Top Scholar

Chapter 359 Grading
When the scholars took the exam, the outer curtain official supervised the exam, and the inner curtain official was not idle either.

Following the same method used in the first round of exams, Chief Examiner Liu Bing, together with thirteen other examiners, devised the second round of exam questions: one essay, five judgments, and one imperial edict and memorial.

Then, following the same process, the ink scrolls were handed over to the printing house for engraving. All the ink scrolls had to be printed before midnight on the 12th, which was a very tight schedule.

However, there was no other way. In order to minimize the risk of leaks, the imperial court stipulated that examiners could not draft all the exam questions at once, but could only release them after each exam...

~~
Over here in the examination room.

Having not slept well for two consecutive nights and having eaten too much at noon, Su Lu felt increasingly sleepy. Forgetting all about whether he was a piece of rotten wood or not, he slumped onto his bedding and fell asleep.

Only when the bell rang to signal the end of the exam did he quickly stretch and sit up, take down his scholar's robe and cap from the wall, dress neatly, and go to the alley entrance to hand in his paper.

After handing in his paper, he pushed his cart into the crowd and headed towards the entrance of the examination hall.

After three days, everyone was exhausted, but no one dared to relax, because the second session was tomorrow morning.

Su Lu dragged the heavy cart out of Gongyuan Street, where Steward Tian and Xiao Yu'er and others had been waiting for a long time.

Little Fish quickly took the cart from him, and Steward Tian also hurriedly said:
"Young master, let's go to Wenchang Inn with Xiaoyuer. We won't go back to the government office. Let's save some time."

"Mm." Su Lu nodded, not wanting to say another word.

Xiaoyuer led him to the Wenchang Inn, which was separated from the Imperial Examination Hall by only a wall, where they met Su Tai, who was equally exhausted.

"Thanks for your hard work."

"Thanks for your hard work."

The two brothers felt sorry for each other, and Su Tai said, "The bath water is ready, take a bath and go to sleep."

"Hmm, where's Second Brother?" Su Lu nodded and asked.

“I need to get a massage,” Sutai said, pointing to his shoulder. “It’s as hard as a rock.”

"Hmm." Su Lu stopped talking, quickly took a hot bath, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep.

~~
The candidates were given a brief respite, but inside the examination hall, the massive grading machines were already rumbling into action…

The officials collected all the exam papers for the day and sent them to the Zhigong Hall, where they were handed over to the designated examiners.

Under the supervision of the supervising official and the inspector, the examiner would carefully count the number of examination papers and check for any obvious violations.

After confirming that everything was correct, the receiving official stamped the document, and then every fifty exam papers were bundled together, placed in a specially made box, sealed, and sent to the sealing office under the supervision of the supervising official.

The sealing office was where the examination papers were anonymized. Clerks would fold the top part of the paper, which contained the candidate's name, place of origin, and other personal information, seal it with a special strip of paper, and affix a seal across the seam to ensure that no one would open it without authorization.

After completion, the sealing official would repack the examination papers, reseal them, and personally deliver them to the transcription office, completing the handover procedures with the transcription official. The entire process would still be conducted under the supervision of the invigilators.

In the copying room, hundreds of copying students stood ready. After the copying officials distributed the candidates' ink-written papers, they used red pens to copy the entire text onto the blank papers.

This process must be faithful to the original text; even misspelled words, missing words, and illegible words must be preserved exactly as they were, and no unauthorized alterations are permitted.

After the transcription is completed, the transcriber must sign their name at the end of the ink scroll to indicate their responsibility; the transcriber will affix their official seal to the cover of the red scroll, and once all the exam papers have been transcribed, they will be sent to the next station.

Therefore, Liu Bing and his associates had no access to the candidates' original exam papers, nor did they know whose papers they were grading. This greatly increased the difficulty of pulling strings, making it possible for children from ordinary families to defeat the children of officials.

This was the original intention behind anonymous transcription. Although even the best systems will eventually have loopholes, no one can deny that they greatly maintained the fairness of the imperial examinations.

After the vermilion scroll leaves the copying office, it is not sent directly to the inner curtain, but instead goes to the reading room.

In the copying room, the copying official would hand over the red scroll and the black scroll to two scribes respectively: one would read the black scroll and the other would read the red scroll, checking each word and sentence. If any errors were found, the copying official would mark them and make corrections.

After verifying that the vermilion and ink scrolls were checked and confirmed to be correct, they were numbered uniformly and sent back to the courtroom.

The supervising official ordered the officials in charge to seal the ink scrolls, and then together with the supervising official, they would send the vermilion scrolls to Feihong Bridge.

This was already the last day of the second event.

The chief examiner and invigilators waited on the other side of the bridge to receive the exam papers. Neither side went onto the bridge; instead, soldiers from the inner curtain carried the papers back.

After the chief examiner and the invigilator checked and found nothing wrong, they filled out a handover form, which was then delivered by a soldier to the supervising officer and the external supervisor. They then bowed to each other and went back to their respective places.

The two sides did not have any contact at all, and did not even exchange a single word.

As soon as Liu Bing and the examiners returned to Hengjian Hall, they distributed the exam papers by room in front of all the other examiners.

After receiving the exam papers, the examiners must immediately begin grading them in the Hengjian Hall and are not allowed to take the papers back to their rooms.

The chief examiner sits high in the hall, facing the other examiners, and is not allowed to leave during the entire process.

The proctors sat at the entrance of Hengjian Hall, facing the chief examiner, jointly monitoring the actions of the other examiners.

Examiners may only review the papers assigned to them and may not interfere with the review of other examiners' papers, nor may they discuss the content or quality of the papers.

The marking of papers took place during the day, and the chief examiner ordered the marking to cease before nightfall. Upon hearing this order, the other examiners were to return the red-inked papers to the chief examiner.

After the chief examiner and the invigilators checked the examination papers and confirmed that there were no errors, they locked the Hengjian Hall and left. They would reopen the hall the next morning to continue the examination...

~~
As the examiners finished grading the papers on the first day, the second round of the provincial examination also came to an end.

Su Lu is in much better shape this time. Firstly, this session had relatively less content, and Su Lu finished answering all the questions on the second day, so he has been resting and recuperating all day today.

Secondly, he brought in a square stool that was the same height as his seat, which he placed at his feet when he slept, thus solving the problem of not having anywhere to stretch his legs, and consequently improving his sleep quality significantly.

If you sleep well at night, you'll feel good during the day.

When he handed in his paper, left the examination hall, and returned to the Wenchang Inn, he saw that his second brother was in much better condition.

"Didn't you ask your ancestors for blessings today?" Su Lu asked in a low voice.

"No, it's just a habit," Su Tai shook his head.

After dinner, all the candidates went to bed early. The next morning at dawn, they rose again to go to the examination hall for the third round of exams…

"I feel completely drained." Bai Yunshan had dark circles under his eyes and a sallow complexion. He looked nothing like the dashing young master he once was.
"I even feel like I'm getting carried away." The others weren't much better off; they all looked haggard and listless, like programmers who had been working overtime for half a month.

"Didn't we prepare ginseng slices for you? Eat them if you want." Su Lu was in good condition. As a mountain boy, he had a strong constitution and had accompanied Wang Shouren through hardships in Guizhou, even sleeping in a stone coffin for a month. His body was very resilient.

"I ate them, otherwise I would have been unable to hold on for a long time." Zhu Zihe said with a wry smile, "In the past, two slices would have made my nose bleed. But now, I've eaten one slice after another and I still don't have any reaction."

"You didn't fail the exam because you're impotent, did you...?" said Li Qiyu, who was accompanying the examinee.

"Get out of here," Zhu Zihe cursed.

"Let's grit our teeth and hang in there, it's just three more days," Su Lu encouraged everyone. "Persistence is victory!"

"Oh..." the classmates said weakly.

“The senior brother should say that he will treat everyone to drinks and entertainment after the exam,” Cheng Wanfan said.

"I'd like to invite everyone to play something even more fun," Su Lu said with a smile.

"Wow!" The classmates were all excited now. This was even more fun than drinking with courtesans; how exciting would it be?

~~
After entering the venue, the exam questions were distributed at noon, consisting of five policy essay questions.

Policy essays are divided into two types: those on classics and history, and those on current affairs. The provincial and metropolitan examinations generally focus on the former, while the latter involves current affairs but mainly revolves around classics and history.

The palace examination focuses on current affairs and is basically centered around the current major policies of the court, but it still requires citing classical texts as evidence.

The five policy essay questions in this provincial examination were all, unsurprisingly, based on classics and history, covering topics such as people's livelihood, border defense, finance, and etiquette. None of them touched on sensitive topics such as "eunuchs in power" or "favoring sycophants and alienating virtuous officials."

This secretly relieved the test takers; none of them wanted their future exams to become tools for examiners to express their political views…

~~
The candidates continued their exams, while the inner curtain of the Hengjian Hall continued grading the papers.

The examiners judged the quality of the essays based on four dimensions: reasoning, method, diction, and tone.

Reason, rhetoric, and style need no further explanation; method refers to the candidate's mastery of the writing style of the eight-legged essay.

Therefore, good essays for the imperial examinations should be pure, elegant, and upright.

Concise writing and clear thinking are called "clear";

Content that is truthful and conforms to the meaning of the scriptures is considered true;
Elegant writing style and standardized word choice are called "refined".
A person who is pure in thought and upright in stance is considered upright.

Under this relatively clear standard, examiners use 'circling and marking' to evaluate the exam papers:

O indicates an excellent paragraph, used for brilliant arguments;

、 indicates goodness and is used in fluent and appropriate sentences;
The vertical line indicates a general sentence, used when the sentence is fluent but lacks highlights.
The letter 'x' indicates inferiority or poor quality, and is used when the text is illogical or offensive.

Basically, articles marked with an "x" will not be recommended to the examiners; this is called "rejection."

The essay presented to the examiner is called a recommended essay, and it will definitely have many markings and comments, that is, it is called "worthy of praise".

However, whether it's a rejected or recommended paper, the examiners must provide comments.

In particular, when rejecting a paper, one must state the exact reasons for rejection and point out its shortcomings, and must not use vague expressions such as "lacking in skill" or "not outstanding enough".

Because all the exam papers would be made public after the provincial examination, the unsuccessful candidates would scrutinize their papers meticulously. If they believed that the examiners had been unfair in their grading, they could file a complaint with the Imperial Censor.

If the imperial censor also agrees that the judgment was unfair, he will request the Ministry of Rites to send someone to review and handle the matter.

However, if it is found that there were no problems with the grading and the essay was indeed of mediocre quality, the candidate will be severely punished.

Some might ask, what if it's found that there were indeed problems with the grading?
Hehe, that doesn't exist...

For those "recommended papers," the examiners would write the reasons for the recommendation on a slip of paper and present it to the deputy chief examiner along with the exam paper.

If the deputy chief examiner approves the recommendation, he will write the character "取" (take) on the paper with a blue pen and present it to the chief examiner.

If the examiner agrees to admit the candidate, they will write the character "中" (zhong, meaning "selected" or "accepted"). Congratulations to the candidate; their exam paper has been selected!

P.S. Read the next chapter tomorrow morning...

(End of this chapter)