The Kingdom That Never Sleeps CH 015 Suddenly Looking Back…
The southeast corner of Zhenbao Pavilion was close to a small river. From the meandering river came the sound of rushing water, and the carved windows were actually open. The dazzling sunlight shone along the window edge and was reflected on a square of high stand made of Chinese cedar.
Chinese cedar was inherently expensive, and even someone from a family like Madam Wang's found it extremely precious. Yet it was placed in the store. This Chinese cedar high stand was covered in brocade silk handkerchiefs embroidered by the top seamstresses in Gusu Prefecture hand by hand. They were stacked layer by layer and in the center of the handkerchiefs, there was a crystal clear jade bowl.
Filling the jade bowl was the intoxicating essential oil.
Jewelry inlay and petal embellishment. Anyone who looked at the objects in this corner would feel that they were extremely expensive. Most of the ladies who entered the store stayed a distance away from it when they saw it, for fear of accidentally breaking anything. Many people didn't know what it was and asked the shop assistant standing by.
"This is called Golden Wisp. It has a similar effect to aromatherapy, but it doesn't need to be so complicated. Simply put a drop on your clothes or jewelry, and the scent will be fragrant and last for a day."
The shopkeeper clapped his hands, and two shop assistants immediately came out from behind the counter. Each of them held one end of a scroll and slowly opened it.
Madam Wang read out the words on the scroll: "The moths are like golden wisps of snow and willows, and the laughter is full of hidden fragrance. Searching among the crowd for him a thousand times, but suddenly looking back, in the dim light there stands that person. Searching among the crowd for him a thousand times... What a wonderful ‘searching among the crowd for him a thousand times’! Oh, this signature is actually Liang Bowen, Liang daren!"
"It is actually Liang daren’s personal inscription."
"Is this Liang daren's new work? Oh, no, it's the work of a poet named Xin Qiji. ‘The moths are like golden wisps of snow and willows…’, this is referring to this Golden Wisp?"
The shopkeeper had the assistants mount the scroll right above the wall of the lobby. At the same time, the madams and ladies of Gusu Prefecture were already going crazy about this Golden Wisp.
Searching among the crowd for him a thousand times, but suddenly looking back, in the dim light there stands that person!
The young ladies recited this sentence with shy expressions on their faces. Customers who could afford the Golden Wisp were from wealthy families, which usually hired private teachers to teach their daughters how to read and write at home. As for this poem, even if you were only literate and have not read the Four Books, you would still feel intoxicated and charmed when reading it.
Instantly, the expensive Golden Wisp was snatched up by the ladies of Gusu City.
The shopkeeper was a little suspicious: "Did I mark the wrong price? The price of this Golden Wisp was written wrong?"
Of course he made no mistake.
A masterpiece of poetry that could be passed down through the ages, coupled with Liang Bowen’s inscription. If it didn't sell well, then it would seriously be a disappointment to Tang Shen's marketing campaign. What was more, he personally went to the Zhenbao Pavilion to design the packaging and presentation of the essential oils.
In the Zhenbao Pavilion, the madams and ladies from wealthy families were very fond of the Golden Wisp, while those from lower backgrounds could only look at the essential oil in the jade bowl and reluctantly stay away. However, soon, they discovered a light pink paste-like object placed next to the essential oil.
"Oh, what is this? It looks delicate and smooth, and it is also placed on the brocade. Is it also an object as good as the Golden Wisp?"
The shopkeeper came over immediately and said with an apologetic smile: "Madam, this is called scented soap..."
Zhenbao Pavilion was newly opened, and there was a huge flow of people.
Although the ladies in the boudoir were literate, their study of poetry was not that profound. They were simply intoxicated by the romance of the poem, but no one noticed that the poem was only half written.
Liang Manor, Tongde Lane, Gusu Prefecture.
Tang Shen carried a box of scented soap and essential oils, and a bookcase on his back, and entered the gate of Liang Manor with a grimace.
Liang Song had been waiting for a long time.
Tang Shen handed the box of scented soap and essential oil to the steward.
Liang Song: "Tang juren's family powder shop opened again today?"
Tang Shen nodded: "That's right. Sir, when I came here, I heard from Yao San that all the people in Gusu City had gone over. When they saw the calligraphy written by you, teacher, they were all dumbfounded. They passed it on word of mouth and simply could not forget it."
Liang Song glanced at him: "If you hadn't blackmailed me, insisting I write the words before you would tell me the author of the poem, I wouldn't have inscribed it for you."
Tang Shen blinked innocently.
That's right, Liang Song was one of the four great Confucian scholars in the world and had an outstanding literary reputation. For ordinary people, even asking him to give some advice would be as difficult as climbing the sky, let alone asking him to write special inscriptions. The attitude of the Song Dynasty towards merchants was pretty good. Scholars could engage in business, and merchants could also take part in the imperial examinations. It was not as harsh as later generations. But that didn't mean Liang Bowen would be willing to write an inscription for a makeup shop.
When Tang Shen shamelessly asked Liang Song to write an inscription, Liang Song almost kicked this young son (the only student he accepted after reaching old age), out of the study door, or preferably into the pond in the yard.
"Can't you have some proper aspirations?!"
But Tang Shen was such a thick-skinned fellow. In his previous life, when his professor scolded him for submitting his paper late, he always said nice things to muddle his way past it. He directly took out Xin Qiji's poem, and sure enough, Liang Song's eyes lit up when he saw the poem.
"Did you write this?" Just as he finished asking this he said, "No, it's impossible. You, a scoundrel, can't create this kind of poetry."
Tang Shen, who was just about to answer modestly and not be a plagiarizer: "...”
Liang Song carefully mulled over the poem and said: "This is only half of it, there is still another half. Where did you get this work?"
Tang Shen had already made up a lie, saying that this was a poem given to him by a down on his luck wandering scholar who accidentally came to Zhao Family Village and after drinking his fruit juice, used it as money to pay for the fruit juice.
Liang Chan: "‘Looking back suddenly, in the dim light…’ Only a great scholar who had experienced the vicissitudes of life and death could write such words and phrases. It's a pity that Xin Qiji, that fellow scholar who sees through the ways of the world, is not known, and I have never heard of him either.”
In order to get the other half of the poem, Liang Song inscribed it for the Zhenbao Pavilion of the Tang family.
When Tang Shen came to Liang Manor, he was in a hurry. He didn't get to take a look at Zhenbao Pavilion, but he was not worried about the sales of the essential oils and scented soaps. He took out the two articles he had just written yesterday from his bookcase and gave them to Liang Song for review.
The article was the eight-legged essay, which was indispensable in every exam in ancient times, from county level examinations to palace level examinations.
However, this eight-legged essay was not as easy to write as later generations thought. The structure alone was divided into eight parts: “breaking open the topic”, “receiving the topic”, “beginning discussion”, “initial leg”, “middle leg”, “later leg”, “final leg” and “big knot”. (TN: opening, amplification, preliminary exposition, initial argument, central argument, latter argument, final argument, conclusion—>more details can be found on Wikipedia)
The question topics for the eight-legged essay all come from the Four Books and Five Classics. It stood to reason that ao long as you were familiar with the Four Books and Five Classics, it should not be difficult to solve the questions. But it was never that simple. Among the questions in the eight-legged essay, there was a very difficult intersecting question, which was to disassemble two unrelated sentences and put them together and directly use it as the topic question.
In the previous dynasty, there was a county magistrate who gave a top-notch intersecting question in the tongshi (TN: exam taken by tongsheng), which stumped all the scholars in that test. The title of the topic was "Mi Zi's Wife and Zi Lu". This sentence was originally from "Mencius": "Mi Zi's wife and Zi Lu's wife are sisters." As a result, the last five characters were removed, and all the candidates were dumbfounded.
Mi Zi’s wife and Zi Lu…
No matter how you write it, it was about an extramarital affair, which must be punished with drowning in a wicker basket!
Tang Shen originally wanted to take the test casually. Gusu Prefecture was a place where talented people from all over the world gather, and it provided a large number of jinshi talents for each imperial examination. Other wild mountains and ridges dare to come up with such weird and bizarre questions, but Gusu Prefecture could not. Gusu Prefecture was similar to the major college entrance examination provinces of later generations. It was nothing to stump the scholars with the questions but they were afraid that these scholars would become high-ranking officials in the future and make trouble for those who set the questions back then.
Therefore, the test questions were destined not to be too biased, and Tang Shen had a golden finger for easily memorizing everything, so taking the tongshi would definitely not be a problem. With only three months left, he planned to study seriously, but he did not plan to study desperately.
Liang Song could tell at a glance that his apprentice was "pleasure seeking" and without saying a word, he took him directly to the examination hall for the next year's tongshi.
This was a ten-foot-square courtyard, just behind the Gusu Prefecture County Office.
Tang Shen walked around and looked at his future examination venue, but didn't feel anything was wrong.
Liang Song said: "Each county in Gusu Prefecture has set up its own examination venue. Now that you have arrived in the prefecture city, you will take the examination here. Last year, 150 people applied for the tongshi. Do you know what this means?"
Tang Shen was stunned for a moment, then he realized: "So many!"
This examination venue was only about 30 meters wide and 30 meters long. But it had to accommodate more than 100 people?
Liang Song looked at him and said mildly: “So many? What if I told you that these people will enter the examination venue before dawn and can not go out until dusk. There is no toilet in this examination venue, and everything must be done in the examination booth. Hehe, you little scoundrel, are you thinking of handing in the paper in advance?"
Tang Shen's face had already turned green. When he heard the words "no toilet", he realized the seriousness of the matter.
"You can indeed hand in the paper in advance, but after you hand it in, your paper will be put aside. No matter how good you are and have the talent to be zhuangyuan, it will be difficult for you to pass this exam."
Tang Shen: "Then… where do we eat?"
Liang Song asked in surprise: "Eat?" Then, in a calm voice: "I heard that more than ten students fainted last year and failed to finish the exam."
"Did they faint from hunger?”
“Some fainted from the odor. There were also people who fainted from hunger because of the odor."
Tang Shen: "...”
Whoever wanted to take this exam could take it!
Think about it, a place the size of a small square would be used for square dances by aunties a thousand years later, but now it would be used for more than a hundred people to take exams. From morning to night, you had to eat, drink, and go to the toilet here. No matter how healthy your stomach was, you still had to go to the toilet at the end of the day, right? After all, you had to eat something.
Imagine that you were eating a dry flatbread that you brought with you. It was extremely unpalatable and difficult to swallow. At this time, the person next door suddenly took a pot and started shitting. This distance was closer than the squatting pits of later generations!
This was such a odorful sentence!
Tang Shen's mind wandered too much, and he felt uncomfortable all over.
Liang Song suddenly said: "The tongshi is divided into three examinations, the county examination, the prefecture examination and the academy examination. I seem to have remembered something. The top ten in each examination will have special treatment. They can take the exam in the building. It is at least better inside than outside." He pointed to the county office lobby.
Tang Shen's eyes lit up.
Liang Song smiled and said: "Where you place in the exam, Little Tang Lang, it all depends on you."
TN1: Imperial Examination Ranks: tongsheng (county level)—>xiucai (prefecture level)—>gongsheng (all gongsheng are xiucai but not all xiucai can become gongsheng)—>juren (provincial level)—>gongshi (all gongshi are juren but not all juren are gongshi)—>jinshi (palace/highest level, divided by third rank, second rank, and first rank. First rank includes tanhua(3rd), bangyan(2nd), zhuangyuan(1st))
TN2: Examinations and their resulting rank: tongshi (divided into county exam=tongsheng, prefecture exam=xiucai, academy exam=gongsheng)—>xiucai/gongsheng, xiangshi—>juren, huishi—>gongshi, dianshi—>jinshi