Li Po, who was far away in Chang'an, did not know about the commotion among Donglai officials.
Little did he know that the former servant who abandoned his wife and children and caused a huge scandal was trying hard to pull himself out of the quagmire.
He only worried that the army led by Li Jing would not be too unlucky and be blown away by some divine wind.
Do the people of the Japanese country have such luck? God knows, the sea is their natural barrier to the isolated islands overseas. Otherwise, powerful empires appear repeatedly on the mainland. As long as the Japanese country is a little closer, they will not even be able to defeat their ancestors.
Who needs to take the exam?
And Yuwen Shiji's worries are indeed justified. Li Po has found many nodes on the map, and Donglai is just one of them.
The places located on the north side of Bohai Bay are also very nice. The location is not bad at all compared to Donglai. Now that there is a canal dug by Yang Guang, it is even more convenient.
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It's just that Li Po's attention is no longer on the military. The edict has been issued and everything that needs to be prepared has been prepared. For the court, it is just waiting to see the results. Anyway, it is impossible for the emperor to lead the expedition in person.
There is only one major event before Li Po now, and that is the imperial examination in Beijing.
After some turmoil, the Beijing Examination was finally held successfully.
It’s hard to describe how crude the imperial examination was at this time. It was better than that of the previous Sui Dynasty. After all, Li Po paid special attention to it and made a lot of preliminary preparations. The general trend is not comparable to that of the previous Sui Dynasty.
But it's not entirely clear how much better it is.
There were scholars in the pre-Sui Dynasty. When it comes to Jinshi, it is different from later times. Scholars are more valuable than Jinshi, and they are all titles derived from specialized subjects.
At this time, Li Po learned from the later practice, and those selected in the Beijing test were collectively called Jinshi and were divided into two rankings, the north and the south. Therefore, later people gradually called them two rankings and Jinshi from another time and space.
The two rankings have completely different meanings.
The classification is not as complicated as it was later. Now it is just a two-level system. Those selected by each county are Juren, also known as Gongsheng, and those selected by the Beijing examination are Jinshi.
The Beijing Examination does not distinguish between the first and second grades. For each subject, two people are selected from the north and the south, that is, four in one subject, and the regular subjects are taken at the same time. There is no difference in subjects.
There are a total of twelve subjects, fifty or sixty people can be selected, and more than 800 people can take the exam. Excluding those who refer to the formal subjects, the probability of passing the regular subjects is roughly one in twenty.
For those who are rushing to take the imperial examination, it is obviously an unfriendly numerical probability. It is a complete elite selection, and the talent is slightly inferior in academics. Even if you sharpen your head, you can't even hope to squeeze into the ranks of the imperial examination.
Moreover, the emperor's preferences largely determined the results of the Beijing Examination. Anyway, those Ming Jing Ke Jinshi were unlikely to be as prosperous during Li Po's reign.
Because the emperor prefers those Jinshi who are knowledgeable in law, calculation, miscellaneous science, etc., because in his eyes, Confucian classics are too flashy, and they can be praised appropriately, but not excessively, because few of them can do it in practice.
use.
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Of course, no matter how crude it was, in May of the fifth year of Yuanzhen's reign in the Tang Dynasty, the first scientific expedition in the Tang Dynasty came to a successful conclusion amidst all the turmoil.
This is undoubtedly a moment of great historical significance. The imperial examination system originated in the Southern Qi Dynasty, and was only implemented by a unified dynasty in the Sui Dynasty. It was not officially established until the Tang Dynasty.
More than a hundred years passed during this period, and there were countless twists and turns, but the people of the Central Plains Dynasty still worked hard to find a new path.
This is called crossing the river by feeling for the stones. No one knows how many people worked hard and even shed blood for this. Everyone only cares about the pros and cons of the imperial examination and doesn't care much about anything else.
And this is history, it only records the process, not the warmth.
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At the end of the three-day exam, everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
The scholars walked out of the liberal arts academy and breathed in the fresh air outside. Even though they were worried about the consequences, they were still relaxed and began to go out with friends to play and contribute to the prosperity of Chang'an.
However, the officials of the Ministry of Rites could not relax and started the marking process.
Li Po waited patiently in the palace. The only thing he was a little worried about was that Li Gang sneaked up to him again and said something like leaking test questions.
Besides, I am thinking about how to use this to promote the imperial examination.
The scholars who were able to enter the Beijing Examination in the first place are now all candidates. They must be given certain rewards. Otherwise, the joy will be in vain. When they go back, they will be full of complaints. What if they don't come next time? The impact will not be good.
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But the reward cannot be too high. After all, it has to be continued. How can the court have so much capital to reward them?
The DPRK and China still need to discuss this, and the more mature idea is to find equalization through taxes. In fact, as long as the people in the government feel that they are different, it will be enough.
As for the practice of exempting taxes and paying wages as later, it is really like treating scholars as ancestors, but if you dare to do this here, the nobles will be happy, and name people
Believe it or not, I can get you thousands of fertile fields right away?
In fact, what Li Po was thinking about at this time was the issue of cost-effectiveness. If he were stingy, he would not be as generous as Old Zhao.
It's better to pay less, just to make the elected elected people happy...
As for the Jinshi, it is considered to be an official, and the reward is certain, but it must be appropriate. The official department has already given it a seal, so Li Po doesn't need to worry about it.
What he was thinking about was how to make these people more famous, so as to show the importance of the court and arouse the enthusiasm of scholars for reference.
We can hold a banquet in the apricot forest and parade the hairpin flowers through the streets. It’s a girly thing. It’s probably something that the descendants of Lao Zhao came up with later. In the Tang Dynasty, martial arts became a common practice, so we can’t do this.
This year's imperial examination has also added a policy question section, to select a top scholar, and the second best candidate will not be seen, and Li Po does not intend to make it so fancy.
This is for long-term planning. The imperial examination needs to be improved step by step. If it is made too complicated at once, it is easy for mistakes to occur.
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Li Po had a lot of thoughts, but in fact, he didn't have much expectations for the results of this year's imperial examination. What he focused on was the imperial examination system itself.
As for who the selected people are and how talented they are... maybe they will be outstanding in the future, but now, for a group of young nobles, no matter how good their writing is and how beautiful their words are, they are just words on paper.
If you give them a county to govern, it would be good if one out of ten is competent, let alone able to make some political achievements.
When Li Po was in Mayi, Li Jing's comment to his nephew was that he could only serve as a county guard, but if he could not achieve great things, then he had been an official for several years.
Facts also proved that Li Jing was right, he was indeed a useless snack.
Therefore, when it comes to selecting talents through the imperial examination, what is selected is a mold and needs to be refined. Whether it will be successful or not will be determined after ten years. Li Po saw this very clearly.