The dialogue between Zhen Shiyin and Jia Yucun Jia involves the issue of talent selection in ancient China, as well as the imperial examination system, which will also be used in this aspect later.

Human social life gave rise to tribes, and those who could solve the tribe's food problems became leaders. As the population multiplied, the material needs exceeded the capacity of the place where they lived, and the tribes either continued to expand their territory, or migrated or even separated. The scope of human activities continues to expand, and the tribes continue to increase, at this time, the tribe can recruit good fighters to become the leader, at this time, the main task of the leader is to lead the tribe to resist foreign enemies, keep the territory, followed by the development of production, fight disasters, and improve life. I think that the selection of talents in the tribal period is based on strength, and whoever can make the tribe strong is the leader and talent.

The productive forces continued to increase, the population continued to increase, the scope of human activities was further expanded, tribal wars were constantly staged, small tribes were reduced to slavery and merged into large tribes, and large tribes of equal strength merged, giving rise to tribal alliances, and on the basis of tribal alliances, early states were born. In a tribal alliance or country, the population is larger, the more talented, and how to divide the labor of talent is a problem that must be faced. Therefore, in order to ensure the continued development and growth of the group he belongs to, he has the legendary "Zen Rang", and takes the initiative to give way to people who are more talented than himself. Legend has it that Yao, Shun, and Yu are all Zen as supreme leaders, so other positions can be imagined.

We need to note that tribal wars have formed hatred, prisoners of war have become slaves, the descendants of slaves are still slaves, the number of slaves has increased, and the difficulty of centralized management has increased, and slaves have been assigned to each member of the tribe for separate management, and slaves have become private property. The living conditions of slaves were poor, and the living conditions of slave owners were further improved, and with the development of productive forces, the large slave owners with more slaves gradually became dominant in the tribal confederations or in the early states. Dayu had to mobilize a lot of slaves when he controlled the water, and with such a foundation, his son Qi could "succeed the father and the son".

The tribal alliance led by Xia Qi has become so strong that no other tribal alliance can compete with it, since he has created a "family world", he needs to get the support of all the tribal leaders in the alliance, and he can "succeed the father and the son", of course, he must win over other tribal leaders to do the same, most of the other tribal leaders are unwilling to "Zen concessions", they choose to support the "hereditary" proposed by Xia Qi. Xia Qi combined the patriarchal patriarchal system at the end of the primitive society with state management, and promoted the continuous development of the power distribution system with the primogeniture inheritance system as the basic feature.

The king, who was ordered by heaven to reign over the world, was regarded as the son of heaven, so he was called "the son of heaven". The Son of Heaven is the great sect of the world, and his eldest son is called "Zongzi", who is the successor to the throne and the hereditary heir, also known as the son. The rest of the sons could only be made princes, or stay with the king as ministers, doctors, and scholars. The eldest son of a prince, secretary, doctor, or scholar who did not become a king is the successor to the position. The other sons will be divided into the next ones. In this way, the ancestors are kings, and the descendants have become ordinary people. Liu Bei said that after he was King Jing of Zhongshan, he couldn't eat enough to farm, and he had to weave straw shoes and sell straw mats.

The selection of talents in Xia and Shang does not look at ability, but only at background. If Chen Sheng asked at the time: "The prince will have a kind of Xiangning", the answer would definitely be: "There is a kind". A child is destined to be a talent when he is born, which seems very ridiculous now, but when Xia Qi founded the country, it did play a role in winning over supporters and stabilizing society. The people in the "circle" are always talents, and they are always the managers of the country. However, over time, they continued to be separated, and some people in the "circle" continued to be demoted, and finally excluded from the "circle". The most important thing that the excluded people bring out of the "circle" is knowledge and culture, as I said in the sixth episode of "I Read the Dream of Red Mansions" when discussing Chinese characters with everyone.

Once these intellectually literate people leave the "circle," they will never be able to enter. Talented people at the bottom of the society cannot enter the state management, and those who are in the state management do not have to work hard, as long as their fate is good, they can occupy the pit and not, and after, they still occupy the pit and still occupy the pit after, and in the long run, the country will not be a country. When encountering a wise king, the "hereditary" system will be appropriately adjusted, and talents will be cultivated and selected through education.

By the time of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the talent selection mechanism had improved somewhat, and the three links of school education, talent selection, and official appointment had been linked. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the government schools, the main objects of education are the children of the nobility with the privilege of "Shiqing", send them to the country for further study, cultivate talents, conduct examinations every other year, on the basis of academic success, select scholars, report the selected list, review the moral ability, and then determine the promotion and appointment, which greatly improves the quality of talent and management level.

In the year of the Western Zhou Dynasty, several generations of faint monarchs, exhausted military force and lost national strength, Zhou Tianzi ran out of the central military force that could balance the princes, the princes began to sit large, and the Zhou royal family lost control of the whole country. Following the example of the Son of Heaven, the princes opened schools one after another in order to cultivate their own talents, and the objects of education were no longer limited to the nobility, and some capable commoners were absorbed, trained, selected and appointed. Civilians who had been trained and did not get appointments opened private schools when they had the knowledge and culture, which in turn promoted the progress of education, and private schools gradually emerged and continued to expand the target of education.

In order to strengthen their own power, the princes and doctors of various countries paid a wide range of people and competed to raise scholars. The scholar became a social class, rising in status and influencing day by day. The practice of cultivating scholars began to prevail, which created a large number of outstanding talents at that time, further promoted the development of private education, promoted the prosperity of academic thought, and created conditions for the contention of a hundred schools of thought during the Warring States Period.

Qin Xiaogong changed the law to become strong, appointed Shang Ying, and implemented the military merit system, which mainly includes two contents: First, all those who have military merits, regardless of their background, class and class, can enjoy the rank of knight and become an official. Second, the hereditary privileges enjoyed by the clan nobles will be abolished, and they will no longer be able to obtain high-ranking officials and fiefs based on blood relations alone, as in the past. Under the historical conditions at that time, the military merit system showed great vitality until Qin Shi Huang swept through the six mergers and annexed Kyushu, and the military merit system was the main mechanism for Qin to select talents, which was more superior than the style of raising soldiers in Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao and Wei in the same period.

After the establishment of the Han Dynasty, the world was unified, the country was gradually peaceful and stable, the military merit system and the style of raising soldiers did not meet the needs of talent selection, and Liu Bang began to implement the election system in the eleventh year of Gaozu of the Han Dynasty (196 BC). This system was originally a system of employing supplementary officials, including the emperor's conscription, private recommendation, etc., and gradually evolved into a probationary system.

The probation system is roughly divided into two categories: one is the regular subject, the most important subject is filial piety, and each state and county recommends filial piety and honesty every year according to the proportion of the population, and the standard of filial piety is "to stand up for people and take filial piety as the foundation, and to be honest in government as the basis", and "filial piety" and "integrity" are the basic conditions for becoming talents. The other type is the special department, which is the emperor's temporary designation of the selection criteria and names according to the needs, and the subjects are set up as you like, and the most important subject is virtuous and square, that is, to recruit people who can "speak out, and advise", so as to open up the way of speech, and correct the mistakes of the emperor. In addition, there is the Ming Jing Department, and the Ming Jing is proficient in the scriptures, and the reading is good. "Jing" originally referred to the pre-Qin classics, and since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty respected Confucianism, "Jing" specifically referred to Confucian classics. There are also subjects such as yin and yang, the art of war, etc.

At the beginning of the implementation of the probation system, it was able to embody the principle of selecting and appointing talents, and at the same time, it greatly promoted the formation of the social atmosphere of studying Confucian classics and the development of education. The premise of probation is the recommendation of the official in charge, and there is no objective evaluation standard in the recommendation. If you want to attract the attention of officials, let him see you, recommend you, and reputation is very important, so in order to become a celebrity, some people sell their reputation, praise each other, cling to the powerful, and bribe and ask for trust, resulting in declining morale and false investigations. In order to reverse this situation, in the first year of Emperor Yangjia of Hanshun (132 AD), on the basis of inspection, examinations were added, Confucian scholars took the Confucian classics, and scribes took the examination of the rules and regulations. If you want to pass the examination, you must study hard, and the school has become an auxiliary institution for selecting talents.

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the inspection system was manipulated and used by the gate lord clan, they swayed the social opinion at that time, and the corruption in the process of recommendation and examination was serious. Cao Cao did not come from a family of famous scholars, and his grandfather happened to be a member of the group of eunuchs who opposed the famous scholars. Many celebrities looked down on Cao Cao and confronted Cao Cao's regime. Therefore, Cao Cao not only had to win over some celebrities to cooperate with him, but also had to suppress the local clan forces represented by celebrities. After Cao **, Cao Pi adopted Chen Qun's suggestion and implemented the "Nine Grades Zhongzheng System" as a supplement to the inspection system at that time.

The "Nine-Rank Zhongzheng System" is a policy whereby the central government (Ministry of Officials) directly sends people to the state or county to be large and small central officials, and the central government recommends talents, and the central government reviews and selects talents. The county has a large zhongzheng, and the county has a small zhongzheng, and the small zhongzheng in the county divides the well-known people in the jurisdiction area into "nine grades" or "nine grades" according to their virtues and talents, and reports them to the big zhongzheng, and after the big zhongzheng verifies, reports to Situ, and finally reports to the Ministry of Officials for review, and after the review, they are used as standby candidates for appointing officials of all sizes according to their grades.

This situation seems to be to bring the right to recommend and review talents to the central government, which is conducive to cracking down on local gate valve clans. On the other hand, it has made it easier for the central wealthy families who are in power, and they gradually control local and even central elections. Those who have low official positions or failed to be officials of the local family are declining, and the status of the central wealthy family of vested interest groups is further consolidated, and in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the powerful family of the gate lord clan has developed to the peak, and the selection of talents pays special attention to the bloodline and ignores the moral ability. As a result, the development of school education has regressed. Therefore, some policies are good when they are proposed, but they become worse and worse in the process of implementation, and to a certain extent, they will be replaced by more advanced and scientific policies.

After hundreds of years of war in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Emperor Wen of Sui Yang Jian unified China, he continued to fight against the power of the gate lords, and the scholar system gradually collapsed, and Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty abolished the "Nine Grades Zhongzheng System" to maintain the privileges of the scholars in the third year (607 AD), implemented the talent selection system based on examinations, and began to implement the imperial examination system. In the Tang Dynasty, the transition from the "Nine-Rank Zhongzheng System" to the imperial examination system was completed, and the imperial examination selection was fully implemented.

The so-called imperial examination system is a selection policy in which the central government or the emperor personally conducts (sub-subject) examinations and admits talents without recommendation. The imperial examination in the Tang Dynasty was divided into three levels, namely the township examination, the provincial examination, and the official examination. Only those who pass the examination, open competition, and selection at all levels, and pass the official examination are appointed.

The Song Dynasty basically followed the imperial examination system of the Tang Dynasty, and carried out reform and innovation, with the following aspects: First, the palace examination system was established, and the emperor directly participated. The second is to stipulate the examination cycle, and the township examination, the general examination, and the palace examination are held once every three years. The third is to limit the power of examiners and formulate a series of measures to prevent cheating in exams.

During the Liaojin period, the imperial examination system was not valued, but it was only set up for the Han people, and it became a means to win over Han intellectuals.

The Yuan Dynasty continued to reform and innovate the imperial examination system: first, it clearly determined the specific date of the examination. It also stipulates that there will be three examinations, each of which will be separated by three days. The second is to clarify the scope of the examination, the scope of the questions is "Analects", "Mencius", "The Mean" and "University", and the scope of the answers is Zhu Xi's "Notes on the Collection of Four Books and Chapters and Sentences".

On the basis of following the old system, the imperial examination system of the Ming Dynasty was further improved, mainly in the following aspects: first, in the seventeenth year of Hongwu (1384), the system of "three-year competition" was officially stipulated, and the township examination was held in the "year of the competition", and Xiucai could participate in the township examination, once every three years, on the 9th, 12th, and 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, three examinations, each of three days. It is autumn, so it is called "autumn test", also called "autumn squirt". Those who have passed the township examination can participate in the second year's examination, which is also once every three years, on the 9th, 12th, and 15th of the second lunar month, and there will be three exams of three days each. Therefore, it is called "spring test", also called "spring test". Second, the Ming Dynasty stipulated that the examination paper must be written in eight strands. Thirdly, the examination process has been changed to four stages. In the Ming Dynasty, on the basis of retaining the township examination, the meeting examination, and the palace examination, the children's examination was added.

The Tongsheng Examination is a selection competition to obtain the qualification to participate in the imperial examination, including the county examination, the government examination and the hospital examination, and the system of the Tongsheng Examination is more complete in the Qing Dynasty.

The county examination is held in each county, presided over by the county, and the candidates who participate in the county examination must go to the county ceremonial room to register, we know that the central government has the State Council, which corresponds to the county government in the county. To register in the gift room, you need to fill out the registration form, such as place of origin, name, age, physical health, and the resume of the three generations of ancestors, etc., which is similar to filling in the school registration form now, but you do not need to fill in the gender, and women cannot take the exam. After filling out the registration form, you need to find four candidates who are preparing to take the exam at the same time, and then these five people jointly guarantee each other, sign, draw and pledge, and find another student who has already passed the children's examination as a special guarantor. It is so complicated, mainly to ensure that the candidates are from the county, to prevent impersonation, but also to ensure that the candidates have not been dismissed from office for three generations, have not served a criminal sentence, and also ensure that the candidates are innocent and are not descendants of untouchables such as advocates and slaves, and also to ensure that the candidates are not mourning and filial piety for their parents. Then, take a seat with the stamp on the cover of the exam paper, a single room, and take four consecutive exams.

(End of chapter)