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Delayed Reform （5）
Abolishing Imperial Examinations |
| CCTV.COM 2002-05-17 05:05:43 |
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 When many students went abroad to carry on their studies, imperial examinations of the Qing Dynasty were not terminated. In 1904, the last palace examination was held in Beijing. The name of Liu Chunlin was carved on the stone tablet of metropolitan graduates as the top winner of the first group.
The 70th birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi happened to occur that year. She would designate the Number One Scholar, the scholar who came first in the palace examination of the year. She did not care about the quality of essays written by the candidates. She only valued whether their names sounded auspicious or not. Zhu Ruzhen, the nominee of the Number One Scholar, reminded her of Zhenfei (Pearl Concubine). So his chance was ruled out. Liu Chunlin became the last Number One Scholar in Chinese history. The imperial examination system came to a laughable end.
 On September 2, 1905, Yuan Shikai, Zhang Zhidong, Cen Chunxuan and some other important local officials jointly presented a memorial to the imperial court, proposing for the abolition of the imperial examination system. On the same day, an imperial edict was issued to put an end to provincial and metropolitan examinations in the following year. Through a microfilm at the National Library of China, we can see the imperial edict published in a newspaper.
The Jiangnan Provincial Imperial Examination Centre, located to the east of the Temple of Confucius, was an examination hall during the Ming and Qing dynasties. When a provincial examination was held, all the more than 20,000 rooms were occupied by examinees. They had to stay in the small rooms for nine days and seven nights with food provided by themselves. You can imagine the hardships they endured. But they could not resist the temptation of success in the imperial examinations. Since the imperial examination system gradually became a stereotyped one, the examinees could only select phrases and passages from Confucian classics. Each essay consisted of eight parts as a rigid form. Such an imperial examination system negated creative writing. We found a special cultural relic at the Jiangnan Provincial Imperial Examination Centre in Nanjing. The booklet contains the Four Books and the Five Classics copied for examinees to cheat in the examinations.
It was the Four Books dating back to the ancient times. It is said that over 100 years ago there was a wonderful book. It was used for cheating in exams. It was very small. Such a book was never found. In 1931 the descendant of an examinee sorted out things left behind by him. He found a small drawer from a heel of his ancestor's boot. The drawer was as small as a matchbox. What had been stored in the drawer was not found. Following up this clue, We searched the examination rooms. We searched for many years. At last we found this book.
Success in the imperial examinations was not merely an honour. In feudal society, it was a stepping stone for poor scholars to become officials.
We found the name of Zhang Jian from the stone tablet of metropolitan graduates in 1894. He was the Number One Scholar of that year.
 Zhang Jian was 42 in 1894. The Number One Scholar of the year was shocked by China's defeat in the Sino－Japanese War of 1894－1895. Determinedly he resigned from his official post and tried to save the nation through industrial development. At the Temple of Confucius, there is a board close to the stone tablet of metropolitan graduates from the last imperial examination. It explains that the government had financed the erection of stone tablets of metropolitan graduates through the ages, but the metropolitan graduates from the last imperial examination had to erect their stone tablets with their own money. Because the national treasury was depleted, the Qing government was unable to erect a monument for its officials.
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