My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 814: Mencius and Mencius Fight Each Other

After Zhuge Jin outsourced the task of preparing the Confucian classics papers to his second brother and his team, there were no more obstacles in the first imperial examination in the first year of Zhangwu.

The interests of all parties have been cleared up, straightened out and settled, waiting only for the final test.

The day of the competition on the first day of March is approaching, and the scholars from all sides who want to show their talents are all holding back their energy.

In fact, many of them are children of the powerful, and they are not relying solely on this exam to become an official - although the Zhuge brothers advocated the reform of the imperial examination system and also fully infiltrated the recommendation system with the help of the imperial examination system, so far, the imperial examination system is not the only way to become an official.

After all, before this, even the system of recommendation was not the only way to become an official. If the emperor or the princes took a fancy to a talented person, they would promote him or her arbitrarily.

Originally in history, after the imperial examination system was introduced in the Sui and Tang dynasties, it was not the only way to become an official. There were also many unorthodox ways such as using backdoors and connections. It took three hundred years, until the Song Dynasty, to almost block all other unorthodox ways.

Therefore, the imperial examination organized by the Zhuge brothers may not be able to completely block the evil ways for at least a few decades. The reason why those children of the rich and powerful are still so enthusiastic is entirely because they are conceited and want to prove themselves.

Anyone with vision can see that the imperial examination system will become more and more mainstream in the future, which is definitely the general trend. With the Zhuge brothers pushing hard, things will definitely get better and better.

In this case, the history books of a hundred or a thousand years from now will always record and emphasize the origin of the imperial examination. If you can get a good score in the first session, you may be remembered in history.

Many children of the rich and powerful are conceited about their knowledge and want to leave a name for themselves, so they work so hard to take the exam.

……

In the blink of an eye, it is already the last day of February, and the exams will officially start tomorrow.

The examination room had been built and all examiners entered the room one day in advance. They were asked to stay in the examination room that night because they had to make some preparations in advance and check the papers. However, since they had seen the papers, they could not be allowed to go back to avoid leaking the questions.

Zhuge Jin had plenty of experience in organizing imperial examinations in later generations to draw on, so he was definitely at the forefront in terms of security and confidentiality.

Most people who want to cheat haven’t accumulated enough experience yet;

People who are trying to prevent cheating, however, have thousands of years of experience;
How is this cheating?

The examination hall was located to the north of Luoyang Imperial College. The court had requisitioned a piece of new land, part of which was the backyard of the Imperial College that had been burned down in the war, plus some previously destroyed houses in the surrounding area.

Some of the residents who were still staying there at the time were also relocated after Zhuge Jin sent people to talk to them in advance and gave them compensation.

The new examination room was built more spacious, and Zhuge Jin also fully considered the humanitarian care for the examinees, ensuring that each cubicle was at least large enough for lying down and sleeping. It was larger than the capsule hotels in Fuso in later generations (of course, there would not be multiple layers stacked up and down, only one flat floor).

Tables, chairs, and beddings were also provided by the court. However, the beddings were only single-layered and had no fillings to prevent things from getting caught in the seams. Candidates could only sleep with their clothes on at night, and cover themselves with this thin blanket outside their clothes.

In later generations, body searches were required for the imperial examinations. The status of scholars in the Han Dynasty was much higher than that in the Song and Ming Dynasties, and their self-esteem was much stronger. This was definitely not allowed. So Zhuge Jin changed it to require candidates to take a bath together before entering the examination room, and the government provided change of clothes, pens, ink, paper and inkstones, which minimized the possibility of smuggling.

For this purpose, Zhuge Jin also had a water tower several meters high built in the Imperial College. The water storage tank on it was very large, and there was also a huge stove and chimney. The water in the entire water tower was heated before entering the examination room.

Then use a pipe to connect it to the bathroom at the entrance of the examination room, poke a large number of small holes in the pipe, and rely on the natural water pressure of the water level difference to supply hot water for centralized showers.

For this reason, some old Confucian scholars who had seen or heard about the extravagant court life during the reign of Emperor Ling of Han Dynasty all said that the Minister of the Court was really extravagant this time, and actually used a "water method" similar to that of Bi Lan, one of the Ten Eunuchs.
However, the "water supply and drainage project" that Bi Lan built was for Emperor Lingdi's personal enjoyment, while today Zhuge Situ built it for scholars all over the world. Being able to take a shower with automatic hot water is also a novel experience for scholars of this era.

Everyone spoke very noble words at first, but after taking a shower and feeling relaxed, they stopped criticizing.

Since they were not allowed to wear their own clothes, they were not allowed to bring their own food and drink. The government provided millet porridge, pickles, bread and water. They did not provide meat because they were afraid that someone would get diarrhea if they were not used to the food, which would make it difficult to maintain order in the examination room. But bread, rice porridge, pickles and other foods were suitable for everyone.

Early in the morning on the first day of March, nearly a thousand candidates lined up at the gate of Imperial College. Soon they entered the venue in batches to take a shower, change clothes, and then take the exam.

Because the requirement this time was to only admit the top 20% of candidates, the number of candidates recommended by each county was four to five times more than that of the filial and honest and talented people in previous years.

Originally, every county with a population of 200,000 could elect one filial and honest official. This time, the limit was relaxed to one for every 50,000 people, but 80% of those who were elected would be eliminated based on the score line.

The Han Dynasty had a population of tens of millions. Even though the population continued to plummet during the war years, the south had not been attacked for more than ten years under Liu Bei's governance, and the population recovered quickly. There were also many people in Shu. Now, the total population of the areas controlled by Liu Bei in the world is at least 20 million.

If 50,000 people nominated one candidate, there would be four to five hundred candidates for the filial and honest category. Add in the other miscellaneous categories of recommendation, there would still be seven to eight hundred candidates. There are also preferential treatments for remote counties. All together, there would be nearly a thousand candidates taking the exam.

On the day of the exam, this scene seemed spectacular to many court officials.

Although there were tens of thousands of Imperial College students in Luoyang during peacetime, they did not flock to study for exams. In the late Eastern Han Dynasty, the Imperial College was almost in name only, and the vast majority of students did not study at all.

But in Zhuge Jin's view, an examination with only nearly a thousand participants was nothing. The scale of the imperial examinations in later generations was no smaller than his, not to mention the examinations Zhuge Jin had seen in modern times.

Therefore, Zhuge Jin had basically thought of all the troubles in order management, and he handled the matter with ease, with order being kept in place from beginning to end.

When the other court officials who were watching saw this, they were all impressed by Situ's meticulousness.

After several consecutive days of examinations for all four subjects, after all the examination papers were collected, it was time to mark and grade the papers.

However, Zhuge Jin suddenly announced a temporary halt to the marking of the papers.

"And bind the title section of all the papers together, put a seal on it, and don't open it until after the papers are graded."

When the clerks in charge of handling the matter heard this request, they were stunned for a moment, and it took them a long time to realize that Situ was worried that some examiners would judge based on their subjective likes and dislikes just by looking at the names.

"Situ is really meticulous in his actions. He even thought of this possible way of cheating. Those wealthy children who used to rely on their family background and prestige may lose one more thing to rely on."

Of course, no one could object to such a thing, nor did anyone dare to object, so they immediately did as Zhuge Jin asked and then sent the paper for grading.

Zhuge Jin also deliberately kept this back-up plan to this moment before revealing it - if he let people know in advance that he was going to use the anonymous name system, then others would be alert and it would be entirely possible that he would come up with more fancy cheating methods.

In that case, Zhuge Jin would have to continue to upgrade his anti-cheating methods. Although he remembered so many anti-cheating methods from later generations, it would be a bit wasteful to bring out too many at once.

For example, there is no need to release the transcription recording that comes with the name-blind system now. You can first use the name-blind system to pass the eighth and tenth exams. In the future, when the candidates' cheating methods and cheating awareness gradually develop and everyone has learned the collusion method of "marking on the test paper", you can release the transcription recording, so that you can harvest another wave of cheaters.

This confrontational arms race cannot be accomplished in one go, it must be done gradually.

...Zhuge Jin suddenly came up with the method of obfuscating names, and the children of noble families who originally wanted to cheat by using their reputations naturally returned empty-handed.

In fact, although the vague name method seemed to have caused a lot of complaints, even many officials in the court, especially those in charge of administering the imperial examinations and marking the papers, cursed it among their friends in private.

But in fact, few of these officials really cursed.

They just want to curse in order to get the people with connections who ask them for favors to hear.

Before the Han Dynasty, there were so many years of imperial examinations, and many local governors had to bow to the aristocratic families and powerful people and recommend people they asked to be officials. But how many of those governors really helped?

Many times, it is either that they have to repay favors, or they are afraid that local tyrants will cause chaos in the area, causing their own political achievements to collapse.

A considerable number of prefects were forced into this position because they could not continue to hold office unless they gave up some of their interests.

Now, they had originally agreed that they would help to smooth over the relationships and try their best to ask the examiners to show some face.

I don't know how many ups and downs I went through in this process.

Once the anonymous system is implemented, all the previous efforts to build up a reputation and seek favors will be in vain.

The examiners can finally go into the examination room with a refreshed mind and light heart, and mark the papers based on the essays.

After the relatives were dismissed, the powerful families behind them came to the door, and the examiner just pushed the blame on Situ:
"It's not that we don't want to help you. We really wanted to help you, but it was ruined by Situ's sudden attack."

If you want to blame someone, you can only blame Situ.

Zhuge Jin is deeply rooted and is not afraid of attacks or revenge. Let anyone who wants to hate him be free to do so.

In addition, he did this matter openly and legitimately, and Liu Bei knew that he was absolutely right and it was all for fairness and the good of the country, so of course he would support him 100%.

Under this sudden attack, the work of marking the imperial examination papers became fair, which also ensured that the first imperial examination would leave a relatively high evaluation in history books in the future.

Time flies and it is the sixth day of March.

Three days have passed since the end of the exam.

The work of marking the papers is not over yet, but it is almost there.

The objective questions on finance and taxation, that is, the math paper, have all been graded and the scores have been recorded.

Although subjects like criminal law and administration are somewhat subjective, their merits are relatively easy to judge and are less controversial than the remaining two subjects, so I also marked them.

Only two volumes of policy essays and classics were left, which were quite subjective and there were not enough examiners, with only a dozen or so examiners to examine nearly a thousand papers, so it was not completed yet.

For the sake of fairness, Zhuge Jin did not allow only one examiner to review an exam paper. Instead, he divided the examiners into three groups, with at least three people in each group.

Each paper must be reviewed by at least three people. If all three people in the group think it is not good, then the candidate will be eliminated directly. There will be no injustice and no need to waste time.

If there are any that everyone thinks are good, they should be picked out for collective discussion by all examiners.

If there is only a dispute, then switch to another group and cross-check the papers again, and then give a rough score.

After several days of hard work, a batch of high-quality papers were finally selected. After collective discussion, the subordinates in charge of marking the papers picked out a few that they thought Zhuge Jin or Zhuge Liang himself would be interested in, and sent them to Zhuge Jin for his personal review.

"Situ, these are all the best essays and classics selected this year. Some of the viewpoints are quite shocking and unprecedented, but they are also in line with the ancients' ideas. We dare not make our own decisions, please review them again."

The person who came to deliver the papers was Zhuge Jin's chief clerk Deng Zhi, who had been a minor official with him for many years.

When Liu Bei was invited to Shu by Liu Zhang, Zhuge Liang was left to govern Shu, and Zhuge Jin stayed in Jingzhou, so he sent Deng Zhi to communicate with him. Deng Zhi was also taught by these two brothers and made great progress. Now he has been Zhuge Jin's chief clerk.

"Oh, could there really be a genius who can understand my deep meaning? I want to see whether it is just a flattering work to please the superiors, or whether it really contains true insights."

Zhuge Jin said as he opened the test paper.

This year's Confucian classics topic was written by Wang Lang, and in the end, the passage "How can the world be pacified?" from "Mencius: King Hui of Liang" was used.

After all, this passage is the core of Situ's academic work, and it must be mentioned in the first imperial examination. But it cannot be directly tested, because it is too easy to be predicted and easy to be clichéd.

Finally, Wang Lang helped add some other key words and provided citations to test whether the candidates could fully understand the orthodoxy advocated by Situ and the "virtue" argued by Situ.

One of the key words added by Wang Lang is also from "Mencius", which consists of only two words, called "貉道".

People who are not familiar with Mencius may be confused when they see this word, but learned people will understand it.

This word comes from "Mencius. Gaozi Part 2": "Bai Gui said: 'I want to take one out of twenty, what do you think?' Mencius said: 'Your way is the way of the raccoon dog.'"

Zhu Xi's later collection of annotations emphasized that "貉 is the name of a country of barbarians in the north."

Translated, Mencius once said that a tax rate of 20% is too light and is the way of ruling by barbarians. The way of ruling by the Han regime should be to collect higher taxes, but at the same time provide more public services and infrastructure.

Wang Lang combined this passage of Mencius with another passage of Mencius, "How can the world be stable?", and added some other supporting materials cited from various sources, and put them together to ask questions, obviously hoping that the candidates would think critically.
"Since Emperor Wen, the tax rate of our great Han Dynasty has been 15%, and after Emperor Jing, the tax rate has been 30% in principle, which is much lower than the 20% tax rate that Mencius despised back then.

But Mencius also emphasized that the people are more important than the king, and even believed that someone must unify the world in order to reduce the burden on the people and prevent them from spending money and energy on fighting a civil war.

In this case, how can we reconcile the seemingly contradictory statements of Mencius that he believed that the burden on the people should be reduced, while at the same time he felt that the twenty-one tax was the way of the raccoon? "

Zhuge Jin personally reviewed this topic and thought that Wang Lang's proposal was very good. It could guide scholars all over the world to prove his orthodox theory and take the reduction of people's burden as the source of orthodoxy, and it also avoided the topic of speculation.
It also uses Mencius's spear to attack Mencius's shield, allowing candidates to find ways to look at this problem dialectically and unifiedly. If they can answer this question well, it can be regarded as a real and profound understanding of Zhuge Jin's orthodoxy, rather than just copying the answer.

(End of this chapter)