Do you know the long song of laughter?

Chapter 148: The Unjust War in the Spring and Autumn Period

After passing the gate of the examination room, there is a large courtyard. In the courtyard, there are groups of students who have been examined, and there are many government officials standing around. Therefore, the students do not interact with each other, but it is quite quiet.

When it was daylight, all the students who took the exam had finished checking, and the door to the exam room was closed.

After a while, Zhou Yingjie and Xu Shigao walked out accompanied by several officials and minor officials.

Zhou Yingjie and Xu Shigao, as the examiners, spoke loudly and encouraged each other. Then a clerk read out the rules of the examination room as usual and asked the yamen to lead the students to the examination room.

Before entering the examination room, you need to take off your clothes for inspection. After the inspection, you can enter the corresponding examination room with the number plate you received.

Although the strip inspection made Li An very uncomfortable, everyone was a man, so he tolerated it and passed it.

The examination rooms in the examination room are distributed according to the heavenly stems and earthly branches. Li An's number plate is Ding Shi.

Ang Lee, who is used to ABCD plus Arabic numerals and semicolons, is really confused about this.

Fortunately, there was a yamen officer in the examination room to guide the way, and Li An was soon taken to an examination room with a Ding Shi sign.

The examination room is very small, only two meters wide and three meters long.

The innermost part is a bed board more than half a meter wide, and there is a table and stool outside. There is a small bamboo basket on the table.

There was a musty smell in the room, and because of the dim lighting, it was not clear whether it was clean or not.

"There is a basket on the table with candles and flints in it. You can light it yourself. Someone will bring you water later, so you can use the water container to fill it."

After the officer leading the way finished speaking, he locked the door from the outside and left.

Li An put down what he was holding and fumbled to light the candle, and the room instantly became bright.

After looking around, I saw that although the house was old, it was very clean. However, judging from the musty smell in the house, it must have been cleaned in the past two days.

Seeing that the exam hadn't started yet, Li An packed up his things and made the bed first.

"Bring a vessel to catch the water!"

As soon as Li An finished making the bed, he heard a government servant shouting again, and the voice was still some distance away from him.

Li An quickly found the bamboo tube filled with water and stood at the door waiting.

Speaking of this door, Li An couldn't help complaining. There were four holes in the door, making the examination room look like a prison cell in later generations.

After a while, the government servant who delivered water came outside Li An's room, and Li An handed the bamboo tube over from the hole.

The yamen servant filled the bamboo tube with water and handed it to him. Then he hung a bell on a nail beside the door and said, "If you feel uncomfortable or want to go to the latrine, you can ring the bell. Otherwise, you are not allowed to ring the bell."

After the yamen officer finished speaking, he went to the next examination room.

Li An carefully put the water on the table. This water was not only for drinking, but also for grinding ink. The yamen just said that the bell could only be rung when going to the latrine or when sick, and not at other times.

In other words, even if the water spills over, you can only endure it and wait until the next day when the yamen officer refills the water.

It's nothing to endure a day without water, but grinding ink without water is not possible. You can't use urine to grind ink.

When the time comes, the people who mark the papers will find out and label you as disrespectful to the sages. You will probably never have the chance to take the scientific examination in this life.

Li An sorted the things and put them away, then arranged the pen and ink and began to grind the ink.

After grinding the ink, Li An sat and waited.

Just when Li An was about to fall asleep while waiting, the sound of a clapper remembered him. Li An was excited, patted his face, picked up a pen, dipped it in ink, and waited for the report.

This county examination is divided into five sessions, namely theory, strategy, classic meaning, poetry and meditation.

The first test is theory. Theory and policy are actually articles, also called policy theory, but they are not actually essay questions.

The treatise is more of a debate. It basically selects a paragraph or a sentence from the Four Books and Five Classics, but chooses its own point of view to discuss it, which is somewhat similar to later treatises.

And "策" is a strategy, which is a solution to a certain problem.

A clerk read out the questions aloud as he walked past Li An's examination room. After listening to them, Li An quickly wrote the five characters "There was no righteous war in the Spring and Autumn Period" on the top of his head.

This is the topic this time.

This is "Mencius. A sentence from "Dedicated".

The original text is from Mencius: "There are no righteous wars in the Spring and Autumn Period." If he is good at this, then he has it. Conquest means attacking from above and below, and the enemy countries do not compete with each other to conquer. '

It probably means: "There were no legitimate wars in the Spring and Autumn Period. Maybe this country was better than this country, but there were such situations. The so-called conquest refers to conquering from above, and countries at the same level cannot conquer each other. .”

Of course, this is only the broadest understanding of Mencius's words by later generations.

Later generations always have various understandings of ancient literature and poetry, so many debates have arisen.

To put it simply, taking ancient poetry as an example, one meaning can be understood literally, but another meaning can be read by substituting the author's situation and mood at that time.

But maybe the author meant it literally, or maybe he meant something else.

As for what it means, you can only ask the author.

To paraphrase later generations, there are a thousand Hamlets for a thousand readers.

After Li An finished writing the question, he held the pen and frowned, thinking about how to answer the question.

In the Spring and Autumn Annals, every story about wars and conquests by princes must be ridiculed.

It can be seen that the scholars at that time had a negative view on the wars in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.

Mencius advocated ideas such as "people-oriented", "benevolent government", "kingly way" and "the theory of good nature", which quite meant to establish the Great Harmony.

This idea is good, but human nature is complex and unrealistic.

If nothing else, take the Song Dynasty as an example. If we really talk about it, many emperors of the Song Dynasty were in line with Mencius' thoughts.

The Song Dynasty implemented a system of governance based on vertical arches, with the emperor and scholar-bureaucrats co-ruling the world.

Song Zhenzong won the war but paid compensation to the enemy.

Doesn’t it look frustrating?

However, the "Chanyuan Alliance" did achieve a hundred years of peace, and was praised by many scholars.

However, Ang Lee did not agree with this at all. From the perspective of historical materialism, the Spring and Autumn Period was indeed a meaningless war, but this kind of war was necessary.

What he agrees with more is what is said in "Sima Fa": "Although the country is big, if it is warlike, it will perish. Although the world is safe, if it forgets to fight, it will be in danger."

In the early Song Dynasty, the army's combat effectiveness was still there, but after the Chanyuan Alliance, there was peace, but the army's combat effectiveness was gone.

Now I can't even beat Xixia. It's ridiculous.

But the article cannot be written like this. Nowadays, not fighting is the mainstream. If he refutes this, no matter how well the article is written, it will probably be labeled as a 'heterogeneous'.

You know, what matters in an article is not just the words, but more importantly the core idea.

Ang Lee's thoughts are deviant and rebellious, so it's a wonder he succeeds.

After thinking for a long time, Li An started writing.

I don't know how long it took, but Li An stopped and rubbed his sore neck.

He has already completed the article. Of course, it is only the first draft now and needs constant revision and refinement.

Li An drank some water and pondered over each sentence with a deep heart.