Inside the examination grounds, rows upon rows of cubicles stretched on and on. The proctors made their rounds holding up boards bearing the examination questions, ensuring every candidate could read them clearly. The boards read:

First: Se nan you shi.

Second: Qiu sheng lian er zhu bu gei.

Third: Wu you ben mo, shi you zhong shi.

These were drawn respectively from the Analects — On Governance, Mencius — King Hui of Liang, Part II, and The Great Learning — the three Four-Book examination essays for the first session of the provincial examinations. From these three questions, one could see that compared to the prefectural examinations, Zhang Lingyi had taken a far more conservative approach to question-setting. He no longer dared to place particular emphasis on testing the candidates’ knowledge of military strategy.

After all, this was the provincial examinations for the Northern Metropolitan Circuit — a matter of great consequence. To lose his position as Minister over something as trivial as a controversial question, should the censors submit a memorial of impeachment, would hardly be worth the cost.

Pei Shaohuai first copied the questions onto his draft paper. Around him came the rustling of pages turning, and before long the soft scratching of brushes on paper rose up, hushed as silkworms feeding on mulberry leaves. Pei Shaohuai gradually sank into this low, murmuring “silkworm-sound” and entered his answering state of mind.

Before entering the examination grounds, he had already planned out his schedule for the three days — on the first day, his mind would be bright and his spirit clear, at its very best, making it the ideal time to break open the questions and map out the structure of each essay to serve as a foundation. On the second day, he would follow through on the previous day’s framework and compose the essays in sequence; should any new direction or inspiration strike him along the way, he would replace the old approach accordingly. By the final day, his mind and spirit would have begun to weary, and at that point he must not make any sweeping revisions — rather, he should polish the essays, attend to the tonal patterns, and then copy out the final version to submit.

Pei Shaohuai began to break open the first question.

Of the three, the first was the kind of “spliced topic” that later generations would criticize heavily. It came from the Analects — On Governance: “Zixia asked about filial piety. The Master said: ‘The difficulty lies in the expression. When there are tasks, the young lend their labor; when there is wine and food, the elders are served first — can this alone be considered filial piety?'” [1]

The meaning was this: Zixia asked what constituted filial piety. When one’s parents and elder brothers were in need, to serve them with all one’s ability, and to yield the wine and fine food to the elders first — was that not filial piety?

The words se nan — “the difficulty lies in the expression” — and you shi — “when there are tasks” — came from the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next; they had no intrinsic connection to each other. By splicing them together, the examiner had created the so-called “spliced topic.”

The spliced topic had appeared as far back as the Song dynasty, and the methods of splicing were many — two-segment splices, three-segment splices, paired-cut two-panel splices, the opening-with-a-function-word splice, the upper-end splice, the lower-end splice, and a great many others besides. If an examiner truly wished to devise something novel to confound the candidates, there was no shortage of ways to do so. Deputy Minister Zhang’s choice of the simplest kind of splice this time — conventional and easily interpreted — made it plain that his intention was not to confound anyone, but rather to prevent candidates from guessing and memorizing prepared answers in advance, lest the examinations fail to reveal their true abilities.

From this, one could see that the spliced topic was not entirely without purpose.

Moreover, in choosing the words se nan, Deputy Minister Zhang had seized upon the very crux of the question — and the most difficult part to interpret.

Se nan — the difficulty lies in the expression. The passage did not specify whose expression was difficult, and so two interpretations were possible. The first: to be able to silently perceive, from a parent’s or elder brother’s troubled countenance, what they needed and desired — that alone could be called true filial piety. The second: one might provide parents and elder brothers with food and drink and tend to their every need, but to maintain a gentle and cheerful expression at every single moment, never revealing one’s own burdens — that was the truly difficult thing.

Other interpretations might exist as well.

Pei Shaohuai recalled Master Zhu Xi’s Collected Annotations on the Four Books, in which se nan was annotated thus: “Therefore, in serving one’s parents, the countenance alone is what is difficult. Attending to labor and providing sustenance are not sufficient to be called filial piety…” [2] Master Zhu Xi held that merely providing for one’s parents was insufficient to be called filial piety; what was rare and precious was to maintain a gentle countenance at all times while serving them.

Evidently, Master Zhu Xi’s annotation aligned with the second interpretation.

Pei Shaohuai had no choice but to follow Master Zhu Xi’s annotation in breaking open the question — and, indeed, it was the only path. This era’s civil examinations had no use for strange or unorthodox views; every interpretation in breaking open the question had to conform to Zhu Xi’s annotations, or it would be deemed an error in opening the essay, and the candidate would be directly dismissed.

Doctrine must take Master Zhu Xi as the standard.

This was the heaviest “shackle” of the eight-legged essay.

Pei Shaohuai understood that when one’s own voice carried little weight, one had no choice but to abide by the rules set by others. For now, his entire attention was devoted to breaking open the question.

The eight-legged essay was a great composition; breaking open the question was a small one — yet these one or two sentences carried decisive weight over the entire piece. A well-broken question meant the essay was already half written; a poorly broken one gave the examiner, pressed for time, ample reason to dismiss the paper on the spot.

When breaking a question, length called for brevity and compression; a spliced question called for seamless fusion; a grand topic called for dignity and grandeur; a small topic called for nimbleness and ingenuity. Different questions, varying in length and angle, each demanded their own approach.

Recalling the hardships of his past life — how in the prime of his youth he had not been able to tend to his parents even a little before passing away — Pei Shaohuai felt a pang of genuine feeling. He also called to mind all the small things his parents had done for him, and so he wrote: “The expression is difficult to maintain as a means of bringing joy to one’s kin — would it not be better to first experience the very trials that fall upon one’s kin?” [3]

The saying goes, “Only when one has raised a child does one understand the hardships of one’s own parents.” If children have lived through the very same ordeals that their elders have faced, and know firsthand how difficult those things are, perhaps they would no longer find it so hard to maintain that gentle expression.

Pei Shaohuai took this as the heart of his essay.

With the first question broken open and the core of it established, the rest of the essay’s structure naturally fell into place.

The second question was drawn from Mencius and concerned governing the people with benevolence — the meaning was not difficult, and it was the easiest of the three. Pei Shaohuai did not linger over it long.

The third question came from The Great Learning and spoke of “the way of great learning” — that all things in the world have their beginning and end, their root and branch, their proper sequence.

The scope of this question was vast, and when breaking it open, one must never take a clever or ingenious shortcut for the sake of standing out; one must follow the principle that “a grand topic calls for dignity and grandeur” and let that breadth fill the essay.

Pei Shaohuai decided to link “the way of great learning” to the governance of the state, and broke the question thus: “Great affairs of state proceed in proper order of precedence; strategies for governing the people must likewise proceed from the near to the distant.”

He used the concepts of near and far, of before and after, to break open the question’s “root and branch” and “beginning and end.”

Since the essay was linked to the governance of the state, he could draw upon current affairs and historical events in the body of the essay, so the writing would not be hollow and empty.

Shortly after, the proctors raised boards bearing the Five Classics examination essay questions — four questions each from the Book of Songs, the Book of Documents, the Book of Rites, the Book of Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals. Pei Shaohuai’s foundational classic was the Spring and Autumn Annals, so he needed only to answer the four questions for his own classic.

The Spring and Autumn Annals was in essence a historical record — its meaning conveyed through restrained, precise language, its moral lessons embedded in the spaces between words. Pei Shaohuai was somewhat more familiar with it than with the Four Books, and breaking the questions open while mapping out the essay structure presented no difficulty at all.

At midday, most candidates made do with a few bites of dry rations; very few bothered to start a fire and cook.

When evening came, the slanted sun was shut out beyond the high walls, and the sky gradually darkened. After nightfall, the proctors lit the lanterns hanging from the eaves of each row of cubicles; row upon row of lanterns shimmered in the light of the newly risen bright moon — a scene that truly evoked the lines: “I ask you, gentlemen of letters, when you take up your brush, how do you fare? Above the tower, the star of literary brilliance gleams as you reach to pluck the osmanthus.”

The candidates, too, lit their oil lamps to brighten their cubicles.

Some had started fires inside their cubicles to cook, filling the air with soft rustling sounds, thin wisps of cooking smoke drifting upward. Others, taking inspiration from the falling darkness, let their literary thoughts flow freely and bent over their lamps, writing furiously.

In the food basket, Lin Shi had prepared some milk cakes for Pei Shaohuai — made from goat’s milk, honey, and white flour, steamed and then dried, they could keep for several days. Soft, sweet, and glutinous, they were perfectly suited for staving off hunger.

Pei Shaohuai folded his answer booklet, tucked it into a waterproof pouch, and hung it on the cubicle wall before turning to his evening meal. He washed his hands, then took two milk cakes, a few slices of dried meat, a pear, and poured himself a cup of tea, eating slowly and unhurriedly.

The two cubicles to his left and right seemed to be occupied by older scholars. Having sat for the examinations many times over the years, they had clearly developed a practiced rhythm — working on their essays when it was time to work, resting when it was time to rest, orderly in all things, each task attended to in its proper turn.

It was quite unlike some of the younger students sitting for the provincial examinations for the first time, who were now grinding ink, now searching for their paperweights, now loosening their robes to drink water — frittering away their time on small matters.

The old scholars’ unhurried and methodical pace gave Pei Shaohuai a quiet environment in which to answer the questions.

Pei Shaohuai was not yet ready for sleep, so he took out several sheets of draft paper and copied down in advance the allusions and passages he might need the following day, so they would be ready for reference and use when he wrote his essays.

At the hour of Hai, the sound of examination boards being taken down echoed through the cubicles all around. Pei Shaohuai was growing drowsy, so he removed his board, laid it across the long bench, and used it as a bed plank.

The cubicle was too small — whether one lay horizontally or lengthwise, a grown adult could not stretch out straight. One could only curl up, or sit with one’s back against the wall.

Pei Shaohuai, already fifteen years old and a full eight chi in height, could only sit on the board with his back propped against the wall, a thin jacket draped over his shoulders, and close his eyes to rest.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Pei Shaohuai was jolted awake by a snoring loud as thunder. Groggy and disoriented, he nearly tumbled off the board, and it took him a good while to remember that he was sitting in the examination grounds taking the provincial examinations. He stuffed two rolls of soft cloth into his ears, and the noise diminished considerably. Pei Shaohuai thought to himself that this particular gentleman must be a person of remarkable ease and breadth of spirit, to sleep so soundly and contentedly even in a tiny examination cubicle.

He then noticed that autumn mosquitoes kept swooping in to bite him, and even the mosquito-repelling sachet he wore did nothing to help. Pei Shaohuai had brought more than a dozen sachets, and after a moment’s thought, he simply tore them open and scattered the powdered artemisia throughout the cubicle. After that, the autumn mosquitoes were at last considerably fewer.

When Pei Shaohuai woke the following day, he found himself more fatigued than he had imagined. Fortunately, he had already essentially settled on his essay structure the day before — otherwise, in his current state, the quality of his writing would have suffered greatly.

The autumn days in the capital this year were rather more oppressive and muggy than usual. In past years it would have grown cool by this point, but this particular afternoon was as scorchingly hot as midsummer. Some candidates who spent their days cloistered in study and had weak constitutions had not slept well the night before, then were drenched in a hollow sweat from the heat. After enduring all of this, some did not even manage to hold out through the first session and were carried out.

It turned out that the difficulty of the provincial examinations lay not only in intellectual endurance, but in physical endurance as well.

By the third day, Pei Shaohuai had finished all seven essays. After silently reciting them through several times and confirming that the form and tonal patterns were all in order, he began transcribing his final answers.

Transcribing was no easy matter either — on one hand, one had to write the characters well; on the other, one had to mind the layout of the page. For instance, whenever the characters for “Emperor” or “Sacred” appeared in a passage, one had to arrange things so that these characters fell at the very beginning of the line, and never at its end, no matter what.

Some candidates had carefully calculated the character count, only to find partway through that they had skipped a character; the entire remainder was then thrown into disorder.

Pei Shaohuai had long since cultivated the habit: when transcribing, his mind was composed and his attention as fine as a needle, and he copied from beginning to end in one unbroken flow, without a single error.

At the hour of You, the first session of the provincial examinations came to an end.

When the papers were collected, three officials in each group each carried out a different duty. The collection officer took the papers and sent them in a body to the sealing officer, who folded the candidate’s identifying information, covered it with white paper, sealed it thoroughly, and then filled in a reference number.

Throughout the process, the supervising officer observed from one side.

At the end, at the binding seam, the sealing officer and the supervising officer each pressed their purple-blue seals, and only then was this set of papers considered properly received and secured.

Once all the papers were collected, the candidates filed out.

……

Pei Shaohuai was only somewhat weary, not utterly exhausted. He picked up his food basket and slowly followed the flow of people out of the examination grounds, finding the Earl’s mansion carriage waiting on the long street outside.

Pei Shaojin, Xu Yancheng, and Yan Gui had all come.

“Eldest Brother, take your time getting in,” Pei Shaojin said, supporting him by the arm.

“I’m only a little mentally tired — there’s nothing really wrong with me.”

Out on the street, quite a few candidates had collapsed where they stood and could only be carried to carriages or shouldered all the way back to their inns by their family members and servants.

Once in the carriage, Pei Shaohuai said, “There’s no need to wait for the notice of disqualification. Let’s go straight back to the mansion.” He had already checked several times over and found no errors, so there was no possibility of his paper being posted for disqualification — of that much he was still confident.

Xu Yancheng laughed. “Of course — even if nine out of ten candidates met with misfortune, Shaohuai would still never have his paper posted.”

The so-called “posted disqualification” referred to when the presiding officers would do a preliminary pass through the papers, sifting out those that failed to meet the regulations. These were then posted on the outer wall of the examination grounds that evening, signifying that the paper had been rejected — meaning the candidate need not bother returning for the second session the following day.

The reasons for disqualification were generally these: handing in a blank paper or accidentally skipping a page and falling into the “blank board” category; clearly failing to complete the full set of answers; inadvertently revealing one’s identity within the essay; excessive corrections or illegible handwriting; essays so verbose and overwrought that they could not possibly be selected…

In every sitting of the provincial examinations, roughly one in ten candidates would have their papers posted for disqualification.

Pei Shaohuai rested at the mansion for the night, and on the twelfth day of the eighth month, before the third watch, he returned to the examination grounds to sit the second session of the provincial examinations — three days and two nights in the cubicle once more.

The second session consisted of one essay on a given topic, five model legal judgments, and one each of an imperial proclamation, an imperial decree, a memorial from a minister, and a memorial of congratulation.

The essay topic could be on current affairs, on history, or on moral principles — it was primarily a matter of composition.

The legal judgments involved writing formal verdict statements and tested how thoroughly familiar the candidates were with the Great Qing Code, as well as whether their reasoning was just and principled.

The remaining questions resembled the drafting of official documents — they had prescribed formats, and as long as one had practiced them, the difficulty was not great.

Of these three components, the most important by far were the legal judgments. A scholar could only meet the basic qualification for entering government service if he was well-versed in the statutes and codes.

When the examiners read through the second session papers, they likewise prioritized the verdict statements.

Accordingly, Pei Shaohuai first read through all five judgment questions. The first four concerned matters of succession and inheritance, disputes over property, accidental injury, and the evasion of grain taxes — for each, Pei Shaohuai quickly found the corresponding statute and formed a plan. Only the final one — a “matrimonial case” — was posed in an unusually tricky manner, and Pei Shaohuai read it through carefully several times.

This matrimonial case could also be called a case of coerced marriage. The scenario was as follows: after a young woman named Yuan Niang came of age, her parents, following the proper conventions of parental consent and a matchmaker’s arrangement, exchanged birth-date cards and drew up a marriage contract with one He Dalang of a neighboring village, thus formalizing the betrothal. Who could have foreseen that after the He family used this slip of red paper to bind Yuan Niang, they would procrastinate endlessly, failing to complete the six rites or take Yuan Niang into the household as a bride — and whenever they were asked about it, they gave no answer at all. Ten full years passed. Yuan Niang was now twenty-five, and a man from her own village, Sun Erlang, had come to seek her hand in marriage. Unwilling to fritter away any more of her life, Yuan Niang married Sun Erlang and became his wife; the marriage had already been consummated.

At this point, He Dalang refused to let the matter rest. He filed a formal complaint against the husband and wife Sun Erlang and Yuan Niang, bringing it before the magistrate’s court, and asked the official to render justice — to have Yuan Niang returned to him as his wife.

The candidates were asked how to rule on the case.

The facts laid out in the question were all the facts there were — candidates were not permitted to add any conditions of their own.

Pei Shaohuai reflected that according to the Great Qing Code, a betrothal was valid the moment “parental consent and a matchmaker’s arrangement” had been obtained; by this reading, Yuan Niang’s conduct was indeed a breach of contract. Yet if he were to rule that Yuan Niang was in the wrong and send her back to He Dalang as his wife, it would be far too rigid and unfeeling, too far removed from human decency.

Ten years — ten full years of a woman’s finest youth.

He Dalang had brazenly used a single marriage contract to hold a young woman in his grip for ten years, and had the audacity to file a complaint with the magistrate, asking the official to hand Yuan Niang over to him. What an utter scoundrel.

What shamelessness.

Was he not treating Yuan Niang as an object to be picked up and used at will?

Pei Shaohuai believed the fault lay with He Dalang. He would rule in favor of the continued validity of Yuan Niang and Sun Erlang’s marriage.

But herein lay the difficulty: searching through every statute and clause of the Great Qing Code, Pei Shaohuai could not find a single applicable provision. This case had truly “slipped through a gap in the law.”

Then it struck Pei Shaohuai — perhaps Deputy Minister Zhang had deliberately set this question to test exactly those gaps. And if it was testing for gaps, how could there possibly be a directly applicable statute to cite?

Master Duan had once said: “In adjudicating cases, one must be rigorous in applying the law and reasoning, but one must also uphold the boundaries of moral principle. The law and moral principle do not contradict each other.”

Pei Shaohuai had formed his plan. He began drafting.

Verdict statements observed a certain prescribed form — one had to analyze the case in detail, explaining the reasoning and why one ruled as one did, with the final pronouncement coming only in the concluding line.

Moreover, the language had to be elegant.

Pei Shaohuai wrote: “…During ten years, He Dalang offered no betrothal gifts and made no move to wed her — can the peach tree’s splendid blossoms in full flower be left to wait indefinitely? A betrothal that leads to no marriage — is this slip of red paper not empty words? One cannot but conclude that He Dalang bore no true feeling for Yuan Niang… and that Sun and Yuan are already husband and wife, their hearts united as two swallows nesting together; for He Dalang to bring a lawsuit out of jealousy is callousness compounded…”

In the end, he ruled that the marriage of Sun Erlang and Yuan Niang should remain in effect, and that Yuan Niang’s breach of contract would be addressed with a verbal admonishment — and the matter would end there.

……

Pei Shaohuai successfully completed the second and third sessions. Throughout, he spent most of his time refining and condensing his language, striving to express his meaning in the most precise and economical sentences possible.

This was because the transcription clerks knew that the examiners essentially judged the papers by the first session’s essays; the second and third sessions’ papers served only as reference. When the transcription clerks came across an essay that was tedious and overlong, they would take shortcuts and trim a few lines or passages for you.

By writing concisely and to the point, Pei Shaohuai could avoid such situations.

……

All the candidates had filed out of the examination grounds, and it was now the examiners’ busiest time.

They were required to finish grading more than ten thousand candidates’ papers within half a month — no small task. One could say that over the course of the provincial examinations, the chief and associate examiners and the chamber examiners were worked even harder than the candidates themselves.

The transcription clerks transcribed the papers; the proofreading clerks read aloud from the copies to ensure accuracy; only then were the papers sent to the examiners for grading. Beyond the time consumed by these steps, the examiners were left with fewer than ten days to read and grade the papers.

The examiners generally did not have sufficient time to read carefully through the second and third session papers — they primarily judged the papers by the eight-legged essays of the first session.

Since the transcription clerks used vermillion brushes to copy out the papers, the copies sent to the examiners’ quarters were called “vermillion copies,” while the sealed original papers were called “ink copies.” The ink copies would only be unsealed when the final rankings were being drawn up.

Since the candidates’ foundational classics varied, their papers were sorted into different chambers for grading. Pei Shaohuai’s paper, once transcribed, was categorized as a Spring and Autumn Annals paper and sent to the chamber examiner’s quarters.

Eighteen rooms, eighteen chamber examiners — since the Spring and Autumn Annals was the most difficult, it attracted the fewest candidates, and of all eighteen chambers, only two were dedicated specifically to grading Spring and Autumn Annals papers.

A spirit of competition existed among the eighteen chamber examiners — if a paper they had recommended was later selected by the chief examiner as the top-ranked paper of its classic, or as the overall top paper, they would share in the glory and receive a commendation, adding to their honor.

The night was dark and the lamps were sparse, yet the eighteen chambers were still ablaze with light.

Chamber Examiner Yu, together with two chief readers, was burning the midnight oil inside his room. For each paper they read, they either recommended it or rejected it, and had to annotate the paper with their reasoning.

Suddenly, Chamber Examiner Yu stood up holding a vermillion copy, visibly elated, and said to the two chief readers: “This essay penetrates the principles with profound insight, illuminates what is subtle and hidden, forges its diction with might and grandeur, and flows with sweeping force — like water surging through in an unbroken current. It is the consummate embodiment of talent, feeling, reason, righteousness, and spirit. It must be recommended!”

He added: “This year’s provincial examinations — our chamber may well claim the top honors.”