Failure Stories: Interpretations of Rejected Papers in the Late Imperial Civil Service Examinations

168 Shiuon Chu

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Failure Stories: Interpretations of Rejected Papers in the Late Imperial

Civil Service Examinations

Shiuon Chu*(Brown University)

Abstract Shiuon ChuThis article investigates the practice of returning marked papers to rejected candidates in late imperial Chinese examinations. The practice—common from the sixteenth century to the abolition of imperial examinations in 1905—established a sense of personal communication between examiners and examinees and was an opportunity for rejected candidates to benefit from the examination system. The failed papers returned to their authors enabled them to make sense of their performance by interpreting, when not misconstruing, examiners’ comments. The examiners sometimes praised the papers and blamed the decision to fail on other examiners. As a result, most rejected candidates tended not to challenge the examiners through official channels or take collective action against the examination system. Thus, in the late imperial examination system, the ways in which rejecting decisions could be negotiated and construed were no less important than the awarding of degrees to an extremely small proportion of participants.

RésuméCet article s’intéresse à la pratique, particulière à la période impériale tardive, consistant à rendre leurs copies aux candidats ayant échoué aux examens. Courante

* The author wishes to thank Cynthia Brokaw, who has contributed insightful advice since the beginning of this research and patiently read numerous versions of this article. Earlier drafts have been read in the graduate writing workshop at the History Department of Brown University, led by Robert Self, and “The Literature of High Stakes and Long Odds: Locating Civil Service Examination Writings in the Late Imperial Cultural Landscape” International Workshop in 2012, organized by Alexander Des Forges and Rui Magone. He is grateful for the valuable feedback received at both workshops. He would also like to thank the anonymous referees and Pierre-Étienne Will for their very constructive suggestions for revision. Finally, he wishes to thank his wife Aphrodite Rueipu Hung for her support.

www.brill.com/tpaoT ’OUNG PAO

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2015 DOI: 10.1163/15685322-10113P05

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ISSN 0082-5433 (print version) ISSN 1568-5322 (online version) TPAO

169Interpretations of Rejected Papers

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depuis le xvie siècle et jusqu’à l’abolition des examens mandarinaux en 1905, cette pratique créait l’impression d’une relation personnelle entre les examinateurs et les candidats et était un moyen pour ceux qui avaient échoué de tirer profit du système. Les copies rejetées retournées à leurs auteurs permettaient à ces derniers de donner un sens à leur performance en interprétant, voire en dévoyant, les commentaires des examinateurs. Il arrivait que les examinateurs fassent l’éloge des copies et attribuent à autrui la décision de les rejeter. De ce fait, la plupart des candidats malheureux évitaient de contester les examinateurs par la voie réglementaire ou de manifester collectivement contre le système. Ainsi, dans le système des examens à la fin de la période impériale, la manière dont les décisions négatives pouvaient être négociées ou interprétées n’était pas moins importante que l’attribution de rangs académiques à une toute petite proportion de ceux qui concouraient.

KeywordsImperial examination system, Chinese civil examination, failed papers, luojuan, rejected candidates, examiners, collective action

IntroductionIn contrast to modern examinations, the official recruitment examina-tion system of late imperial China did not translate the achievements of the candidates into comparable units, such as grades or ranks expressed in figures. Numerical assessments were not introduced in China until the late nineteenth century and were never adopted in the keju 科舉 examinations. In every examination until the system’s abolition in 1905, only a few of the candidates entered official records after being ranked and awarded official degrees. Not being granted any rank, title, or grades, those who had not passed were deprived of any clear indicator of their situation vis-à-vis the rest of the candidates and the examination sys-tem in general.1

How then did they make sense of what they had been able to achieve? In this article, I focus on the practice of returning examination papers to rejected candidates (I will speak hereafter of “failed papers,” for luojuan

1) For a generalization of the divide between “premodern” and “modern” in European and Chinese examinations, see Keith Hoskin, “Education and the Genesis of Disciplinarity: The Unexpected Reversal,” in Knowledges: Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity, ed. E. Messer-Davidow, David R. Shumway, and David Sylvan (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Vir-ginia, 1993), 273.

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落卷) as a means for the latter to construct, contest, and negotiate their performance. By interpreting the punctuation marks and comments (or the absence thereof) in their papers, candidates could interpret their examination performance in relation to the specific examiners who had graded their answers. Indeed, the late imperial state and the examiners themselves not only recognized, but in fact advocated returning failed papers, in order to demonstrate the examiners’ accountability in grad-ing. As a channel of communication, failed papers created a seemingly personal relationship between examiners and examinees. This person-alized vision of grading, I suggest, stabilized the keju system before the advent of modern examinations that relied on the construction of uni-form, impersonal, and objective standards.2

An anecdote recounted by He Gangde 何剛德 (1855–1936), a success-ful candidate in the 1877 metropolitan examination, gives a glimpse into the interaction between rejected candidates and examiners:

After a certain examination, when a rejected candidate collected his failed paper, on the examiner’s comment slip attached were four words he could not have ex-pected—“a piece of ham” (huotui yizhi 火腿一支). He eventually discovered that the ward examiner3 was an acquaintance of his and went to argue with him. “What a terrible mistake!” the ward examiner said, “this is a grocery list written to the of-fice of supplies, why did they attach it to an examination paper?” The candidate burst out in anger, saying, “Hey! You work as an examiner, all you think about is ham and so you left my answer unread. [You talk about] letting ‘them’ attach com-ments, who are ‘they’? They are just your servants.” The ward examiner replied, “I tell you the truth because we are friends. How come you attack me with such official language (daqi guanhua lai 打起官話來)?” The candidate said, “I prepared for the examination so hard over the past three years, and you don’t even take a glimpse at my paper. Do you think we are still friends?” “I don’t think you really want to sue a friend like me,” the ward examiner said, “and as you know, I am a poor Hanlin Academy scholar who cannot afford to pay you an indemnity. I have a

2) The failed papers discussed in this research were “vermilion papers” (zhujuan 硃卷): to maintain anonymity, the candidates’ answers, which were written in black ink, were tran-scribed by copyists in red ink. The examiners read and marked these vermilion copies. This definition of “vermilion papers” should not be confused with the practice of publishing suc-cessful answers as gifts to relatives and friends, which were also called “vermilion papers.” See Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Late Imperial Civil Examinations (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2000), 188, 400. 3) The distinction between ward and chief examiners is discussed below.


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mule in the stable, [that’s all] you can take.” “Let it be so,” the candidate said, and he took the mule.4

Of course we cannot take this story literally: it is a joke about the exami-nation system. But to construct a successful joke, He Guangde had to situate his story in a convincing institutional and social setting, and for that reason the anecdote is a useful introduction to a reflection on the structural relationship between examiners and candidates, particularly as it played out in the grading of examination papers.

It is clear from He’s story that rejected candidates (who of course could not participate in the ritual interactions that linked their success-ful counterparts and the examiners) expected to see their graded papers and were routinely able to identify and interact with the examiners who had graded them. And indeed, since at least the mid-fifteenth century, the fact that failed papers should be returned to candidates was recog-nized in official discourse.5 This practice was eventually codified in the late seventeenth century: in the Qing examination code failed papers were to be returned to the candidates, so that they might understand how their papers had been graded.6 The relative openness of this practice made failed papers a medium of communication between exam iners and candidates, a means by which—in theory at least—the

4) He Gangde, Huameng ji 話夢集, Chunming menglu 春明夢錄, Shen Taimou 沈太侔, Donghua suolu 東華瑣錄 (Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 1995), 92.5) The available materials do not enable us to identify the exact origin of the practice, official or not, of returning failed papers. A proposal that luojuan be returned to provincial examin-ees, written by a juren 舉人 during the Zhengtong 正統 reign (1436–1449), suggests that the official practice did not predate this period. Even if we assume that the author possessed comprehensive knowledge of contemporary practices, his proposal does not preclude the possibility that failed papers were unofficially purchased by their authors. In fact, unofficial access to luojuan, probably by various means, can be traced back to the beginnings of the Song civil service examination system, as the examinees would naturally want to learn about the grading process. Therefore, the more important question is not the historical origin of the examinees’ access to luojuan, but the manner, tone, and language in which they demon-strated their attitude toward the markings—it is one thing to want to see the comments and markings on one’s paper, but quite another to assume the right to challenge and criticize the examiners.6) See Da Qing huidian 大清會典 (Kangxi ed.) (rpt. Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1992), 52.24a-b; Qinding kechang tiaoli 欽定科場條例 (rpt. Beijing: Beijing Yanshan chubanshe, 2006), 46.9–10a; Qinding Da Qing huidian shili 欽定大清會典事例 (Guangxu ed.) (rpt. Tai-bei: Qiwen chubanshe, 1963), 352.14b; He Xiaoyan 賀曉燕, “Shilun Qingdai keju zhidu zhong de fa luojuan zhengce” 試論清代科舉制度中的發落卷政策, Qingshi luncong 24 (2010): 9.

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examiners became personally responsible to the candidates.7 Of course, the information that candidates could extract from their failed papers was often limited and uncertain, as the examiners’ markings varied in both format and quantity. But the failed candidate’s access to his paper did create a sense of accountability, as he could at least identify the ex-aminers involved in the marking process. Therefore, unlike his modern counterparts—the takers of civil service examinations during the Re-publican period or of university entrance examinations in the PRC, who are not given an opportunity to see their papers, whether they passed or failed8—a late imperial candidate would not necessarily see the keju as an anonymous system, but as one that opened the possibility of per-sonal interaction with specific examiners.9

7) As we shall see, information asymmetry existed among candidates. Even after the Qing government institutionalized the returning of failed papers, candidates might still be hin-dered from gaining access to their papers by those who executed the policy: as seen in anecdotal accounts, the clerks in charge of the storage of failed papers often asked for bribes from the candidates before acceeding to their demand. For example, when Zhong Yulong 鍾毓龍, a late Qing candidate, attempted to buy back his failed papers, the ward servant kept raising the price because he knew that Zhong dearly wanted to know the actual com-ments of the examiners after he had heard rumors that he had come very close to passing. See Zhong Yulong, Kechang huiyi lu 科場回憶錄 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 1987), 72. There was also a semi-official (i.e., not written into official codes) practice in the Qing to destroy failed papers every thirty years. However, in comparison to the present PRC gaokao 高考 practice, which preserves examination answers for only half a year, late impe-rial candidates had better opportunities to gain access to their examination papers. For the Qing practice of burning outdated failed papers, see He Gangde, Chunming meng lu, 90. 8) For the Nanjing Republican government’s regulations, see the Regulations on Examina-tion Assessment (Yuejuan guize 閱卷規則) issued by the Examination Yuan (Kaoshiyuan 考試院) and collected in Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng 中國考試史文獻集成, ed. Yang Xuewei 楊學為 and Liu Peng 劉芃 (Beijing: Gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003), vol. 5 (Republic), 343. For the PRC government’s policy, the latest regulation can be seen in “2012 nian gaodeng xuexiao zhaosheng quanguo tongyi kaoshi kaowu gongzuo guiding” 2012 年高等學校招生全國統一考試考務工作規定 (http://www.moe.edu.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/B21_xxgk/201205/xxgk_135374.html), article 38.9) This article sees examiners as a distinctive category of actors, along with the state and the examinees, especially in the grading process. As I will show, the state had structural difficul-ties in imposing consistent rules on the examiners. As Hilde De Weerdt has argued with Song examples, “despite mid- and high-level official supervision examiners [in Song] enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy”; see De Weerdt, Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127–1279) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 2007), 378–79. On the other hand, Iona D. Man-Cheong points out the Qing emperors’ attempt to tighten control over the examiners by intervening in their selection; see Man-Cheong, The Class of 1761: Examinations, State, and Elites in Eighteenth Century China (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2004), 170–71.

http://www.moe.edu.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/B21_xxgk/201205/xxgk_135374.html

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The anecdote also draws attention to the reasons late imperial candi-dates might have to protest examination decisions, a topic understudied in keju research.10 It suggests that controversies over examination grad-ing tended to be negotiated and settled personally between examiners and candidates. If this was the usual case, then it might have been diffi-cult for rejected candidates to mobilize other rejected candidates in some kind of collective action. The personalization of the examinee-examiner relationship could also make it hard for individual candidates to raise protests in the literary field. Equipped with the information from a failed paper, candidates should have been able to articulate chal-lenges against particular examiners in their writings. Yet as we shall see, open criticism of examiners was quite rare throughout the late imperial period. The ways the discourse on failed papers shaped the form of ex-amination protests deserve further investigation.

Furthermore, the access candidates had to such information as the comments on their papers and the identity of examiners does not seem to have encouraged petitions for official review of examination results. Although the examiner in the above story acknowledges the possibility that the candidate might take legal action against him, this is not the option eventually chosen by the candidate despite the examiner’s very limited response—the offer of a mule—to his protest: the examiner ex-plicitly urges the angry candidate not to attack him with “official lan-guage,” and his offer of a mule is enough to bribe the candidate into keeping the complaint private. But certainly the state—which appears in this story only as a threat better avoided—must have taken measures to limit any personal networking between examiners and rejected can-didates that might undermine its authority. So, what did it do to regulate the personal relationships developed from the practice of returning failed papers?

We can begin to answer the question by looking at the discourse on failed papers that first emerged in official policy debates in the Jiajing

10) Except for a handful of works on late imperial examination hall riots, few have discussed in detail how rejected candidates responded to examination results. See Wu Renshu 巫仁恕, Jibian liangmin: chuantong Zhongguo chengshi qunzhong jiti xingdong zhi feixi 激變良民——傳統中國城市群眾集體行動之分析 (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2011); He Xiaoyan 賀曉燕, “Qingdai shengtong bakao, naokao, zukao zhi feng shuping” 清代生童罷考、鬧考、阻考之風述評, Tansuo yu zhengming 8 (2009): 73–6.

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嘉靖 era (1522–66) of the Ming. As the few extant failed examination papers provide little contextualized information,11 these discussions, re-corded in memorials, Veritable Records, and literary collections, are es-sential for our understanding of the practices related to failed papers.

My analysis is divided into four parts. The first part discusses how es-say markings were first interpreted in official policy debates, and how rejected candidates eventually adopted this official discourse on failed papers. I will assess the extent of the candidates’ knowledge of those debates and of the marking process from the ways in which they framed their arguments over failed papers. The second part demonstrates that the state’s control over the examiners’ evaluation (and manipulation) of failed papers was quite limited, the reason being that the numbers of failed papers were unmanageably abundant. In the third part I will sug-gest that, because rejected candidates shared with examiners the cul-tural capital generated by manipulating the marking process and the meaning of failure, they tended to echo, rather than oppose, the exam-iners. Most of the time, disgruntled rejected candidates resorted neither to protest nor to demands for official review. Finally, the fourth part re-lates three rare cases in which external political forces and public opin-ion prompted open confrontations between candidates and examiners. In the conclusion, I show how the exchanges between rejected candi-dates and examiners explored in this essay suggest a new understanding of the triangular relationship between candidates, examiners, and the state in the late imperial period.

Controversies over Marking Practices in the Late Ming and in the QingWhen controversies first developed over failed papers in sixteenth- century official policy debates, attention was paid to the punctuation marks12 added by the examiners and the comments (pi 批 or ping 評)

11) For a photographic reproduction of a Qing returned failed paper, see Cong xiucai dao zhuangyuan zhi lu: keju wenhua tezhan tulu 從秀才到狀元之路 —— 科舉文化特展圖錄 (Yilan: Guoli chuantong yishu zhongxin, 2006), 41. 12) Common marks included the comma (dou 逗), the dot (dian 點), the circle (quan 圈), and the crossing out (tumo 塗抹).


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they inserted in the papers. These markings served two functions for the readers, be they the other examiners, keju monitors like the supervising censors (jianlin yushi 監臨御史), or most importantly for our discus-sion, the candidates themselves. First, since the late Ming the presence of examiners’ markings, especially punctuation, was regarded as proof that they had actually read and followed the argument of the essay; and second, one could interpret the examiners’ opinion from their mark-ings, and especially from their comments.

The association of the act of punctuating with scrupulous reading was based on an explanation of the function of punctuation articulated by some “speaking officials” (yanguan 言官) and former examiners in the late sixteenth century. In 1591, He Chuguang 何出光, a censor (yushi 御史), asked that examiners be punished if any failed papers lacked punctuation markings.13 Examination-supervising censors (jianlin yushi) were assigned to enforce the punishment after this proposal had been accepted. In the 1601 metropolitan examination, according to Qian Huan 錢桓 (1589 jinshi), who served as an examiner, there was a set of rejected papers for the first session (shouchang 首場) in which only the Analects and Zhongyong essays were punctuated, while the rest had been left untouched. Qian also noted that some examiners relied on their clerks to put punctuation marks (judu 句讀) on failed essays.14

13) “In 1691, He Chuguang memorialized that … knowledgeable officials should be commis-sioned to investigate the failed papers. If there are papers without any markings, or rejected before having been read in their entirety, censors will be authorized to impeach the ward examiners for treating people unjustly because of their negligence. Once the papers have been fully examined, the failed papers must be returned to the education intendants to be distributed to the candidates, so that they will be able to look at them in person, which will be an occasion for them to be instructed. In this way, when reading the papers, the examin-ers will be fearful and do their utmost, and rejected candidates will have no reason to pro-test” 萬曆十九年, 何出光奏 …. 其落卷仍委精明官員逐卷查明. 如有空白無筆跡, 及覽未終篇而遂棄之者, 許御史參劾房考以為怠事屈人之罰. 查閱明白, 仍將落卷發提學官分發各生, 使之親自省覽, 以為受教之地. 如此則考官閱卷者凜凜自盡, 而士子下第者可無後言矣. See Wang Qi 王圻, Xu wenxian tongkao 續文獻通考 (Taibei: Wen-hai chubanshe, 1979), 45.17a; Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng, vol. 3 [Ming]), 248.14) Qian later presented this observation in a proposal written in response to the examina-tion controversies around 1611: “Thus in 1601, I saw personally the juren Tao Qiqing’s rejected paper. While the essay on the Analects was densely punctuated, the one on the Zhongyong contained only five circles in the introductory statement (poti 破題), and the rest remained unmarked: one can see the negligence!” 如辛丑年, 臣親見舉人陶其清落卷，論義密點，庸義一破五圈, 而後竟不動一筆, 其忽略可知. See Qian Huan 錢桓, “Jingchen kechang qieyao” 敬陳科場切要, in Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng, vol. 3 (Ming), 209.

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This detail is especially noteworthy because it shows that, possibly un-der the influence of the 1591 proposal, examiners understood that punc-tuation was a means of convincing rejected candidates that their essays had been read. In 1612, a proposal from the Department of Rites offi-cially recognized this conception of punctuation.15

Later, during the Chongzhen 崇禎 reign (1628–1644), the quality of punctuation became an issue in rejected candidates’ complaints. The story of Ai Nanying 艾南英 (1583–1646), the renowned writer and critic of examination essays, is the most notable and widely circulated exam-ple from the late Ming. After the 1634 metropolitan examination, Ai re-ceived his failed papers and found that only four columns of his first essay had been punctuated (zhidou sihang 止逗四行). Ai himself, his supporters, and the later narrators of the story all condemned the exam-iner for having read only four columns before failing Ai: no one chal-lenged this interpretation by suggesting that the examiner might well have read the whole paper without punctuating it.16 Ai’s was not an iso-lated case. Wu Yingqi 吳應箕 (1594–1645), a prominent eight-legged es-say writer and leader of non-official essay criticism, also complained that the examiners did not make even a single brushstroke on his an-swers in the 1624, 1633, and 1636 examinations.17 However, as we shall see, Ai took a more high-profile approach against the examiners. The discourse on punctuation also played a role in the debate over the very existence of the civil examinations sparked by the Chongzhen emper-or’s abrupt restoration of the recommendation (jianju 薦舉) system.18

15) Ming Shenzong shilu 明神宗實錄 (Taibei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 1966), 503.4b (9544).16) Luo Wanzao 羅萬藻, “Tianyongzi ji zonglun” 天傭子集總論, in Ai Nanying 艾南英, Tianyongzi ji 天傭子集 (rpt. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2000), juan shou, prefaces, 14. 17) “[Once they have] recommended enough candidates to meet the quota, they will aban-don the rest of the papers without casting an eye on them. As for myself, my papers for the 1624, 1633, and 1636 examinations were not marked with a single brush, and the seals were unopened” 所舉但取充數, 即棄卷不寓目矣. 即余一人, 甲子、癸酉、丙子之卷, 皆未動一筆, 封識如故. See Wu Yingqi, Liudu wenjian lu 留都聞見錄, quoted in Hou Meizhen 侯美珍, “Rulin waishi Zhou Jin yue Fan Jin shijuan de xushu yihan” 儒林外史周進閱范進試卷的敘述意涵, Guowen xuebao 44 (2008): 164–5. 18) Generally speaking, under the recommendation system qualified local officials (in the 1639 case, belonging to the third to fifth ranks) recommended local students for positions in the bureaucracy. This had been a recruitment system parallel to the keju examination sys-tem and to the drafting of imperial academy students. It eventually petered out in the mid-Ming when officials who had passed the examinations became the mainstream in the


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Careless marking—or the absence of any markings at all—on failed pa-pers was attacked by critics of the examination system, especially those who did not possess a jinshi degree, like Jiang Chen 蔣臣 (1597–1652).19

The debates of the late sixteenth century are interesting because, for the first time, questions were raised about how failed papers were read and evaluated. Rejected candidates had, not surprisingly, been dissatis-fied with the grading system ever since the beginnings of the civil ser-vice examinations. Yet in the late Ming, we begin to see a discourse linking punctuation to careful reading that had originated among offi-cials, especially examiners—in other words, among men who had been successful in the examinations. Thus, if we interpret the sayings of late Ming non-official examination essay critics—most of them rejected candidates at the jinshi level—as a challenge to the hegemony of jinshi degree holders and examiners, we must bear in mind that they were not the ones who created the discourse around the reading and marking of failed papers: it was officials who possessed the degree who brought the issue to policy debate in the first place.20 To be sure, rejected candidates adapted and shaped this discourse to their own ends. Nonetheless, the terms of the discourse were limited by the fact that it had originated on the official side. When criticisms against examination results were con-fined to the absence of markings on the papers—particular examiners failing to fulfil their responsibility toward the examinees—the rejected

bureaucracy and discriminated against those who were recruited by other means. From then on, the recommendation system acquired symbolic value in the critique of keju bureaucrats; it was employed, for example, by the Chongzhen Emperor in 1639 while his empire was fac-ing a profound financial and military crisis. Yet the emperor and the reformers could not match the strong path dependency on keju. The few men recruited by recommendation had troubled careers, not least because of pressure from keju degree holders. See Dai Mingshi 戴名世, “Shen Shoumin zhuan” 沈壽民傳, in Nanshan ji 南山集, 7.17a; Xiong Wenju 熊文舉, “Shu Liu Bozong chidu hou” 書劉伯宗尺牘後, in Lü’ou ge jinji 侣鷗閣近集 (rpt. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2000), 1.186a-b.19) “There were often rejected papers completely unmarked, or that had been let down after reading a few columns, or that clerks had been forcibly ordered to alter and had no punc-tuation whatsoever. As for the papers from the second and third sessions, they were never looked into” 往往落卷中有通篇空白全未落筆者, 有閱未數行而棄者, 有強令隸胥點竄, 全非句讀者. 至于二三場從不觀覽. See Jiang Chen 蔣臣, “Dingchou shilu disan wence bianwu” 丁丑試錄第三問策辨誤, in Wutaji tang yugao 無他技堂餘稿 (rpt. Bei-jing: Beijing chubanshe, 2000), 2.12a. 20) Kai-wing Chow, Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2004), 219–223.

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candidates could hardly post a radical challenge to the examiners as a group, and more importantly, to the keju system itself.

Probably due to its stabilizing effect, the punctuation discourse per-sisted through the Ming-Qing transition. As early as 1658, an imperial order that examiners be punished for unpunctuated rejected papers from the second-round selection (fubang 副榜) was issued in the name of the Shunzhi Emperor (r. 1644–1661).21 In 1684, and again in 1706, the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661–1722) extended the order to all rejected pa-pers.22 It was also during the Kangxi reign that the returning of rejected papers was codified.23 Adopting and further institutionalizing a propos-al that had earlier gained currency in the late Ming also served as a way to prove the Manchu-Qing court’s capability to rule as an alien dynasty, especially in the eyes of the Han examination candidates.24

More complicated than the “punctuation equals reading” discourse was the interpretation of the examiners’ opinions. For late imperial candidates, the “opinions” indicated in punctuation and comments (dian ping 點評) often served as a means to enhance one’s own literary fame. Throughout the period, the formal division between chief exam-iners and ward examiners created a space for multiple interpretations of examination results.25 “Appreciated by the ward examiners, but

21) “In the second-round selection, even the rejected papers must be entirely punctuated with blue brush. [The ward examiners] who fail to do so will be punished by a one-year sti-pend suspension, the chief examiners being subject to a nine-month stipend suspension” 其副榜雖係不中之卷, 亦應藍筆全點, 如有不全點者, 罰俸一年, 主考官各罰俸九月. See Qinding Da Qing huidian shili (Guangxu ed.), 358.6a; Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng, vol. 4 (Qing), 378. Ye Mengzhu 葉夢珠 mentions a similar order concerning the metropolitan examination of 1661; see Yueshi bian 閱世編 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007), 52.22) Qing Shengzu shilu 清聖祖實錄 (rpt. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,1986), 118.6a.23) See Da Qing Huidian (Kangxi ed.), 52.24a-b, Qinding kechang tiaoli, 46.9–10a. 24) As John Williams has argued, following precedents established in the Ming keju was an important marker of the early Qing Empire’s legitimacy; see Williams, “Fraud and Inquest in Jiangnan: The Politics of Examination in Early Qing China” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, Berkeley, 2005), 306. Despite the privileges enjoyed by Manchu and Mongol candidates in the Qing examination system, examinations remained an unimportant route to bureaucracy for Manchu officials. The keju was so generally regarded as a Han practice that the Qianlong Emperor dissuaded Manchus from taking the examinations when he called for a revival of the “Manchu way.” See Mark Elliott, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2001), 136, 203–4. 25) Since as early as 1385, ward examiners would only read the answers from their assigned ward or pool of candidates, and then recommend the outstanding candidates for the chief


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unfortunately failed by the chief examiners” was a trope that pervaded the discourse of rejected candidates.26 The claim here—that but for the chief examiner the candidate would have passed—was supported by the ward examiners’ comments, which often showed personal apprecia-tion of the rejected candidate’s essays. For example, on a failed paper in the 1677 Shuntian provincial examination, the ward examiner claimed that he had done his best to recommend the candidate, but that the chief examiner had stubbornly rejected what the ward examiner con-sidered an outstanding paper.27

If the ward examiners’ comments were reserved or critical, candi-dates might employ another trope: “The examiners are looking forward to my future success; that's why I am grateful for their critical com-ments.” When Tao Wangling 陶望齡 (1562–1609, 1589 jinshi) failed the 1586 metropolitan examination, the examiner Wang Xijue 王錫爵 (1534–1614), who was famous for his critique of examination essays, commented on his paper, “all of the seven essays are ordinary” (qizuo pingchang 七作平常). Later accounts do not see this as a simple dis-missal of Tao’s writing, but as Wang’s way of encouraging Tao to seek improvement.28 And even when examiners made no markings on failed papers, candidates might fabricate comments in their favor. As Gao Yi pointed out in a report of 1567, some candidates added emphasizing punctuation (which they attributed to the ward examiners) and claimed that “a certain person” was the one who had rejected their essays (本在斥落而自加圈點，遂矯稱某人遺棄).29 In these ways, the definition

examiners’ overall selection. See Elman, Cultural History, 189.26) For this trope as seen in Ming and Qing novels, see Ye Chuyan 葉楚炎, Mingdai keju yu Ming zhongqi zhi Qingchu tongsu xiaoshuo yanjiu 明代科舉與明中期至清初通俗小說硏究 (Nanchang: Baihuazhou wenyi chubanshe, 2009), 238–40. 27) “I have recommended this paper three times. It failed not because of Heaven’s will, but because of someone in this year’s examination. Such a pity!” 此卷余連薦三次，而究不得中者，非天意不中，而為今科之人不中也。可惜可歎. See Wei Xiangshu 魏象樞, “Zaichen kechang tiaoli shu” 再陳科場條例疏, in Hansong tang quanji 寒松堂全集 (Bei-jing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996),104.28) See Zheng Man 鄭鄤, “Ming wengao huixuan xu” 明文稿彙選序, in Miyang caotang wenji 峚陽草堂文集 (rpt. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2009), 7.11b; Chen Kangqi 陳康棋, “Jiang Shiyao shende shixin” 蔣師爚深得士心, in Langqian jiwen sanbi 郎潛紀聞三筆 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1997), 779. 29) Gao Yi 高儀, “Yi tiaochen kechang shiyi shu” 議條陳科場事宜疏, in Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng, vol. 3 (Ming), 206.

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of “success” in the late imperial examinations was in fact highly nego-tiable: despite their ultimate disappointment, candidates could erase the sting of failure by constructing flattering or hopeful accounts of the comments on their papers.

The messages provided in returned failed papers were obscure to people outside the examination system, but generally speaking, candi-dates were equipped with adequate information to make convincing interpretations about their performance in the examinations. The offi-cial codes and records of policy debates were accessible to the educated population in the late imperial period. Regulations regarding officials can be found in the Zhengde (1506–1521) and Wanli (1574–1620) editions of the Collected Institutions of the Great Ming (Da Ming huidian 大明會典), which were in principle distributed to every office around the empire and eventually entered some private collections. The Qing em-perors also had successive editions of the Complete Book for Education Officials (Qingding Xuezheng quanshu 欽定學政全書) sent to the local schools. The policy discussions by scholar-officials were available not only in their literary collections (wenji 文集), but also in specific collec-tions of memorials (zouyiji 奏議集) and “statecraft documents” (jingshi wenbian 經世文編). For example, Gao Yi’s report, cited above, was re-produced in his personal collection, published in 1601.30

The identities of the chief and ward examiners were the key to ac-count for examination rejections, as the candidates’ performance was defined in relation to the examiners’ judgments. These were not con-fidential in the late imperial period: the anonymity of the system was focused on the candidates, not the examiners. The surnames of the ex-aminers in charge were written on every marked paper. Even when the candidates could not identify the examiners from their surnames, they could find help in such sources as the “records of examinations” (shilu 試錄) published after each session and the rosters of the newly gradu-ated (tongnianlu 同年錄, tongnian bianlan 同年便覽, and chilu 齒錄), also published shortly after each provincial and metropolitan examina-tion.31 These documents informed candidates about the examiners out-

30) Gao Yi 高儀, Gao Wenduan gong zouyi 高文端公奏議 (microfilm of the 1601 Qiantang Gaoshi edition 萬暦二十九年錢塘高氏刊本, Taibei: National Palace Museum, 1992). 31) For example, the Jiajing guichou jinshi tongnian bianlan 嘉靖癸丑進士同年便覽 and


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side their own wards. They could also gain some knowledge of which examiner had made which comments because of the convention of marking colors: beginning no later than the mid-Ming, it was the prac-tice for chief examiners to use black ink and for ward examiners to use blue ink. Thus, while the official code specifying the chief and ward ex-aminers’ duties was fairly complicated, the logic of the marking process was simple enough that every candidate could reconstruct his own “fail-ure story”: if a rejected candidate saw only blue markings on his papers, he had probably been rejected by the ward examiners; if he saw blue and black markings, he had been failed by the chief examiner, perhaps after the ward examiner had recommended him for passage.

Little is known of how widely these examination records were dis-tributed, but both their physical format and their content suggest that they were intended for instant circulation. A number of surviving shilu and rosters of the newly graduated exist in manuscripts that are in rough handwriting and poorly laid out.32 Obviously, the authors/copyists did not intend to produce documents for long-term preservation, they were only for short-term circulation. Probably transcribed or abridged from the printed high-quality original versions of the records, which were usually produced by the new degree holders to commemorate their suc-cess, these low-quality copies could be circulated among rejected candi-dates at large who wanted to obtain fresh information about the examination.33

As the above analysis of the late imperial discourse on the punctua-tion and commentary of failed papers shows, the more the state empha-sized the examiners’ individual accountability, the greater was the

the Chongzhen yimao Shandong xiangshi chilu 崇禎已卯山東鄉試齒錄 clearly list the names and numbers of the wards of which the examiners were in charge. These examination records are collected In Zhongguo keju lu huibian 中國科舉錄彙編 (Beijing: Quanguo tushu guan wenxian weisuo fuzhi zhongxin, 2010). 32) See, for example, the Wanli ernian jiashu ke huishi xiaolu 萬曆二年甲戍科會試小錄, in Zhongguo keju lu huibian.33) This flow of information raises another question: how might the rejected candidates’ experience of the examinations be shaped when information was presented from the degree holders’ point of view? Further research is needed for an answer, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that these records might constitute a sense of connectedness between passed and rejected candidates. By sharing the same pool of information with the passed candidates, rejected candidates could strengthen their “failure stories” by emphasizing their nearness to the community of degree holders.

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information flow between examiners and candidates. This information flow created space for the examiners and examinees to generate what amounts to extra cultural capital beyond the official awarding of de-grees. The personalized communication through failed papers allowed the examiners and examinees to negotiate achievement in the examina-tions more or less independently of the official decision of pass or fail. This was indeed, at least symbolically, a challenge to the state’s claim to the authority to grant or withhold political and cultural capital through the examinations. We shall next attempt to assess the late imperial state’s capacity to control such personalized relationships.

The State’s Limited Capacity to Monitor the ExaminersIf we take the discourse on the punctuation and commentary on failed papers at face value, the state imposed pressure on examiners to show a responsibility toward rejected candidates. Policy makers, advisors, and emperors in the Qing continued to emphasize the examiners’ responsi-bilities in the same way: papers should be thoroughly read and rejection should be explained. Such discussions seem to support the thesis that there existed a strict and effective system ensuring close surveillance of examiners in late imperial China.

Yet, in practice the state’s pressure on examiners was not as heavy as suggested by official regulations. Since actual rejected papers are not available, we are uncertain about the extent to which the official dis-course influenced the examiners’ marking practices. Still, the repeated emphasis on careful reading by examiners may indicate its actual inef-fectiveness. Complaints about unpunctuated failed papers by no means ceased after 1591, when the first official attempt at requiring examiners to punctuate all the answers was made. In about 1690, Ye Mengzhu 葉夢珠 (b. 1624) wrote in his Yueshi bian 閱世編 that “in the past” un-punctuated papers—like those of Ai Nanying in 1634—were nothing unusual.34 The situation was similar in the Qing, despite the fact that

34) “In the past, only the passed vermilion papers in the provincial and metropolitan exam-inations were delivered to the Ministry [of Rites]. The rest were all discarded. Enterprising people collected them from the county and provincial administrations. Students who aspired to success would purchase them for 0.2 or 0.3 silver tael per paper in order to read


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clearer regulations against failing to thoroughly punctuate all papers were promulgated from the Shunzhi reign onwards. We can still see that in the case of Zhang Yunzhang 張雲章 (1648–1726), a candidate who failed probably in 1699, the examiner(s) only punctuated the first three legs of his essay before deciding on rejection.35 These examples may be scattered and inconclusive, but they all remind us to be skeptical about the effectiveness of the controls imposed on examiners.

The unmanageable number of failed papers was another cause for the state’s loose monitoring of examiners. Despite harsh criticism of their negligence in marking, it was tacitly acknowledged that there were too many papers for thorough and detailed reading. In the Ming and Qing provincial examinations, an assumed maximum forty-eight exam-iners (twenty-two two-examiner wards and four chief examiners) had to mark around 12,000 sets of papers (i.e., the answers to each of the three parts of the examination; the number is taken from the 1792 Jiangnan provincial examination) within less than a month (in the Qing, provin-cial examination answers were usually collected on August 15 and the results were announced before September 15).36 Therefore, as Hou Mei-zhen points out, reaching a decision before having read all of an essay

them: lots of papers had not been punctuated through to the end; some were even com-pletely untouched. Yet nothing could be done about it” 向來鄉會硃卷, 惟中式者解部, 餘皆棄去, 好事者各就本府縣收歸, 俟諸生之有志者, 每卷出銀二三錢購閱, 其間點竄, 往往有未竟, 甚或不染一筆者, 亦付之無可而何也. Ye Mengzhu, Yueshi bian, 52; also quoted in Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng, vol. 3 (Ming), 290. 35) “When I took my rejected essays from the past few exams and reread them, I was so frustrated that I could not sleep easily. In my rejected paper this time, (the examiner) ceased to punctuate as soon as he reached the ‘small statement’” 自取數科以來被斥之文而反復之, 亦寢不能平. 今番落卷. 點逗饞及小講, 便已放筆. See Zhang Yunzhang, “Yu Tang jijian Xiya” 與湯給諫西厓, in Pucun wenji 樸村文集 (rpt. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2000), 5.5b. The anonymous reviewer has kindly pointed out the possible year of this quote. 36) Both the late Ming and Qing governments several times ordered increases in the number of examiners and in the time allowed for marking. However, these measures were mere gestures acknowledging the Emperors’ and the policy makers’ concern about the workload and quality of marking, rather than real solutions to the problem. See the Kangxi Emperor’s edict in Qing Shengzu shilu, 248.11b. The limited numbers of examiners partially stemmed from the political culture of “qualification” (liupin 流品). The assignment of ward and chief examiners was confined to officials who adhered to a more or less fixed career path; a stint at the Hanlin Academy was arguably the most important qualifier. Further research must be conducted to determine the average years between Hanlin tenures and ward examiner assignments. Yet the career pattern of the class of 1761 Hanlin scholars does suggest the predictability of examiner assignments. See Iona D. Man-Cheong, The Class of 1761, 164–75.

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was not necessarily regarded as irresponsible at the time. Indeed, as many sources note, making an accurate judgment by skimming was seen as a quality of an outstanding examiner.37 This argument might also be used to counter the “thorough reading equals careful marking” discourse.

The limitations of the mokan 磨勘 system further demonstrate the difficulty of overseeing the grading process. Since its implementation in the late Jiajing era in the Ming, the practice of mokan, i.e., the central-ized double checking of marked papers, applied only to those passed. Yet, even limiting the rechecking process to the passed papers, the num-ber of papers was still too large for the Ming and Qing government offi-cials to handle. For example, in 1736, after the Qing government extended the scope of mokan to provincial examinations, Li Fu 李紱 (1675–1750) memorialized that the officials currently entrusted with mo-kan (all the central administrations subsumed under the term jiuqing 九卿, or “Nine Ministers,” were involved) were already overloaded by the quantity of passed papers. There were at the time more than 1,300 successful candidates every provincial examinations year; and as the mokan process involved the cross-checking of both “vermilion” copies (zhujuan) and “black” originals (mojuan 墨卷), there would be in total more than 8,000 papers to be rechecked.38 Thus, it is clear that extend-ing the scope of centralized scrutiny to failed papers would have been impractical. To supervise the examiners’ marking, the emperors, advi-sors, policy makers, and administrative officials could only focus on the passed papers, in order to look for clues of cheating and fraud.

The Qing state also failed to reconfigure the power dynamic between the different categories of examiners. In the late imperial period, chief examiners and ward examiners (and even the candidates themselves) shared or contested the power of interpreting “examiners’ opinion.” The

37) Hou Meizhen, “Rulin waishi Zhou Jin yue Fan Jin shijuan de xushu yihan,” 166–68. 38) As each examination included three sessions (chang 場), Li Fu multiplied the number of successful candidates by three, making close to 4,000, and again by two to take account of both “vermilion” and “black” papers. See Li Fu, “Qing zhuoding mokanjuan renyuan zhazi” 請酌定磨勘卷人員劄子, in Mutang chugao 穆堂初稿 (rpt. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chu-banshe, 2002), 40.35b. Li Fu proposed that mokan be entrusted to officials of the Hanlin Academy and of the censorate, who according to him had more time on their hands. The anonymous reader has kindly pointed out the correct date of Li’s report.


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division of labor was straightforward in appearance, but the distribu-tion of power was in fact more subtle and fluid both in the Ming and the Qing. Generally speaking, ward examiners in the late Ming determined the list of passing candidates. Theoretically, they only “recommended” candidates to the chief examiners for final decision, but in practice, most of the chief examiners in the Ming merely rubber-stamped the lists forwarded by the ward examiners.39 As a result, in the Ming suc-cessful candidates normally established a pseudo “teacher-student” bond with the ward examiners, a relationship that was much closer than the one with the chief examiners.40

The balance appeared to shift in favor of the chief examiners in the early Qing. As foreign rulers, early Qing emperors abhorred the small but tightly linked networks of Han-Chinese “ward teachers” (fangshi 房師) and “students” (mensheng 門生), as well as the ward examiners’ prestige as literary figures. One of the measures to reduce the influence of ward examiners was to reinstate the superiority of chief examiners. For the emperors, the chief examiners, who were fewer in number and mostly senior officials more directly responsible to the throne, were much easier to control than the ward examiners.41 They expanded the chief examiners’ authority by granting them the power also to read the papers not recommended by ward examiners.42 Moreover, the Qing

39) According to Wang Xijue 王錫爵 (1534–1614), who served as a chief examiner in 1586, it was the usual practice for the chief examiners to approve the passing of candidates recom-mended by ward examiners. They would just determine the ranking in the roster of passers. See Wang Xijue, “Bingshu huishilu xu” 丙戍會試錄序, in Wang Wensu gong wenji 王文肅公文集 (rpt. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2000), 1.7a. 40) Since the mid- and late Tang dynasty, when examinations were used for the recruitment and promotion of bureaucrats, candidates sometimes paid “tributary” visits to examiners to create a pseudo relationship of teacher (zuoshi 座師 or fangshi 房師) and student ( men sheng 門生). The successful candidates regarded the examiners who had granted them degrees as mentors. This practice was forbidden in the Song and Qing because it undermined the emperor’s authority to bestow political and cultural power through official degrees. And it was criticized by scholars like Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–1682) because it ran the risk of reduc-ing the sacred mentor-student bond (one of the Five Cardinal Relationships in Confucian teaching) to a utilitarian exchange of power. See Gu Yanwu, “Shengyuan lun” 生員論, in Gu Tinglin shiwen ji 顧亭林詩文集 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2008), 23. Yet neither written regulations nor moral doctrine could constrain the persistence of this powerful practice.41) Lü Simian 呂思勉 named this approach to administrative control “reining in complexity with simplicity” (zhijian yi yufan 執簡以馭繁). See Lü Simian, “On examinations,” 考試論 (1928), in Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng, vol. 5 (Republic), 99–102. 42) This practice was known as “searching among failed papers” (sou luojuan 搜落卷). The

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state attempted to underplay the role of ward examiners by restrictions on their written comments. In 1657, an order was issued to prohibit the identification of particular ward examiners: under a practice called tong jing gongyue 同經共閱, comments written on the final graded paper would be attributed to the collective authorship of all ward exam-iners responsible for the same classic. In 1660, ward examiners were briefly restricted from adding written comments when making their recommendations to the chief examiners.43 Later, in the Qianlong reign, ward allocation by specialization in a particular Classic was abolished, so as to cut ties between ward examiners and examinees.44 These poli-cies led to greater powers of commentary for the chief examiners.

Yet it was difficult for the Qing to develop a consistent policy for limit-ing the ward examiners’ power to mark essays. The emperor and the policy makers had to make a difficult choice between limiting the ward examiners’ authority and ensuring their responsibility for the com-ments on examination answers. After the Kangxi Emperor’s 1668 order to return failed papers to their authors, ward examiners were required to explain failing decisions in the comments they submitted to the chief examiners.45 In the Yongzheng reign (1723–1735), the state found that collective commentary allowed the individual ward examiner to deflect personal responsibility. The Yongzheng Emperor therefore decreed a re-turn to individual commentaries by ward examiners.46 The punish-ments decided in 1793 for the latter’s failure to comment consolidated this line of policy.47 Eventually, in its (ultimately fruitless) effort to mon-itor the ward examiners’ assessments, the Qing state had to recognize de facto the personal connection established between ward examiners and rejected candidates through written comments. Moreover, during the period of transition from the Qianlong to the Jiaqing era, the policy of

“failed papers” in this case are the papers discarded by ward examiners during the marking process, not in the final examination result. See Li Shiyu 李世愉, “Qingdai sou luojuan zhidu chutan” 清代搜落卷制度初探, in Qingdai keju zhidu kaobian 清代科舉制度考辨 (Bei-jing: Zhongyang guangbo dianshi daxue, 1999), 70–72.43) Qinding da Qing huidian shili, 347. 1b. 44) Qinding kechang tiaoli, 18.4a; Qinding da Qing huidian shili, 347.14a-b. 45) Qinding da Qing huidian shili, 347.2b. 46) Yongzheng shangyu neige 雍正上諭内閣 (rpt. Taibei: Taiwan Shangwu yinshuguan, 1983), 4.13a-b. 47) Qinding da Qing huidian shili, 347.19b.


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empowering chief examiners at the expense of ward examiners led to controversies, as some chief examiners boldly violated the anonymous system. This justified the Jiaqing Emperor’s call for a check on their power—many of them had been promoted by the Qianlong Emperor and were too powerful in the eyes of his successor.48 The early Qing pol-icies did to some extent shift the chief and ward examiners’ balance of power, but with regard to failed papers, the ward examiners’ freedom to assert their power remained essentially unchanged throughout the late imperial period.

Institutional and Structural Limitations on Rejected Candidates’ ProtestsIf central oversight of the marking of failed papers was infeasible, could rejected candidates be counted on to monitor the examiners? Motivat-ed as they were by the possibility that their papers might be reviewed and eventually passed, failed candidates would logically be the most critical and effective critics of the marking of failed papers. The returned papers provided them with important information that they could use to appeal for official review, or even to launch protests. By examining the failed papers, they were able to know whether the examiners had gone through all of their answers and to identify those responsible for the decision to reject them.

In fact, the record shows that late imperial governments, in particular the Qing, which institutionalized the returning of failed papers, wel-comed reports of examiners’ negligence in grading papers. Scattered cases can already be found in the late Ming, even before the relevant practices were institutionalized. For example, Yu Huan 余煥, a candi-date in the 1612 Shuntian provincial examination, appealed against his failure after receiving his luojuan, and the case was officially processed. During the Qing, the Kangxi version of the regulations on examinations (Kechang tiaoli 科場條例) included an entry to the effect that examina-tion-monitoring censors (jianlin yushi) were responsible for responding

48) Shiuon Chu, “Searching in the Dark: Han Learning and the Controversy of the 1799 Met-ropolitan Exam,” unpublished conference paper, 2013.

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to such reports and conducting appropriate investigations.49 Com-plaints by rejected candidates (and their use of non-official avenues of protest) demonstrate that the institution of returning failed papers could be an effective means of checking the power of examiners.

However, questions arise when we consider the fact that very little attention was paid to failed papers in the “examination cases” (kechang an 科場案) recorded in the sources and when unofficial protests erupt-ed. According to a preliminary survey based on a compilation of late imperial examination sources,50 in the Ming and the Qing most exami-nation cases that went through official investigation processes were about explicit cheating, fraud, and bribery, while little attention was paid to the examiners’ punctuation or comments on failed papers. As none of these cases—with the exception of the 1705 protest discussed in the next section—involved information provided from failed papers, it is reasonable to question the effectiveness of reports by rejected candi-dates as a means of regulating examiners.

Unofficial protests also tended to focus on those who had passed and to neglect those who had failed. For example, from the mid-Ming through the Qing nearly all the protests that arose during examinations or shortly after the announcement of the results were protests against unfair (or rumored to be unfair) passing decisions, rather than unjust failing decisions. Furthermore, there were very few writers who, like Gui Youguang 歸有光 (1507–1571) or Ai Nanying, would introduce their failed papers into the public discourse. Given the openness of informa-tion and a political atmosphere that welcomed, at least rhetorically, re-ports of malpractice, the scarcity of examination cases and unofficial protests arising from failed papers is puzzling.

A closer look at the power dynamic among the central government, the censors in charge of supervising the examinations, and the examin-ers themselves may help answer our questions. As the central adminis-tration had no effective way to scrutinize failed papers, the supervising censors, who in the Qing were responsible for dealing with complaints

49) He Xiaoyan, “Shilun Qingdai keju zhidu zhong de fa luojuan zhengce,” 7.50) “Kechang wubi ji kechang an” 科場舞弊及科場案, in Zhongguo kaoshi shi wenxian jicheng, vol. 3 (Ming), 305–321, 468–485; “Kechang an” 科場案, in Zhongguo kaoshi shi wen-xian jicheng, vol. 4 (Qing), 463–497.


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about returned papers, became pivotal in the monitoring of examiners. Yet, in a proposal of 1678, the censor Wei Xiangshu 魏象樞 (1617–1687) could not provide any workable way of ensuring that examiners read and marked papers carefully; he was reduced to simply urging the su-pervising censors to be impartial and fearless (惟在御史鐵面冰心) when accepting complaints from candidates, and to look into such com-plaints thoroughly (加意嚴查).51

In fact, supervising censors were structurally discouraged from initi-ating investigations of examination frauds, not to mention handling complaints about failed papers. One can see that they exerted unofficial but considerable influence on the assignment of ward examiners: al-though the regulations stated that this assignment was to be determined by lottery, supervising censors in practice had many opportunities and means to manipulate the process. This is especially true of provincial examinations, where the censors often ranked higher than the chief ex-aminers.52 Because of their actual involvement in the process of assign-ing ward examiners, the supervising censors tended to conceal, rather than expose, the examiners’ malpractices. As long as they enjoyed unof-ficial influence over examiner assignment—which provided them with opportunities to network with successful candidates or to extract bribes from candidates who plotted to cheat with particular examiners—their incentive to monitor the examiners was very limited.53

As for the candidates, complaints as to their failure were limited by one simple fact: the extremely low passing rate in the civil examina-tions. It was difficult for rejected candidates to make convincing claims that they “should have been passed,” no matter what kind of fame they

51) Wei Xiangshu, “Kechang bidou duoduan dengshi shu,” 科場弊竇多端等事疏, in Han-song tang quanji, 103. 52) Williams, “Fraud and Inquest in Jiangnan,” 80–81.53) As a result, the supervising censors’ main concern was the apparent smoothness of examination administration. The most vivid illustration of this mindset might be the diary of Wang Zhensheng 王振聲, a censor for the 1844 metropolitan examination. While provid-ing a detailed account of the logistic procedures—like the printing of examination question sheets and the processing of answers—Wang depicts the whole examination as a process as stable and regular as clockwork. In this representation, the mission of monitoring the exam-iners was reduced to no more than ensuring procedural precision in the handling of exami-nation papers. See Wang Zhensheng, Jiachen chunwei riji 甲辰春闈日記, in Xinqingshi riji 心清室日記 (Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe, 2006), 23–29.

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had earned as baguwen writers or cultural and political commentators. The failure of these rumored-to-be-talented people could easily be ex-plained away by the low passing rate and, probably more commonly, by fate.54 In this context, rather than openly protesting the examiners’ judgment, rejected candidates tended to claim what appreciation they could from at least some of the examiners. As we have seen in the previ-ous section, they might selectively cite or interpolate positive comments to their papers, exaggerating or even fabricating endorsements from ex-aminers in order to increase their literary fame in the face of failure. Or they might simply attribute failure to various unfortunate circumstanc-es, or to the workings of a mysterious fate.

Protests over Failed Papers: Three Exceptional CasesBy studying the few known cases of protest over failed papers, we may better understand the enormous cultural and political power that was needed to overcome the structural constraints described above. But be-fore delving into these cases, a clearer distinction between different types of discontent over examinations will be helpful. In terms of their formats, examination protests in the late imperial period can be divided into written statements and collective riots. Regarding written state-ments, although records of candidate frustration and dissatisfaction with failing decisions are extremely common in literary works and biji anecdotal records, few of them were made by the candidate himself to criticize a contemporary examination decision, especially when the candidate had been failed. Rejected candidates like Gui Youguang and Ai Nanying, discussed below, who took a confrontational stance against the examiners in written statements, were extremely rare.

As for examination riots, I will exclude here those that took place be-fore the examination, which were fueled by causes ranging from per-ceived unfairness in the examination quotas to emotional outbursts due to the mishandling of examination logistics, because they are not rele-

54) In some contexts, procedural errors were also regarded as the result of fate or karma. For examples, see Lü Xiangxie 呂相燮, Kechang yiwen lu 科場異聞錄 (Beijing: Yanshan chu-banshe, 2006), a Qing collection of keju anecdotes. See also Elman, Cultural History, 304–26.


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vant to the candidates’ response to examination decisions.55 Among the remaining cases, most involved rumors of corruption and fraud after re-sults had been announced, and few protesters referred to information culled from failed papers, the 1705 agitation discussed below being an exception. And as shown in Wu Renshu’s survey, protests that triggered large-scale “examination cases”—none of which centered on failed pa-pers—were concentrated in the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong reigns.56 I attribute this trend to the early Qing state’s leniency toward protests, meant to counterbalance the power of the examiners, particu-larly the ward examiners. Without this tacit support from the state, re-jected candidates could not have transformed their discontent into collective protest, despite their access to the failed papers and relevant information.

Gui YouguangIn the light of the structural confinement of rejected candidates’ speech, Gui Youguang, the famous essay stylist of the late Ming, made a remark-ably bold claim in 1559. In his “Miscellaneous Records from the 1559 Metropolitan Examination” (Jiwei huishi zaji, 己未會試雜記), he tried to convince his readers that his failure in that examination was due to a conspiracy against him.57 Gui first emphasized that a number of upright examiners had decided to do their best—within legal limits—to award him the jinshi degree. They tried eagerly to identify his paper by his prose style. They even searched among the temporarily rejected papers (those not recommended by the ward examiners, but that the chief ex-aminers could still read, either informally or officially under the so-called sou luojuan 搜落卷 system, and possibly still pass).58 These supposedly well-disposed examiners finally found that their efforts were in vain because Gui’s paper had been blocked from being pro-

55) For an overview of the riots that happened before examinations in the Qing, see He Xiaoyan, “Qingdai shengtong bakao, naokao, zukao zhifeng shuping,” 73–76. 56) Wu Renshu, Jibian liangmin (see n. 11 above).57) See Gui Youguang, Zhenchuan xiansheng ji 震川先生集 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chu-banshe, 2007), 848–51. 58) The practice of sou luojuan was only codified in the early Qing; see Li Shiyu, “Qingdai souluojuan zhidu chutan,” 70–72. For the chief examiners’ manipulation of this practice and the controversies created, see Chu, “Searching in the Dark.”

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cessed by the office of copyists (tenglusuo 謄錄所) owing to an anony-mous “fellow townsman” (xiangren 鄉人) who was serving as “outer examination administrator” (wailian guan 外簾官),59. Things became even worse when, according to Gui, several other “fellow townsmen” spread slanders about him among the candidates in Beijing. Gui also complained about the examiner’s ineptitude when failing his paper in 1547. This open accusation was supported by his conviction that there was a clear conspiracy against him in 1559. Although no other records enable us to verify Gui’s claims, we can tell from the text of Jiwei huishi zaji that he was quite serious about it and did believe that his account would convince his contemporaries.60

What was it about Gui Youguang that might have made him a target for these politically powerful “townsmen”? If he had just been an ordi-nary man of letters, famous only for his prose writing (particularly his eight-legged essays) and without any notable political connections,61 as conventional accounts tell us, there would have been no reason for ex-aminers or anyone else to attack him in this way.62 But in fact, in the Jia-jing era Gui was an important representative of the local interests of Kunshan 崑山, his hometown, and broadly speaking, of the so-called San Wu 三吳 area, which included Suzhou 蘇州 prefecture, and nota-bly Changshu 常熟 county, the hometown of Yan Na 嚴訥 (1541 jinshi)

59) The wailian guan’s intervention in the marking process was a frequently discussed issue in Ming examination policy. For the division of internal and external officials, see Elman, Cultural History, 181. 60) Thus, we can note, firstly, that in this article written right after the examination Gui explicitly named the chief examiner, Yan Na, and one of the ward examiners, Cao Dazhang 曹大章, as those who attempted to pass him. As Yan Na was linked to Gui’s network through Qu Jingchun 瞿景淳 (Gui’s friend since the 1520s and the optimus [zhuangyuan] in the 1544 metropolitan examination), it is quite unlikely that Gui would have made a false statement that Yan could refute. Second, he omitted the name of the “fellow townsman” who served as “outer examination administrator,” but hinted that he knew who he was, as did all those involved in that examination.61) Unlike, for example, Wang Shizhen 王世貞 (1526–1590). On the ways by which Wang Shizhen gained fame through his family background and political involvements, see John D. Langlois, Jr., “The Reversal of the Death Verdict against Wang Shizhen's Father,” Ming Stud-ies 53 (2006): 72–98.62) Kai-wing Chow has suggested that Gui Youguang was the first writer to publish his eight-legged essays commercially in the Ming dynasty. Yet he provides no direct evidence to equate Gui’s practice of the eight-legged essay with that of the leaders of the fully developed non-official field of essay production after the Wanli era; see Chow, Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China, 219.


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and Qu Jingchun 瞿景淳 (1507–1569), both examiners in the 1559 met-ropolitan examination. Gui acted as spokesman for the local gentle-men’s point of view on two central issues in local administration: the management of the San Wu water system, and the defense of the area in the aftermath of large-scale looting by the wokou 倭寇 pirates. Gui’s San Wu shuili lu 三吳水利錄 and Beiwo shilue 備倭事略, both consisting of petitions to officials he had written for the sake of the local gentry,63 reopened the agenda for local discourse after the state administration’s authority in the area had been severely challenged by problems of drain-age and piracy.64 In this sense, it is not difficult to imagine that there was much at stake with Gui Youguang’s examination results: that he might be recognized by a jinshi degree, and more importantly, the possibility of his entering the Hanlin Academy, became a field of political contest between different groups with conflicting interests in the San Wu area. Gui’s participation in a network of local and central elites explains that he was no ordinary candidate; and it is certainly because of the support of this network that he was able to make a case to his readers that a political conspiracy had prevented him from earning the degree he de-served. In fact, his eventual passing in 1565 was at least partly a conse-quence of this protest, which had created pressure on the examiners. Candidates who did not enjoy the prior fame and influence of a Gui Youguang could not articulate a protest in a similar manner.65

63) Gui Youguang, San Wu shuili lu (Siku quanshu edition); Beiwo shilue, in Zhenchuan xian-sheng ji, 72–7564) According to Li Cho-ying 李卓穎, the effectiveness of the state in reconstructing the Jiangnan water system had contributed to the Yongle emperor’s legitimacy in the area; see Li, “Shengren fuzuo, shuigui qique: Xia Yuanji zhishui Jiangnan yu Yongle zhengquan zheng-dangxing zhi jianli” 聖人復作、水歸其壑：夏原吉治水江南與永樂政權正當性之建立, Xin shixue (Taiwan) 22.4 (2011): 55–108. By the mid-sixteenth century the situation had considerably deteriorated.65) After Gui’s eventual success at the 1565 metropolitan examination, it was said that another series of maneuvers was launched to either fight or support his appointment to the Hanlin Academy. And this was not to be the final political campaign against Gui Youguang on the part of his “townsmen,” at least according to Gui’s own account. After holding office as magistrate of Changxing 長興 in Zhejiang, he was attacked by a townsman who had con-nections with the censors in charge of his assessment. As a result, he was assigned to a minor office in Shunde 順德 in North Zhili. See Huang Mingli 黃明理, Ruzhe Gui Youguang xilun: yi yingju wei kaocha zhongxin 儒者歸有光析論——以應舉為考察中心 (Taibei: Liren shuju, 2009), 90–91.

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Ai Nanying’s Protest and Late Ming Examination Essay CriticismAnother case of open protest involved Ai Nanying, who was regarded as a master of Tang-Song style prose along with Gui Youguang. While Gui’s protest confronted opponents in local politics, Ai’s protest was deeply embedded in his enmity with Zhang Pu 張溥 (1602–1641) stemming from their contest for mastery in the field of examination essay criti-cism.

During the Tianqi (1621–1627) and Chongzhen eras, famous, but often non-jinshi, literati sought to influence taste in matters of examination essays by publishing their criticism. They selected examination essays, made their own commentaries, and published them in anthologies that circulated widely among the educated public. While the prolifera-tion of commercial printing in the late Ming enhanced the spread of literary fame, political crisis—most notably the eunuch Wei Zhong-xian’s 魏忠賢 (1568–1627) usurpation of imperial power during the Tianqi reign—justified the literati’s challenge of official authority.66 As illegitimate examination standards were seen as a reflection of a larg-er political illegitimacy,67 writers like Zhang Pu promoted their essay criticism as part of a protest against an actual ruler who lacked legi ti-

macy.68 By creating alternative standards, examination critics attempt-ed to seize symbolic power from official examiners.

66) Chow, Publishing, Power, and Culture, 216–22; Elman, Cultural History, 118. 67) Zhuo Fazhi 卓發之 provides the most explicit illustration of this line of thought in the following comment: “I argue that the examination essays in the Tianqi reign projected an aura of usurping, betrayal, and belligerence” 余謂天啓朝文字，有如亂臣賊子氣，有刀兵氣; see “Xieyuanji zixu” 祴園集自序, in Luli ji 漉篱集 (rpt. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2000), 10.36a. The word wenzi here means specifically the examination essays, as this juan in Zhuo’s literary collection is dedicated to prefaces written for keju essay anthologies. Zhuo denounced the ward essays collected in this period as resembling those collected in the Sanchao yaodian 三朝要典, a book published by the eunuch Wei Zhongxian’s party to besmirch their opponents; see “Wu Wujiu zhiyi xu” 吳無咎制義序, in Luli ji, 10.51b. 68) Yet the antagonism between rejected candidates and examiners should not be overesti-mated, even during the decades of eunuch dominance. It is true that questions about the legitimacy of orthodox examination discourse created room for rejected candidates to speak for themselves. This antagonism led to some strong protests about failed papers. Famous examination essay writers who failed in the examinations—men like Jiang Chen 蔣臣 and Wu Yingji 吳應箕 (1594–1645)—referred to their unpunctuated (and thus presumably unread) answers in several examinations in their general criticism of the keju system. How-ever, as we have seen, by and large rejected candidates still tended to accept the examiners’ judgments rather than directly attack them. Instead, they preferred other methods of pro-


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The examination essay critics gained official endorsement at the be-ginning of the Chongzhen reign. Right after coming to power, the Chongzhen Emperor ordered a reversal of the political persecutions un-der Wei’s reign of terror. Zhang Pu was one of the major winners in this turnaround in the political situation. He first demonstrated his leading status in the literary field by organizing the commemoration of the “Five Martyrs” who had died in the course of Suzhou’s resistance against Wei Zhongxian. Then in 1629, he started the Restoration Society (Fushe 復社), a trans-local union for essay criticism which included most of the famous literary societies (wenshe 文社) of the time. Meanwhile, Zhang Pu attempted to alter the ways in which examination essays were collected and published. To further boost the prestige of literary societ-ies, he urged that “society essays” (shegao 社稿), which were selected from non-official salons of examination preparation (she 社), should re-place the prevailing genre of “ward essays” (both fanggao 房稿 and fangxuan 房選) selected from actual examinations.69 In the official realm, Zhang earned the jinshi degree and entered the Hanlin Academy in 1631. His bold violation of conventions at the Academy quickly earned him a dismissal from office. Afterwards, Zhang was still able to exercise influence on actual examination results via the society’s network. To-gether with his fellow society members—a number of whom entered

moting their writing—and indirectly criticizing examiners. See Jiang Chen 蔣臣, “Dingchou shilu disan wence bianwu” 丁丑試錄第三問策辨誤, in Wutaji tang yigao 無他技堂遺稿 (rpt. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2000), 2.12a; for Wu Yingji’s opinion, see Hou Meizhen, “Rulin waishi Zhou Jin yue Fan Jin shijuan de xushu yihan,” 165. 69) The “ward essays” included two types of publications. First, the fanggao consisted of essays written by successful candidates (mainly in the metropolitan examination) from the same examination ward, determined by their shared specialization in one of the Five Clas-sics. They included both answers written during the examination and some of their everyday work, selected and published under the name of their ward examiner immediately after the examination. Second, non-official essay critics (most of whom were not jinshi, nor even juren) selected essays from the fanggao, added their commentaries, and compiled “ward selections” (fangxuan 房選). The coexistence of fanggao and fangxuan might be seen as illustrating a dialogue between the examiners and rejected candidates, represented by the “lay” essay critics. But in practice, most of the ward essay critics were closely linked to, if not directly patronized by, examiners who hoped to enhance their personal fame through pub-lished examination essay criticism. Before he obtained the jinshi degree, Zhang Pu promoted the shegao 社稿 —anthologies of works by non-jinshi society members—as a means of chal-lenging the domination of the examiners. In celebrating the importance of shegao, he was asserting the Restoration Society’s independent assessment of examination quality against that of the conventional examiners.

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the government in the early Chongzhen years—he mobilized examin-ers to pass candidates handpicked by the leaders of the Restoration So-ciety. Zhang’s influence persisted until 1636, when the Restoration Society suffered from purges launched by its political opponents.

A counterpart of Zhang Pu in the late Tianqi reign, Ai Nanying did not enjoy the same success in the Chongzhen era. His grudge against Zhang also intensified with time. In the 1624 provincial examination, Ai had formulated his well-known critique of Wei Zhongxian in his examina-tion answer. As a result, he had been punished by suspension from the next three metropolitan examinations. His case was appealed in 1627 along with those of other victims of Wei Zhongxian. Yet Ai’s prestige was limited, mostly because of his exclusion from the founding of the Resto-ration Society in 1629. Ai’s personal conflict with Chen Zilong 陳子龍 (1608–1647), one of Zhang Pu's closest allies, as well as his preference for sharp criticism, in contrast to Zhang Pu’s often unreserved praise of his colleagues’ essays, led to his marginalization under Zhang’s influence.70 In ideological terms, Ai was faithful to the Tang-Song school of prose writing and refused to compromise with the Han-Wei style promoted by Zhang.71 All of this hampered Ai’s fame in the field of examination criti-cism, now dominated by Zhang Pu and the Restoration Society. Most importantly, Ai struggled unsuccessfully in consecutive metropolitan examinations throughout the Chongzhen era.

Seen in the light of this background, Ai’s protest was more a conse-quence of his difficulties in the field of examination criticism than a deviation from the norm of examiner-examinee bond. Xiang Xu 項煜, the ward examiner responsible for Ai’s rejection in the 1634 metropoli-tan examination, was believed to belong to Zhang Pu’s clique and thus likely to favor Restoration Society candidates. After getting back his nearly unmarked failed papers, Ai Nanying published them with

70) Lu Shiyi 陸世儀, Fushe jilue 復社紀略 (rpt. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2002), 1.24a–25b; Zhang Fuxiang 張符驤, “Tianyongzi ji jiuxu” 天傭子集舊序, in Ai Nanying, Tianyongzi ji, prefaces, 2. 71) Ai Nanying, “Wuchen fangxuan qianjian ji xu” 戊辰房選千劍集序, in Tianyongzi ji, 9.6a-b. For the early Qing official recognition of Ai Nanying as an essay master illustrating the Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy, see Elman, Cultural History, 418–19. Ai and Zhang also had con-flicting views about essay selection. Ai adhered to ward essays and contended that Zhang Pu’s promotion of shegao might undermine the emperor’s authority by selecting essays by lay scholars.


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a preface in which he lamented the ward examiner’s heartlessness in ignoring the candidate’s painstaking efforts.72 Given his conservative at-titude toward the official authority of examiners, it seems clear that, without the contentious political discourse at the turn of the Tianqi and Chongzhen eras and without his personal conflict with Zhang Pu, he would not have launched his protest in such a high-profile manner.

The 1705 Collective Protest about Unmarked Failed PapersIn protests over failed papers, collective action was even rarer than indi-vidual criticism. As mentioned above, information from failed papers played no part in most examination-related protests.73 The protesters seem, ironically, to have shared the official indifference to rejected can-didates and their papers. Throughout the late imperial period, one finds only one clearly recorded protest over failed papers. This event took place in 1705, during the Kangxi Emperor’s reign. Deviating from the structural relationship between examiner and examinees, it was made possible by the state’s tacit mobilization of candidates to suppress the power of examiners.

After the 1705 Shuntian provincial examination results had been re-leased, a group of rejected candidates attacked the chief examiners, Wang Bin 汪霦 (1676 jinshi) and Yao Shilei 姚士藟 (1688 jinshi). They had found in the papers returned to them—as we saw, the practice of returning papers had recently been codified—that the examiners had failed to punctuate, in other words, had not read, most of their answers. Frustrated, they circulated the unmarked papers, rushed to the examin-ers’ mansions and hacked to pieces straw men representing them. The emperor acknowledged the candidates’ anger, condemning the examin-ers and stressing again their responsibility to scrutinize all answers.74 The examiners indicted in the case were eventually demoted, but the candidates who had participated in the protest were left unpunished, though in the end their papers were not evaluated anew.

72) Luo Wanzao, “Tianyongzi ji zonglun” 天傭子集總論, in Tianyongzi ji, prefaces, 14; Liang Zhangju 梁章鉅, Zhiyi conghua 制藝叢話 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2001), 97. 73) For a list of examination-related collective protests in the Ming and Qing, see Wu Renshu, Jibian liangmin, 338–88. 74) Qing Shengzu shilu 清聖祖實錄, 223.14a-b.

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Such lenient treatment of examination candidates protesting collec-tively was unusual at the time. With the wide-ranging official suppres-sion of gentry privileges since the Shunzhi era, collective protest by intellectuals was regarded as taboo in early Qing politics. Events like the 1661 case of “Lament at the Temple” (kumiao an 哭廟案), in which a number of participants were sentenced to death, should have presented a sobering example to the 1705 protesters.75 Thus, it is remarkable that in the present case the dissatisfied candidates were still willing to risk death by protesting publicly.

In fact, they may well have calculated the risk carefully before acting. The outcome of several examination cases in the early Qing suggests that the government’s target was actually a clearly defined group—ex-aminers who had connections to candidates, especially those from the Jiangnan area. The outcome of the 1657 Jiangnan examination case, which was regarded as the most serious in the early Qing because of the number of casualties, clearly demonstrated this tendency on the part of the government to attack a particular group: the punishment of examin-ers was much harsher than that of the candidates, and although the 1657 protesters did exactly the same as those in 1661—collectively lamenting in front of the Confucius Temple—they suffered much less.76

Moreover, early Qing emperors often expressed sympathy toward candidates in order to put pressure on examiners. Unlike the Ming em-perors’ general dissociation from examination practices (except when they acted as ceremonial examiners in the palace examination), the early Qing emperors were actively involved in the examination process, as shown in their personal orders authorizing special “imperial grace examinations” (enke 恩科), in overruling examiners’ decisions by alter-ing examination results, and in awarding extra degrees.77 This is another

75) For a detailed account of the case, see Meng Sen 孟森, “Jin Shengtan kao” 金聖嘆考, in Xinshi congkan 心史叢刊 (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1986); for lamenting in front of the Con-fucius Temple as a significant gesture in late Ming and early Qing cultural politics, see Chen Guodong 陳國棟, “Kumiao yu fen rufu: Mingmo Qingchu shengyuan ceng de shehuixing dongzuo” 哭廟與焚儒服：明末清初生員層的社會性動作, Xin shixue (Taiwan) 3.1 (1992): 69–94. 76) On the 1657 scandal, see Meng Sen, “Kechang an” 科場案, in Ming Qing shi lunzhu jikan 明清史論著集刊 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 394–406; Elman, Cultural History, 204.77) For “imperial grace examinations,” see Elman, Cultural History, 129. For one case of the Yongzheng Emperor awarding extra juren degrees, see Qingchao wenxian tongkao 清朝文獻通考 (Taibei: Xinxing shuju, 1958), 49.5313–3.


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dimension of the Qing court’s efforts to consolidate the new dynasty’s legitimacy. By personally intervening in the examination results, Qing emperors emphasized their role as the ultimate arbiters of scholar-ship—they claimed to be able to assess the candidates’ real scholarship more accurately than the examiners. Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong all regarded themselves not only as political heads of state, but also as mentors in Confucian learning.78 They were particularly concerned about the pseudo teacher-student (zuozhu mensheng 座主門生) rela-tionship between examiners and successful candidates, in large part be-cause they feared examiners might gain enormous personal influence from such relationships.79 Examination protests could be used by the emperor to deter examiners from networking with candidates. For ex-ample, failed candidates in the 1721 metropolitan examination demon-strated noisily at the gate of the deputy chief examiner Li Fu’s mansion because they believed that he had favored several candidates with whom he was acquainted.80 The Kangxi Emperor concluded the case by demoting Li Fu, and, although the court prohibited candidates’ protests thereafter, the protesters in this case do not seem to have been pun-ished.81

In the 1705 protest, the candidates definitely drew on support from the emperor’s statements regarding the responsibility of examiners to mark papers carefully. Although sources are too scarce to explore the organization of actual protests in any detail, circumstantial evidence suggests that in the Kangxi reign at least, protesters might expect le-nient treatment from or even endorsement of their complaints by the emperor. As we have seen, this may have encouraged them to take the risk. Further support for this hypothesis may be found when we widen

78) Wang Fansen 王凡森, Quanli de maoxiguan zuoyong: Qingdai de sixiang, xueshu, yu xin-tai 權力的毛細管作用——清代的思想、學術、與心態 (Taibei: Lianjing chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 2013), 402. 79) The Kangxi emperor issued a prohibition against private rituals between examinees and ward examiners; see Elman, Cultural History, 189. Yet the effectiveness of this practice may in fact have been limited, as we can see in the persistence of the authority of examiners as “teachers” of the candidates. 80) In Li Tiaoyuan’s 李調元 (1734–1803) account, the failed candidates crashed the door of Li Fu’s mansion with stones and attempted to cut off his beard; see Li Tiaoyuan, Danmo lu 淡墨錄 (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001), 125.81) Qing Shengzu shilu 清聖祖實錄, 293.5a-b.

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the scope to other reigns in the Qing. As Wu Renshu has pointed out, examination-related riots declined significantly after Qianlong, proba-bly because the Qianlong Emperor took a much harder stance against rioters in the later years of his reign.82 It is possible that he no longer felt the need to use examination protests to rein in examiners.

The 1705 case exemplifies once again that only in certain extraordi-nary circumstances would candidates risk disturbing the structural rela-tionship between examiners and examinees. Without the intervention of external factors, failed examinees would normally take the safer ap-proach—such as redefining their performance by emphasizing or fabri-cating the examiners’ appreciation of their papers. They took the oppositional approach only when the political situation lowered the risk and increased the potential reward.

ConclusionWithout numerical grades as a theoretically commensurable indicator of achievement, keju assessment was open to interpretations that were deeply embedded in the interaction between specific examiners and examinees. The practice of returning rejected papers enabled candi-dates to define their achievements by interpreting the examiners’ punc-tuations and comments. Moreover, despite sophisticated measures to guarantee anonymity, rejected candidates could easily identify the examiner(s) who had graded their papers. Thus, the identities of the examiners involved, along with the knowledge of keju institutions per-vasive among the educated population, became part of the narratives of examination performance.

All three groups of actors in the examinations—the candidates, the examiners, and the state—could benefit from this space of interpreta-tion. Candidates could redefine their achievement in the examinations by either emphasizing or fabricating examiner praise, or by directly challenging examiner judgment. Even though they had failed, the expe-rience of taking the civil examinations opened possibilities for disap-pointed candidates to construct a positive image for themselves in the

82) Wu, Jibian liangmin, 312–13.


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literary and cultural arena. For those among them who were famous and influential enough, like Gui Youguang, the explanation given of their failure could even be a means of pressuring future examiners to pass them. For their part, examiners could define the role they played in the decision to fail papers by shaping their comments on the luojuan. Ex-pressing personal appreciation for the essays of particular rejected can-didates was a means of networking with scholars who might one day pass. The gain in personal influence thus went beyond the number of passed candidates. And the state could fail a large number of candidates without in most cases provoking collective dissent, thus avoiding an in-flation of the number of degree holders who would be difficult to place into limited official positions. Failures were thus far more productive than it might seem.

But the candidates, the examiners, and the state were also subject to different constraints. The extremely low rate of passing made it diffi-cult for candidates to argue that the examiners had misjudged them, as discarding numerous outstanding examination answers was nothing uncommon in the keju system. Unless the candidate possessed extraor-dinary personal fame, or public opinion had reason to be skeptical of the abilities of the examiners, as in the case of Ai Nanying, rejected can-didates preferred not to protest.

The power of examiners was limited as well. Official policy debates at times provided candidates with ammunition to challenge their judg-ments. For instance, the concept that punctuation was proof of an examiner’s actual reading was formed first in official discourse, and then became part of the candidates’ arguments. The punctuation prob-lem shows that both the state and the public discourse among candi-dates restricted the examiners’ autonomy. And the examiners were under even heavier pressure in the early Qing when the emperors sup-ported the candidates’ protests as a means of limiting the examiners’ influence. The state, especially the Manchu emperors, feared the (most-ly Han) factionalism formed through the examiners’ networking with candidates.

Yet the state’s power of control often remained symbolic. In practical terms, it was virtually impossible to monitor the examiners’ communi-cation with candidates through failed papers, if only because of the enormous number of papers involved. Moreover, when emphasizing

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the individual accountability of examiners the state de facto recognized their personal relationship with examinees. This dilemma was demon-strated in the oscillations of early Qing policy, when emperors intended to reduce the examiners’ power in bestowing both official and unofficial fame, as they had been doing more and more in the late Ming. The state at first attempted to contain the presence of individual examiners’ pres-ence on the marked papers by introducing collective comments. But in order to track the examiners’ personal responsibility in assessment, the policy eventually reverted to one that required examiners to make individual comments, meaning that the state had to accept that exam-iners and candidates would forge personal relationships in the course of discussing the grading of papers. The state’s weak presence in the examiner-examinee relationship was not a matter of respecting the teacher-student relationship in Confucian ethics, it rather encapsulated its acceptance of structural constraints against rigorous surveillance.83

These benefits and limits created an internal dynamic that in fact sta-bilized the examination system. The small number of instances of open protests suggests a general tendency for examinees not to confront ex-aminers, even when they were not passed. The wide range of alternative careers available may have discouraged rejected candidates from collec-tive protest, but the low incentive in making complains against specific examiners also may be explained by the concept of the examiner-exam-inee relationship. With failed papers as the medium linking particular candidates to particular examiners, an apparently reciprocal relation-ship was established. Whenever examiners took the responsibility of thoroughly and carefully reading the papers, an obligation was imposed on examinees to moderate or abandon protests in light of the institu-tional constraints placed on examiners tasked with grading thousands of papers. But it is clear that this relationship was not completely recip-rocal, as the examiners obviously enjoyed greater power and, increas-ingly, a lighter grading burden. Shaped by the discourse that arose in the late Ming, the demands placed on the examiners in grading were simpli-fied to the point that all that was required of them was punctuating the essays and adding brief comments. As anecdotal evidence suggests, the

83) For the Jiaqing Emperor’s abstaining from active intervention, see Chu, “Searching in the Dark.”


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range of “acceptable” punctuation and comment was actually wide—candidates often encountered unpunctuated papers with brief or rou-tine comments. They usually took this light grading for granted, unless the examiners had made ridiculous errors—such as mistakenly attach-ing a food order slip to the answer, as in the anecdote recounted at the beginning of this essay—or had written nonsensical comments such as “not careless enough” (qian manhan 欠顢頇).84 Thus, despite the ap-parent openness of the exchange of information, the responsibilities of examiners and examinees were far from even.

Candidates were compensated by the possible fame to be gained once they had fulfilled the somewhat unequal relationship with their examiners, regardless of their success or failure in the examinations. As we have seen, the returned failed papers enabled their writers to subvert the anonymity of the examinations and earn cultural capital through skillful interpretation or fabrication of the comments; sometimes the examiners even cooperated in this by praising papers and blaming fail-ing decisions on their colleagues. It was in fact not rare to see rejected candidates establishing a pseudo-teacher-student relationship with their examiners, in line with the practice prevalent among successful candidates.85 This was not least because the bond between examiners and examinees was based not only on the degrees and offices provided by the state, but also on a shared recognition of the values performed in examination writing, such as personal virtue, classical knowledge, and literary skill. Unless warranted by external factors such as the weight of general public opinion against examiners or the emperors’ support—and this was not often the case—protests against examiners would not only be likely to fail to alter the result, but also risk undercutting the cultural capital that might be gained from careful manipulation of the examiners’ comments.

Even in exceptional cases of protest, candidates were bound by the examiner-examinee relationship built upon rejected papers. With a sense of individual accountability constructed by the information flow through failed papers, candidates directed their protests against partic-ular examiners, not against the system or the state as a whole. Moreover,

84) He Gangde, Chuming meng lu, 92; Zhong Yulong, Kechang huiyi lu, 73. 85) Zhuo Fazhi, “Yu Liu Yongqian fangshi” 與劉用潛房師, in Luli ji, 22.5–6a.

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as the discourse of failed papers was first articulated by degree holders, rather than being a right earned by rejected candidates as a group, chal-lenging the hierarchy of degree holders and non-passing candidates was beyond the range of the latter’s language of protest. As the analysis of examination records suggests, these documents, compiled from the viewpoint of degree holders, helped construct a sense of connectedness between passing and non-passing candidates. Despite their uncertain prospects, non-passing candidates might see themselves not as a group separate from successful candidates, but as members of a pool of poten-tial degree holders.

Although the development of modern examinations after the aboli-tion of the keju system in 1905 is beyond the scope of this article, sketch-ing some trends in the twentieth century will be helpful in highlighting the significance of late imperial practices. First of all, the abolition of the practice of returning failed papers constituted an important trans-formation in the format of examinations and in the examiner-examinee relationship—a transformation no less remarkable than the change in contents, namely, the de-canonization of classical knowledge. This transformation was fundamental—even in the Advanced Civil Ser- vice Examinations (also known as gaokao 高考, not to be confused with the PRC’s identically named University Entrance Examinations) and Ma gistrate Examinations under the Nationalist regime, which imitated the most symbolic practices of traditional keju examinations: now the in formation flow between non-passing candidates and examiners was blocked.86 Examination reports (baogao 報告) and commemorative publications, which were the equivalent of the examination records of old, did announce the identities of the examiners, but without a routin-ized and institutionalized practice of returning rejected papers, non-passing candidates in the Republican era no longer had the same sense of personal interaction with the examiners.87

86) Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi Jiangsu sheng weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao bianji weiyuanhui 中國人民政治協商會議江蘇省委員會文史資料委員會, Guomin-dang de wenguan zhidu yu wenguan kaoshi 國民黨的文官制度與文官考試 (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenshi ziliao bianjibu, 1988). 87) Zhejiang xianzhang kaoshi tekan 浙江縣長考試特刋 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Chinese Research Materials, Association of Research Libraries, 1986); Hebei sheng xianzhang


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It is tempting to attribute this situation to the much larger pool of examinees under the modern schooling system. Yet, since the late impe-rial discourse and practice about returning failed papers had persisted despite the unmanageable number of papers involved, quantity may not be as decisive as it seems. It is also noteworthy that the numbers of candidates taking the gaokao and the Magistrate Examinations in the 1920s and 1930s did not exceed those in the late Qing provincial exami-nations. Withholding rejected papers, therefore, was not a simple logis-tical issue: it reflected a fundamental change in the conceptualization of individual academic performance.

After the introduction of a modern educational system at the turn of the twentieth century, numerical grades created a new sense of deper-sonalized assessment. Achievement in the examinations was now ex-pressed in the form of numbers, which were seemingly commensurable, rather than in punctuations and comments, which obviously bore par-ticular examiners’ personal judgment on particular candidates. Behind the curtain of “objective” standards, individual examiners were disen-gaged from the interpretation of achievement once the grades were given. This is why in most of the grading review processes, papers are reevaluated by a different team of anonymous examiners representing the same impersonal standards.

Numerical grades also enabled the state and the examiners to get a comprehensive view of general academic achievement. In this way, examinees became indicators of broad social issues. In 1921, Shen Jianshi 沈兼士, a prominent scholar in philology at Peking University, proposed a thorough archiving of the answers of rejected candidates at the University’s entrance examination. This archive, which was not meant for the candidates, would help researchers in education who were working to understand “educational problems” and their social origins.88 Similar projects of “scientific” research on candidates’ perfor-mance proliferated throughout the 1920s and 1930s, particularly at Pe-king Normal University, Southeastern University in Nanjing, and the

kaoshi weiyuanhui huikan 河北省縣長考試委員會彙刊 (Hebei: Hebei sheng xianzhang kaoshi weiyuan hui, 1929).88) Shen Jianshi 沈兼士, “Dui Beida ruxue kaoshi weiyuanhui de liangxiang tiyi” 對北大入學考試委員會的兩項提議, Beijing daxue rikan, September 26, 1921.

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Examination Yuan during the Nanjing Decade (1927–1937).89 These re-searchers shared a new concept of accountability that saw the failure of candidates to meet examination standards as reflecting deep-seated “problems”—ranging from general intelligence standards to differences in the regional distribution of educational resources—rather than the educators’ and examiners’ personal responsibility.

This was indeed a sharp break from the late imperial concept of ex-amination performance, in which the general quality of essays in par-ticular examinations, as well as trends in literary style (wenfeng 文風), were often attributed to specific examiners. Examiners in charge were responsible for the “correction” of the candidates’ literary style, just as they were individually accountable, theoretically at least, for the written comments on failed papers.90

For their part, with a shared social identity, examinees in the twenti-eth century, also in contrast to their late imperial counterparts, were more inclined toward collective protest than toward personal negotia-tion. In the 1933–1934 movement against the Centralized Examinations for High School Graduates (huikao 會考), student-candidates from a number of provinces organized collective protests against the KMT state’s policy. They not only criticized the state’s undercutting of the au-tonomy of schools, but even denied the legitimacy of any form of ex-amination as a means of assessment. Even more striking was the language they used to identify themselves. In the midst of the anti-hui-kao movement, around two thousand examinees in Beijing formed the “Coalition of huikao rejected candidates” (Huikao luodi kaosheng da-tongmeng 會考落第考生大同盟).91 Unlike the collective protests trig-gered by unmarked failed papers in the early Qing, the rejected candidates fought to get “opportunity for advanced education” from the KMT government, rather than over the responsibility of particular ex-aminers or education officials to grade examinations fairly. Certainly it was not the abolition of the practice of returning failed papers alone that led to this new form of protest. We cannot underestimate the ef-

89) Yi Min 逸民, “Zhuyi liangzhong ruxue kaoshi de fuchanwu” 注意兩種入學考試的副產物, Duli pinglun 67 (1933). 90) Chow, Publishing, Culture, and Power, 208–9. 91) Hu Kongyin 胡孔殷, “Huikao luodi kaosheng datongmeng” 會考落地考生大同盟, Meizhou pinglun 每週評論 127 (1934): 7–8.


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fects of new media and the identity of “students” as a status group after the introduction of a Westernized education system. Still, the change in information flow through failed papers undoubtedly played an impor-tant part in the relationship between examinees, examiners, and the state in modern examinations.

Documents

Failure Stories: Interpretations of Rejected Papers in the Late Imperial Civil Service Examinations