For a family with a bright son and money for tutors, there was
no realistic alternative to the prestige of government position. As
literatus-in-chief, the emperor himself oversaw the system's highest rungs,
personally approving abstruse exam questions on Confucianism's finer points.
Even for those who failed, indoctrination in the exams' orthodoxy still defined
the acceptable purpose, parameters and precedents of literary activity. Rejects
still wrote, tutored, and aspired to the refined ideal of a long-gowned
literatus, like Lu Xun's pathetic protagonist Kong
Yiji. And for well over a millennium before their 1905 abolition,
the Imperial Exams and Confucian classics remained a cultural gyroscope of
remarkable stability, a civilizational compass for the literati ruling class
that survived wars, revolutions, barbarian invasions, and numerous dynastic
collapses.
This literature-government link permeates down to the most
elemental levels of language and culture. Consider the ideogram 文 (wén). The character -- as resonant as "Tao" or "Ch'i" -- connotes writing, inscribing, delineating,
patterning, ordering, rationalizing. It crops up in words relating to written
language like 文章 (essay), 中文 (written Chinese),文盲, (illiteracy)
and 文人, (a literatus). But it is also integral to words denoting
systematized knowledge like "culture" (文化),
"civilization" (文明),
"civil servant" (文官),
"astronomy" (天文), "hydrology" (水文) and
the name of cultural progenitor and noted politician King Wen (文王; ca. 1152-1056 BC), famed for his orderly rulership and
keen aesthetic sense. Emperor Qin
Shihuang (antagonist of the 2002 Jet Li film Hero) was known for many
brutal reforms in forging a centralized state.His standardizing writing across the empire is a tale often retold, as
in a famous
story analogizing court officials to writing brushes. The message:
both are tools, to be used as vectors of state power.
In modern China, entire cities nearly
shut down for the gaokao exam, the do-or-die college test
that is the Imperial Exams' modern counterpart. References to tests and
scholar-official culture likewise remain a staple of bedtime stories, soap
operas, regional theaters, aphorisms, art, newspaper headlines, and even
cuisine.
Diners nationwide still tuck into bowls of fondue-like
"Crossing-the-Bridge Noodles." Legend credits the dish's invention to a dutiful
wife hoping to keep ingredients fresh on the long walk to an isolated island
where her husband crammed for the exams.
Once upon a time, official ceremonies announcing successful
examinees positioned the highest-ranking applicant before a statue of the
mythic turtle Ao. Today, the phrase "Standing alone by Ao" simply means
excellence in any field.
Towns across China are still strewn with stelae commemorating
local lads who triumphed in the exams and became famous officials. Even the
Chinese analogue to English's "speak truth to power" presupposes a government
stipend: "do not hold your tongue for five piculs of grain."