Nine days and six nights, what happened to the ancient imperial examination room

  For the first person, Gongyuan is just a new starting point for their glorious future. Compared with the ups and downs of Huanhai, the nine days and six nights are just ordinary experiences.

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  Ancient Chinese scholars intensively studied and prepared for the title of the gold list. In fact, it is not only a long and difficult road to prepare for the exam, it is the exam before the fame, and the difficult life of the exam room has also made countless examples difficult, and even described it as "three hard labors into ghosts, two words of merit Misfortunes people."

  From the official establishment of the Sui Yang Emperor to the abolition of the 31st year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty (1905 AD), the imperial examination system survived for more than 1300 years in Chinese history, and about 100,000 jinshi and one million juveniles walked out of the academic field. Although the tribute life is hard, for the students who will undertake the "big task", it is also a kind of "suffering their minds, working their muscles, hungry their skin, emptying their bodies, and doing what they want". Experience.

Only in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty, there was a dedicated tributary examination room.

  In the Sui and Tang dynasties when the imperial examination system was just born, there was no dedicated examination room for the imperial examination system, which was usually borrowed from the office area of ​​the officials. In the twenty-fourth year of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty (AD 736), the Imperial Examination was changed from the Librarianship Department to the Libei Department. However, at this time, Gongyuan still borrowed the office area of ​​the Ministry of Rites or Shangshu Province, and temporarily set up an examination room during the examination, and returned to its original state after the examination.

  Roughly after the mid-Northern Song Dynasty, the government began to build a special building as a tribute examination room. Inside the tribute courtyard, there are rows of spaced and relatively independent small rooms, namely the number house, where the candidates take the examination. According to the number of candidates, there are dozens of tribute houses in various places, as many as three to five hundred and thousands, and there are even 10420 houses in the tribute house of Beijing's Shuntianfu in the Qing Dynasty, and 20644 in Jiangnan.

  However, the grand scale of the tribute courtyard cannot hide the narrow and narrow space of the single building. Each house has walls on three sides, only the south has no doors open, the interior is 3 feet wide and 4 feet deep, the front eaves are 6 feet high, the rear wall is 8 feet high, and the construction area is about 1.3 square meters. Such a small space was vividly described as a honeycomb by Pu Songling in "Liao Zhai Zhi Yi". "The return home is also home, the hole is extended, the house is barefoot, like the cold bee in the late autumn."

  The 1.3 square meter house is not the normal treatment that every candidate can enjoy. During the construction of Gongyuan, there will be cutting corners and cutting materials. The area of ​​the house has shrunk severely, narrowing to "a wide seat", and a straw mat can not be put down; it is short enough to "eaves are equal to eyebrows", and the front eaves are only with people. His eyebrows are flat. Candidates can't sit back for long, so they have backache.

  During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the civil examinations and examinations for the imperial examinations were generally conducted once every three years. Therefore, after the number was used once, it had to be sealed for three years and not opened until the next examination. In three years, no one had sorted it out. The house was covered with dust and dust. It was covered with spider webs. Some of the houses are so old that they are "off the rain and the wind is windy, and the structure is soft."

  According to the stipulations of the imperial examination system at that time, the damaged examination papers were invalidated, and the respondent automatically dropped the list. Therefore, candidates prefer to be drowned in the soup, and will also protect the examination papers. Only in this way, the level of play is inevitably affected. Even if it is a sturdy house that can shelter from the wind and rain, candidates have to do it themselves to clean up a relatively neat examination environment before entering the house to start the exam.

Do not leave the test room for a few days, and eat, drink and live are challenges

  Just like today's college entrance examination, ancient imperial examinations usually take several exams, which last for several days. Unlike today's college entrance examination, candidates cannot leave the examination room for consecutive days of examinations, and all food and drink Lhasa must be conducted in the Gongyuan.

  There are three exams in the Ming and Qing Township Examinations and Conference Examinations. Candidates will spend three consecutive days and two nights in the No. 1 test room, and the next three exams will be nine days and six nights. Only on the night after the end of each exam, candidates can return to their place to rest, change their clothes, arrange their bedding, replace pen, ink, paper, candlesticks, and prepare for another battle in the Ming Dynasty.

  The tribute courtyard does not solve the food, the candidates need to bring their own food. Chen Cunneng, a scholar of the Tang dynasty, "on the eve of the test, the ancestors will prepare food for the test and have morning food", and relatives will prepare the test meal for them. In Wu Jingzi's "Ru Lin Wai Shi", wealthy candidates can purchase moon cakes, honey orange cake, lotus rice, round-eye meat, ginseng, pickled cucumber, plate duck and other foods in advance, as well as Chinese medicines such as "A Wei" that help digestion. She is shy in her sacred bag, or she can bring enough dry food for a few days to feed her hunger, or she can prepare a few grains of rice and vegetables and cook a fire by herself during the exam. Each house "has a front stove and a basket of charcoal for the sake of cooking tea and soup with scholars".

  In the Ming and Qing dynasties, most of the township tests were conducted in August. The heat was unbearable. The candidates were sweating and raining. Most of the drinking water filled with bamboo tubes was only enough for one day, and only the Gongyuan well water was available for the next two days. The tributary wells are used for three years, the cleaning is not timely enough, the water quality is not guaranteed, and the food is prone to spoilage and deterioration, often candidates have died of sudden intestinal diseases in tributaries. In the twenty-eighth year of Guangxu (AD 1902), the Fujian Rural Examination, there were 4 hospitals for death and death in the first field, and in the second field there were 3 people who were killed due to illness.

  The Tribute House is locked at night, and candidates can only sleep in a 1.3 square meter house. The brick walls on both sides of the house are about one foot five inches and two feet five inches high from the ground, and are designed with two upper and lower brick joints, that is, brick brackets, for placing two one-inch eight-point thick number plates. The lower number plate is on the inside and can be used as a chair; the upper number plate is on the outside and can be used as a table, so it is combined into a set of examination tables and chairs. Candidates removed the upper number plate and placed it in the lower brick tray together with the lower number plate to form a bed board for rest and energy recovery at night.

  Examinations for Jinshi subjects in the Tang Dynasty are generally held on the first lunar month, which is in the middle of winter and Chang'an is invading the cold. Although the candidates "carry fat candle water charcoal" for heating, they "sit down, sit in the cold, and sit on the ground alone" , Sitting on the floor under the hallway, will inevitably freeze hands and feet. During the provincial examination in the first month of the Southern Song Dynasty, candidates were attacked by the "magic" of the wet and cold weather in Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou). "The pen and ink were frozen, and the pen was written all day long. There are those who can't end the game." The Ming Dynasty examination was also held in the middle and early February of the lunar calendar. The weather in Beijing was even colder and the water dripped into ice. Candidates could only answer questions tremblingly. It was not until the tenth year of Qianlong (AD 1745) that the court remembered that "the weather is not yet warm" in February in the north, and then changed the examination time to mid-early March.

Fire accidents occur frequently, and the number house conditions gradually improve

  The hardships in eating, drinking and living are only commonplace. The biggest threat to candidates is the casualties caused by various safety accidents. Candidates fire in the tribute courtyard to cook fire during the day, candle lighting at night, and charcoal for heating in winter. The house is also low-rise brick-wood structure, so fire and other safety accidents are unavoidable.

  In the late years of Shenzong Yuanfeng in the Northern Song Dynasty, a fire broke out on the eve of the Tokyo (now Kaifeng) Tribunal on the eve of the examination, and 14 officials (40 persons) were killed in the fire. Afterwards, there were rumors in the capital that "the champion burnt the coke". After the tribute hospital was restored, the exam was reopened. It turned out to be the top high school candidate named Jiao Wu.

  During the Ming dynasty, there were frequent fires in Gongyuan. In the three years of Orthodoxy (1438 AD), a fire broke out just after the first exam in Shuntianfu Township. The number building and test papers were both burned. Fortunately, there were no casualties. But later the candidates were not so lucky. Mingyingzong Tianshun would try in four years (AD 1460). The tribute courtyard was on fire. The door of each row of the number house and the gate of the tribute courtyard were locked. More than ten candidates were buried in the number house. , There is no way to win a broken limb." But the imperial court did not learn enough lessons from this fire, let alone improve the fire protection facilities at Gongyuan, so that a more tragic fire occurred three years later.

  During the first examination in the seven-year trial of Tianshun (AD 1463), the soldiers who patrolled the examination room in Gongyuan made a fire to warm up and caused a fire. Yu Shi Jiao Xian, who is in charge of the examination, strictly observes the discipline of the examination room and "closes the door", closing the gate of the tribute courtyard. The sergeant inside could not escape, nor could the sergeants outside enter the tribute courtyard to fight the fire, so that "more than ninety slayers were burnt down", and countless burned persons.

  Afterwards, Ming Yingzong gave a compassionate gift to the deceased celebrity as a scholar, and wrote a sacrifice for them personally. After converging the remains of the victims, the imperial court divided it into six large tombs and buried them outside the Chaoyang Gate in Beijing. Lu Rong, the son of the person who experienced the fire, included in his book "Shuyuan Miscellaneous Records" a poem written by the people of the time. Planting towards the horizon, Dan Guifan opened from the fire. The arrogance was full of spit flames, and the heart became gray overnight. Where is the victory of Qujiang today? The bones are scattered all over the pile", which is awesome to read.

  In addition to fires, due to construction quality problems, other safety accidents in the science field also occur frequently. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, during the Jiangxi Ji'anfu college entrance examination, the examination shed suddenly collapsed, crushing 36 candidates who were struggling, and many others were injured. Qianlong issued a decree to chase the dead candidates to be talents, for the sake of "given the students."

  The poor life of the tribute courtyard is actually a reflection of the relatively poor material conditions in ancient times. Under the conditions at that time, the tribute house, which was the "most important place", was already one of the best buildings. The Jingcheng Gongyuan is the second largest building complex in the palace, and the Provincial Gongyuan is the largest building complex in the area. They are all rigorous and orderly.

  Moreover, the conditions of the Gongyuan Building are gradually improving. In the early Ming Dynasty, the wooden houses were mostly wooden wall panels. Because of repeated fires, the Qing Dynasty changed to brick wall structures. In order to allow candidates to sit more comfortably, the original brick-soil bench was also changed to a wooden number plate. However, the area of ​​the 1.3-square-meter house has not been expanded, because it satisfies the needs of candidates for independent meditation and answering to the greatest extent, and it is also convenient to prevent cheating.

  In addition, according to some scholars, life in the ancient sciences is not completely dark. Because of these tragic records, most of them were uninformed literati. The academic field in their memory is the biggest setback in their life, so it becomes the deepest pain in the pen. For the first person, Gongyuan is just a new starting point for their glorious future. Compared with the ups and downs of Huanhai, the nine days and six nights of the science field are just ordinary experiences.

  (The author is a Ph.D. in History, Renmin University of China)

  Wu Peng Source: China Youth Daily