Chapter 5 Chapter 4 Examination

The Su Dongpo brothers grew up to be teenagers and were about to take the exam, and the problem of marriage immediately arose.If they come to Beijing unmarried and pass the exam, they will definitely be proposed by a family with a daughter.Marriage proposals were popular at that time; rich businessmen in the capital who had unmarried daughters were all waiting for the results of the examination, and planned to propose financial conditions to the bachelors who were enlisted on the gold list.The period of public examinations is also the peak season for the marriage market.From the standpoint of the parents, they would rather their son marry a native girl from the same township, who are familiar with each other.Everything is arranged by the parents as usual.Dongpo married Miss Wang Fu at the age of eighteen. She was fifteen years old and lived in Qingshen, fifteen miles south of the river.The next year his younger brother was only sixteen years old and married a bride who was two years younger than him.It is considered early marriage, but it is not uncommon.

In principle, early marriage - not necessarily as early as the Su brothers - can save young people a lot of time, energy and emotional troubles in choosing a spouse and courting.It is best for young people to have their love and relationship history settled so as not to interfere with their work.It is natural for Chinese parents to raise daughters-in-law. Young people don't need to delay their wedding. Perhaps it is better for a girl to love a man who has become a husband than a man who has not married her.It's just that in a romantic society, the latter is more exciting.Anyway, the Su brothers happily married.This is not to say that parents will not make mistakes in arranging their children's marriages, or that the proportion of happy marriages must be high; no matter how they are arranged, all marriages are a gamble, like sailing in a vast ocean.Even if arranged personally, no parent or seer can know with certainty what the future outcome of a son's marriage will turn out to be.In an ideal society, marriages are blindly matched between unmarried men and women aged eighteen to twenty-five in the Black Forest. As long as social ethics and community life are stable, the proportion of happy marriages remains the same.Whether a man is eighteen or fifty-eight, he still chooses a mate on the basis of sexual attractiveness designed by nature, and with few exceptions, women also base their attraction on the same basis, but do not actively choose.They understand better the attempt to choose wisely.This alone keeps marriage from being reduced to mating among animals at present.The advantages of parental decision-making are simplicity, convenience, no waste of time, and more freedom and scope of choice.All marriages are determined by God, but they are practiced on earth. A man and a woman must start to build a relationship after they leave the church.

After the youngest son got married, the two brothers went to Beijing with their father.They first went to Chengdu, the provincial capital, to call on the high official Zhang Fangping.In the future, he and Su Dongpo have the same love as father and son.Father also hoped to get an official position.He's forty-seven now, but he's put in a lot of work since he failed last time.At this time, he wrote a masterpiece, discussing the principles of politics, war, and peace, which is extremely deep and creative, and should attract the attention and respect of scholars in the capital.At that time, there was a way to get an official position by being specially recommended by a high-ranking official.He presented the work to Zhang Fangping, who appreciated it very much, and planned to appoint him as the professor of state studies in Chengdu.Lao Su is unwilling to be only the teaching chair of the academy.In the end, Zhang Fangping was moved by his enthusiasm. Although he had no friendship with Ouyang Xiu, the number one scholar in the country, he wrote a letter of introduction to him.Another friend surnamed Lei also wrote a letter of introduction, saying that Lao Su had the "talent of a prime minister".With these two letters to Ouyang Xiu and Mei Yaochen, the father and son went to Beijing by land and traveled for two months, passing through the mountains of northern Sichuan and Shaanxi.

In May of the first year of Renzong Jiayou (1056), Sansu arrived in the capital and lived in a Buddhist temple, waiting for the autumn examination.Among the forty-five candidates from Meizhou, thirteen passed the exam, including the two brothers.The father and son waited wholeheartedly for the palace examination next spring, and had nothing else to do, so they stayed to visit the capital and enter the social world.Su Xun presented the work to Ouyang Xiu, the most respected scholar among scholars.Ouyang Xiu with a warm face has unusually long ears and a short upper lip, showing his upper gums when he smiles.He is not handsome in appearance, but it is the common wish of scholars to meet this literati leader and gain his favor.Ouyang Xiu won the love of scholars mainly because he always took it as his duty to discover and reward the backward.He received Su Xun sincerely, and introduced Lao Su to the house of Privy Councilor Han Qi as a guest, introducing high-ranking officials.However, Su Xun's attitude was cold and conceited, and he didn't make a good impression in front of the high officials.

The Su family brothers went shopping when they had nothing to do, went to famous restaurants to eat, and stood in the cold wind to admire the elegant demeanor of the famous official's car.There were four capitals in the Song Dynasty, with Kaifeng in Henan as the main city.Kaifeng was called Tokyo at that time, the outer city had a circumference of thirteen miles, and the inner city had a circumference of seven miles.There are twelve city gates, all of which are equipped with double-layer or three-layer enemy fortifications, and "horse heads" are set up at certain intervals on the top of the city wall, similar to the current gun piers.Kyoto is located on a low plain with no advantages of terrain, only protected by the Yellow River about 200 miles to the north—the current Longhai Railway is built along the river—so they designed a complete military defense plan.

Xijing is located one hundred and thirty miles west of Luoyang, and it is specially used to protect the invasion route from the northwest through the important town of Tongguan.Shangqiu, 800 miles to the east, has another important military base, Nanjing.The south is not afraid of human aggression.On the contrary, in the first half of the tenth century AD, the northern barbarians invaded China.At that time, a warlord formed another government and formed an alliance with the foreign race in Mongolia to fight against other Chinese forces.Shi Jingtang became the son of Emperor Xianbei, but he said that he loved China and cared about the peace and welfare of the people.He called himself "Emperor Son" and the "Emperor Father" of Xianbei people.He saved his life and destroyed the unity of China, but won the applause of foreigners.Therefore, the government took special measures to avoid the recurrence of the separation regime, because in ancient times or in modern times, there were always many "patriots" who were willing to use the name of the Chinese people as puppets of foreign governments to pursue their own power.The disgraceful death of the "son" of this foreign tyrant did not prevent Zhang Bangchang, another puppet in the twelfth century; Zhang Bangchang was exploited and then overthrown, nor did it prevent Wu Sangui, another "patriot" in the sixteenth century, from leading an alien army Enter the Great Wall and destroy the Chinese government.Therefore, the Song Dynasty established Beijing in the Daming Mansion in the south of Hebei to strictly prevent the invasion of Mongolian aliens in the north.

Jingshi is the capital of China, where the prosperity of the empire is contained, and the wealth, talent and beauty of the whole country are concentrated around the imperial court.Outside the city there is a moat a hundred feet wide, lined with elms and weeping willows, revealing the white buttresses and vermilion lacquered gates behind.Four rivers flowed through the urban area, generally running east-west, the most important being the Bian River, which transported goods and food to the capital from the plains of Anhui and Henan in the southeast.The gates of the four rivers are closed at night.There was a sentry post every hundred yards on the main streets of the city.The river in the city is covered with exquisitely carved wooden bridges, and the small bridge in front of the palace is carved from carefully designed marble.The imperial palace is located in the center of the city, starting from a row of stone brick walls under the Xuande Tower in the south. There are exquisite half-reliefs of dragons and phoenixes, and the glistening roofs are exposed on them, all of which are made of glazed tiles of various colors.The four sides outside the palace are the main streets, which are named according to the four points of the compass.To the west of the palace are Zhongshu Sheng and the Privy Council.There are national universities and royal temples in the southern outer city outside Suzaku Gate.The streets are crowded with pedestrians, official cars, bullock carts and sedan chairs. This is the general traffic situation. A few small two-wheeled cars are pulled by manpower, which are the prototypes of modern foreign cars.The women in the ox cart drew down the curtains.There is a characteristic of the capital, no one can walk around bareheaded, even the humblest fortune-teller is dressed like a literati.

It's time for the imperial examination.Ouyang Xiu was appointed by the emperor as the chief examiner, and many scholars served as judges.This is the most important moment in a scholar's life, and he is always full of excitement, hope and anxiety about gains and losses.Years of hard study in the cold window are about to bear fruit.Candidates had to get up in the middle of the night and go to the palace at dawn, bring their own cold food and dry food, and could not come out until the exam was over.During the examination, they were locked in separate compartments, guarded by palace guards.The authorities have a strict system against bribery or favoritism.The test papers of the examinees are all copied by the secretary before they are handed over to the examiners, lest the person in charge see their handwriting.The re-copied papers do not write their names, and they are recorded in the file separately.After the examinee came out of the exam, the judge began to enter the forbidden palace, and was not allowed to have contact with outsiders. Usually, it was closed from the end of January to the beginning of March, and the test papers were approved and presented to the emperor.Candidates take history or policy theory first.The second round will be archaeological texts, and when the results are announced, those who win must test poems and poems and policy questions under the supervision of the emperor.Emperor Renzong loved talents very much, and he was also very concerned about these tests.He often sent servants around him to send out exam questions, and sometimes changed them at the last minute to prevent leaks.

The Su brothers were selected with high scores.Dongpo wrote an article, and Ouyang Xiu later showed it to his colleagues and admired it for many days.The article talks about the principle of seeking simplicity and breadth in national administration, which is also Su Dongpo's basic political philosophy.But there was an unfortunate misunderstanding.Ouyang Xiu admired the style and content of the test paper, thinking that it must have been written by his friend Zeng Gong.In order to avoid suspicion, he changed the paper from the first place to the second place, so Su Dongpo took the second place in the test.In the second year of Jiayou (1057), Su Dongpo passed the palace examination on April 8, and was selected as Jinshi at the age of 20 on April 14, ranking among the best among 388 students who passed the examination.Receiving this honor means that he immediately becomes a first-class scholar in the country.

However, it is rare in history that this talented scholar casually quoted historical examples and fabricated a dialogue on the test paper.He said that the reward would rather be too lenient, and if there is any doubt about the punishment, the principle should be to avoid killing innocent people.He wrote that in the Tang Yao era, a man was about to be sentenced to death. "Gao Tao said to kill the third. Yao said to forgive the third." The dialogue is good, and it can quite support the authoritative statement that Shengjun is willing to use bad guys and give him opportunities to show his talents.When the examiner read this story, he dared not question it, for he was afraid to admit that he had not read these unknown ancient books.So Su Dongpo passed the test.After the exam, one day Mei Yaochen, one of the examiners, asked him:

"By the way, in which book is the story of Emperor Yao and Gao Tao published? I don't remember where I read it." "I invented it," admitted the little scholar. "Really?" said the old examiner. "Hey, the Holy King will definitely do this, right?" Su Dongpo replied. When a literati is named on the gold list under a certain examiner, he has to thank him for his kindness, and the relationship between the two people has since been established as a "mentor" and "student".Candidates should meet their teachers and examiners and write a letter of thanks.Ouyang Xiu is a literary authority.A word of praise from him can make or break a literati.At that time, a writer said that scribes were not afraid of punishment, they did not love promotion, they were not greedy for life or death, they were only afraid of Ouyang Xiu's opinion.Ouyang Xiu said to a colleague, "Reading Su Dongpo's letter, I am sweating with joy. I should retire and make this young man stand out." Think how much this sentence had on Su Dongpo!As soon as Ouyang Xiu said these words, the whole capital heard it.It is said that Ouyang Xiu once said to his son, "Remember my words, no one will talk about me in thirty years." The prophecy came true. Ten years after Su Dongpo's death, no one mentioned Ouyang Xiu, and everyone was talking about Su Dongpo. His banned works. Dongpo was about to start his official career when his mother passed away.According to the rules of Confucianism, this is such a big event that even the prime minister has to resign immediately and stay in mourning for 27 months before he can be reinstated.Dongpo's elder sister died a few years ago, and all the men in the family went out to take the exam, while the mother and two daughters-in-law stayed at home.She was dying and hadn't heard any good news from the capital.The father and son hurried home and found that the mother was dead, the house was in a mess, the fence was collapsed, and the roof was leaking, "like a fugitive". After the funeral, they chose a cemetery in the "Old Man Spring" under a hillside.According to local legends, in the clear moonlight, an old man with white hair and handsome face can be seen sitting or lying by the spring, but as soon as people approach, he disappears into the water, hence the name "Old Man Spring".Later, Su Xun was also buried in the same tomb. His poetic name "Old Spring" was named after this place. Su Xun wrote in his deceased wife's tribute: "I know my mother's heart, and it is better to be an official, so I should call it in writing. In the past, I was a teenager, and I didn't learn when I was wandering; I knew my son's heart, and I was worried about my annihilation. Feelings, listening, and even today... ...There is a mound with banners, but the grave of the son. It is dug into two rooms, and the period is the same as that of the son.... I am old, and I am all over the world. Since the death of the son, I have lost a good friend. I return to the old hut, and there is no change. The soul is still alive, and I will return soon." The twenty-seven months of forced seclusion were the happiest years of Su Tungpo's youth.Both brothers lived with the young lady.Dongpo often visited his wife's natal home in Qingshen, surrounded by green hills, with streams, deep ponds and Buddhist temples on the top of the hills.An atmosphere of mystery, romance and legend.Su Dongpo often visited temples with his wife's uncles and cousins, and had picnics or drinks by the Seocho Bridge.On summer nights, he would sit outside the hut and eat melon seeds and fried broad beans.It was a big family: his wife's father Wang Fang, her two uncles and the family.Among the more than 30 cousins ​​of the Wang family, there was a "twenty-seven mother" who later became a part of his life. At this time, Lao Su was waiting for his dispatch order.He can be an official, because mourning his dead wife is not like mourning his mother, and it will not become an obstacle to becoming an official.Senior officials in Beijing promised to help, but he has not heard from him for more than a year.Finally, the imperial decree came, telling him to go to the capital to take a special examination.This panicked him, and now he is terrified of all exams.He wrote a reply letter to the emperor, refusing to take the exam on the pretext of old age and frailty, but he wrote to his friend: "A servant is not a person who insists on seeking an official position, nor a servant who insists on not being an official... Why bother? The body of decay and illness is reluctant to weigh the balance of the division, and laughs at oneself... Xiangzhe Quan wrote a few strategies to discuss the balance, which Uncle Ouyang Yong thought could be further advanced. Gou court thinks his words are credible, so why? Let’s try. If you don’t believe what he says in his daily life, how can he believe what he said hastily?” Another letter to Mei Yaochen also said: “But he can’t just meet the standards of Yousi in his life. As a result of being so impoverished... The self-thinking young man tasted the lush forest, sat up in the middle of the night, wrapped his meal and brought cakes to wait outside Xiao Donghua's gate, entered one by one, sat down on his knees, and bowed his head to answer the case. Every time he thought about it, he would Chilling..." In the second year—the fourth year of Jiayou (1059)—in June, he received another order from the government, reiterating the previous order.The article did not say that the exam was exempted, but he only cared about the exemption.Government leaders should trust him—either accept it or forget it.He didn't want to be tested like a primary school student.So he pleaded for the third time.He wrote that he was fifty years old.What can this age do for the country?After all, a scholar's career in politics is only to serve the country, otherwise he should be a poor scholar in peace.If he is determined to enter politics now, he will neither get the opportunity to serve the country nor enjoy the honor of a great hermit.But he finally said that it was summer now, and his son's mourning period would be over next month, so he would accompany them to Beijing again.He hoped to see the officials again then and discuss everything.Judging from the tone of the entire letter, he has no objection to entering politics at the age of 50, as long as the adults make proper arrangements so that his test papers are not allowed to be graded like a primary school student. In fact, the old wife is dead, and Lao Su intends to leave Sichuan forever.He is clearly a good fit for life in Kyoto.The two sons have already gained fame, and the next step is to see what vacancies the government has left for them, even if they don't want to seek an official position for themselves.Just two months after the filial piety period, the father and son went to Beijing again, this time with their young wife.They made proper arrangements for the soul of the dead mother.Su Xun asked people to make six statues of Bodhisattvas, placed them in two woodcarved and gold-inlaid shrines, and placed them in the Tathagata Hall of the Temple of Bliss.The six Bodhisattvas are Avalokitesvara, Shizhi Bodhisattva, Tianzang King, Ksitigarbha King, Relief King and Guide King.Before leaving, Su Xun officially dedicated the Buddha statue to the temple, and then bid farewell to the spirit of his dead wife.At the end of the sacrificial text, it says, "The dead have knowledge, and either ascend to the sky, or ascend to the four directions, and the up and down are as they please, just like the rest of them swim in the four directions without being tied to the clouds."