Xiangye

Chapter 119 The Purpose of the Imperial Examination

Soon, the topic paper was sent out.

It turns out that the ancient imperial examination papers and questions were separated.When candidates enter the examination room, they will get a stack of blank papers from the examiner to use as questions.As for the questions, they are unpacked and taken out by the main examiner before each exam and distributed.

Before the chief examiner opened the package, no one knew what was being tested.In this way, the confidentiality can be maximized and the fairness of the imperial examination can be guaranteed.

When he got the topic paper, Gao Wen held it under the lamp to have a look. It was "The Way to Safeguard the Country and the Whole Army".In addition, under "The Way of Anguo and Anjun" is an ancient poem "I'm afraid I will fall asleep late at night."

The six words "The Way of Safeguarding the Country and the Whole Army" are easy to understand, but it is just a topic of policy, asking candidates to talk about how to rectify the army and enrich the country and strengthen the army.

The Tumu Fortress change, the Taishang Emperor was captured alive by the Oirats was simply a great shame for the Ming Dynasty. After the new king ascended the throne, he thought every day about how to defeat the Tatars, and he was ashamed.Because of this, Lord Wang, the chief examiner of the Pingliang Mansion Examination, was sent by the imperial court to Shaanxi to recruit soldiers.The Ming Dynasty has never compromised with the outside world, and what is good at the top will follow suit at the bottom. There is a lot of shouting and killing for the Oirat government and the public.In this year's imperial examinations at all levels, there are probably not a few questions related to military affairs like this.

In his previous life, Gao Wen had taken the civil service examination, but he was passed because of his health.I am also familiar with this kind of thing that is equivalent to arguing. After getting the topic, I only need to think about it for a while before I know how to proceed.

As for the following sentence "I'm afraid I will fall asleep late at night", if you don't have a basic concept of the imperial examination, you may be confused and confused.

In fact, this is a test post poem.

The so-called test post poem is to take a sentence in the ancient poems and use a flat tone word in the sentence as the rhyme to compose a five-character eight-rhyme poem, which is also in the form of stereotyped.There are also breaking the topic, inheriting the topic, starting the lecture, middle-ranking, and closing-up... It's just that you have to use the form of verse.

"I'm afraid that the flowers will fall asleep late at night" comes from Su Dongpo's poem "Begonia".I'm afraid that the flowers will fall asleep late at night, so I burn high candles to illuminate the red makeup.

The translation is in vernacular, that is, the curling east wind blows the faint clouds, revealing the moon, and the moonlight is also faint.The fragrance of flowers melted in the hazy mist, and the moon had already moved over the courtyard corridor.Because I was just afraid that the flowers would fall asleep in the middle of the night, so I lit tall candles and refused to miss the opportunity to appreciate the blooming of the crabapple.

Of course, the meaning of the original poem has nothing to do with the test post poem.In the imperial examination, the form is more important than the content.When choosing this poem, what I choose is the flat sound of the character "Hua", and the flat water rhyme.

You just write poems according to this rhyme. If the rhyme is correct and the format is correct, you can pass the test.

It seems that the first day of this hospital examination is policy theory and test post poems. Looking at the sky, it is still early, and he was very tired before. Gao Wen knew that his current state was not very good, so he simply lay down again and continued to sleep Replenish your spirit.Anyway, there is a whole day, and the papers will be handed in at dusk, so there is no rush.

At the moment, I couldn't care how the other candidates were doing, so I continued to lie down again, and this one returned to the cage to sleep comfortably.When Gao Wen woke up again, the sky was already bright, and his hands were numb due to the pressure of his head for a long time, and he almost lost consciousness.

After shaking for a long time to clear the blood, Gao Wen scooped some water from the small bucket in the corner of the house and poured it into the inkstone, slowly grinding the ink.

While grinding, thinking about how to answer the question.

Ordinarily, today's exam should be the most difficult poem in poetry. It is easy for a modern person to make up two hazy poems such as "facing the sea, the spring is warm and the flowers are blooming".But to write ancient poems, whether it is five-character or seven-character, you have to stick to the rhyme, and you have to pay attention to the parallelism. If you make a mistake, the poem will be considered useless.But in Gao Wen's opinion, it is precisely this test post poem that is best written.

Still the same sentence, although there is a poem in the poem post poem, it has nothing to do with poetry.To put it bluntly, it is actually a stereotyped essay with rhyme.Emphasis on format and less content, as long as the format is correct, you can get high scores.As for whether the poem is well written or not, it doesn't matter.

The imperial examinations in the Ming and Qing Dynasties used stereotyped essays, and did the Tang Dynasty use poetry and prose to select scholars?

So Gao Wen picked up a pen and started a draft.After about two hours, I finally pieced together a test poem with dozens of lines.

After finishing writing, he read it himself first, and then couldn't help laughing out loud: What kind of poem is this called? It's completely about two orioles singing green willows.

Moreover, this poem is extremely stinking, it says nothing, and it's a mouthful. As for the beauty of literature, it doesn't have the slightest bit of beauty.

But the problem is that people can't find any faults, whether it is rhyme or stereotyped style.

"It seems that this imperial examination is not difficult. As long as you grasp the key points, even if the examiner wants to give you a low score, there will be no point to deduct points."

This sounds simple, but some people can't think of it.

The so-called cleverness is worse than being clumsy, if you want to practice words and sentences in the test post poems and show your literary talent, maybe it will be a bad thing.From ancient times to the present, Gao Wen has never seen anyone write a well-known poem.Literature is literature, and exams are exams.What literature pays attention to is touching people's hearts, and what it pays attention to is the beauty of the rhythm of words and content.The exam is a cold rule that can clearly judge the pros and cons.

Although the poem he wrote was stinky, no one could catch the flaws. Gao Wen was also very satisfied, so he immediately picked up the pen and copied it on the paper in neat "guange style".

This topic is over, and the next step is that policy theory.

The question "The Way to Safeguard the Country and the Whole Army", as the name suggests, asks you to talk about how to make the army strong and how to make the country healthy.

As a time traveler, Gao Wen was also an avid fan of military history in his previous life. He has been in the forums for many years. This topic is really too simple for him.

In the military history forum of later generations, why the Ming Dynasty died is always a hot topic.The articles written by the big names on the forum are also overwhelming, and it is dazzling to read.

As for why the Ming Dynasty died, there are generally three arguments.

The first argument is that the Ming Dynasty died during the Little Ice Age.Since the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the temperature of the earth has dropped significantly.At that time, the annual average temperature in the whole of China was lower than it is now. Severe droughts and floods occurred one after another in summer, and the winter was extremely cold. Not only Hebei, but also Shanghai, Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong and other places experienced heavy snowfall.Crop production in the northern hemisphere has been greatly reduced, and famine is everywhere, causing severe social unrest.The people who couldn't eat enough to eat left their homes and fled around, which eventually led to a large-scale peasant uprising.In the end, Li Zicheng, the leader of the Peasant Army, captured Beijing, Emperor Chongzhen hanged himself on Jingshan Mountain, and the Ming Dynasty fell.

The second argument is that the fall of the Ming Dynasty was due to financial bankruptcy.During the Wanli period, Zhang Juzheng reformed and implemented a whip method.This is good governance. During his tenure as chief minister, he accumulated a lot of wealth for the country.However, when the new law was implemented, the methods were so drastic that it offended the big landlords and big bureaucratic groups.After his death, the new law fell into disuse.In the year of Chongzhen, the emperor was fooled by the ministers, and he directly exempted several major tax sources such as commercial tax and mineral tax.Without stable taxation, coupled with a large number of land mergers, the state can collect less and less money.When faced with the domestic peasant war and the challenge of the Liaodong post-Qing Dynasty, they were naturally helpless.Fighting is about logistics. If you get money and food, if you don't have money, you will die forever. /
The third argument, the death of the Ming Dynasty, died of the system.In particular, the Weisuo military household system has been implemented for more than 200 years.Because of the household registration restrictions, those military households went to serve in the army as soon as they were born.Military officers, on the other hand, regard military households as private property and slaves, and more often let them farm for themselves for profit, rather than training.Many soldiers have planted all their lives without even touching a knife or gun.Such a soldier went to the battlefield, and it would be hell to be able to fight.

If we want to do a good job in today's policy discussion, we just need to copy these three arguments, but it is also simple.

Thinking of this, Gao Wen picked up a pen and began to draft, but he couldn't write two words, his heart suddenly trembled, and he thought to himself: No, you can't write like this.Otherwise, I'm afraid that my Gao Wen will lose my name in this exam.

That's right, if it is written like this, it is already the emperor's edict when the old six ministers of the imperial court entered the palace to meet the emperor.Not to mention me, just take the candidates in this examination room as an example, they are just a group of children without fame.How can you write nonsense about such a major military matter.Moreover, when the examiner asked this question, he didn't want to find a way to enrich the country and strengthen the army in the paper.

In this era, limited by information conditions, even scholars are mostly nerds who don't work hard and don't distinguish between five grains, and know nothing about common affairs.

What do they know about governing the country?

From this point of view, later generations felt that the imperial examination was not a good system for selecting talents.Especially during the period of the New Culture Movement in the early Republic of China, countless people criticized the imperial examination system to the point of utter shame, and put it on the pillar of shame in history. What's the use of it?

However, in Gao Wen's view, the imperial examination is not to let you rule the country with stereotypes, but to select a group of high-quality talents with culture and executive ability from the vast crowd.A person who has studied hard for ten years and can win the prize in the examination room should be a top-notch person in terms of ambition and intelligence.

After the imperial examinations, scholars with good grades had to enter the Imperial Academy to learn how to govern the country, and those with poor grades had to be placed in various ministries to observe politics. After the internship period expired, they would be released as officials after passing the examination.That is to say, from this time on, the country began to complement the administrative capabilities of scholars, and only use what they can.

Therefore, whether it is stereotyped essays, test post poems or policy theory, what is tested is only your cultural quality.As for your administrative ability and political vision, sorry, this examiner is not interested.

(End of this chapter)