The Happy Life of Small Officials in Northern Song Dynasty

Zhao Zhen's impromptu question really scratched the heads of many candidates. Before coming to the palace examination, everyone had made some preparations and tried their best to find out some allusions about the previous emperor's palace examination.

The palace examination was first established when Li Tangwu was in the court, but it was officially customized in the sixth year of Kaibao in the Song Dynasty. In that year, Li Fang, a scholar of the Imperial Academy, served as the chief examiner of the Gongju, and presided over the national examination held at the Bianliang Gongyuan in Tokyo.After various examinations, a total of 38 people were admitted as Jinshi, various subjects and ranks.Two of them were dismissed because of "the worst material and the wrong question" when calling for a match.

Xu Shilian, a failed Jinshi, beat the Dengwen drum, accused Li Fang of "making a choice based on emotion", and demanded a palace examination in order to seek justice.So Taizu issued an edict to select 190 five people from the losers and 36 people who had already won, and conduct a re-examination in the Jiangwu Hall, which was presided over by Taizu himself. Ten of them lost the election.

After publishing the list, there was an uproar between the government and the public, and Li Fang was demoted.Since then, the palace examination has become a custom, and the Song Dynasty has gradually established a three-level scientific examination system of state examination, provincial examination, and palace examination.

However, the palace examination only examines one policy question. Generally, a paragraph or a sentence is selected from a subset of classics to write a policy theory article that is related to today's reality, and then the article is used to judge the competition. [

But today, Zhao Zhen's impromptu idea was not to choose ancient books to ask questions, but to directly ask everyone to point out the current problems and propose solutions, which made the hard-headed practitioners a little panicked.

Moreover, scholars in this era are generally people with high eyesight and low abilities, and rote memorization is absolutely no problem, but once it is connected with reality, it will kill these students who don't care about things that don't matter to others, come down with blank test paper , Half of the more than 200 exercises were scratching their heads and not knowing how to start.

Su Jinchu rubbed the ink slowly with the pen, thinking carefully: Zhao Zhen's question today seems to be caused by his own nonsense, but in fact it should be a long-standing thought in his heart, related to the upcoming After experiencing the New Deal in person, Su Jin seemed to understand something.

Fan Zhongyan's New Deal was implemented with Zhao Zhen's support, and the time is next year. The New Deal change cannot be a temporary idea. Therefore, such a question may be because Zhao Zhen is collecting the methods of the New Deal to see if they can be used in future reforms.

Thinking of this, Su Jin's eyes lit up, and he immediately thought of an article in college Chinese, which was written by Fan Zhongyan in front of Zhao Zhen before the Qingli New Deal, which was about the future The direction and means of change were greatly appreciated by Zhao Zhen, and finally sent to the whole Song Dynasty in the form of an imperial edict, and the vigorous Qingli New Deal began.

But Su Jin still didn't dare to start writing. It's not that he couldn't remember the full text of the article, but that he suddenly thought of a question, that is, when this article was written; 》This article, I openly recorded it now, isn't that a big joke.

So Su Jin carefully recalled Fan Zhongyan's resume, trying to find evidence of whether Fan Zhongyan had submitted this article; The biggest Beijing official he served was only Tianzhang Pavilion, but he had been released as a county magistrate and magistrate at other times, but he had never been in the central government; he was unlucky because this person was too upright, and Lu Yijian was at the height of his power. However, he presented pictures of hundreds of officials to the emperor, and impeached Lu Yijian to appoint a private person; moreover, this old fan had also talked about the establishment of the emperor's younger brother in private because of Zhao Zhen's heir, so Zhao Zhen used the excuse to go through it to the end, directly Demoted to other places to become an official.

From the above, it can be concluded that at least before the Northwest War started, Fan Zhongyan was not appreciated by Zhao Zhen, so it was impossible to talk about the reform with Fan Zhongyan before then.

After the Northwest War broke out, Fan Zhongyan and Han Qi have not been recognized by everyone until now, and their strategy of sticking to the counterattack was regarded as a strategy of fearing the enemy at the beginning. Zhen has a lot of status in his heart; but with Fan Zhongyan's current rank, it is still unlikely that Zhao Zhen would personally ask him to write this "Answer to Shou Zhao Tiao Chen Ten Things" in person. The biggest possibility is after the end of the Northwest War. Well, when Fan Zhongyan was transferred back to the capital and entered the center, the emperor had the opportunity to have close contact with him, and this article was probably written at that time.

Although there is only [-]% certainty, Su Jin is a person who likes to gamble. In addition, it is difficult for Su Jin to ask him to write an article that criticizes current affairs. He has been in Dasong for more than a year, and he is as smart as Su. Jin, has not yet fully understood the details of this society, let alone put forward countermeasures against the evils of the court.

On the steps, Zhao Zhen chatted with Yan Shu and others, while looking down at the candidates under the stage. After the initial confusion, all the students had already started to write. Zhao Zhen nodded slightly, but suddenly he found that Su Jin was sitting He bit his pen and stayed there, not writing from the beginning to the end, so he asked Yan Shu: "Yan Aiqing, Yuan Sujin of the Xinkehui has not written a single word so far, it seems that this question has stumped him."

Du Yan interjected: "Your minister said earlier that this Su brocade is only superficial, but it is actually a failure of gold and jade. When the ranking was determined by Yuan Yuan, the minister told Yan Sansi. It’s all for nothing, and I still write a doggerel below, the attitude is really bad, and I don’t know how he got here after trying to solve the test. If it wasn’t for Yan Sansi who tried his best to make him the first, I and Lu Xiangzao He will be dethroned into the top three; this is good, now it is serious, it seems that he is going to reveal his true colors."

Yan Shu frowned and said, "Privilege Du is saying that I, Yan Shu, as the examiner, cheated for personal gain?"

Du Yan said: "I didn't say that. Yan Sansi himself was overwhelmed. It's just that two of the three examiners thought he shouldn't be in the top three, but Yan Sansi tried his best. There are inevitably gossips in it."

Yan Shu said angrily: "From the beginning to the end, all I read are the transcribed test papers, and the names are all pasted up. Even if the old man wants to cheat, I will start with it. You are spitting blood. Your Majesty is here, please explain it to me."

Du Yan rolled his eyes and ignored Yan Shu, Yan Shu cupped his hands and said, "Your Majesty, you have to give the old minister justice, the old minister has always acted impartially, and besides, Su Jin and the old man are related, how could the old man ruin his reputation for him?" ?”

Du Yan snorted and said, "Relationship? He will soon be your nephew and son-in-law of Yan Sansi. Everyone knows about this matter, who are you hiding it from? This Su Jin is also desperate to hug Lord Sansi's thigh. Even a widow who is a few years older than him has married as a legal wife, and she is not afraid of being laughed at by the world."

Yan Shu jumped up against the case, blowing his beard and staring, and was about to go crazy, Zhao Zhen hurriedly stopped the two of them, and scolded: "In public, as the central brain of the court, you actually quarreled with two shrews, don't you want to be decent? "

Yan Shu gave Du Yan a hard look, then bowed his head and stopped talking. Du Yan was quite proud, but he was out of breath. It's not easy to make Yan Shu fly into a rage. Only by digging his heart can he be angry. [

Zhao Zhen pointed at Du Yan and said: "You can still laugh, can you talk about such things casually? Fortunately, everyone in the court knows Yan Aiqing's character, otherwise, wouldn't your words really cause many so-called topics? Unexpectedly You are really nosy, who do you want to marry as your wife? Besides, Su Jin is the Huiyuan hand-picked by me. Back then, I chose one of the anonymous test papers submitted by the three of you. I didn't know it was Su Jin over there, but you blamed this on Yan Aiqing, you really eat too much meat, but you talk too much."

After being reprimanded by Zhao Zhen, Du Yan immediately tilted his head and bowed his neck in arrogance; Zhao Zhen ignored him and turned his head to look at His Royal Highness. Suddenly, he was pleasantly surprised to find that Su Jin had dipped a pen in ink and mixed it thoroughly, and slowly rubbed it in white ink. After writing on the paper, he looked quite calm, and seemed quite confident.

Of course, Su Jin has a well-thought-out plan, and he is just pursuing the principle of taking it. As for the consequences of this move, will Fan Zhongyan write this article in the future? If he does, he will be plagiarizing himself Articles and so on, Su Jin can't take care of this muddled account, coming here by himself is like a bug in the game, what's the use of thinking about it now?

Sprinkling two pieces of test paper, writing silently while recalling, and adding some impromptu thoughts by myself, it took nearly half an hour to write this theory before it was completed.

The end of the palace examination is at noon, and it only takes more than an hour from the start of the examination to the end of the examination. He was the first to hand in the paper without even looking at the name on the signature. Some of the other candidates looked at Su Jin enviously, and some thought Su Jin was trying to show off. Is it good to be the first to hand in the paper?If the writing is not good, it will become a laughing stock instead. Most people choose to continue to polish and think hard, striving for perfection.