Author: Leslie Lee

Cheating in the joints of the field began in the two Song Dynasty and flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties. This is the most concealed fraud method in the imperial examination era, and it is a new cheating trick that appeared after the two preventive measures of sealing and transcribing were adopted in the scientific field, and its tricks are numerous and extremely harmful.

The so-called joint refers to the code for the examiner and the candidate to cheat through specific words on the paper. Northern Song Dynasty Zhen

During the reign of Zong Jingde, the imperial court formulated two examination rules that were of great significance in the history of ancient imperial examinations: one was to blur the name, and the other was to transcribe it. Blurring the name is to cover the candidate's name, place of origin and other items on the test paper with paper paste, so that the examiner who marks the test paper does not know who made the paper at hand; Transcription is after the candidate submits the paper, and the transcription staff hired by the examination room will recopy all the test papers, and then submit them to the examiner for review, so that even the examiner's handwriting can not be recognized by the examiner. However, just after the two anti-cheating measures, such as sealing the name and transcribing the book, there is a new "countermeasure" for cheating? , that is, the joint is handed over to the strip. Specifically, it means that the candidates collude with the examiner to cheat, make an appointment before the exam, and use what words are used as marks in a certain place in the poem in the test paper. To the joints that have been ordered, write them on the slips. After the examiner enters, pay attention to the person he wants to take care of, and admit him by the joint code on the note at hand, and never miss a person when he finds a candidate. Those candidates who have given silver through the joints, even if the donkey's lips are not right in the horse's mouth, they can also be hit, which is the wonderful use of joints. Here we see that in order to prevent the examiner from knowing the candidate's name or knowing the candidate's handwriting and thus cheating for personal gain, the government has introduced a well-intentioned sealing and transcription system, but the cheater immediately came up with a trick to secretly order the joint, which is really a foot high, a foot high! Let's take a look at the tricks of joint cheating.

(1) The Northern Song Dynasty's "Pi Xiuzai"

It is reported that during the time of Zhenzong of the Northern Song Dynasty, the imperial court had just formulated a set of preventive measures such as sealing and transcription, and there were disadvantages in the scientific field. At that time, there was a Hanlin bachelor named Yang Yi, who had a very high reputation, and on the eve of the provincial examination, he specially entertained his fellow villagers who came to Beijing to take the exam. The candidates who were invited to the party were all excited, and they tried their best to flatter during the banquet, some praised Yang Bachelor's famous poems in the world, and this time they must be "Wen Heng" (chief examiner), and some directly asked Yang Yi to give "guidance". Hearing this, Yang Yi suddenly changed color, and said "Pi Xiuzai" in his mouth, and threw his sleeves away. The three words "Pi Xiuya" come from "Shangshu", which is a curse. The townsmen present thought that they had touched a nail, and the smarter ones heard that there was something in the words. Sure enough, a few days later, Yang Yi was appointed as Zhigongju, and several people who used "Pi Xiuzai" in the papers were all admitted.

(2) The joint trick of Qin Hui in the Southern Song Dynasty

Qin Hui, the traitor of the Southern Song Dynasty, has a son named Qin Xuan who is about to take the exam. Before the exam, Qin Hui sent someone to summon Cheng Zishan, a member of the Zhongshu House, into the Prime Minister's Mansion, and only let the servants serve with good wine and good food, but Qin Hui himself did not come forward to receive him. Cheng Zishan was left alone, so he flipped through the inscription marked "Jinshi Qin Xuancheng" on the table, and almost memorized it. A few days later, Cheng Zishan received an appointment to take the entrance examination and learned that Qin Xuan had taken the exam. At this time, Cheng Zishan immediately thought of Qin Hui's deliberate arrangement a few days ago, so he used Qin Xuan's essay as the content of the exam. That Qin Xuan Nature High School topped the list. It should be said that Qin Hui is doing tricks to trick joints here.

(3) The local language "囡" in the Ming Dynasty

In the Ming Dynasty, the disadvantages of dark joints became more and more prevalent. Shi Zai: "In the next season, there are those who enter with joints. In May and June of each subject, the period of employment in the housing examination will be the first to be authentic, or promoted, or to bribe the person to come to power, so that after the appointment of the thorny man, the sub-room inspection is like a coupon and obtained, and each list is issued, no less than dozens of people. "It seems that there are many disadvantages in the thorny area, and there are not a few people who do this.

There was a typical case of joint cheating during the Wanli period of Mingshenzong. It was the sixteenth year of Wanli (1588) in the Wuzike Township Examination, and the Prime Minister Huang Hongxian served as the examiner of Beifu. The examiner received a lot of slips before entering the venue, and when admitting them, he only looked at whether the "word joints" matched, "those who are powerful and have no children will be admitted as sons-in-law, and those who are important will not be sons and grandchildren." At that time, there was a Zhejiang scholar named Li Hong, who bought Huang Hongxian with a lot of money in front of the field, secretly set the joint, and used the word "囡" in Wuditu, which had nothing to do with the context, in both volumes, and was named the eleventh lifter. Under Huang Hongxian, the volume taken by the joints is "the literature and science are false, and the chapters and chapters are false." This caused public anger, "Everyone gritted their teeth when the list was listed, and everyone wanted to spit on Hongxian's face and flog his back." Rao Shenshang, the director of the Criminal Department, impeached him, saying: "Today's evil ministers are as bad as the disadvantages of the scientific field. He bluntly pointed to Chen: "There is no Datong joint who is unscrupulous like Huang Hongxian." ”

(4) The Qing Dynasty's "overall planning", "hookah" and others

1. Incognito in the volume

Using the joints in the imperial examination presided over by the emperor, it can be said that this cheating behavior is inevitable on the spire of the imperial examination. And using the method of incognito as a code is even more extreme. In the 34th year of Qianlong (1769), the court examination was held after the palace examination, and the minister who read the papers submitted to the emperor for admission. Emperor Qianlong opened the seal, looked at the name of the scholar and read the scroll at the same time, and found a problem: the first Yan Ben, there are two sentences in the volume, "The human heart is clear, and it must be strictly handled in the difference between movement and static", and Yan Ben's name is obviously hidden in the text. The second place, Wang Shiwei, has the sentence "Emperor Wei surrenders" in the volume. The third place Bao Zhizhong, the text uses the sentence "including up and down", and the package is half of the word Bao, and it is homophonic. The fifth place Cheng Yuan, the test paper said that "the character of the person who becomes is also", and Cheng and Cheng Yin are the same. Seeing this, Emperor Qianlong felt: "Its handwriting is suspicious, and there is more than one volume, how can it be said that it is suitable by chance?" It seems that this hidden word, what is it if it is not a joint? If it is said that it is not a joint, it does not explain what the words are joints. Emperor Qianlong believed, "Such a proposed approach is not enough to show justice and convince the people." He ordered the Minister of Military Aircraft to re-examine all the examination papers of the court in conjunction with the original marking officers, and the four papers named by Emperor Qianlong were ranked at the end this time, and several ministers who read the papers were "handed over to the ministry."

2. Weng Tong has the heart to plant flowers and flowers do not bloom

In the Qing Dynasty, there were many joints, and even the emperor's teachers were doing tricks. It was the eighteenth year of Guangxu (1892) Renchen Branch Examination, and Weng Tong, the teacher of the Guangxu Emperor, was appointed as the president. Among those who participated in the examination was Zhang Jian, who later became a famous industrialist and educator in modern Chinese history. Zhang Jianqi was bright and studious since childhood, and was admitted to Xiucai at the age of 16, but when he participated in the Lifu examination in the fifteenth year of Guangxu (1889), he was not on the list. Before this test, Zhang Jian and his friend Liu Keyi went to visit Weng Tong, a fellow villager in Jiangsu. As an examiner, Weng Tong has always appreciated Zhang Jian's talent, and he also regrets that he failed to make the list last time. After meeting, there was a greeting for a while, and then Weng Tong repeatedly advised: "Today's situation, it is advisable to coordinate the overall situation." The upright Zhang Jian only thought that Weng Tong was talking about the current situation, but he didn't expect this to be a hint, but Liu Keyi next to him took it to heart. In the first exam, Liu Keyi embedded the words "overall planning" into the problem of the eight-strand manuscript, and when Weng Tong saw this volume, he thought it must be Zhang Jian's, and he didn't read the whole volume carefully, so he criticized it: "Celebrate for the country." "It's the first place in this one. waited until the package was opened to find that the volume was not Zhang Jian's, but Liu Keyi's. Weng Tong didn't know much about Liu Keyi, so he was very frustrated. After inquiring, I learned that Liu Keyi was also a famous person in Jiangnan, so I felt a little calmer, and comforted myself: "It's not satisfactory." In the second exam, Weng Tong found that there was a sentence in a paper that "rode horses and three Hans, and snowflakes were like palms", because Zhang Jian had been to Goryeo with the Qing army, so Weng Tong decided that this volume must be Zhang Jian's and took the first. When I opened the seal, I saw that it was still Liu Keyi. Zhang Jian tried but failed. In the examiner Weng Tong's place, it can really be said that he deliberately planted flowers and did not bloom, and he had no intention of planting willows and willows.

3. The "hookah" of mistaken things

In the cheating of the joint in the scientific field, there are also many self-defeating things about Zhang Guan Li Dai. Here are two examples: First, in the Qing Dynasty Hanzhan Examination, the test paper does not need to be copied, so those who cheat with joints can use their methods to be simpler. During the Daoguang period, a certain Hanlin Academy and Zhan Shifu Cichen will be examined, and the person in charge is Xu Naipu, an important minister in the court, and a familiar old Hanlin begged him to take more care when reading the papers, and try to take it above the third class. Xu Naipu agreed in person and asked the old Hanlin to sprinkle a few drops of ink as a code after writing the volume. At that time, Zeng Guofan was serving as a Hanlin reviewer, and after he finished answering the paper, when he was inserting the pen case, a few drops of ink were squeezed out and accidentally stained on the paper. When Xu Naipu read the papers, he mistook Zeng Guofan's papers for those of Lao Hanlin and took them in the second class. In the end, after Emperor Daoguang's imperial review, Zeng Guofan was listed as the first in the second class and promoted to a bachelor's degree. The old Hanlin, who was not recommended for ink printing, was demoted because of his ranking at the bottom of the list.

Second, according to the late Qing literati Zhong Yulong's recollection, Li Youmei, a scholar from Hunan, once told him such a very sad thing: one year, Li Youmei took the exam, and before the exam, he specially invited a "best" to order the joint. Unexpectedly, Li Youmei's mother-in-law knew about this, her mother-in-law had three sons-in-law, and she wanted the three sons-in-law to win the first place together, so as to glorify the court, so she secretly told Li Youmei's joints to the other two sons-in-law who were also preparing for the exam. After Li Youmei entered, she wrote the word "hookah" into the beginning of the poem: "In the vast expanse of smoke and water, talents are in the bag." The examiner was entrusted with the admission of the paper with the word "hookah", but it was found that the three papers had this joint in succession, and the examiner hesitated for a moment and decided to take two of them, but he didn't expect that it was Li Youmei who was left behind.

4, Lu Xun's grandfather's strips

Lu Xun's grandfather, Zhou Fuqing, was the 15th Jinshi in the third class of the Xinmoke in the tenth year of Tongzhi (1871). In March of the 19th year of Guangxu (1893), Zhou Fuqing, who was the secretary of the cabinet, returned to his hometown due to the death of his mother. In August of this year, in the Zhejiang Township Examination, the chief examiner was Yin Ruzhang, who was the Jinshi who entered the department with Zhou Fuqing. When Zhou Fuqing learned that the main examiner in Zhejiang Province was Yin Ruzhang, he wanted to "seek a joint for his son", and at the same time asked for the children of several relatives and friends, in order to get "reward" from relatives and friends. On July 27, the examiner Yin Ruzhang arrived in Suzhou by boat from Beijing. Zhou Fuqing, who had been waiting here, sent his servant Tao Ashun to board the ship to deliver a secret letter in order to avoid people's eyes, in which he asked Yin Ruzhang to take care of his son Zhou Yongji and other 6 candidates, and secretly used the words "Chenzhong" and "Maoyu" on the joints, and wrote "10,000 yuan of foreign silver" on a piece of paper, which was the price promised to be rewarded. Due to the recklessness of the domestic servant Tao Ashun, Zhou Fuqing's delivery of joints was revealed in public on the examiner's ship. Yin Ruzhang immediately turned his face and denied the person, and sent Tao Ashun and the others to Suzhou Prefecture for interrogation, and several of the people mentioned in the letter were "deducted from the exam" and were not allowed to take the exam. As for Zhou Fuqing, he first fled to Shanghai to hide, and later heard that the imperial court had ordered him to be dismissed, and was investigating everywhere, so he returned to Zhejiang Huiji and surrendered, was escorted to Hangzhou for interrogation, and finally spent eight years in prison, and the Zhou family has been in decline since then.

In memory of those brothers and sisters who couldn't finish their studies because of cheating... �