The metropolitan examination was held in spring, and for this reason was also called the Spring Examinations.

So many candidates had come for the metropolitan examination that though the examination itself was set to begin on the ninth of the second month, entry verification and admission had already begun on the night of the eighth.

The heavens were unkind — the sky hung dark and lightless, a thin cold rain drizzling down and cutting like needles, the night wind gusting into the candidates’ collars and inflicting a biting chill.

By the dim glow of their lanterns, many candidates’ eyes could be seen as dark and heavy as the night itself, their faces a shade hollow and wan, which then shifted to a glimmer of resolve and stubbornness. Among the older candidates, some turned back toward their lodgings; others stood in hesitant dejection before setting their jaws and pressing forward into the examination ground with grim determination.

Spring rain, soft as cream — yet an inopportune spring rain would turn an already grueling examination into something even more arduous to endure.

Pei Shaohuai carried his examination basket, shouldered his bundle, held an oiled paper umbrella in hand, and pressed along quickly with the queue, waiting for his name to be called and his entry verified. He reflected that Heaven was toying with people — sitting for the examinations was itself a process of continuous self-selection: a decision seemed to rest in the single instant of the present, yet what sustained that decision was all the days and nights that had come before.

Pei Shaohuai had arrived relatively early and stood near the front of the queue; it was not long before his turn came. In truth, compared to the provincial examinations, the inspection procedures for the metropolitan examinations were considerably less rigorous. The inspecting officials did not crumble each piece of dried food, nor did they ask Shaohuai to remove his hair crown — once they had confirmed he carried nothing hidden on his person or in his bundle, they passed him through to the second inspection point.

For one thing, all candidates sitting for the metropolitan examinations already held the status of provincial graduates; for another, at an imperial metropolitan examination conducted in the shadow of the palace walls, those who engaged in corrupt practices for private gain faced not merely the revocation of their degrees. Risking their entire family’s exile to the frontier in exchange for some petty underhanded scheme was simply not worth it — a provincial graduate already had the qualifications to enter government service.

After his name was called, Pei Shaohuai received a blank folded answer sheet, already stamped with the official seal of the examination compound. After verifying it was correct, he wrapped the answer sheet carefully in a waxed cloth, found his examination cell by number, and took his place inside.

The cell was narrow and slightly damp. Pei Shaohuai first removed his half-soaked outer robe, draped the bedding over his shoulders, lit the charcoal brazier, and drove out the chill from the cell, allowing his body to warm slowly.

The brazier cast a faint, glimmering light, now and then flicking out a few sparks. Once his body had warmed, Pei Shaohuai began to put the cell in order.

The surrounding cells gradually came alive with sounds as candidates filed in one by one; this process would continue through the whole of the night. Pei Shaohuai brought the writing board and long bench side by side, spread a layer of cloth over them, and draped the bedding across himself as he sat in a semi-reclined position, attempting to sleep.

He closed his eyes and, to drive away the noise around him, began thinking of light and pleasant things. He drifted into a light, shallow sleep.

The following morning, the faint color of dawn was just beginning to appear at the horizon. The charcoal in the brazier had burned down to ash. Pei Shaohuai found his body and spirits tolerably well, and let out a slow breath of relief — much thanks to his habit of keeping physically active.

The nine days and nine nights had barely seen through the first night.

Over those nine days, the examination was divided into three sessions, each lasting three days, and today was the first session.

Compared to the time of the provincial examinations, Pei Shaohuai had accumulated three more years of learning, had traveled and studied between the north and south, and had lived through much — and so his state of mind was considerably more composed. He understood that the spring examinations were difficult, yet he did not shrink from that difficulty; there was something almost effortless about the way he held what was heavy.

The first session examined three essay questions on the Four Books and two essay questions on the Five Classics, with each essay to be no fewer than three hundred characters and preferably no more than five hundred. To compress one’s understanding and insight into two or three thousand characters in total was no simple matter.

When the time came, the question boards were unveiled. First were the three Four Books questions; on the board was written:

The first: “It is man who is able to make the Way great, and not the Way that can make man great.”

The second: “Therefore, the gentleman is watchful over himself when he is alone, apprehensive over what he does not hear.”

The third: “This is so with all things, and even more so with the heart.” [1]

These were drawn respectively from the Analects, the Doctrine of the Mean, and Mencius — all were proper, straightforward questions, with no tortured or convoluted cross-text combinations. Nor should they have been — this was already the metropolitan examinations, the final step before the palace examinations. Why resort to testing candidates’ basic foundations with such techniques?

All who had entered the examination hall were the finest from the northern and southern directorates and every provincial administration. The metropolitan examinations sought to identify the extraordinary from among the outstanding — it was mastery of argument and the bearing of one’s essays that would determine the outcome.

Pei Shaohuai reflected for a moment and arrived at a general direction of approach. The meaning of the first question was plain enough: man can make the Way great, while the Way cannot make man great. The principle was easy enough to grasp, and the question was not particularly difficult.

Pei Shaohuai thought: if the Way could make man great, would it not follow that — all who study the Way can become gentlemen? That one need only build schools everywhere and all under heaven will know peace? The Way, in the end, is merely a “thing” — put it to use and it exists; disregard it and it does not.

The word “Way” appears throughout the classics — yet men of true virtue are rare in the world.

With an approach in mind, Pei Shaohuai set brush to paper and broke the topic: “It is only when man practices the Way that the gentleman exists; it is only when the nation promotes the Way that an age of peace endures.” A balanced pair of opening lines broke the topic, and he moved swiftly into his argument without any superfluous preamble.

The key words were “practice” and “promote” — only through the active practice and transmission of the Way can a person become a gentleman; and for the nation, the same principle holds: only when every person is a gentleman can generation after generation enjoy lasting peace.

The second question was from the Doctrine of the Mean, speaking of the gentleman remaining watchful and self-disciplined even where no one can see or hear him. Pei Shaohuai inwardly smiled in recognition — was this not the concept of self-discipline, of being scrupulous when alone? When he had been studying in the Jiangnan region, he had explained this very concept to his younger fellow students in the small class.

It seemed that explaining things to others was, at times, equivalent to reviewing them oneself.

A gentleman acts for his own sake, not for others’ — even with no one watching or overseeing him, he is still capable of great accomplishment. He seeks not the knowledge of others, but only the peace of his own conscience.

Sitting for an examination is a matter of learning; learning is a matter of effort; effort depends on being scrupulous when alone. Without such a quality of character, how could a man of letters endure ten years of solitary study by cold window light?

Pei Shaohuai broke this topic: “The gentleman’s conduct is governed by fear of his own knowing; the achievement of scrupulous self-discipline lies in the peace of his conscience.” To act and to conduct oneself — one may conceal it from heaven’s knowing, earth’s knowing, another’s knowing, but one can never conceal it from one’s own knowing.

The third question was from Mencius. Taken alone, those six characters yielded no meaning — one needed to recall the preceding line: “Weigh first, and then you know the light and heavy; measure first, and then you know the long and short.” Only then did the six characters of the question follow: “This is so with all things, and even more so with the heart.”

Shaohuai too broke this topic without difficulty.

Having answered all three Four Books questions, Pei Shaohuai looked back over them and only then grasped the underlying intent behind Grand Secretary Shen’s choice of questions — the first question addressed the governance of an era; the second, the cultivation of character; the third, the exercise of dialectical reasoning.

Such was the complete picture that Grand Secretary Shen sought: only when these three were unified could one be called an exceptional candidate.

In the afternoon, the examination official making his rounds reached Pei Shaohuai’s cell once more and posted two Five Classics questions. Pei Shaohuai’s primary classic was the Spring and Autumn Annals — with their profound and concise language laden with moral judgments, he copied down the Spring and Autumn passages on the question board.

The first: “The men of Qi attacked the Mountain Rong.”

The second: “The duke met the Marquis of Jin and the Viscount of Wu at the Yellow Pool.”

The Spring and Autumn Annals is a historical record; to break its topics, one must first be thoroughly acquainted with the full context of events.

Before Qi rose to hegemony, it had long suffered the disruptions and incursions of the Mountain Rong. Now that Qi had become the overlord of the feudal lords, dealing with the Mountain Rong would be an easy matter — yet unfortunately, Qi was geographically too distant from the Mountain Rong’s strongholds, with no secure rear flank, making it difficult to dispatch troops. It happened that the state of Yan, unable to endure the Mountain Rong’s raids any longer, sent envoys to Qi to beg for assistance. Duke Huan of Qi seized upon this opportunity to mobilize his forces and gave the Mountain Rong a thorough thrashing, driving them back to the northern frontier.

This was “the men of Qi attacked the Mountain Rong.”

In the present day of the Great Qing, the realm was unified, with only tributary vassal states along the borders — and there was every reason to be guarded about revisiting the discourse of alliances, annexations, and the stratagems of the Warring States.

And so in breaking this topic, Pei Shaohuai extracted only the meaning of “a just cause for military action” — Duke Huan of Qi’s campaign against the Mountain Rong had been both an act of vengeance and a demonstration of his military power and might.

This also illuminated why so few candidates chose the Spring and Autumn Annals as their primary classic — the amount of history to be memorized and recited was the greatest of all the classics, and when breaking its topics, while entry points were easy to find, it was also easy to commit an offense; for the moment one touched upon relations between states, there were all manner of things that could not be said.

Say too much, say the wrong thing, and one’s paper would be discarded outright.

On the first day of the examination, Shaohuai’s thinking was clear, and his approach to both the topic-breaking and the overall structure of each essay proceeded smoothly. By the time evening approached, the first drafts of all five essays were complete; the following two days were for revision and transcription.

The thin spring rain fell throughout the day without any sign of letting up. Pei Shaohuai looked up at the dark, heavy sky above the eaves and surmised this rain would not stop for some time — it seemed likely to persist for several days straight.

Having made this basic assessment, Pei Shaohuai temporarily revised his original plan for answering the questions — so long as the rain did not stop, he would not write by night but would have the confidence to complete all the questions during the daylight hours. Given the total quantity of the questions, he was confident of finishing them during the day.

At night, he would rest quietly beneath his bedding beside the brazier, keeping himself warm against the cold. Whether or not sleep came did not greatly matter — what mattered was staying warm and warding off the chill.

Writing by night might not necessarily improve the quality of the essays — but falling ill with a chill would certainly cause their quality to deteriorate sharply.

And so, while the cells of the examination compound blazed with candlelight and candidates wrote furiously through the night, Pei Shaohuai extinguished his light early and lay down. That single small cell, the only one to have gone dark, was conspicuous in the extreme.

The patrol officer, thinking something had gone wrong, came by to check on it several times in passing, only to find that Pei Shaohuai was genuinely resting quietly — after which he left him alone.

On the second day of the first examination session, Pei Shaohuai divided his charcoal into equal portions to ensure he would have enough to last through all nine nights, and each time he lit the brazier for warmth he would take the opportunity to heat his dried rations and water flask over it, warming them before eating and drinking.

The main task for that day was to refine and polish the essays — a process that tested a candidate’s command of the written word most severely. Some candidates had fine insight but were unable to express it fully, their words falling short of their meaning — and they too would fail to pass.

The young patrol officer was full of the energy of youth and vitality, and as the official responsible for overseeing this row of cells, he had a particular fondness for clasping his hands behind his back and pacing up and down the aisle between the rows.

Much like someone in a later era’s examination hall who would bounce their leg or spin their pen.

Fortunately, the candidates looked up at him with expressions that carried a certain mute reproach, and he grew considerably quieter — planting himself in the middle of the aisle, keeping a general watch over the whole area, and refraining from pacing up and down and disturbing the candidates.

By the third day, coughing had begun to sound through the examination compound.

Once inside, even if one fell ill and could no longer write, one could only be moved to a designated room to be given some minimal care — early departure was not permitted.

Even if enemy troops were to assault the city walls, as long as they had not breached the examination compound itself, the metropolitan examination would not be interrupted.

And the first session was not even over yet. These coughs were not a good sign.

Pei Shaohuai let out a quiet sigh, but could only see to his own welfare first. He drew out a plain silk handkerchief and wrapped it over his nose and mouth, then bent himself to the task of transcribing his answer sheets.

His brush moved unhurried, like a trickling stream; the strokes fell upon paper like drifting wisps of smoke. Pei Shaohuai was writing in the standard official script style, yet it carried within it a quality of his own brushwork — the final strokes were clean and decisive, and the answer sheet as a whole was neat and orderly.

As the sun descended, the first examination session came to an end. The patrol officers, in coordination with the paper-sealing officials, collected the answer sheets.

That night, the candidates could not leave the examination compound, nor could they leave their cells — they waited quietly for the second examination session to begin.