VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 6, SECTION 3

VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 6, SECTION 3

Why the Examination Hardened

Last section looked at the brilliant face of the examination, how it changed China for over a thousand years. This section looks at the other face. This brilliant institution, across thirteen centuries, was not all bright. It hardens, turns into the eight-legged essay, turns living people into bookworms. This section turns out the hardening of the examination, to see how it slowly went from a living merit selection toward a dead end, and we look at both sides.

Emperor Yang of Sui formally establishing the presented-scholar subject is the landmark starting point of the examination, and the Qing abolishing it in the thirty-first year of Guangxu is its end. Nearly thirteen centuries in all, and this road can be seen in five stages. The first stage, the Sui and Tang beginning, some three centuries, the Sui founding the first form, the Tang regularizing and enlarging it, with the classics subject, the presented-scholar subject, the law subject, the mathematics subject and more, rich in content and flexible in form, but the examination only one channel into office, the protection of birth, recommendation, and military merit still weighing heavily. The second stage, the Song height, some three hundred and twenty years, the examination truly universal, almost every important civil position passing through it, with the palace exam, name-sealing, and recopying added as anti-cheating measures, fairness greatly raised, the most brilliant period of the Chinese examination. The third stage, the Yuan trough, some hundred years, the Mongols not valuing the examination, abolishing it for a time and later restoring it but at a very small scale, a great many Han scholars losing their channel of rising and turning to opera, fiction, and painting, which as a side effect advanced Yuan opera and the scholar's painting. The fourth stage, the Ming setting the form, some two hundred eighty years, Zhu Yuanzhang restoring the examination at once after founding and making it tighter, but also beginning to move toward hardening, requiring the eight-legged essay. The fifth stage, the late Qing hardening and abolition, some two hundred sixty years, continuing to strengthen the eight-legged essay, the exam ever further from real matters, and in the late period, as the Western powers came in, the officials of the traditional examination generally not understanding modern knowledge, governance failing to keep up with the age, abolished in nineteen oh five, ending a thirteen-century institution.

To see the brilliance of the examination, the most complete sample is the Song. The admission scale greatly enlarged, the Song admitting several hundred presented scholars each list, several times the Tang, the Northern Song admitting some nineteen thousand presented scholars in all, feeding a great body of civil talent to the whole dynasty. Social mobility reached its peak, the Song having the saying, in the morning a lad of the fields, by evening in the hall of the Son of Heaven, a young man farming in the morning able through the examination to be a presented scholar summoned by the emperor by evening, a rate of social mobility the highest of the Chinese dynasties and rare among the other civilizations of the time. The quality of talent was extremely high, the Song one of the peaks of Chinese culture, its giants of literature, history, philosophy, and science almost all of examination origin, Su Shi, Ouyang Xiu, Sima Guang, Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi, Zhu Xi, and Shen Kuo among them. The institutional detail was complete, the Song building a full anti-cheating system, name-sealing, recopying, sealing the examination hall, avoidance, and re-testing, raising fairness to an unprecedented height. The Song examination is both the most brilliant period of China's thirteen centuries of examination and the spiritual source of the civil-service exam systems of countries the world over today. But the Song had already planted the seed of hardening, Wang Anshi's reforms turning the examination content from poetry to the meaning of the classics, meaning to make the examination more practical but in fact narrowing the content, and the eight-legged essay of the later Ming and Qing evolved gradually out of the Song's classics-meaning exam.

The core problem of the Ming and Qing examination is the eight-legged essay. The eight-legged essay is an extremely regularized writing format, required to be divided into eight parts, breaking open the topic, taking up the topic, beginning the discussion, entering the matter, the opening legs, the middle legs, the later legs, and the closing legs, each leg strictly limited in word count, format, and sentence pattern, required to take a line of the Confucian classics as topic and ground of argument, required to speak for the sages and not use one's own words, required to follow the orthodox reading and not any other. The original design of the eight-legged essay was to make the grading standard uniform and prevent the grader's subjective preference, a reasonable consideration. But the actual result of it in operation turned the exam into a formulaic writing drill, nearly unrelated to the abilities truly needed to govern a state. A candidate from childhood had to spend a dozen years, even decades, working at the eight-legged essay, memorizing the classics and a great mass of model essays, mastering every formula. Whether one could pass as a presented scholar depended mainly on how well the eight-legged essay was written, nearly unrelated to whether the person understood economy, the military, foreign affairs, or law. So the Ming and Qing saw a strange phenomenon, many who passed as presented scholar or top graduate, once they truly held office, found they could do nothing and could only rely on the local private secretaries to handle the concrete work. The eight-legged essay trained people good at taking exams, not people good at doing things, the deepest problem of the examination's hardening. The four hundred years and more of the eight-legged essay slowly narrowed the spiritual world of Chinese scholars, everyone putting their energy into guessing the grader's taste and applying the model-essay format, rather than studying the real world. This is the tragedy of the examination, meant to bring up those of real ability, turning in the end into bringing up those who could write the eight-legged essay.

Why does the examination harden? Is it a problem of the institution itself, or of its execution? The answer has three layers. The first layer, the inner demand for objective grading. The examination must run at a national scale, several hundred thousand taking the exam each year, several hundred to be selected, and it needs an objective, comparable grading standard. If candidates were allowed to write freely, the grader's subjective preference would become the deciding factor and fairness would suffer. So the examination necessarily moves toward format, the eight-legged essay the extreme form of that format, but even without the eight-legged essay, any large-scale exam moves toward some degree of format. This is the inner problem of the examination, large scale demands objectivity, and objectivity leads to hardening. This is the same problem every large-scale exam in the world faces today, the college-entrance exam, the SAT, the TOEFL, the GRE, all large-scale exams unavoidably moving toward some format. The second layer, the political demand for narrowed content. What the examination tests decides what kind of talent a dynasty raises. The court wished to raise obedient, cultivated, rule-abiding officials, so the exam content naturally leaned toward the Confucian classics, because the classics stress loyalty to the ruler, filial devotion, and the rites, all favorable to the dynasty's stability. But the classics are after all limited, the same few books tested over and over, and after several centuries reaching the point where every topic had been used up, the graders forced to dig ever more obscure topics. The third layer, the setting of vested interest. After the examination had run several centuries, a vast bloc of vested interest slowly formed, graders, exam masters, their protégés, the exam-preparation industry, and these people did not wish the examination to be rectified, because rectification would harm their resources and standing. Whenever someone proposed rectification, Wang Anshi, Zhang Juzheng, Kangxi, Yongzheng all tried, they met strong opposition, and the rectification either died halfway or lost its shape. This is why the examination's hardening could not be moved for centuries, not that no one saw the problem, but that it could not be changed. These three layers together make the hardening a necessary direction of the institution's own evolution, not only the personal problem of a few muddled rulers or corrupt officials.

Here a hidden real thing must be pointed out. The examination breakthrough of the ancestors completed only half a dream, not running through to the throne. But interestingly, the long-lived dynasties, in the succession to the throne, quietly used a kind of internal examination too. The so-called succession of the eldest son is nominal, and in the truly long-lived dynasties, succession to the throne was not simply by the principal eldest, but a small-range selection of the worthy among the princes, which is also a kind of examination, only with the circle narrowed to the princes alone. The Qing sample is the most complete. The Qing height of a hundred thirty years, the three reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong, was none of them by principal-eldest succession. Kangxi was Shunzhi's third son, and one important reason Shunzhi chose him was that he had had smallpox as a child and survived, having immunity, together with his cleverness and steadiness. Yongzheng was Kangxi's fourth son, chosen at last by Kangxi through the fierce contest of the nine sons for the seat, because his ability was the steadiest and his work the most solid. Qianlong was the most fitting person picked out after Yongzheng set up the system of secret succession. The Qing height of a hundred thirty years was, at bottom, the fruit of three generations of internal examination among the princes. The Tang height was similar, Taizong a younger son and the strongest in ability among the brothers, Xuanzong not the principal eldest either, the most flourishing emperors of the Tang all in some degree selected up by worth. The counter-sample is the Ming, which of all dynasties was extremely strict in succession to the throne, strictly by the principal eldest, and the result was that the middle and late Ming produced not a few muddled rulers, Wanli sitting on the throne because he was the principal eldest, not because he had ability. The dynasty strict by the principal eldest declined faster, the dynasty running an internal examination among the princes endured longer, this the other secret of the long-lived dynasties. Understand one thing: the examination breakthrough of the ancestors seemed on the surface not to run through to the throne, but in fact the long-lived dynasties all used the spirit of the examination inside the succession to the throne, only with the range narrowed to the princes alone. Beyond the half dream, there is a hidden, unpublic, small-range examination running too.

So here is the position this section lays down. We set one layer firm: the examination across thirteen centuries walked five stages, beginning in the Sui, regularized in the Tang, at its height in the Song, in a trough in the Yuan, set in form in the Ming, hardening and abolition in the Qing. The Song was the most brilliant age, large in admission scale, high in social mobility, extremely high in quality of talent, complete in institution. The eight-legged essay of the Ming and Qing is the core of the hardening, turning the exam from a test of real learning into a test of formulaic writing, over four hundred years severely narrowing the spiritual world of Chinese scholars. The examination hardened for three inner reasons, the objectivity demanded by a large-scale exam, the content narrowed by political demand, and the setting of vested interest, three layers together making the hardening a necessary direction of the institution's evolution, not only a personal problem. The long-lived dynasties used a kind of internal examination among the princes in succession to the throne, a hidden examination beyond the half dream, while the Ming, strict by the principal eldest, declined faster instead.

The brilliance and the hardening of the examination are two faces of one institution, both changing China for over a thousand years and in the end moving toward a dead end. But did it truly die in nineteen oh five? The next chapter walks into today, to see that the examination never vanished, only changed its name and its form, and to see a strange thing: why today's government does only half the dream, while it is the enterprise that runs the whole examination.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.