When the bell rang in the examination hall, in a dormitory of the administrative school that was temporarily used as an examination room, Xi Peilan, who was informed by the invigilator that it was time to start, opened the brown paper bag in front of him and took out the contents.
With an uneasy feeling, when he opened the piece of paper with the titles of the four books written on it, he saw the five characters "Don't show mercy to the poor" printed on it. Xi Peilan thought for a moment, then pursed his lips and smiled, and couldn't help but pat him.
Chest, let out a long sigh of relief.
This question comes from "Mencius. Gongsun Chou Part 1", and the same words are found in "Mencius. Wan Zhang Part 2". The original text is: "Liu Xiahui will not be ashamed to insult the king, nor will he be humble to a small official; he will not hide the virtuous when he advances, but he will follow the way;
Don’t complain when you lose things, don’t show mercy when you are poor.”
It means that when a person encounters a difficult situation, how should he maintain his mental integrity and not be pitiful? Candidates must write an eight-legged essay of no more than 700 words based on the above meaning, and the time limit is three days and two nights.
As for the policy topic, it is about the "land reform" implemented in Beihai Town. It quotes a section of the "Land Management and Private Lending Regulations" on "rent reduction and interest reduction" and requires candidates to explain their own understanding. The number of words is
Within one thousand.
Xi Peilan frowned when she saw this. The previously distributed training materials did contain an explanation of the land reform law, but due to time constraints, she only looked at it in general terms.
After thinking for a moment, she decided to put it aside and finish the four book questions before talking about it.
Soon after, Lin Qizong and most of the candidates who were in the examination hall spent half an hour to an hour after seeing the question, and thought about the source of the question, and their hearts that had been hanging around finally settled down.
The policy confuses many people, but in Lin Qizong's view, it is always a good thing to reduce rents for the poor. In addition, after he saw the endless fields of farmland in Beihai Town, he also had concerns in his mind.
Since there were less than 200 students in total who came to take the exam, Wang Zhong and others did not think about increasing the difficulty too much when setting the questions; anyway, even if the imperial examination was passed, there would still be one year of professional study, and Beihai Town would also
The world can be governed without relying on the Four Books and Five Classics.
Just give an upright question and answer it honestly. The main purpose is to test the candidate's mastery and understanding of the Four Books and Five Classics, as well as their understanding of Beihai Town's policies.
To be honest, the total amount of content in the Four Books is not much, and the content suitable for eight-legged essay questions is even more limited. Nowadays, in areas with developed culture and education, qualified and diligent candidates may even use all the most commonly used test questions in the Four Books
All contents are mastered and recited silently.
Why is it said that the three-level examination for children in the Qing Dynasty was more difficult than the examination for civil servants?
If an ordinary person starts studying at the age of six or seven, if he wants to read through the Four Books and study Zhu Xi's various annotations at the same time, it will be very difficult to do so in less than six or seven years; and the Five Classics will be even longer, at least seven or eight years;
In addition, there are the first four histories - "Historical Records", "Hanshu", "Later Hanshu", and "Three Kingdoms".
Basically, if a 20-year-old scholar wants to master the above content, except for geniuses and super academics, it is difficult to do it. So you understand why any scholar in the Qing Dynasty will be a full-fledged master of Chinese studies in later generations, right? They are Chinese
There are more than enough professors in the department! Of course, donating children is not included in this list.
I would like to ask which professor today can recite the entire Four Books and Five Classics, or even write an eight-legged essay by randomly picking a topic from them?
To put it bluntly, the Tongsheng Examination is to select the reading seeds based on the candidate's mastery of the Four Books and Five Classics and whether the meaning and theory in the writing are smooth.
In addition, the second difficulty of the children's examination is the interception and matching questions. Starting from the mid-Ming Dynasty, basically all the questions that can be used in the four books have been published. In order to test the strength of the children and ensure a low admission rate, the examiners will
They played tricks and caused countless candidates to suffer mental ravages of ecstasy and death.
In the third year of Qianlong's reign, the Qing government explicitly stipulated that the propositions of the children's examination could include more difficult combined questions. For example, the question "The Strongness of Learning" is a combined question, which comes from "Mencius. King Hui of Liang II", full text
It's "The lady learns it when she is young, and wants to practice it when she is strong."
Although the Qing government required that the two sentences involved in the cross-section question must be coherent in meaning and cannot separate the meaning of the text. However, it is too difficult not to separate the meaning of the original text, so some strange and even obvious things will appear in the child test.
There are problematic test questions. The reason is that the examiner is either careless in handling the questions, or is deliberately trying to show off, or is deliberately making things difficult.
For example, during the Guangxu period, a prefect used the proposition "turtle, turtle, dragon, dragon, fish, turtle" and asked each of the six counties under his jurisdiction to use one word as an examination question. Most of the candidates were confused when they saw the question and did not know where to start.
After writing, many people were deposed.
In fact, this question comes from a passage in "The Doctrine of the Mean": "Today's water is as much as a spoonful, and unexpectedly, turtles, dragons, fish and turtles are born, and goods and wealth are produced."
However, taking out the names of animals and using them as test questions is no longer a strange thing, it is simply a bastard.
Another example is that a certain government assigned the topic "Being a king, a father, a minister, and a son" to the four counties under its control, and each chose one "being a person" as the topic. This kind of question is really terrible for the candidates!
Because according to the rules of answering questions, not only are the four words "lord, minister, father and son" not allowed in the composition, but also the words "stop at respect" and "stop at compassion" at the end are also absolutely forbidden, but they cannot be left out of every sentence in the composition.
The above meaning. This kind of question will be inconsistent with etiquette if you are not careful, and the eight-part essay is the most important thing about etiquette. If you write it wrong, you will be dismissed.
What's more, some examiners couldn't find the topic in the Four Books, so they found it from the "Book of Han". Oh my God~~ They haven't learned the Four Books and the Five Classics proficiently yet! However, the examinees can't say that the examiners are wrong, because "The Book of Han"
"Book of Han" belongs to the first four histories and is also the knowledge content that children need to master.
Therefore, for students like Lin Qizong, a serious four-book question from the Eight Classics is just like an open-book exam, which is completely free! What everyone needs to compete is their writing skills and calligraphy skills.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! As for the scholars, this exam has been reduced to two questions, the first one has four book questions, and the second one has two questions on current affairs policy.
The four books obtained by Sun Yuanxiang's people have three titles, namely "The purpose of etiquette is to be harmonious. The way of the ancient kings is beautiful. If you follow it, you will not be able to do something. Know how to be harmonious and make peace, and do not use etiquette."
It is also not feasible.", "The world can be equalized, the rank and salary can be dismissed, the sword can be cut, but moderation is impossible.", and "Is it possible to praise his poems and read his books without knowing his person? That's why.
Talking about his world."
Among these three questions, the first question comes from "The Analects", the second question comes from "The Doctrine of the Mean", and the third question comes from "Mencius". The requirement to answer the questions is to write three eight-legged essays based on these three paragraphs, and each essay must also be free of charge.
Over seven hundred words.
The rules for the Four Books questions in the first provincial examination in the Qing Dynasty were basically as follows. Three questions were asked from the Four Books; "The Analects" and "Mencius" were must-haves, and then one was chosen from "The Doctrine of the Mean" or "The Great Learning". For those who have already read the Four Books well
For the scholars of the Five Classics, the routine game of cutting and setting questions cannot be used.
Because the purpose of the examination is to speak for the sages and sages, the emphasis is on "purity, elegance and integrity". Moreover, it is also necessary to quote scriptures and draw on the essence of various schools of thought, without being allowed to meddle with miscellaneous theories, in order to achieve the state of vertical and horizontal integration.
As for the second session, there are two policy topics. The first one is about river control. It explains how to fundamentally solve the problem of annual floods in the Huanghuai River. The second one requires candidates to express their views on the "land reform" in Beihai Town.
opinion.
That's right, Beihai Town is preparing to cultivate its own water conservancy talents. Zhao Xin and Chen Qingsong plan to select a few from this year's candidates to build Beihai Town's anti-pornography team.
Since the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Yellow River has been in trouble every year. If we relax even a little bit, natural and man-made disasters will occur. Of course, there is corruption in the administration and cutting corners, but the most critical reason is that during the Jingkang Incident, the people who guarded Daming Mansion
In order to stop the Jin soldiers, Du Chong, a privy scholar, ordered the digging of a dyke, which caused the Yellow River to divert the Huaihe River and flow into the sea. The 800-mile-long water bank of Liangshan disappeared. Since then, the Huanghuai area has been overflowing, floods have continued, and Shandong has also become a drought.
district.
In the history of another time and space, it was not until the fifth year of Xianfeng that the Yellow River burst again, but this time it miraculously separated from the Huaihe River and took the Ji River waterway from Shandong to the sea. Although the Huaihe River still often suffered from floods, the Yellow River finally subsided.
.
The problem is that for Zhao Xin and others, after they enter the customs, they can't just wait for decades for the Yellow River to change its course, right? In addition, investing large sums of money every year to strengthen the river embankments cannot completely solve the problem, and we have to find the root cause.
Method. The plan given by Chen Qingsong is not only to build a dam on the Huaihe River, but also to open a canal on the Yellow River and force it to change its course through Shandong and into the sea.
Speaking of which, when it comes to the provincial examination level, scholars must not only memorize the Four Books and Five Classics, but also study the first four historical records, hundreds of schools of thought, and even "Li Sao" and "Selected Works of the past dynasties", and have an understanding of government affairs;
Because starting from the second and third sessions, the exam content will involve astronomy, geography, history, literature, government, wealth, water conservancy, diplomacy, military and other aspects.
This can only be answered by a rotten scholar who only reads books from sages and sages.
Without these two brushes, let alone being admitted to the imperial examination, he is not even qualified to be a master or a staff member, and he will die as a private school teacher!
Therefore, it is not that there is a problem with China's traditional reading and education methods, but that there is a problem with the Neo-Confucian theory of "achievement means success in virtue" under the feudal autocracy, the talent selection system that only emphasizes the Four Books, and the resulting institutional corruption in the officialdom.
.Even those top figures who are able to deal with the world can only struggle to move forward in the cracks of officialdom.
Take a look at the "Eight Eccentrics of New Yangzhou" in Beihai Town. None of them are experts in Confucian classics who have extensive knowledge, but each has a different focus. Think about Hong Liangji, Lin Zexu, and Zuo Zongtang in another time and space.
Li Hongzhang, and even Liang Qichao...
Sun Yuanxiang sighed slightly after reading the questions. Although he already knew when he took the training class that there were no rhythmic poetry questions in this exam, he still felt a little regretful that he could not use his greatest strength!
Originally, Wang Zhong and the others had drafted a poem title, but Zhao Xin rejected it. In his view, writing poetry was purely a personal hobby. Even if it reached Li Du's level, it would be of no use to the economy and people's livelihood. Besides,
, good poems in the Qing Dynasty never came from the imperial examination.
Although Sun Yuanxiang was thinking about how to solve the problem, his wife always appeared in his mind.
"I don't know what kind of questions will be asked in the Tongsheng Examination. If there are cross-cut questions, I think Yunfen will also have a headache."
But what he didn't expect was that when four o'clock came in the afternoon, Xi Peilan had already finished typing up the draft of the four book questions. She decided to have a good sleep after eating and start copying the questions onto the answer sheet tomorrow morning.
.But she didn’t know at this time that she would be the first candidate to hand in the paper in the first session of this year’s children’s examination.
The first day of the exam passed like this. At dusk, bright lights lit up in each room, and the two exam buildings also became brightly lit. Fortunately, all the candidates had seen the electric lights in Beihai Town, and the previous training
Classes also last until evening, so no one will make a fuss.
You must know that in the examination rooms under the Manchu Qing Dynasty, you had to bring your own candles at night because the quality of the candles provided by the government was really bad.
Lin Qizong put down his brush, unconsciously stretched his arm, and rubbed his sore wrist. He picked up the cup and took a sip of water. He felt a little hungry, and then he raised his head and looked at the hanging hanging in front of the room.
The "Western Clock".
The lunch prepared for the candidates in the Beihai Town cafeteria included a piece of fried salmon, two shrimps, a vegetable, a small bowl of tofu soup, and the staple food was rice or steamed buns. It tasted very good, which made him look forward to the evening meeting even more.
What to eat? When the long and short hands on the dial pointed to five o'clock, the tip of Lin Qizong's nose suddenly moved, and he thought!
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! More than twenty minutes later, two young people wearing white aprons delivered pine food boxes into the examination room one by one. Lin Qizong opened the box and looked at it.
It turned out to be fat braised pork, stewed with vermicelli and shredded potatoes. His mouth watered immediately. He couldn't wait to pick up a piece of meat with chopsticks and stuff it into his mouth.
Tsk tsk~~Satisfied!
Because the examination room in Beihai Town was not the kind of examination room that the Qing Dynasty had, so as soon as Lin Qizong started to move, everyone else in the room had to put down their pens, clear the table and prepare to eat.
At this time, there was a sudden commotion outside the door, accompanied by the sound of rapid footsteps, and two people in white coats flashed past the door. Lin Qizong and others did not dare to stand up and look around, so they pricked up their ears and listened carefully.
Listen to the noise.
After a while, I saw two people in "white coats" carrying a stretcher passing by the door, with a person lying on it, and a person in charge of invigilating the exam.
Afterwards, Lin Qizong found out that the person who was carried out was really poor, and he became nervous when he took the exam. Even after being tutored in a training class, he still couldn't do it.
This candidate named Wu Yun is from Wendeng. He sat in front of the exam questions from 8:30 in the morning until about 5:00 in the afternoon. He didn't even bother to eat lunch. In the end, he was so anxious at the table
He wrote a four-character poem with a brush on the case, and then he fell to the ground and fainted. His poem said: "It's just like this, that's why I am like this. I knew it was like this, but I regret not doing it like this."
Thanks to Beihai Town Hospital, which arranged two doctors and several medical staff in the examination room, all the necessary medicines were available. After Wu Yun was carried to the temporary emergency room, he was given glucose and some oxygen, and then he woke up.
When he came over, he immediately looked ashamed and said that he was sorry for his parents, wife and children. He thought he would be deposed at this time. Unexpectedly, the accompanying invigilator came over and asked him if he still wanted to take the exam after hearing that he was nothing serious.
Wu Yun widened his eyes in disbelief and said, "Can students continue to take the exam?"
"Of course! You didn't violate the rules of the examination room, you just fainted. It's not easy after ten years of cold weather. If you still want to continue, just calm down and go back in a while. By the way, I'll have someone bring you a bowl of porridge. Let's not
If you are just taking care of the exam, you have to eat!"
Wu Yun burst into tears. He took the exam from the age of fifteen to thirty-five. He always failed because of the great pressure and fainted as soon as he entered the examination room. Moreover, the examination room in the Ming and Qing Dynasties
There is a rule. If a candidate faints and is carried out of the examination room for treatment, he will be disqualified even if he recovers. Let’s talk about it next time.
Who knew that Beihai Town didn't have such a rule and could continue? Wu Yun couldn't help but feel extremely excited. He also forgot that he was getting an injection and infusion. Although he couldn't get up, he was ready to raise his hand to say thank you, but then he felt a sharp pain on the back of his hand.
, lowered his head and looked again, and couldn't help but scream: "Ouch! He's bleeding!"
Because the examination hall was completely closed during the exam, Zhao Xin could only ask Wang Zhong about the situation over the phone. When he learned that only one candidate fainted and everything else went smoothly, he, Chen Qingsong, and Yu Deli finally felt relieved.
It is said that in the Qing Dynasty, it was not a big deal to faint due to psychological pressure in the imperial examination room. There were also people who committed suicide in the examination room due to mental and physical torture. In the Guangxu period in another time and space, there were many candidates who committed suicide in the Zhejiang Provincial Examination.
, such as making dozens of cuts on the belly to disembowel the abdomen, stabbing oneself in the neck with candle sticks, and the most violent one was that one man naturally shattered his testicles and died.