The imperial examination was an important way to select talents in ancient times. When did the specific origins be verified. However, it is generally believed that the imperial examination began in the Sui Dynasty, prevailed in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and developed to its peak in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang once stipulated: "Chinese and foreign civil servants are promoted from the imperial examinations, and those who are not imperial examinations should not be given official positions." This also promoted the imperial examinations to North Korea, Vietnam and other places in the Ming Dynasty.

At the same time, Zhu Yuanzhang also set the "Imperial Examination Entrance Examination" and made strict regulations on the levels, levels, regulations, etc. of the Imperial Examination, which turned the Imperial Examination into a standard examination system.

According to the "Imperial Examination Enactment", the imperial examination is divided into five levels: children's examination, college examination, provincial examination, communal examination and palace examination.

To put it bluntly, it is a qualification examination. Only children who pass the examination can be qualified to obtain fame and fortune.

The college examination is the initial level of fame and honor examination. After passing the college examination, you can become a scholar with fame and fortune.

The provincial examination is a threshold for scholars to become officials. Generally, only by passing the provincial examination and becoming a juren can one become a formal official.

The imperial examination can be said to be the most important part of the imperial examination, because after passing the imperial examination, you can get a title as long as you don’t have any surprises.

To put it bluntly, the palace examination is a ranking battle. Gongshi usually becomes a Jinshi, but the ranking of the third-level Jinshi needs to be finalized through the palace examination.

The imperial examination became a spring examination again. According to the "Imperial Examinations" regulations, the imperial examination started on the ninth day of the second month of the provincial examination. There were three exams in total, each exam for three days, and the exam was completed until the end of February 18th.

Most of the people who participated in the examination were juren, and students from the Imperial College can also participate after passing the assessment.

As for the number of people taking the exam, it depends on how many places the emperor gives. After all, the imperial examination requires a lot of things to prepare. The most basic thing is that every candidate must have a test stand, and each session has to be given a basin of charcoal fire, three candles, and a stack of test papers.

There are not many people in this matter, and if there are more people participating in the exam, it will be no more.

Therefore, the number of people in each imperial examination is generally around 1,500 to 2,000, while the number of places in the two capitals and thirteen provinces of the Ming Dynasty is about 100.

However, this time, Taichang broke the convention and doubled the quota.

In other words, he recruited nearly 4,000 candidates!

This made Gu Bingqian and others miserable.

Nearly 4,000 candidates, they have to prepare more than 10,000 basins for charcoal fire alone!

There are also candles, which require more than 30,000.

There are also test papers, and hundreds of thousands of copies are required to prepare for all sizes!

As for the examination room, it is the simplest, because there are many examination room in the tribute court in Beijing.

In order to cope with the provincial examination, there were more than 13,000 examination houses in the Gongyuan Courtyard of Beijing. Moreover, the famous prime minister of Wanli, Zhang Juzheng, also specially changed all examination houses into brick and tile structures, which were much more solid than the previous wooden examination houses and were much easier to clean.

Basically, you just need to go in and sweep the floor and wipe the board.

Taichang attached great importance to this provincial examination. After the Chinese New Year, he had to personally inquire about the progress of the provincial examination preparations almost every morning after the New Year. Moreover, once each progress was completed, he would take the Grand Secretary of the Cabinet and the Six Ministers to conduct a careful inspection.

The first item to complete is to clean up the imperial examination shed, which is the number shed in the Gongyuan, Beijing.

When Taichang heard the news, he immediately summoned all the Grand Secretary of the Cabinet and the Six Ministers to the Gongyuan of the Capital.

This is the first time he has been to the Beijing Gongyuan, but he is familiar with this place, because the Gongyuan is just opposite the armor factory, it is so big and terrifyingly large.

Accompanied by Gu Bingqian, Huang Liji, Cui Chengxiu, Xu Guangqi and Bi Maokang, he walked into a room with a chance to see it and was shocked.

To put it bluntly, this room is a three-sided wall. There is a door at the entrance. The door indicates a certain font size. This character is sorted according to the "Thousand Characters Text", such as the font size of the sky, the font size, the font size of the earth, the font size of the Xuan font size, and the yellow font size.

The number room has no roof, and when you walk in, you will see rows of number sheds.

This number shed is where candidates take the exam, and each number is hung with numbers drawn from the heavenly stems and earthly branches.

At this time, Taechang couldn't help but sigh in his heart that it was really not easy to take the imperial examination!

This room is only about one meter in front, back, left and right, and there are only three walls. It is empty and has no walls facing this side of the aisle.

The purpose of this is naturally to prevent candidates from cheating. However, in such a icy and snowy weather, sitting in a small room without a door to answer questions is really cold.

Moreover, after each exam begins, the candidates must stay in the narrow room for three days and two nights, eating, drinking, defecating, and urinating in this space of less than one meter!

He really couldn't imagine how these candidates survived these three games and nine days.

It is rumored that people often die in the imperial examination. If they are in poor health, they may not be able to get out when they go in.

It seems that the rumor is true. In such a cold day, it is really possible that people will be frozen to death in the shed.

Taichang stood in front of the shed and sighed, then said to Gu Bingqian: "Prepare more charcoal and try to keep the charcoal fire in the brazier of all candidates burning."

When Gu Bingqian heard this, he couldn't help but complain.

Your Majesty, do you know how much charcoal is needed for a brazier to burn for a day?

If there is no fire for nine days, you can't bring in a few charcoal as big as a mountain!

Of course, he would never dare to complain in his heart and contradict the emperor.

Taichang didn't care about that much, he just took these people to stroll around the tribute courtyard and then went back to the palace.

This made the eunuch party bosses somewhat puzzled.

What does the emperor mean?

You said you attach importance to this test, and you don’t have to pull us all over here to accompany you around here, right?

What's the exam room for inspection? Isn't it just rows of number rooms?

Taichang is actually numbing these people. The reason why he emphasizes the ability to test every day is to make these people think that his attention is the ability to test.

How could these people think of it? He threw all the tests to Xu Guangqi and Bi Maokang to prepare, and he was preparing to deal with these guys.

After the palace trial, start!

This day really passed quickly. All the yamen began to formally handle business on the 20th day of the first lunar month. By the ninth day of the second lunar month, it was less than twenty days. Taichang had tormented these eunuch party leaders for half a month, and the imperial examination was about to begin.

At this time, the 30,000 infantrymen in the Shenwu Camp also returned to the capital.

Taichang explained in the morning that these Shenwu Camp infantry recruited them to serve as the number army, which means taking turns to be on duty in the examination room to deliver tea and hot meals to all candidates.

This does require a lot of people. The huge tribute school and nearly 4,000 candidates, even if they take turns two shifts a day, they will need at least tens of thousands of troops.

The eunuchs did not think about the action. They just thought that the emperor really attached great importance to this test.

Taichang and everyone prepared for nearly twenty days, and the test finally began.

Next, cheating.

As for how to cheat, it is actually very simple. He just needs to send the deputy examiner Xu Guangqi and Bi Maokang to the number room for inspection.

If Liu Zongxiang, Sun Yuanhua, Song Yingxing, Song Yingsheng, Cheng Yuandan and others need "special care", Xu Guangqi will go over and take a look. If he pretends to inspect, he is actually just remembering what they wrote on the test paper.

In this way, even if the name is sealed and then copied by Yulu hand, he can easily recognize these people's test papers.

Bi Maokang cared about those who needed to be dealt with, such as Wu Kongjia, Zhang Douyao, etc., and some relatives and friends of the eunuch party.

These guys actually went to find Wei Zhongxian before the exam, thinking that I don’t know?
Chapter completed!