Chapter 7 2. Grandpa wins the exam

The sound of artillery in the distance drove us to Fuji. Fuji is a territory of Qi State.My first memory of Fu Ji is the two flagpoles erected on both sides of the gate.I rode on the stone seat of the flagpole and looked up to the sky. Huge clouds flocked from the top of the flagpole like a flock of snow-white sheep.The flagpole and I also rose from the ground and got into the vast sea of ​​clouds.A tall, long-legged fighting cock came over unexpectedly and pecked my nose, and I fell off the cloud again.The old janitor said, it was my fault when I was young, and I shouldn't be riding on the flagpole in such a disrespectful posture.The flagpole can only be erected in front of the mansion of Juren, and the plaque with the two characters "Wen Kui" can only be hung on the lintel of Juren's mansion, and it is watched by Wenquxing in the sky.

Grandpa's father - my grandpa was a Juren in the late Qing Dynasty.His old man passed away more than ten years before I came to visit him.He left one Bagong and two scholars to the family, who later went to the first batch of higher schools established in the late Qing Dynasty, and obtained double degrees of Chinese studies and Western studies.They are my grandfather and his two elder brothers.This is a rich and harmonious intellectual family.My mother said that when the family was at its most prosperous, more than a hundred porcelains from Jingdezhen would join in the fun every day for dinner, and the joyful crisp sound was like the sound of knocking a chime.

Grandpa also left a large manor.In a large courtyard surrounded by big trees and high walls, there are fourteen small courtyards scattered in different places.If I am not careful, I will fall into the trap of another yard from one yard.I got into the maze, and the tall and solid old house surrounded me in the shadow that I couldn't get out of.There are strange-shaped "beasts" crawling on the ridge.The bell in the corner of the house jingled in the wind.The pigeons that landed on the slope of the house cooed elegantly and lazily, fluttering their tile-blue wings.The carved doors and windows were silently closed.From one window came the cry of a newborn baby.Da Jin said, my mother gave me a younger brother who weighs seven catties and six taels.The younger brother was born at night, and what greeted him was the roar of cannons in the distance, as if there was an old nocturnal god "Hang Han" coughing and wandering in the wilderness.The window lattice was trembling, and the window paper was trembling like strings.

I began to listen to my grandfather's story at an inopportune moment.In this empty and mysterious manor, the old man is everywhere.Grandpa is a thick thread-bound book.To this day, I often hear the "rustling" sound of turning the pages of the book. The young old grandfather floated out of the book with the breath of rosewood and mothballs, walking more than a hundred miles in the square steps of a scholar, to save money. The Gongyuan in Kaifeng, the city, participated in the "township examination". The old man came to the Gongyuan with a wicker "examination basket". The "examination basket" is full of holes, allowing investigators to see the contents of the basket at a glance.The eighth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar is a day that uncles and aunts repeatedly mention.The triennial provincial examination always starts on this day.Before dawn, the old man had already carried the "examination basket", and together with the "examination baskets" from all over Qidi and Henan Province, they lined up at the checkpoint outside the gate of the Gongyuan.The investigators flicked bright lanterns and turned my grandfather's "examination basket" into a mess. When searching the "Four Treasures of the Study", they didn't even let go of a small copper-tipped pen cap.Ten fingers touched a piece of homespun quilt very nimbly, and stretched out their noses to smell and smell on a stack of scallion pancakes, and finally let out a singing chant with a drawn-out voice: "Let go!"

A scholar who has tried and failed is still trembling like chaff after the search officer flipped through the "examination basket".The inspector glanced at him from head to toe again, and found that he was covering the cloth buttons of his blouse with his palms, so he asked him to undo the buttons one by one, opened his blouse, and shone light on him with a lantern. I took photos, but didn't find any "entrainment", but saw that the white silk shirt he was wearing next to his body was covered with dense spots, and blurted out: "Lice!" The scholar's knees softened and he knelt on the ground .The search officer took a closer look with a magnifying glass, and the spots turned into small characters the size of rice grains, which were all kinds of articles prepared in advance.The inspector threw out his "examination basket" and chanted loudly: "No lice allowed!"

Such stories in the examination room often caused the aunts to burst into laughter. Grandpa didn't dare to laugh.The students who passed the search were not yet ready to laugh.They passed through the checkpoint one by one, and they all kept their voices in check, looking at the closed gate of the "Gongyuan" and the thorn trees suppressed on the top of the wall of the "Gongyuan".It was a wild spiny jujube tree specially collected from the mountainous area in western Henan, and there were also undried wild spiny jujubes hanging like red agates.The imperial examination system with a long history has not been protected by the power grid and industrial civilization, and the idyllic jujube thorn tree has become a barrier to prevent cheating by jumping over the wall inside and outside the examination room.Therefore, the "Township Examination" is also called "Jiwei".

Grandpa and all candidates must also undergo another "mental test". When the clapper of the fifth watch was knocked on Qiaolou, the gate of the Gongyuan opened.Surrounded by two rows of colorful flags, the invigilators swarmed out.The invigilator raised his face to the sky, and bowed his hands: "Please come to the stage!" The city gods, who are invisible to the naked eye, stepped into the examination room first under rows of colorful flags.Then two tall men in short suits jumped out, holding red and black mace flags.The one holding the red flag shouted loudly: "Good will be rewarded with good, and evil will be rewarded with evil. It's not that we don't report, it's not time. When the time comes, we will report everything!" Then the one holding the black flag shouted: "Listen, evil spirits and ghosts! The time for revenge has come! If you have a vengeance, if you have a vengeance, go to the examination room to settle your debts!" ​​The wolf tooth flag was flipped in the air, and the looming shadow of the grievance slipped into the Gongyuan like a bewitching blue smoke.When the invigilator announced loudly that "candidates are entering the arena", some people were already pale and frightened; some were foaming at the mouth and fell to the ground.

The old man couldn't remember any grievances or grievances he had in the world or in the underworld, so he walked into the "Gongyuan" and found his "room" in the "room" like a pigeon cage.It was a narrow wooden house, three feet wide and six feet long, with a wooden board erected for sitting and writing;Grandpa is about to go through three exams in eight days here, so he has the right to use the "No. Room" as a study room, put down the "Four Treasures of the Study Room", open the first exam paper, and have to write five stereotyped essays with the proposition of "Four Books".The old grandpa pondered over the question, completely forgetting that the old city god was wandering around the examination room with the evil spirits and fierce ghosts.

A student surnamed Li from Yuzhou suddenly howled like a pig: "Master City God, please forgive me, I confess, I confess!" Before, I saw him laying out the examination papers, crying and writing, counting his many crimes such as forcing the death of his tenants and falsely accusing his teacher, and crying like a pig: "Stop beating, I will recruit! I returned the crime 18 years ago. I owe Widow Sun three catties of tofu money." He strangled his neck with both hands, and slammed his head against the wooden pillar of "room number".The number officer hurried over and asked everyone to break his hands away.He was still wailing sharply, bleeding from his own pinch on the neck.At this time, the gate of the Gongyuan was closed tightly, and it was not allowed to unlock during the exam.The officer asked someone to lift a boom more than two feet high, tied the student surnamed Li to the boom, fudged him, and hung him out of the wall from the sour jujube thorn tree on the top of the wall.

There was chaos in the examination room.The old man still dances the dragon and the snake with his own pen, unaware of the chaos. The second exam is based on the "Five Classics" and five eight-legged essays.The old man suddenly felt the purple smoke around the nib of the pen, exuding the smell of roasted sweet potatoes and old wine, and wrote until the dusk fell, and he fell asleep at his desk.In the middle of the night, I heard another scream: "Ezi, please spare me!" A candidate surnamed Yang in Ruzhou jumped out of the "room number" barefoot, suddenly acted like a daughter, and sighed sadly: "God!" Oh, it’s so hard to be a slave!” He imitated Danjiao’s figure, and sang while dancing: “Second Master Yang, you have a scorpion-like heart and take over my daughter’s body. Grandpa woke up from the dream, sat in the "room number" and said: "Ezi, you go back for a while, and when I leave the examination room, I will write a complaint for you and sue him." Ezi? He is the second master Yang who Ezi wanted him to kill!" The boom was erected again, and the candidate surnamed Yang was "fooled" out of the wall.

After the boom "fooled" twice, there was a dead silence in the examination room. The third exam is three "policy questions".This day has come to the fourteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, and the autumn wind is cooling down, and it is raining continuously.The old man had one article left to write, but he caught a cold and had a high fever, and fell into a coma in the "room number".An invigilator read the two articles he had written and said, "It's a pity!" He signaled the officer to bring a quilt to cover him.At noon the next day, when the rain was over and the sky cleared, a pair of little swallows circled and flew in front of his "room", chirping and calling, waking him up from his lethargy.The story is controversial here: the little aunt said, have you never heard of this pair of little swallows?The fourth aunt said, why not?This is a pair of little swallows flying to repay their kindness.One spring, the big swallows built their nests with mud on the beams of our house, and hatched a nest of little swallows.The boy next door was crazy with his hands, and stabbed the bird's nest with a bamboo pole. The young swallow fell off the roof beam, opened its tender mouth and screamed loudly.Grandfather was only twelve or thirteen years old that year. He was reading by the window when he heard the little swallow screaming pitifully. Inside the hat shell, the hat shell was nailed to the roof beams as a bird's nest.Thanks to the grandfather, otherwise, this nest of little swallows would have become the victim of the bad boy next door, right? I would rather believe in the "swallow" theory of my fourth aunt.It was the descendants of this nest of little swallows that flew into the examination room and woke up the old man with their chirping.The old man staggered out of the "room number" to go to the toilet, met the test-taker in the next number, and asked, what time is it today?The student said that today is the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, and it will be time to clean up after dark.The old man was taken aback, and asked again, why is one day missing?The student said, why did you forget that August 15th is the Mid-Autumn Festival, according to the traditional rules, both examiners and students have to go home for reunion.One day should be subtracted from the third exam. On August 14th, when the sun sets and the field is cleaned up, "continuing candles" is not allowed, that is to say, lighting lamps is not allowed to extend the time. When the old man heard this, he broke into a sweat profusely, and recovered from a severe cold.He hurried back to the "No. Room", seeing the sun setting to the west, he expected that he would never finish writing the remaining article, and his desire for fame and fortune suddenly disappeared.The old man changed his mind and thought again, instead of sitting here idly and guarding the bitter city, why not follow God's will and write as much as he can?If you don't seek fame and fortune, you are worthy of ten years of hard work.Thinking of this, the old man suddenly felt that his mind is as calm as water, the world is like smoke, and his writing is like a clear spring trickling out.At the moment of netting, the article is only short of an end.At this time, it was dark and the examination paper could not be seen clearly.Grandpa thought, well, I have done my best, and I have a clear conscience.An invigilator walked slowly with his hands scissored behind his back.The old man calmly put down his pen and sat up straight, ready to hand in the papers.But the invigilator sat down in front of his case, took a hookah, struck flint with a scythe, lit the fire matcher folded in yellow rough paper, blew the light, and started to smoke , according to the front light of the case.The old man hastily picked up his pen again, taking the opportunity to finish.The invigilator used three fire mediums and smoked six bags of hookah.The old man just finished the paper, so he knelt down and said, "Teacher, please smoke another bag of cigarettes!" The invigilator said, "Why?" Appearance." The invigilator hung the hookah on his shoulder, raised his hands with his hands behind his back, and said, "There's nothing to 'see' with a wrinkled face! When the day of the announcement of the results comes, let's 'see' on the wall of the Gongyuan." The end of August in the lunar calendar is the period for publishing the list.On that day, all the examiners of the Tribute Academy gathered in the "Zhigongtang", took out the mid-term examination papers, a total of 81 copies, and publicly revealed the names sealed with the password, which is called "revealing".Beginning with the last one, call out the names of the mid-test candidates, and write them on the list immediately, and write them in order to the first place.There was a servant from Qidi in Gongyuan, who worked as a book boy in my grandfather's private school.He hid outside the window of the "Zhigongtang" and eavesdropped on the announcement of the name, and secretly counted in his heart. The old folks who sold pears in the city went back to send a letter of comfort to my grandfather. That day, the old man was giving a lecture on "The Analects of Confucius? Do you want to shoot? I want to do it.” The old man recited the original text and was about to start the lecture when the pear seller suddenly shouted out of the window: “Master, I have a bad message for you. I blame you. Bad luck, this time in the provincial city's 'country test', you are not on the list. Wait until the next time, don't be sad!" When the old man heard this, his expression was as calm as before, and he cupped his hands out of the window and said, "Thank you very much!" Then, as if nothing had happened, he began to speak to his disciples: "Someone in Daxiang said, Confucius is great! He has extensive knowledge, but he has not made himself famous. Hearing this, Confucius said to his disciples, what should I do? Drive a chariot? Be a shooter? I’d better drive a chariot.” With a self-deprecating smile, the old man said to his disciples: “Confucius even I have chosen the job of driving a chariot, so what about me? What can I do? I will go and lead a donkey for Confucius, okay?" All the disciples were tearful and silent.Only one disciple stood up and said, "Teacher, don't you have any regrets about this 'country examination'?" The guilt is rare in the world!" Then, I heard the sound of gongs and drums approaching from far away.It turned out that the servant who delivered the message had misremembered the number of people when he eavesdropped on the "revelation". After he left, all the pilot testees were "revealed".Grandpa is the eighty-first from the bottom, and the first positive number, which is "Jie Yuan".After a lot of fun, the old man sighed again and said, "Unfortunately, I can't write a good article!" Someone asked him why he did this?He said: "Articles can only be written when they are far away from fame and their hearts are as pure as water! I am ashamed of the name of 'Jie Yuan' and always have a mind of gains and losses, so I will be distracted and terrified when I write." I don't know if the old man's articles after that have written about the taste of roasted sweet potatoes and old wine, but I heard that he didn't want to be an official and refused to go to the capital to participate in the "examination", and continued to run a private school in Qidi for many years.The famous scholar couldn't accommodate it, so he posted a "full crowd" notice in front of the door.Someone said to him: "The Master said: 'If you practice more than yourself, I am not without instruction.' Listen, Confucius said, as long as 'someone comes to me with dried meat, I will teach you anything.' Can you say it?" Is it full?" The old man was terrified, and hurriedly removed the notice.Since then, many people have come to the door, handed in the student post, "self-cultivation and above", kowtowed three times, and claimed to be Meng Jieyuan's disciple when they went out.There is a self-boasting saying circulating in Qidi intellectual circles: "Who knows my teacher (pronounced zhe in the local pronunciation of Qidi), Meng Guangluo, a mile south of the county." This Meng Guangluo is my grandfather.A few years later, my grandfather commented to me that the "shuxiu" Confucius talked about was ten pieces of dried meat, which was the tuition fee for one school year given to Confucius by his disciples.I asked, how much "shuxiu" does the old man charge?Grandpa didn't know the details, but he knew that the "shuxiu" received by the private school was seven or eight times that of the scholar, which must be a number that Confucius envied.The old man has run private schools for decades and taught more than 200 students.Coupled with the good housekeeping of the old grandmother, the family has a thousand acres of fertile land. In the twenty-seventh year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty, that is, in 1901 AD, the Eight-Power Allied Forces set fire to Beijing Gongyuan.In the twenty-ninth year of Guangxu's reign, the "General Examination" was changed to Kaifeng Gongyuan.Kaifeng Gongyuan is the "auspicious place" promoted by the grandfather.Qidi, officials from the provincial capital, and even grandpa's fellow examiners all came to encourage him to take part in this "examination".The old man hid in the Confucian Temple and avoided seeing him.One day, a crazy old man knocked on the door with a cane to ask for an interview. He declared his name as "fire matchmaker" and the word "shisha".When the old man heard this, he rushed out the door and saw the old man sitting sideways on the threshold with his legs crossed and a fire medium in one hand and a hookah in the other.Grandpa fell to the ground and bowed.The old man sat firmly to accept the ceremony, and said: "Xieyuan boy, the emperor sent the'examination' to the door of your house, why are you afraid to go forward?" Stealing security? Even if there are 360 ​​new scholars who can write thousands of stereotyped articles, how can they compare with the strong ships and guns of the western powers, and how can we protect our great rivers and mountains in China?" The old man was terrified and said nothing. .The old man hurriedly got up, chased after him and said: "Please stay a step, the disciple dare not look up in fear, let the disciple take a look at the mentor." The old man couldn't turn his head, and said, "What are you talking about! My old face There is no place to put it, and there is no place to bury an old bone!" The old man watched the old man stagger away, speechless all day long.Suddenly one day, the old man suffered from a "demonic disease", with long hair and shawl, running barefoot in the wilderness, howling against the wind, weeping and asking the sky: "My God! Are you worrying about the sky? No, God makes you worry about it!" He also said : "Where is Nuwa safe? May I ask how to mend the sky?..." Before the end of the speech, weeping and unable to speak. After more than a month, the old grandfather's condition decreased slightly, and he said to his three sons: "I am not sick, but the state has a serious illness. Go find a prescription quickly. I want Chinese medicine and Western medicine." My grandfather and his two elder brothers went to Beijing and Beijing respectively. The Higher School of Political Science and Law in the provincial capital searched for prescriptions and found Mr. Sun Yat-sen's strategy of saving the country. Since then, they have all become believers in the Three People's Principles.The third grandfather also secretly joined the League. After the founding of the Republic of China, the old grandfather's condition improved greatly, and he served as a lecturer in Qidi. He tried his best to introduce Western learning, founded teachers' training schools, agricultural and chemical schools, and advocated education and industry to save the country.My grandfather and second grandfather also inherited their father's career with both Chinese and Western education. They established an inclusive "new private school" in Qidi. , the Five Powers Constitution, and also subscribed to the "New Youth" magazine sponsored by Mr. Chen Duxiu for his disciples, and disseminated the "Communist Manifesto" translated by Mr. Chen Wangdao.It is said that the grandfather and his three sons found a common ideal in Confucius' "Great Harmony World", Sun Yat-sen's "Three People's Principles", and Marx's communist theory.Mr. Sun Yat-sen said in Guangzhou: "The principle of people's livelihood is communism." The grandfather and his sons turned over the first page of the "Communist Manifesto", circled the first sentence with a red pen, and asked and answered each other: "Can the specter of communism come and wander in Qi?" "Yes! It's such a joy to have friends come from afar!" This "new private school" has been included in the history of the Chinese Communist Party in Qidi, because its first batch of disciples became the first batch of Communist Party members in Qidi in the future. In 1925, my grandfather passed away suddenly.All the disciples built a "Garden of Great Harmony" for him in Fuji, and erected a stele detailing his life story.Among the disciples who set up monuments for him, there are the leaders of the "Red Bandits" who raised their spears to rebel in the future, some dignified officials who launched troops to suppress the "Red Bandits", some foreign doctors who studied abroad, and some produced "Rooster" soap to replace Japan's "foreign soap". Alkaline" and revitalize the small boss of Zhonghua Industry.The old man stared at the mottled disciples in the yellowed photo.No smiles, only wordless contemplation. The last story about the old man was spread by the old man who took care of the Datong Garden.The old man said that every dusk in the wind and rain, or the night when the moon shines brightly, there are invisible and invisible footsteps coming and going in the garden memorial hall, sometimes roaring and shouting, sometimes talking and singing; Dialing; now whispering softly, now shouting and scolding;When the rooster crowed, it stopped abruptly, and suddenly the shadows of people scattered quietly.Afterwards, the old man in charge of the garden walked into the memorial hall to sweep the courtyard, opened the windows, and let go of the smell of tobacco and gunpowder in the room, and occasionally smelled the fragrance of orchid musk; A few bullet casings emitting green smoke and burning hot to the touch. In the middle of a snowy night, the old man guarding the garden saw the old man riding a white-eyed donkey, jolting away from the garden.He hurriedly chased after him and said, "Where are we going? Don't be afraid of the cold!" The old man got into the heavy snow and called out to the sky, "Snow, it's so hot!" Turned into blood-red clouds lingering away.At the end of the snowy field, the strong wind brought the old grandpa's shouting: "Fire, such a cold fire!"