Chapter 144: Mixing Sand into the Eight-Legged Examination

After the matter of re-standardizing weights and measures was settled, and before Chongzhen could bring up the matter of the late Tianqi Carpenter's dream, Minister of Rites Meng Shaoyu stepped out from the ranks and memorialized: "Reporting to Your Majesty, your subject also has a memorial to present."

Watching Meng Shaoyu, who normally barely made a sound in court, step out to memorialize, Chongzhen suppressed his own intention to speak of Tianqi's dream and asked curiously: "Minister Meng, what matter do you have to memorialize?"

Meng Shaoyu bowed and said: "Reporting to Your Majesty, the special examination of the first year of Chongzhen approaches. Your subject requests Your Majesty's instruction: who shall serve as chief examiner? And what topics shall be set?"

Chongzhen frowned and said: "What is the Ministry of Rites' original procedure? How was it done in previous years?"

Meng Shaoyu said: "Reporting to Your Majesty, in previous years the Son of Heaven appointed the chief and vice examiners. All juren from the provinces and Imperial Academy students were eligible to sit the examination — this is the spring metropolitan examination."

Chongzhen himself had not failed to do his homework, and he knew just how fucked the Ming dynasty's civil examinations were. Ever since the examinations began, Emperor Wen of Sui had only policy questions; Emperor Yang of Sui opened ten examination subjects.

The Tang dynasty had many examination subjects, with the regular ones mainly being Understanding the Classics (classical meaning), jinshi, Understanding Law (law), Understanding Characters (writing), and Understanding Mathematics (mathematics).

By the Ming dynasty, only the single subject of jinshi remained. As for Understanding Law, Understanding the Classics, and Understanding Mathematics — all these examination contents had vanished.

So much so that someone wrote a crooked poem mocking it: "Today's Son of Heaven esteems only essays; why should you speak of Han and Tang?"

These two lines described precisely this fucked-up situation: the entire Ming dynasty had only the jinshi subject left, playing with the eight-legged essay format that Old Zhu had mandated.

Just how fucked up was the eight-legged essay?

The eight-legged essay referred to an article's eight parts, with a fixed format: it consisted of breaking open the topic, receiving the topic, beginning the exposition, entering the topic, the opening leg, the middle leg, the rear leg, and the binding leg — eight parts in all.

The topics were invariably drawn from original passages in the Four Books and Five Classics. The latter four parts each contained two strands of parallel prose, making eight legs in total.

Sentence length, character complexity, tonal pitch — all had to be matched into proper prose, and word count was also restricted.

The main content tested was classical meaning, selecting set topics from the Five Classics — the Odes, the Documents, the Rites, the Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals — for composition. Both the topics and the method of composition followed fixed formats.

The eight-legged essay had four paragraphs, each requiring parallel sentences; the paragraphs with parallelism were called the four parallels. The four matched couplets required tonal balance and antithesis; no allusions to romance or beauty could be used to profane the sages.

Every essay included the four sections from the opening leg to the binding leg.

Mind you, if it were merely this, the academic overachievers of today might still have some hope if they worked hard enough. What gave the Chongzhen Emperor the most fucking melancholy was that the content had to use the ancients' tone of voice — absolutely no free expression was allowed!

The so-called "using the ancients' tone of voice" did not mean learning how ancient people spoke — it meant using the tone of Confucius and Mencius!

For fuck's sake, the two sages Confucius and Mencius have been buried in the dirt for several thousand years. From the Warring States to the Ming dynasty, a full two-thousand-plus years' gap — and you want Ming people to study how they spoke? What tone they used?

His mother's! The phrasing had to use the ancients' tone of voice — so-called speaking on behalf of the sages! Throw the academic overachievers from today's Tsinghua and Peking University who study ancient literature or history into that, and I bet those guys would be completely dumbfounded too!

And what was even more fucked up was that since the sages' words only amounted to so much — presumably to save bamboo, they were all "subtle words with profound meaning" — after being tested over and over again, topics inevitably repeated. What to do in that situation?

The Ming dynasty had no shortage of talent; how could such a trivial matter stump anyone? Just splice two sentences into one passage, right? For example: "I am fond of beauty, and I daily examine myself on three counts."

The first half came from Mencius, King Hui of Liang, Part Two; the second half was from the Analects. Taken literally, it meant: because I, your father, like young women, I must reflect on myself three times every day.

But if you dared write that in the examinations — congratulations, failing the exam was the good news; slandering the sages was the real problem!

The entry point for breaking open this topic had nothing to do with being fond of beauty or not; it lay in the self-examination on three counts. But this "fond of beauty" — you couldn't just ignore it either!

In short, they had to make these examinees write flowery, splendid essays, yet they were not allowed to spout nonsense or express themselves freely — they couldn't even use allusions from after Confucius and Mencius! Of course, this was an invisible, implicit requirement.

If you insisted on using them, fine — once you were eliminated, go find a place to cry on your own.

Take that titan of a generation, Pu Songling. If that titan were around today, he'd at least have made Qidian Platinum, but his eight-legged essays didn't cut it.

Well then, sir, go cool off somewhere — the Qing officialdom wasn't for you! What end did he come to?

Failed repeatedly, only became a senior licentiate at age seventy-one, worked as a private tutor until old age, and finally died of illness at home.

If it were just this, it might be tolerable. After all, Pu Songling couldn't do it, but wasn't there still Lu Wanling? The Ming dynasty had plenty of scholars; someone would always pass.

The key was that the ones who passed were each more useless than the last!

"Studied until stupid" — that described these guys.

Either their heads were stuffed full of sage-thought but they themselves understood nothing, or after muddling along in officialdom for a few years, they finally got wise and started seriously playing the bureaucratic game.

At that point, these people polarized again. One group, like Wen Tiren, understood how to be an official and understood how to get by as a person.

As for the other group — all one could say was heh. Some were great grafters, some petty grafters, and some understood nothing at all and relied entirely on their private secretaries.

Sometimes you couldn't even tell whether the official was being done by the secretary or by the officeholder himself.

But he still couldn't change this fucked-up examination system! Even Chongzhen, fool that he was, knew that all the scholars under heaven lived by this thing. If you dared destroy it, that would truly be fatal!

The more he thought, the more his balls ached, so Chongzhen simply stopped thinking.

I can't destroy it — fine, no problem — I'll mix sand into it: "In that case, for this examination, the Ministry of Rites shall take the lead, with Zhang Ruitu as chief examiner and Minister Meng as vice examiner, broadly gathering the realm's literary men and wise scholars."

After Meng Shaoyu bowed and acknowledged the order, Chongzhen continued: "However, the jinshi subject admits no more than three hundred. Our Ming dynasty has scholars numbering in the tens of millions — if they always fail to pass, is that not a lifetime wasted?

Our heart is deeply pained by this. We decree: after the jinshi examination, an additional special examination shall be opened, taking subjects in Understanding Law, Understanding Mathematics, and the Investigation of Things, conferring the rank of equivalent to jinshi."

Meng Shaoyu bowed and said: "Your Majesty's grace is abundant! Your subject ventures to ask: for the Understanding Law, Understanding Mathematics, and Investigation of Things subjects, what shall be the examination topics, and who shall serve as chief and vice examiners?"

Chongzhen said: "Since they did not pass the jinshi subject, their eight-legged essays are presumably mediocre. Therefore, the three subjects of Understanding Law, Understanding Mathematics, and the Investigation of Things shall not set eight-legged essays.

Each discipline has its specialty: those in Understanding Law must be thoroughly versed in the Great Ming Code; those in Understanding Mathematics must be versed in Zu's ratio, the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, and other mathematical disciplines; the Investigation of Things is likewise."

"As for the chief examiners: for the Understanding Law subject, Minister of Justice Yan Mingtai shall be chief examiner, with Zhang Ruitu as vice examiner.

For the Understanding Mathematics subject, Minister of Revenue Guo Yunhou shall be chief examiner, with Zhang Ruitu as vice examiner. For the Investigation of Things subject, Xu Guangqi shall be chief examiner, with Grand Secretary Shi Fenglai as vice examiner."

(End of chapter)