after the examinees submitted their papers, the examiners would sort the vast sea of ​​papers according to the classics they covered. The papers would then be sent to the sealing officer for sealing. After sealing, the official's name would be stamped on the corner where the sealer's name was written.

Throughout the examination, the seals must remain in good condition. After the examination, the Imperial Censorate and the Imperial Guard patrol officers would inspect the seals. If the seals were damaged, everyone, from the official who sealed the papers to the clerk who handled the case, would be imprisoned. The specific prison they were sent to depended on the emperor's mood.

After sealing, the answer sheet will be sent to the transcriber for transcription, which means that the clerk will copy the test paper word for word with a red pen.

To ensure complete accuracy and prevent decades of hard work from being ruined by the transcriber's mistakes, the transcribed copies were then reviewed by a dedicated reviewer. One person read the red scroll, while the other read the black scroll. The two pairs carefully reviewed every word and sentence. If any error was found in the red scroll, the entire scroll would be retranscribed, and the scribe in charge would be punished.

Thus, after being sealed, transcribed, and reviewed, the test papers handed to the examiners were virtually nameless, markless, and error-free. It could be said that until the results were officially announced, no one except the transcribers and reviewers, who were under the close supervision of patrolling military officers, could touch the original answer sheets.

The sloppiness of the answer sheet actually began during the transcription process. Before transcribing, the transcriber would first check the paper for prohibited language, such as slandering the emperor or his father, defaming the government, or any suggestive language describing one's family background or experience. If any were found, the candidate would be arrested and await trial.

After eliminating any principled issues, the transcriber will then check the word count and the appearance of the paper. If the word count falls outside the specified range, the paper is not neatly arranged, or there is a scratch paper inserted into the paper, the paper will be invalidated. Only after these errors have been eliminated can the formal transcription begin. If any of these issues are discovered, even the best writing and the most sophisticated essay will be useless; the paper will be removed before it even reaches the examiner's hands.

In this sense, the transcribers could be considered examiners in a broader sense, though they could only use objective, rigid rules to reject candidates. It could be said that, aside from the eight-legged essay format, these were the only objective factors in the imperial examination. Afterward, the co-examiners and the chief examiner reviewed the papers based on their own subjective judgment, selecting those who deemed them good.

The primary responsibility of the co-examiners was to initially screen inferior papers, select the best, and write their comments in black ink. Since the selected candidates would form a teacher-student relationship with them, which was crucial for cultivating their connections within the officialdom, the co-examiners hoped their selected papers would ultimately be favored by the chief examiner and accepted. Therefore, they often strongly recommended their selected papers in their comments. However, the number of admissions was always limited, and it was not uncommon for eighteen co-examiners to select thousands of candidates from thousands, even nearly ten thousand. Therefore, the chief examiner would then use the number of candidates to be admitted as a basis for selecting and rejecting the papers recommended by the co-examiners. Only the selected papers would receive the examiners' comments, while the rejected papers would only receive the candidates' comments.

Interestingly, while both co-examiners wrote comments, the average length was between 20 and 30 words, nearly a complete sentence. Meanwhile, the chief examiner's comments averaged only seven to ten words, or two to four phrases. This may be related to the chief examiner's lack of need for detailed comments on secondhand papers, as well as the co-examiners' strong desire to have the chief examiner select their recommended papers.

Some speculate that this may be because the examiners were generally high-ranking officials such as cabinet ministers and officials from certain ministries. These officials, having devoted themselves to administration for a long time and neglected academic studies, were unable to write sophisticated comments citing classics, so they used a few key words instead.

After a quick read, Xu Guangqi did not pick up his pen as he had done before, but kept the answer sheet as it was.

This meant that the answer sheet, which had been initially reviewed by the transcriber and then again by the co-examiner, had finally landed in the hands of the Chief Examiner. To put it bluntly, the owner of this answer sheet had been left out, and their trip this year was likely in vain.

The reason for this high probability is that if a fellow examiner finds a piece of writing truly brilliant, they can protest the president's rudeness. If the president accepts the protest, or another president agrees to accept it, the paper will still be accepted. However, if both presidents disagree, the protest is invalid, and the owner of the paper will have to wait for the next three years.

On the other hand, the two presidents also had the power to review the papers that had been tarnished by the other examiners and then select the correct answer. Once such a selection was made, it meant that the candidate would definitely be on the list unless the emperor intervened.

In the Shuntian County Examination of the 25th year of the Wanli reign, the chief examiner, Jiao Hong, singled out Xu Guangqi's paper from the rejected papers and instantly placed him first. This caused a great stir at the time, and Jiao Hong, already marginalized for compiling the "Yangzheng Tushuo," came under immense pressure. Due to the negative reviews of the examination, Jiao Hong, then a Hanlin Academy editor and a lecturer to the Crown Prince, was transferred to a remote post, becoming the Tongzhi of Funing Prefecture in Fujian.

The following year, during the Wuxu Imperial Examination, Xu Guangqi, who had been specially selected as the top scorer, failed, sparking even greater controversy. The following year, during the Jihai Imperial Examination in the 27th year of the Wanli reign, Jiao Hong was again demoted for being cunning and impetuous, and in anger, he resigned from office. Even so, Xu Guangqi's status as the top scorer remained.

In the 48th year of the Wanli reign, the newly enthroned Emperor Taichang sent for Jiao Hong's return, only to discover that he had already passed away before the previous emperor's death. Jiao Hong, the top scholar of the 17th year of the Wanli reign, could hardly have imagined that Xu Guangqi, the very man who had led to his exile from the capital, would become one of the chief examiners appointed by the emperor the following year.

After forcing himself to review the papers for a while longer, Xu Guangqi finally finished the last one before dusk. According to the plan drawn up before the exam began, they should have finished reviewing all the papers by the 25th of this month, which was yesterday. This morning, they began the process of ranking and filling out the draft list. However, this year's special exam had so many applicants that the examiners worked overtime, often burning the midnight oil. In the end, everyone was dizzy and still couldn't finish grading by the 25th.

"Uh~~~" Xu Guangqi put down his pen and stretched hard.

At this time, another president, Shi Jixie, came over. He had finished reviewing the documents half a minute earlier than Xu Guangqi, and in order not to disturb Xu Guangqi, Shi Jixie stood at a distance and waited silently.

"Zixian." Shi Jixie called softly.

Xu Guangqi was startled and instinctively contracted his body, pulling his muscles violently, almost spraining his waist.

Xu Guangqi quickly put his hands on his waist, barely able to steady himself. Looking up, he saw Shi Jijie looking equally exhausted, his hair disheveled. "It's Brother Shicheng!" Xu Guangqi stood up and saluted Shi Jijie with a crooked gesture.

"Let's hold the first banquet today." Shi Jixie said straight to the point.

The imperial examination was more than just a single test; it was a continuous ceremony. From the eighth day of the second lunar month, when the chief examiner, under the imperial decree, offered sacrifices to Zhou Gong, Confucius, and other ancient sages and teachers, to the final announcement of the results, nearly every major event involved a celebration. The so-called "paper-collecting banquet" was a banquet held to collect the ink-drawn papers and determine the names of the candidates. Afterward, a separate banquet was held to discuss the rankings and select the top candidate.

In form, the examiners discussed the merits of the essays over a feast, reminiscent of a discussion of heroes over a cup of wine. But in reality, it was a test of wits, both overt and covert. For the fellow examiners, each hoping their chosen papers would rank as highly as possible, they were particularly enthusiastic. For the chief examiner, however, it was a matter of balancing the merits and negotiating the subject.

When registering, each candidate must choose one of the Five Classics, namely "The Book of Songs", "The Book of History", "The Book of Rites", "The Book of Changes" and "The Spring and Autumn Annals" as his or her specialization. During the exam, they must write four essays on the meaning of the classics, with sentences extracted from these classics as their titles. This is called "studying a certain classic" or "specializing in a classic". Each classic has a champion, collectively known as the Five Classics Champions.

Traditionally, these five top examiners would dominate the top five spots in the Imperial Examination and directly influence the reading of the papers in the Palace Examination. Therefore, the competition for the top five would be the most intense during the next few banquets. To compete for the top spot, many lower-ranking and less powerful fellow examiners would even directly challenge the powerful chief examiner.

The rankings outside of the Five Classics champions were relatively unimportant. Essentially, the president nominated the candidates, with their fellow examiners nominating them, creating a harmonious atmosphere of mutual enjoyment. As for the hundreds of candidates who made it to the top three, the examiners practically blindly selected them, with the lucky ones receiving higher rankings and the unlucky ones lower. After all, they were just background figures in the palace examination.

"Okay, let's gather the examiners." Xu Guangqi nodded in response, and the special examination officially entered the countdown.

　I forgot to check the scheduled post yesterday, so I'll post both chapters today. My perfect attendance is gone, and I don't know how I used this month's leave note last month.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)