Chapter 29: CH 29

Teacher Lin also asked others to go up to explain the scriptures in detail, criticizing and revising essays. Cui Xie numbly returned to his seat to copy the weimo book’s essay prompts. When he stepped down from the elevated teaching platform, the few students who had given him a few glares covertly peeked at him, but this time it was his turn to return the silent treatment with an expressionless face.

Weimo: selection of papers from successful candidates in imperial examinations  or “hall essays”

The first essay was Wang Ao’s essay, Teacher Lin had just talked about it earlier; the second essay was also from the same author, the topic on 《Duke of Zhou’s achievements extended even to the barbarous tribes of the east and north, and he drove away all ferocious animals, and the people enjoyed repose》; the third essay’s prompt was on three sections of Li Dongyang’s essay on the topic of 《From Yao and Shun down to Tang》. Cui Xie unfolded a large piece of paper, placing a pad underneath, copying down the prompts and poti from the example essays in a proper and neat manner. Next to the topics, he then practiced writing the first two essay’s prompts and first two lines. Once he finished writing down the contents from all three sections of the third essay’s topic, he finally switched to a cinnabar brush and after writing the main text, he silently wrote down Cheng Zhu’s annotations. 

Wang Ao (1450-1524) was a politician, essayist and poet of the Ming Dynasty. In this book, it would be around 1469, so he would have only been 19 here. He was considered a master of eight-legged essays.

Li Dongyang: Chinese historian, poet, and politician during the Ming dynasty. He served as an official under four emperors for over 50 years in roles including Grand Historian, Minister of Rites and Senior Grand Secretary, the highest post in Ming civil government.

*Poti or “breaking open the topic’ is the opening of the eight-legged essay in which two sentences of prose are written that function as broaching the topic and demonstrating the test-taker’s knowledge about the title/prompt and its source. It is a writing style in which the main subject is approached directly from the outset. I will be using poti and the phrase “breaking the topic” interchangeably since either versions fit better in certain contexts than the other.

Cheng Zhu school: Collective term for the scholars: Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, the pioneers of Song Dynasty Neo-confucianism

In this era, the three to four character sentence prose scheme was still the main protagonist of the poti. Wang Ao’s first poti consisted of two sentences, and the second poti consisted of three phrases: ‘On the topic of the ancient Sages, eliminating the evils under the heavens, becomes a great merit to the world.’ And as for Li Dongyang’s topic on the sentences ‘From Yao and Shun down to Tang were 500 years and more’, it was of a similar theme of inheritance of the saintly path. His poti was also three sentences: ‘The life of the Sages is impermanent, either pass down principles in the current era or pass down principles in another era.’

He copied all the poti onto the paper, recording the entire essay into his mind’s hard disk. He then went up to return the 《Collected Works of the Cheng Brothers》 to Teacher Lin. After returning to the seat, taking advantage of the freshness of the knowledge and detailed points mentioned by Teacher Lin’s lecture just now, he began to break the prompt on 《The Duke of Zhou desired to unite in himself the virtues of those kings, those founders of the three dynasties, that he might display in his practice the four things which they did》.

The original author, Wang Ao, used the shunpo method to break the topic, so he should also use this method.

In the original text, before this topic, there was a ‘Mencius said’ but Wang Ao just wrote ‘Great Sage’. Then he would also use ‘Great Sage’, and the rest were easy: Duke of Zhou and the Three Sacred Kings were all the ‘Holy Ones’. ‘The Great Sage discusses’…No, he shouldn’t write something too similar to others, just change it to ‘the Great Sage narrates’ instead. The ‘former saint’s’ part also needed to be changed, and he changed it into ‘earlier saint’s’ which was more or less good enough; he then changed ‘group of Holy One’s’ to the ‘multitude of Holy One’s’; ‘gather their virtues’ was changed into ‘Individual collects each one’s prosperity’ from Zhu Xi’s original annotations. The first sentence broke the purpose of the prompt and the latter sentence would break the meaning of the topic. Wang Ao had already said, that ‘pondering all with a worried, diligent, vigilant and stern heart’, so then Cui Xie could just change his statement slightly, just….

Shunpo: method of consecutively writing phrase after phrase that hits the nail of the head (subject), requires a specific order

“The Great Sage narrates the earlier saint’s admiration for the multitude of Holy Ones and follows after their four virtues in magnificent undertaking, walking on a similar path.”

Cui Xie’s fingers tightly clutched the brush handle and he wrote down this sentence very seriously, reading it over several times by himself.

There were no problems format-wise and he had really done his best with the content. He set down his finished poti and then followed up writing another one using the nipo method, inverting the topic starting from the latter sentences and up.

Nipo: literally means reverse/inverse breaking involving where one inverts the order of the sentences

Four things, three kings, Duke of Zhou, Mencius.

How to break it after inverting the order?

Unable to think of it momentarily, he simply opened his notes again and read through the teaching material again, suddenly seeing the line ‘the first sentence breaks the meaning of the prompt and then the latter breaks the purpose of the topic’. His train of thought suddenly switched on with a flash of understanding—or in other words, as long as he inverted the entire poti he had written just now, wasn’t this still keeping in accordance with the nipo method?

But purely inverting the sentence sequence of the poti, the result was stiff and strange, not truly proper writing. He still needed to comprehend the subtleties and meanings from Zhu Xi’s annotations and then change the method of breaking the topic a little. Instead of piecing together a word-by-word interpretation of the text, but rather a general summary…

After a long time, he wrote a new line on the paper, “The path should be unchanging, immovable in time. The Great Sage’s words state that in regards to the virtues of former Holy Ones, later saints will succeed and inherit them.”

The first sentence referenced the phrase ‘as time passes, the situation changes’ and ‘principles do not become different’ from Zhu Xi’s annotations. This first sentence said that the path that Duke of Zhou walked and the path the Three Sacred Kings walked on were originally the same, a mutually-complementary path; and the latter sentences were written about the Three Kings and then the Duke of Zhou, and this all together should be considered as having reversed the order using the nipo method.

Next, there was the zhengpo and fanpo method. Zhengpo was precisely breaking the topic according to the topic’s original wording and compared to the shunpo method, it was basically the same, except the order of breaking the topic did not have strict sequence requirements. Fanpo was to counter-break the topic using the opposite meaning of the topic to synthesize an argument—the original topic was 《The Duke of Zhou desired to unite in himself the virtues of those kings, those founders of the three dynasties, that he might display in his practice the four things which they did》, then would counter breaking the topic just be that the Duke of Zhou does not consider what four things the Three Kings possessed?”

Zhengpo:  straightforwardly breaking a topic

Fanpo: counter break a topic

But Teacher Lin had just said that, lianshang and violations were big taboos. That is to say, repeating what the Sage had already said once or mentioning the words that the Sage had not explicitly included was considered a disqualification.

Lianshang: pointing out the actual names in the opening which is taboo since one cannot directly refer to such topics/original text 

The requirements were extremely strict, could he really break the topic by misrepresenting Duke of Zhou’s conduct like this?

Cui Xie finally came to a conclusion and suspected that Teacher Lin had just forgotten to mention the zhengpo and fanpo methods. After his lecture, in order to prevent Cui Xie from realizing this, Teacher Lin had casually asked him to use the zhengpo and fanpo method, not even thinking about it any further.

Cui Xie broke the topic using the zhengpo method of hitting the nail (subject) on the head, “The Great Sage discussed earlier saints who imitated the group of Holy Ones, following after their benevolent and virtues to properly govern.” The problem of counter-breaking the topic using the fanpo method was simply just left unfinished, and he did not ask Teacher Lin if he could do so.

Besides, when the homework was handed in tomorrow morning, upon seeing that Cui Xie was unable to write one of them, Teacher Lin would definitely elaborate on the topic anyways. If he were to mention this to Teacher Lin in advance, he would definitely give him an additional assignment to practice using the mingpo and anpo method, really wanting to take his little life.

Today, for now, he will be a poor student who could not finish his homework.

Cui Xie was only able to write nine different poti out of the assigned twelve and he spent the rest of the class earnestly copying down the daily quota of practicing twenty pages of the taiga script. After memorizing the last five sections of 《Nan You Jia Yu Zhi Shi》, he headed back home empty handed, without any homework.

Taiga script: finest chancellor script popularized by Shen Du. Shen Du was a calligrapher of the Ming Dynasty, and his characters are well-shaped, his brushstrokes clean and calm.  His brother was similarly well known for his excellent calligrapher, known together as the “Two Shens”. Emperor Yongle praised him greatly and entrusted him with the transcription of the most important official documents.

Here is an example:

Nan You Jia Yu Zhi Shi: The Minor Odes section in the Book of Songs in the Classic of Poetry, there are 10 different articles although there are 3 that are lost to this day.

But, now that he finally started learning how to compose eight-legged essays, it was time to memorize the collections of essays sent by Assistant Liu had gifted him before in addition to the 《Compiled Transcriptions of the Six Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song》gifted to him by County Magistrate Qi…there were too many things to study, too much to do and not enough time.

Eight-legged essay: ‘eight bone text’; style of essay in imperial examinations during the Ming and Qing dynasties in China. The eight-legged essay was needed for those test-takers in these civil service exams to show their merits for government service, the contents often focusing on Confucian thought and knowledge of the Four Books and Five Classics in relation to governmental ideals

《Compiled Transcriptions of the Six Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song》: Technically it is the Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties: Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan, Ouyang Xiu, Su Xun, Su Shi, Su Zhe, Wang Anshi, and Zeng Gong. However, some argue that since three of them (the Su’s) are from the same family, it should be titled the ‘Six Great Prose Masters’ instead.

Cui Xie sighed at the bookcase full of books and stretched out a hand to select a book of the county’s examination collection of anshou essays to browse through.

Anshou: highest ranking linsheng and the top shengyuan who ranked first in the college exam (yuanshi)

Shengyuan: (生員, lit. “student member”), also commonly called xiucai (秀才, lit. “distinguished talent”), an entry-level licentiate who had passed the college exam (there are three classes within shengyuan that is in the pictures below

Lisheng: (廩生, lit. “granary student”), the first class of shengyuan, who were the best performers in the college exam

The tongsheng imperial examinations topics were all isolated and fragmented xiaoti (lesser themes), the poti all very exquisite and strange, and was not compatible with his current interpretation and meanings in dati (greater themes). However, the county examinations were precisely testing scholars on xiaoti. Sooner or later, he would have to become familiar with this way of breaking the topic for lesser themes. As such, he endured and patiently opened the book, only looking at the topic and the two sentences used for the poti for each essay, copying it into a .pdf so that he could take it out at any time.

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Tongsheng: candidate who has passed the college level imperial exam

Xiaoti: lesser themes used for tongshi (apprentice examinations)

Dati: great themes used in provincial and capital examinations

These outstanding essays needed to be read over and the selection of the Eight Great Prose Masters needed to be memorized.  As a transmigrator who did not know how to write classic Chinese essays, he could only start with memorizing the works of others first—as the saying goes, ‘When one learns 300 poems of the Tang Dynasty by heart, one is sure to be able to write poetry’. If he memorized a lot, his essays should be passable and then if he formats the information into the standard eight-legged essay form, he did not dare to say they would be well written, but they would be a neatly organized and well-formatted essay.

After all, Cui Xie had been an honors student for more than ten years, and towards learning, he still possessed quite an optimistic mentality. Immediately, he created a more rigorous and intense timetable, treating as if he was a graduate student completing his dissertation on eight-legged essays.

After reading a few essays, he lit a few bright candles and continued to squeeze in at the bedroom table with Pengyan. One side was analyzing how to break topics on one side; one side lifted the elbow and moved the wrist, striving to sketch out flowing and smooth lines.

When he went to school the next day, he handed over his nine poti to Teacher Lin, saying nothing. After reading over them, Teacher Lin did not say that he was missing three. Instead, he took out a cinnabar brush and drew a few circles on the potis Cui Xie had done, twirling his beard to say, “Since you are a beginner and have no experience poti, I did not ask for much. It is good enough to be able to follow the correct format.”

He pointed to the first essay’s three sentence poti, “This essay was discussed the most yesterday and naturally this one would be your best attempt. Although there are some fragmented phrases, to be able to grasp the point of succession of Confucian orthodoxy from saint to saint, this is counted as a thorough understanding of the text.”

Cui Xie ‘s eyes lit up and he nodded, “It turns out that Confucian orthodoxy is successive! In my heart, I always felt that the Holy Ones were always consistent in their ways of doing things. Their virtues do not change according to current events, and my phrasing was a bit inaccurate as I was writing.”

Teacher Lin slightly smiled and freely commented, “You have only studied for a few days, how many of the Sage’s wisdoms would you have accumulated in your mind? If it is this easy to write essays on the level of tanhua essays, then wouldn’t every scholar under the vast heavens be officials?”

Tanhua: candidate who came in third in jinshi (graduates ranked first class in court exam, usually only the top three individuals)

He pointed a few more things to Cui Xie, helped to revise and refine his poti. In the end, Cui Xie came up with ‘The Great Sage cites the former saint’s mental cultivation methods, the bright succession of Confucian orthodoxy and tradition.’

After finishing going over all three poti and giving examples for each one, Teacher Lin, cool and collected, stated, “I think that you can comprehend the anpo method yourself. By not clearly stating the four things or three kings, this can be considered to be quite perceptive and witty. From today on, when you are breaking the topic, you must test the breadth of your knowledge by using the shunpo and nipo methods, the zhengpo and fanpo methods as well as the mingpo and anpo methods. Every time you attend class, you will practice breaking the topic with these six methods with four different topics. “

Teacher Lin was such an outstanding nobleman.

Cui Xie inwardly sighed, but not one drop of water leaked out from his expression and he respectfully accepted the new homework assignment and went back to his desk. 

Not one drop of water leaked out: water tight/rigorous

Another day of nervous recitation and writing poti passed by. The bell signifying the end of the school day rang, and Teacher Lin unhurriedly left the classroom hall, and the students in the room seemed to come to life, calling out to their friends and walking out of the courtyard.

Zhao Yinglin (grandson of Landlord Zhao) came over and tapped a few times on his table, calling out, “On the day of the Chongyang Festival, there is going to be a poetry meeting taking place on the peak of Solitary hill. Shen xiucai  is the one who organized it and he is Yue shixiong’s cousin. He is taking us few tongsheng over to widen our horizons, is Cui shixiong interested in attending?”

Xiucai or shengyuan are entry level licentiate who have passed the college/county exams

Shixiong: senior male fellow student, apprentice/disciple; peers of the same generation often refer to this (male only)

Biaoxiong: older male cousin via maternal side

Chongyang Festival: Double Ninth Festival or Double Yang Festival occurs on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month which is said to have a lot of yang (sun/warm) energy and is a very auspicious date. It is customary to climb a high mountain, drink chrysanthemum liquor and wear the zhuyu (japanese cornel dogwood) plant (considered to have cleansing qualities). Chongyang cake is popular and incense sticks are burned. Some Chinese will visit the graves of their ancestors to pay respects on this day as well.

’

Pictures of Solitary Hill

Cui Xie looked up, catching sight of a seventeen or eighteen year old youth in a white tongsheng robes, nervously looking at him with a hopeful gaze. This person’s appearance was ordinary and he usually liked to talk about poetry and essays. By lucky coincidence, he was precisely the person Cui Xie suspected attempted to bully him and one of the underachiever’s whose self-esteem had taken a blow by Cui Xie.

The youth’s gaze was somewhat evasive, his words faltering, and that simple appearance was ruined by that expression.

Cui Xie had not yet met any gifted scholars and was a bit intrigued, he curiously asked, “What will the poetry gathering look like? Does everyone need to come up with poems? Do those learned seniors discuss content from the scriptures?”

A few chuckles lightly rang out in the surroundings and the older tongsheng looked at Cui Xie with a half-ridiculing and half-pitying glance. Zhao Yinglin pursed his lips, and looked at him speechlessly for a long while, “Have you never attended a poetry gathering in the capital? This gathering…it is just…” He lowered his voice, glanced at the courtyard vigilantly and leaned next to Cui Xie’s ears, “Isn’t just a place where one rents out a courtyard to drink wine and chant poems, invite some prostitutes and singers to serve wine…”

Cui Xie raised his eyebrows and used a righteous look full of disapproval, condemning Yue shixiong and a few of the tongsheng standing next to him. Those youth blinked frequently, their smiling expressions vanishing, slightly leaning forward as if they were waiting for him to answer.

Cui Xie asked again, “Then does the gathering discuss how to make poems? Or is it just those xiucai who will chant their own verses. If I do not know how to write poems and attend, wouldn’t I just be attending for the music and the wine?”

A senior shixiong grinned and said, “How can one just eat and drink? Even if it is not good, you must come up with a pair of antithetical couplets*, participate in a wine-drinking game, and invite the xiucai and literary courtesans to comment on it.” He took a glimpse at Cui Xie, his gaze stealthily tracing Cui Xie’s face, saying in a frivolous and teasing tone, “A talent like Cui shidi, there is no need to do anything once you get there. I am afraid that all the invited literary courtesans will fight over you…”

*antithetical phrases or duizi: The Chinese couplet refers to two complementary poetic lines adhering to certain rules

Shidi: similar to shixiong and means junior brother apprentice/disciple

Before he finished speaking, he was pulled back from behind, Yue shixiong looked somewhat resentfully at the youth and sincerely asked Cui Xie, “Brother Cui, do you want to go?” It seemed like he was stifling a sentence deep in his chest, and he whispered in a difficult to hear and muffled voice, “We….we can help  you with your homework. These kinds of poetry gatherings are rare, our county’s gifted scholar Gong Yong is also attending. He is extremely knowledgeable and all the teachers in the county say that he will certainly pass his examinations.”

Cui Xie felt genuinely a bit intrigued and wanted to witness for himself what the world of scholars was like, but thinking that he could not even do poetry, why would he attend a poetry gathering? Would he really just drink and listen to music, wag his face in front of the literary courtesans, experiencing the pleasure and feeling of puppy love?

However, there were still some days before the Chongyang Festival, what if this opportunity could be used to promote his new novel?

He secretly thought this in his heart, but was also afraid that the woodblock template would not be carved out in time, so he only replied vaguely, “Thank you for the invitation. It is still early with a few days left, I am not sure whether I have decided to attend or not.”

His fellow classmates grinned as if they understood him tacitly, “Exactly, this is a gathering hosted by Yue shixiong’s relatives and there will naturally be seats for us. It is not too late to make a decision when the banquet begins.”

Yue shixiong said, “I will wait for shidi’s reply.” And then he left school with the other students.

Zhao Yinglin’s residence and the Cui Residence were all but partitioned by just a wall so Zhao Yinglin stayed behind and waited for Cui Xie to pack his things up before going home together. Although this youth’s mind was a bit blunt, easily believing what others would say, when one really got to interact with him, he was a cheerful, carefree and easy going person and he easily left a favorable impression. Cui Xie already had a good impression of his family, so he was especially willing to take care of this young man who had received such affection and expectations of his entire family.

So, when he arrived home, he advised Cui Yuan to wait until they had left for school the next morning and personally visit Landlord Zhao’s residence and report to the elders the bad places that the child was going to.

——Only 600 days until the year after next’s examinations, Zhao shixiong, this is all I can do to help you!

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