After the first handing in the papers, the test papers were gathered by the collectors, and they were sent north along the Yongdao from the number house to a reading courtyard behind the Mingyuan Building, which was the outer curtain part of the marking place. Its core building is the majestic Supreme Court, where the outer curtain officer, who is responsible for the discipline of the examination room, sits here and supervises the preliminary processing of the examination papers.

Under the supervision of the Supervisor, the examination papers are first sent to the collection room on the east side of the public hall, where they are sorted and stacked, the number is counted, and the preliminary selection is carried out...... Any damaged or stained test papers will be taken out and sent back to the public court, where they will be reviewed by the prison officer and transcribed in blue pen. The rest of the qualified test papers are marked with seals, and then ordered to be transferred to the sealing office on the left, and the candidates' information on the test papers are tightly pasted with thick paper...... Before the admission list is announced, no one is allowed to open it privately.

After completion, it is handed over to the largest transcription office, where more than 100 scribes transcribe the candidates' examination papers with a red pen, and if there are typos in the candidates' papers, these scribes must copy them and mark them at the top of the page.

After the transcription is completed, it will be handed over to the reading office next door, and the scribe in charge of reading will check whether the transcribed 'Zhu Scroll' is consistent with the candidate's own 'ink scroll' and whether the labeling is correct. After checking that there are no errors, they are sent to the palm scroll next to the public court, and the scribe among them will number the red scroll and the ink scroll uniformly and send it back to the public court.

The supervisor left the ink scroll to seal, and then according to the number of examiners in the inner curtain, the red scroll was divided into corresponding bundles, and this township examination was eight same examiners, so it was divided into eight bundles, and wrote 'the first bundle', 'the second bundle', until the 'eighth bundle', after the seal was marked, personally sent into the inner curtain.

The supervisor came out of the outer curtain door, went straight to the north, stopped in front of a flying rainbow bridge, the inner curtain on the opposite side had already been notified, the chief examiner and the inner supervisor came to the other end of the bridge, the two sides did not go to the bridge, but a team of sergeants, sent the test papers, and the opposite sergeant took over. The two sides exchanged salutes and went back without saying a word.

Of course, this is not because both parties are not polite, but in order to prevent collusion and fraud by examiners who undertake different tasks, it is strictly forbidden to contact each other between the front and back curtains. The back curtain courtyard, which is responsible for marking the papers, is absolutely reading the entire tribute courtyard, and no one is allowed to enter or leave except for receiving the papers.

The central building of the back curtain courtyard is Hengjian Hall, which is on a central axis with the Zhigong Hall, Mingyuan Building, Gate and Dragon Gate, which is the place where the chief examiner and the same examiner are divided into rooms to read the papers. In addition to marking and admitting, the back curtain also has a very important role, that is, on the day before each exam, the examiner will propose, and the engraving room and printing room will be engraved and sent to the outer curtain early the next morning.

When the test papers were sent into the inner curtain, the chief examiner, Ruan He, said to the eight fellow examiners: "Everyone, let's draw lots." Several fellow examiners went forward to draw lots, and when they got a few lots, they took away the bundle of papers.

However, you can't take the meeting room to it, and you must read the papers in the Jianheng Hall. The chief and deputy examiners sat in the hall, and the eight examiners sat on the left and right. The internal supervisor who is responsible for monitoring the marking of the papers, with a group of supervisors, sits next to the examiners, and monitors the examiners' marking process with wide eyes.

Under the watchful eye of the surveillance officer, the entire Jianheng Hall was quiet. Because these surveillance officers are generally served by Jinyi Wei, the custodian stares at the examiner and does not dare to have distracting thoughts. Of course, as long as the examiners do not talk to each other and do not raise their eyebrows, the monitoring officers cannot interfere with the marking of the papers.

The same examiners are all from Jinshi, under the age of forty, in the prime of life, and their eyes are very good. They must first carefully punctuate each article, and at the same time see if the article is smooth, if it stumbles and has no rhyme to speak of, it will be put aside and sentenced to death.

Only papers with smooth writing and no more than three typos are eligible to be read a second time by the same examiner. In this session, the examiner judged the merits of an article mainly from the four aspects of 'reason, law, rhetoric, and qi' -- 'reason' is the mastery of the scriptures and the understanding of Cheng Zhu's commentary. 'Fa' is the structure of the eight-strand text. 'Ci' is the candidate's ability to organize and express words, and 'qi' is the concentration of the article's thoughts and surnames.

The measure of these four aspects is 'halal and elegant', which means that a good eight-strand essay should use concise, elegant, and smooth language to positively expound the way of Confucius and Mencius and the learning of Cheng and Zhu.

According to this criterion, the examiner judges the merits of the candidate's essay, and writes a comment on each paper, stating the reasons for whether to recommend the paper or not, and he is responsible for his own decision.

The same examiners will write down the reasons for recommending the papers that they think are qualified to be high, and hand them over to the scribes on the side, who will forward them to the chief and deputy examiners at the top, and if there are particularly outstanding ones, they will also 'highly recommend', that is, highly recommend.

In fact, the trade-off of the test paper is focused on the two examiners, which means that whether or not to admit is the final decision of the chief and deputy examiners. If the test paper recommended by the same examiner is approved by the deputy examiner, then he will write a big 'take' word in black pen on the paper, write the reason for the recommendation, and send it to the examiner.

If the examiner also approves, he will write another word 'medium', which is the middle of the match, and the reason for the selection must also be clearly stated, so as to relieve the gift department.

Although the examiner has the right to turn over the test papers that are rejected by the deputy examiner, it will be too embarrassing for the deputy examiner, so the examiner will generally not exercise this power unless he particularly appreciates it...... But an article can be particularly appreciated, and in the eyes of others, it is at least a good level, and it will not be taken without it, so this situation generally does not occur.

As for the papers that have been recommended by the same examiner but have not been accepted, the chief and deputy examiners also need to add comments to explain the reasons for not being admitted.

The time for marking the papers is during the day, and in the evening, when they stop to rest, then the two examiners and the internal supervisor will count the papers together, and after confirming that they are correct, they will lock the Jianheng Hall with three locks. The next morning, they came over together, and the three of them came together to unlock the lock and continue to read the papers.

Generally, the marking time is less than 20 days, and most of the time is used for the first marking. Although in the second and third sessions, the same examiner can continue to recommend. However, in the actual process, the examiner only focuses on the first game, especially the fourth book, and basically ignores the grades of the second and third games. In other words, the first game is selected, and the second or third game only needs to be smooth and reasonable...... On the one hand, this is because the time is tight and the task is heavy, and the examiners can't carefully review all of them anyway, so the more objective eight-strand essay has become the first choice for grading; On the other hand, it is also because this dynasty attaches the most importance to the Four Books and Five Classics and Cheng Zhu's commentary, and it is reasonable to choose Baguwen as the focus.

After half a month of grading, all the candidates' first papers were finally reviewed, and after the recommendation of the same examiner, the two examiners were selected, and a total of 89 papers were selected. But the amount of the Zhejiang Township Examination is ninety-five, this number is certain, neither more, nor less, if it is changed elsewhere, after experiencing the marking that can torture people to death, the examiners will let go in the end and make up the solution.

But here, don't think. Because the examiner this time is the right Du Yu Shi Ruan, this person is as his name, thin and thin, but his eyes are as sharp as an eagle, and he is not easy to mess with at first glance. At least the examiners below have learned the truth of this person...... In the process of marking the papers, he repeatedly reiterated that he asked the examiners to take every candidate's test papers seriously, and strive to select candidates who have real talents and meet the requirements to let them get ahead.

He not only urged the examiners to carefully mark the papers, but also strictly checked himself, made careful and meticulous comments on the advantages and disadvantages of each test paper, and refused to let the bad test papers be filled indiscriminately.

In order to ensure that the good test papers were not missed, he carefully reviewed each of the papers, and it was not until the day before the list was made that he found six good ones from the papers, and gathered 95 people.

The rest of the work is to arrange the rankings, because the examiners are all temporarily selected, disbanded after the fact, and there is no subordinate relationship in the establishment, so no one is afraid of anyone, and there are often fierce quarrels and debates due to differences of opinion.

But not here, because Ruan Que knows the pros and cons of all the articles well, and when judging, everyone has no way to argue, and it only took half a day to arrange the admission ranking, which made the internal supervisor on the side breathe a sigh of relief, wiped his sweat and smiled: "I thought it was going to be delayed." ”

Ruan Yi smiled, held the scheduled ranking, got up and said, "Let's go, everyone, let's go to the court." He stood side by side with the inner supervisor, led all the examiners out of the inner curtain door, crossed the flying rainbow bridge, entered the outer curtain, entered the public court, and worked with the outer curtain officer to dismantle the number and fill in the list.

An hour later, all ninety-five figures showed their true faces. Looking at the place of origin of the admitted candidates, Zhejiang Jinyi Wei Qianhu, who served as the supervisor of the temporary officer, said to Ruan Yi: "We have a saying in Zhejiang, saying, 'get good, look at Shaoxing', Shaoxing's cultural atmosphere covers the whole province, and now I look at it, Shanyin, Huiji and Yuyao have the majority of candidates, which means that your admission this time is fair." ”

The top five admissions this time were all from these three places, but no one questioned the unfairness, but said: "Convincing." It can be seen that the level of candidates in Shaoxing Mansion is super high, which is recognized by everyone.

(To be continued)