YOU WERE LOOKING FOR: Civil Service Exams Ancient China
They also developed a rule about who could become a member. This rule was that any officials from the civil service could not be related to the emperor or anyone that was born into elite families. In the Tang Dynasty AD , local schools were created...
What did you have to do to join the civil service? What did you have to be good at to pass your exams? During which dynasty did you have to work away from home? Answers They helped the government run the country It began during the Han Dynasty You...
Exhibition catalogue. Test takers were given a certain amount of time sometimes six weeks and they were supposed to write everything they knew. Ideally, the students with the best scores were chosen for the best positions in the bureaucracy. There were local, provincial and palace exams and they covered a number of topics, including poetry, philosophy, politics and ethics. Passing was said to be more difficult than getting into Harvard. Stephen West, a Chinese literature professor at Berkeley told U. News and World Report, "The magnitude of their accomplishments was impressive. It would be as if a Henry Kissinger was a gifted poet. Or if W. H Auden was also a superb government policy specialist. Each cell contained a bench and table, and housed a nervous candidate. Every precaution was taken to prevent cheating.
Candidates were searched before entering the enclosure, carefully watched while the examination was in progress, and not permitted to leave until it was over. Each examination commonly lasted several days and was of unbelievable difficulty. In , for example, out of more than 14, candidates taking the examination in Peking, only slightly over passed. The reward for success, however, was entry into the honored ranks of the scholar-officials who governed the country.
The essays were largely to do with the content of the Confucian classics - how do you rule the people? You rule them through good, you rule them through example. It's morality that they're being examined on - their ability to cough up gobbets of Confucian morality. The system continued to play a major role, not only in education and government, but also in society itself, throughout Qing times. The most promising teenagers were sent to study under masters in the Chinese capital. They were taught poetry, essay writing and Confucian scholarship. Many students failed. In the year , only two students passed the highest, or jin-shi, test. Scholars sometimes cheated on the civil service exams by writing down answers on a special shirt worn under their robes. There are also many stories in Chinese literature of promising students who failed the test because they were corrupted by women and alcohol. The notion that the Confucian system was based totally on merit and lacked a hereditary element is not true.
Children of merchants, landowners and families with money had an advantage in that their parents could hire tutors to teach them how to properly write Chinese characters and study Confucian texts. Once they attained their position, Confucian gentlemen made sure their sons studied the classics and prepared for the exams. In following centuries the system grew until finally almost anyone who wished to become an official had to prove his worth by passing written government examinations. It is recorded that the emperor himself conducted the earliest exams, posing questions to the graduates of the state academy and determining their role in government on the basis of their replies. From that time until this century, the exam system was central to government in China. Although the nature of the exams changed over time, the system was intrinsically a Confucian one.. Throughout the period from about to , the central imperial government held massive exams at the various capitals of China every three years.
Those who performed best on these exams earned the right to receive government positions; the specific position was determined through a combination of exam scores, personal influence, and available openings. To select the thousands of young men and men only who could compete for these exams, lower level tests were administered annually at provincial and county levels. The aspiring young man could expect to spend several years moving upward through this pyramid of exams.. Some were conducted annually, and others once every three years. The honors thus attained corresponded roughly to our B. This system operated with great regularity until it was finally abolished in Even today the government of China is officially pledged to its re-establishment, though in greatly modified form.
Exam cells Confucian Examination System In late imperial China the status of local-level elites was ratified by contact with the central government, which maintained a monopoly on society's most prestigious titles. The examination system and associated methods of recruitment to the central bureaucracy were major mechanisms by which the central government captured and held the loyalty of local-level elites.
Their loyalty, in turn, ensured the integration of the Chinese state and countered tendencies toward regional autonomy and the breakup of the centralized system. The examination system distributed its prizes according to provincial and prefectural quotas, which meant that imperial officials were recruited from the whole country, in numbers roughly proportional to a province's population. Elites all over China, even in the disadvantaged peripheral regions, had a chance at succeeding in the examinations and achieving the rewards of officeholding.
The uniformity of the content of the examinations meant that the local elite and ambitious would-be elite all across China were being indoctrinated with the same values. Even though only a small fraction about 5 percent of those who attempted the examinations passed them and received titles, the study, self-indoctrination, and hope of eventual success on a subsequent examination served to sustain the interest of those who took them. Those who failed to pass most of the candidates at any single examination did not lose wealth or local social standing; as dedicated believers in Confucian orthodoxy, they served, without the benefit of state appointments, as teachers, patrons of the arts, and managers of local projects, such as irrigation works, schools, or charitable foundations. The overall result of the examination system and its associated study was cultural uniformity--identification of the educated with national rather than regional goals and values. This self-conscious national identity underlies the nationalism so important in China's politics in the twentieth century.
Some scholars estimate that as a result, as much as 40 percent of Chinese males at that time were literate. Having achieved this level of education, the vast majority of boys simply left school and went about their lives. This was true of boys from merchant as well as farming families. Only those from wealthier families or showing exceptional promise and having wealthy sponsors who were impressed by their potential could continue their studies and compete in the examination system.
But young people now have more choices in life. The civil service is only one career path. And the public perception that some bureaucrats are more concerned with their own fortunes than that of the country is leaving an "increasingly sour taste" according to Jonathan Fenby, author of a History of Modern China. The communist mission statement is ruling China for the people, after all. The leadership changed hands in , but there is no sign of a Wang Anshi among them - someone ready to risk their career by turning the bureaucracy upside down. The lowest level of the Chinese imperial administration was the county seat, and in the county seat one took the preliminary examination, which, if passed, qualified one to take the examination at the second level, which was at the prefectoral district seat.
The third-level examinations were given in the provincial capitol, and the fourth and highest level of examinations were given in the imperial palace itself. Theoretically, he was to proctor the palace exams, although in practice he sent someone to represent him in that capacity. Once a Confucian Apprentice passed the local county, prefecture, and institute examinations to become a Cultivated Talent, it was but the first step in the imperial recruitment examinations. After achieving status as a Cultivated Talent, a scholar had to pass the examination of the Provincial Education Commissioner Supervisory Examinations before being eligible for the Provincial Examinations held once every three years. Usually held in the eighth lunar month, they were known as the "Halls of Autumn. The Metropolitan Examinations were also held once every three years, usually in the spring after the autumn provincial examinations of the preceding year.
Those lucky enough to pass the Metropolitan Examinations were known as Passed Scholars. The Palace Examinations were then held about a month after the Metropolitan Examinations. The Palace Examinations were to confirm the number and ranking of successful examinees, all of whom appeared on the list of passing scholars, with the ranking directly determining their paths in officialdom.
There were three grades in both civil and martial subjects of the Palace Examinations. Even a youth from the poorest family could theoretically join the ranks of the educated elite by succeeding in the examination system. The hope of social mobility through success in this system was the motivation for going to school in the first place, whether one was the son of a scholar or a farmer. This curricular uniformity had an extremely powerful effect on Chinese society, and the major impetus for this uniformity was the meritocracy promoted by the civil service examination system. In addition, because the list was issued by the emperor himself, it was called the "imperial edict. It often began with the phrase, "The Emperor, who governs with the Mandate of Heaven, declares that…" and would end with "Let such be known by imperial manifestation. Selected for display here are examination papers, subjects for the provincial examinations, passing lists, announcements of passing, and memorials expressing gratitude in relation to the imperial examinations.
It was only in the Song, however, that the examination system came to be considered the normal ladder to success. From the point of view of the early Song emperors, the purpose of the civil service examinations was to draw men with literary educations into the government to counter the dominance of military men. So long as the system identified men who would make good officials, it did not matter much if some talented people were missed. They wanted to be assured that everyone was given an equal chance and the examiners did not favor those they knew. Successful candidates were rewarded with great prestige. Their families could boast that they belonged to the sole recognized nation-wide elite, and were permitted to fly a special flag at the gates of their family compounds. They could expect that their successful son would bring to the family all the benefits that Confucian education, public service, and deeply entrenched customs of bribery could provide.
Although the examinations were open to any adult male, regardless of birth, in practice families whose members had already achieved high rank through the examinations were at a tremendous advantage in preparing the next generation for success. It was such families who usually possessed the resources that allowed them to excuse their children from all economic contributions to the household in order that they might spend a dozen years or more devoting themselves solely to the study of examination texts. The most important was the Confucian civil service examination, which gave men access to the highest level of government posts.
These exams were based on a thorough mastery of the extensive corpus of Confucian classical texts, with their voluminous commentaries, of political essays composed by exemplary Confucians of the post-Classical era, and of the arts of poetry, calligraphy, and essay composition that marked one as a cultivated member of the Chinese intellectual elite. In addition to a very wide knowledge of the texts and their commentaries, exam candidates were expected to know a certain core group of these texts by heart. The texts that needed to be memorized included the following group, listed below with the total number of words, or Chinese characters, that they include: The Analects
One of the main contributions of the Han dynasty to the future of imperial China lay in the development of the civil service and the structure The Qin dynasty — bce established the first centralized Chinese bureaucratic empire and thus created the need for an administrative system to staff it. Recruitment into the Qin bureaucracy was based on recommendations by local officials. This system was initially adopted by the succeeding Han dynasty bce— ce , but in bce, under the reign of the Han emperor Wudi , an imperial university was established to train and test officials in the techniques of Confucian government. The Sui dynasty — adopted this Han system and applied it in a much more systematic way as a method of official recruitment. They also introduced the rule that officials of a prefecture must be appointees of the central government rather than local aristocrats and that the local militia was to be subject to officials of the central government. The Tang dynasty — created a system of local schools where scholars could pursue their studies.
This system gradually became the major method of recruitment into the bureaucracy; by the end of the Tang dynasty , the old aristocracy was destroyed, and its power was taken by the scholar-gentry, who staffed the bureaucracy. The civil service system expanded to what many consider its highest point during the Song dynasty — Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Almost all Song officials in the higher levels of the bureaucracy were recruited by passing the jinshi degree, and the examinations became regularly established affairs.
After they were held every three years, but only for those who first passed qualifying tests on the local level. During this period no man was allowed to serve in his home district, and officials were rotated in their jobs every three years. Although only the passage of the jinshi made one eligible for high office, passage of the other degrees gave one certain privileges, such as exemption from labour service and corporal punishment , government stipends, and admission to upper-gentry status juren. Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent cheating, different districts in the country were given quotas for recruitment into the service to prevent the dominance of any one region, and the testing matter was limited to the Nine Classics of Confucianism.
The examination system was finally abolished in by the Qing dynasty in the midst of modernization attempts. Learn More in these related Britannica articles:.
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