When the bell rang in the examination hall, in a dormitory in the administrative school that was temporarily used as the examination room, Xi Peilan, who was informed by the invigilator, opened the kraft paper bag in front of him and took out the things inside.

With a nervous mood, when he opened the paper with the title of the Four Books, he saw five big words "I am poor but not compassionate" printed on it. Xi Peilin thought for a moment, then pursed his lips and smiled slightly, unable to help but pat his chest and breathed a sigh of relief.

This title comes from "Mencius. Gongsun Chou Shang", and there is also the same thing in "Mencius. Wanzhangxia". The original text is: "Liu Xiahui is not ashamed to despise the king, nor humble the small official; if he advances, he will not hide his wise men, but will not blame him; if he is lost, he will not complain, and if he is poor, he will not compassion."

It means that when a person is in a difficult situation, how should he maintain his moral integrity and not be compassionate to others. Candidates should write an eight-part essay with no more than 700 words based on the above meaning, which is limited to three days and two nights.

As for the topic of the policy, it is about the "land reform" implemented in Beihai Town. The above quotes a paragraph on "Land Management and Private Lending Regulations" on "Rent Reduction and Interest Reduction" and requires candidates to explain their own understanding, with the number of words within one thousand.

When Xi Perrin saw this, she frowned. The training materials she sent before were explained by the land reform laws, but due to time, she just read them in general.

After thinking for a while, she decided to put it aside and finish the title of the Four Books before talking about it.

Not long afterwards, Lin Qizong and most candidates in the examination institute spent half an hour to an hour after seeing the questions. They also thought about the source of the questions, and their hearts that had been hanging around finally fell.

The strategy sent many people a little confused, but in Lin Qizong's opinion, reducing rent for the poor is always a good thing. In addition, after seeing the endless fertile fields in Beihai Town, he also had a scheming in his heart.

Because there were less than 200 children who came to take the exam, Wang Zhong and others did not think too much about increasing the difficulty when they set the questions. Anyway, even if they passed the imperial examination, they would have a year of professional learning in the future, and Beihai Town did not rely on the Four Books and Five Classics to govern the world.

Just give a decent question and answer it honestly. The main purpose is to test the candidates' 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 content of the Four Books is not large, and the content suitable for the eight-legged essay topic is even limited. Nowadays, in areas with developed culture and education, candidates with the conditions and hard work may even master all the contents of the Four Books that are most commonly used as test questions.

Why is it said that the three levels of the children in the Qing Dynasty were more difficult than the Juren exam?

If an ordinary person starts to read books from the age of six or seven, he wants to read the four books thoroughly and also learn Zhu Xi's various annotations, it is difficult to achieve it without 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 - "Records of the Grand Historian", "Book of the Han Dynasty", "Book of the Later Han Dynasty", and "The Three Kingdoms".

Basically, if a 20-year-old scholar wants to master the above content, it is difficult to do except for geniuses and super academic masters. So I understand why any scholar in the Qing Dynasty was a perfect master of Chinese studies in the future? They are more than enough to be professors in the Chinese department! Of course, donating students is not included.

Who can now say that the professor can recite the Four Books and Five Classics throughout, or even draw a random topic from it to write an eight-part essay?

To put it bluntly, Tongsheng Examination is to select the seeds of reading by the candidates' mastery of the Four Books and Five Classics and whether the meanings and principles in the writing are smooth.

In addition, the second difficulty of the test for children is to get the questions. Since the mid-Ming Dynasty, basically all the questions that can be used in the Four Books have been drawn. In order to test the strength of children and ensure a low admission rate, the examiners have played tricks, causing countless candidates to suffer from the spirit of ecstasy.

In the third year of Qianlong, the Qing court clearly stipulated that the children's test questions could have difficult interrogation questions. For example, the question "Learn to be strong" is a interrogation question, which comes from "Mencius. King Hui of Liang". The full text is "The wife learned it when she was young, and wanted to do it when she was strong."

Although the Qing court required that the two sentences involved in the interrogation questions must be coherent in meaning and cannot be divided into the meaning. However, it is too difficult to not divide the original meaning, so some strange or even obvious problems will appear in the Tongsheng exam. The reason is either that the examiner deals with it sloppyly, or that he deliberately shows himself, or deliberately makes things difficult.

For example, during the Guangxu period, a prefect used the question "steel, turtle, dragon, dragon, fish, turtle" to make the six counties under their jurisdiction use one word as the test question. Most candidates were confused when they saw the question and didn't know where to write it, so many people were dismissed.

In fact, this question comes from a passage in "The Doctrine of the Mean": "Now, a spoonful of water is as large as a spoon, and it is unexpected. The turtle, dragon, fish and turtle are born, and the goods and wealth are born."

However, it is no longer a strange thing to take out the animal's names and use them as test questions. It's simply a bastard.

Another thing is that a certain government assigned to four counties under the title "Being a king, a father, a minister, and a son" to each take one "Being a man" as the question. This kind of question is really fatal to the candidates!

Because according to the answer rules, not only the four words "monarch, minister, father and son" are not allowed in the composition, but the words "stop at respect" and "stop at mercy" are not allowed to be written, but every sentence in the writing cannot be separated from the above meaning. If you are not careful about this kind of question, it will not conform to the etiquette, and the eight-part essay is the most ritual, and as long as you write it incorrectly, you will be dismissed.

What's more, some examiners couldn't find the questions in the Four Books, so they actually looked for them from the "Book of Han". Let me go~~ The Four Books and Five Classics have not been well learned yet! However, the candidates cannot say that the examiners were wrong, because the "Book of Han" belongs to the first four histories and is also the knowledge that children should master.

So for the four-book questions of Lin Qizong and other children, it is like the opening exam, and it is completely useless! What everyone wants to compete with is writing skills and calligraphy level.

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content behind! And for the scholars, this exam has also been reduced to two games, the first game of the Four Books and the second game is the current affairs and policy discussion.

The title of the four books obtained by Sun Yuanxiang is three, namely, "The use of etiquette is the most important. The way of the previous kings is beautiful. Small and big things are based on it, and there is something that cannot be done. Knowing harmony and harmony is not done with etiquette is not feasible.", "The world can be equal, the title and salary can be resigned, and the hand and blade can be trampled, and the mean cannot be done.", and "Is it possible to praise his poems and read his books, but not knowing the person? Therefore, it is to discuss the world."

Among these three questions, the first question comes from "The Analects of Confucius", the second question comes from "The Doctrine of the Mean", and the third question comes from "Mencius". The answer is to write three eight-part essays based on these three paragraphs, and each article must not exceed 700 words.

The rules for the first provincial examination in the Qing Dynasty were basically the same, and three questions were drawn from the four books; "The Analects of Confucius" and "Mencius" must be found, and then choose one from "The Doctrine of the Mean" or "The Great Learning". For scholars who have already read the Four Books and Five Classics, the routine game of intercepting the topic cannot be used.

Because the Juren exam is to establish words on behalf of sages, it is important to be "clear, elegant and upright". It also requires citing scriptures and learning from the essence of various schools of thought, and not to go through miscellaneous arguments to achieve the state of being erect and circumspect.

As for the second session, there are two strategies. The first is about river management, which explains how to fundamentally solve the problem of floods in the Huanghuai River every year; the second is to ask candidates to express their opinions on the "land reform" in Beihai Town.

That’s right, Beihai Town is preparing to cultivate its own water conservancy talents. Zhao Xin and Chen Qingsong plan to select a few of the candidates of this class to build a team of Beihai Town’s yellow-controlled team.

Since the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Yellow River has been curing disasters every year, and if a little relaxed, natural and man-made disasters will occur. Although there are certain reasons for the corruption in the administration of officials, the most critical thing is that during the Jingkang Incident, Du Chong, a direct scholar in the Privy Councillor who guarded Daming Prefecture, ordered the digging of a large embankment to stop the Jin soldiers. This caused the Yellow River to seize the Huai River and the 800-mile waters of Liangshan disappeared. Since then, the Huanghuai area has been flooding, flooding continues, and Shandong has become a drought area.

In another time and space history, until the fifth year of Xianfeng, the Yellow River broke its mouth again, but this time it miraculously separated from the Huai River and seized the Jishui waterway from Shandong to the sea. Although the Huai River still had frequent floods, the Yellow River finally calmed down since then.

The problem is that for Zhao Xin and others, after they enter the pass, they can’t wait for decades to wait for the Yellow River to divert, right? In addition, investing a large amount of funds every year to strengthen the river embankment cannot completely solve the problem. We have to find a solution from the root. Chen Qingsong’s plan was that not only should the Huai River be built, but the Yellow River also had to open another canal, forcibly let it divert to Shandong and go into the sea.

Speaking of which, when it comes to the provincial examination, scholars not only have to memorize the Four Books and Five Classics, but also study the first four records of the historians, the various schools of thought, and even the "Li Sao" and the "Selected Works of the Past", and have some understanding of government affairs; because from the second and third sessions, the content of the examination will involve astronomy, geography, history, literature, administration, finance, water conservancy, diplomacy, and military. This is not something that corrupt scholars who "turn a blind eye to the outside world and only read the books of sages" can answer.

Without these two tricks, let alone taking the imperial examination for the juren and Jinshi, they are not even qualified to be a teacher and a staff member. They are so overwhelmed to be a private school teacher!

Therefore, it is not that there is a problem with the traditional Chinese reading education method, but that the theory of "fate and fame are achieved is virtue" by Neo-Confucians under the feudal autocracy, which only focuses on the talent selection system of the Four Books and the resulting institutional corruption in the officialdom. Even those top figures who can work hard can only move forward in the cracks of the officialdom.

Let’s take a look at the “Eight Eccentrics of New Yangzhou” in Beihai Town. Which of them is not a broad scholar of classics, but each person’s academic focus is different. Think about Hong Liangji, Lin Zexu, Zuo Zongtang, Li Hongzhang, and even Liang Qichao in another time and space...

After reading the questions, Sun Yuanxiang sighed slightly. Although he knew that there were no regulated verse questions in this exam during the training class, he still felt a little regretful that he could not show his greatest strengths!

Originally, Wang Zhong and the others wrote the title of a regulated verse, but Zhao Xin rejected it. In his opinion, writing poetry is purely a personal hobby, even if it reaches the level of Li and Du, it is useless for economic 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 questions Tong Sheng will ask for. If you encounter a screenshot, Yunfen will probably have a headache."

However, what he didn't expect was that by the time he arrived at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, Xi Peilan had already finished the draft of the four books. She decided to have a good sleep after eating, and would start copying it on the answer sheet tomorrow morning. However, she didn't know at this time that she would be the first candidate to hand in the first exam of this year's child student exam.

The first day of the exam passed like this. At dusk, bright lights lit up in one house, and the two examination buildings became brightly lit. Fortunately, all the candidates had seen the electric lights in Beihai Town, and the previous training classes were all over until night, so no one would make a fuss.

You should know that during the examination halls under the Qing Dynasty, you have to bring your own candles at night. The reason is that the quality of the candles provided by the official is too bad.

Lin Qizong put down his brush, stretched his arms unconsciously, rubbed his sore wrists, picked up the cup and drank a sip of water, felt a little hungry, and then raised his head and looked at the "Western clock" hanging in front of the house.

The lunch prepared for the candidates at noon in the Beihai Town Canteen included a piece of fried salmon, two shrimps, a vegetable, and a small bowl of tofu soup. The staple food was rice or steamed buns. It tasted very good, which made him look forward to what he would eat in the evening. When the long and short needles on the dial pointed at five o'clock, Lin Qizong's nose suddenly moved and thought to himself!

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content later! More than twenty minutes later, two young men wearing white aprons sent pine food boxes to the examination room. Lin Qizong opened the box and saw that it was fat braised pork stewed with vermicelli and shredded potatoes. His unscrupulous saliva instantly secreted a lot. 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 is not the kind of examination room in the Qing Dynasty, as soon as Lin Qizong started to move, the others in the house had to put down their pens and pack up the table to prepare for eating.

At this moment, a sudden turbulence came from outside the door. Accompanied by the sound of rapid footsteps, two people in white coats flashed past the door. Lin Qizong and others did not dare to get up and look around, so they raised their ears and listened carefully to the movement.

After a while, two "white coats" were passing by the door carrying a pair of stretchers. There was still a person lying on it, and there was a person in charge of the invigilator.

Afterwards, Lin Qizong realized that the person who was carried out was really poor and was nervous as soon as the exam was taken. Even after the training class tutoring, he still didn't work.

The candidate named Wu Yun is from Wendeng. He sat in the test questions from 8:30 in the morning and did not know the key points until after 5:00 in the afternoon. He didn't even have lunch in the middle. In the end, he hurriedly wrote a four-character poem with a brush on the table, and then fell to the ground and fainted. His poem said: "It's the case, so if I had known this, I would regret it."

Fortunately, Beihai Town Hospital arranged two doctors and several medical staff in the examination room, and all the medicines were prepared. After Wu Yun was carried to the temporary emergency room, he lost glucose and inhaled some oxygen. Then he woke up, and then he looked ashamed and said he was sorry for his parents, wife and children. He thought he would definitely be demoted now, but the invigilator accompanied him came over to ask him if he still took the exam after hearing that he had nothing to do.

Wu Yun widened his eyes in disbelief and said, "Can the students continue the exam?"

"Of course! You did not violate the discipline of the exam room, but just fainted. It was not easy for ten years to go on. If you want to continue, you will recover later and go back. By the way, I will have someone to bring you a bowl of porridge later. Let's not just take care of the exam, you have to eat too!"

Wu Yun's tears flowed out. He got from fifteen to thirty-five years old. Every time he was under great pressure and fainted as soon as he entered the examination room, so he failed repeatedly. Moreover, there was a rule in the examination room in the Ming and Qing dynasties that if a candidate fainted and was carried out of the examination room for treatment, he would be disqualified even if he was well. I will talk about it next time.

Who knew that Beihai Town could continue without such rules? Wu Yun couldn't help but feel excited. He also forgot that he was having an injection and infusion. Although he couldn't get up, he was still ready to raise his hand to thank him. But then he felt a sudden pain in the back of his hand. He looked down and couldn't help screaming: "Ouch! It's bleeding!"

Because the examination institute was completely closed during the exam, Zhao Xin could only ask Wang Zhong about the situation by phone. When he learned that only one candidate fainted and the others were going well, he, Chen Qingsong and Yu Deli finally felt relieved.

It is not a big deal to faint due to psychological pressure in the imperial examination hall of the Qing Dynasty. Some people committed suicide in the examination hall due to mental and physical torture. In another time and space history, candidates in the provincial examination in Zhejiang committed suicide many times, such as those who cut more than ten cuts on their belly and pierced their necks with candle signs. The most powerful thing is that one actually broke his testicles and died.
Chapter completed!