CH 41

Cherished disciples kept close to the bosom like Cui Xie were naturally treated differently from others. After finishing grading homework for the rest of the students, Teacher Lin instructed them to study by themselves and only took Cui Xie into the inner room with a fire kang [1], telling him to sit by the kiln and listen to his personal counselings. 

The teacher and disciple duo now had tacit understanding: the purpose of learning was purely focused on passing this examination this time round. Therefore, Cui Xie did not even bother learning poetry: the requirements for composing poems differed from composing essays. Poem verses emphasized being clear and concise. The scriptures were interdependent on dualism and antithetical couples which also had to be written in a circular yet indirect and tactful manner. Learning too many poems written by talented scholars could easily influence the essay’s syntax.

Teacher Lin first took the “previous” homework written by Cui Xie and said, “Fortunately, the article you composed is closely related to the Sage’s chapters and teachings, the usage is also interspersed throughout for every point made. This writing style is on the path of imposing and grand righteousness. It is just that I do not think your words are elegant and tactful, and writing with such air is like taking the path of ancient Tang and Song prose.”

“But the eight-legged essay [2] method is the convention for composing essays and it is written for the examiners to look at. If the examiner does not like this type of ancient prose, he will disdain your writing for being excessively simple and unsophisticated. Therefore, the main text of the eight comparative legs must be made carefully and neatly done with beautiful essence, bringing back the impression that the quality of the essay is better than the text.”

Cui Xie diligently took careful notes, honestly admitting: “When this student first came to this county, the County Magistrate da-ren said that essays should be born out of ancient compositions and asked me to memorize the 《Compiled Transcriptions of the Six Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song》[3]compiled by Teacher Zou Yangzi. This student has memorized too many of the articles and unconsciously brought out stylistic traces of ancient texts when writing.”

Teacher Lin indifferently questioned, “How many articles have you memorized?”

Cui Xie lowered his eyes, gazing at the snow white pages, he replied, “I have already completely memorized and familiarized myself with it.”

The《Compiled Transcriptions of the Six Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song》had a total of 320 articles. Cui Xie had started memorizing at the end of Leap Year August. At the beginning, he insisted on memorizing three new articles everyday. In the next few months, he had been too busy with homework so he reduced it to two and he finally finished memorizing during winter vacation. Not only did he memorize all the way through at once, but he also strengthened and consolidated his memory on it according to the Ebbinghuas forgetting curve.[4] During this time period, there were only a few days in which he stopped memorizing new articles and he still had to review older texts after blowing the candles out at night. At most, Cui Xie had to memorize more than 20 new articles a day and now he still had to review more than a dozen old articles every day as well.

At times, when he thought back to his current situation, he didn’t know how he could persevere and endure any longer. But he knew that in the future, he would need to continue to learn and memorize, because the Imperial examination facing him was the best….actually, it was the only path he could take.

Teacher Lin felt faintly emotionally moved and sighed, “ I did not expect you to have such ambitions. It is not wrong to memorize ancient compositions. From the poti [5]to the ruti[6], it is necessary to be refined and powerful, to capture the entire article in one go. It is not necessarily bad to imitate articles from the ancients. But when it comes to the eight comparative legs in the essay, it is necessary to be neat and precise, have a polished writing style while paying particular attention to the cadence of rhythm and tempo. Ancient texts have the advantage of ancient prose, but contemporary prose also has the advantages of contemporary prose. Don’t blindly admire the past and suppress the present.”

Cui Xie’s reverence and awe of the eight-legged essay far outstripped his awe for ancient prose. At any rate, these ancient essays had been randomly memorized, scattered throughout his education since the start of middle school. This eight-legged essay style was a high-level of workmanship that had already lived for more than 20 years and hadn’t even been thoroughly studied yet, how could he dare to belittle it? Cui Xie’s attitude was excellent, “This student understands, I will pay attention to sculpt my words well.”

Teacher Lin said, “But, do not excessively sculpt out overly elaborate prose, if it is too delicate and extravagant, it will result in an inferior result.”

……Is this a two-way block?

To sculpt was incorrect, but to not sculpt was also incorrect, then how was one supposed to write it? Writing a conventional composition was practically like making a plan, but one hadn’t even written it before feeling crushed!

Teacher Lin let out a thoughtful sigh, “When you get to the examination room, it depends whether or not you have the luck to perfectly suit the examiner’s preferences. If you do happen to do so, you can get selected even if you close your eyes while completing the test. Not being able to have such luck will be like a bride marrying to into a household with a fickle husband and harsh, demanding mother-in-law; Quiet and inelegant is not right, grave and dignified is not right, the allusions used is incorrect and not using any allusions is not right either…..whatever you do is wrong.”

Unexpectedly, there was a trace of hidden bitterness and resentment in Teacher Lin’s consistently solemn expression. It was as if he was reminiscing over a certain memory of an examiner trampling and oppressing him down. Cui Xie could not help but peep a glance at Teacher Lin. Teacher Lin was somewhat able to detect this change, so he concealed his expression with a sip of tea and slowly said, “The County Magistrate regards you with importance, thinking of it, as for your county examinations, this step should not be a problem. But, it is just that the prefectural exam and dao[7] exams, one will need to try to fathom what articles the County Magistrate and the Official who wrote the question usually compose as best to cater to their preferences.”

When Teacher Lin mentioned this, Cui Xie recalled that County Magistrate Qi liked to write essays. He had once even been told by the Bookkeeper boy at the yamen, that once the honorable County Magistrate published a collection of essays, the boy would buy a set for himself. Since now Cui Xie had a bookstore, if he wanted to analyze what the main content of the examinations would be, then one simply should just print some books for County Magistrate Qi?

Besides, the 《Shen Garden Poetry Collection》could sell more than 200 copies and once Qi daren[8]’s travel notes were packaged into a hipster style, they should be able to sell a lot.

Didn’t scholars all like to pay particular attention to distinguish oneself through ‘virtue, one’s service and one’s writings’[9]? Although he was unable to fish up some political achievements for County Magistrate Qi and have him recorded down as a famous official in the Qian’an hall of fame, at least his essays could be passed on for later generations to read. In the future, when the local chronicles were compiled, maybe the compiler would record him down in an essay spanning half a page in the 《Literature and Arts》volume.

Cui Xie’s mind had wandered off for a while and he soon woke up from his stupor. He stared at Teacher Lin, fearing that he might have missed something. Fortunately, Teacher Lin himself was immersed in his own little world of resentment and grudges against some unknown examiner or preliminary imperial examination itself, hence, did not notice Cui Xie’s abnormality.

Cui Xie picked up his brush and randomly jotted down a few notes. When Teacher Lin returned from his trip down memory lane, seeing that Cui Xie had written down the requirements he had just told him now, he nodded approvingly and continued, “Ancient essays are mainly divided into two parts: couplets and prose. Contemporary essays also consist of two components: couplets and prose. At the beginning, starting from the poti to the Exordium[10], prose analysis should be used. As for the eight comparative legs in the middle, they are similar to ancient parallel prose, but do not have so many requirements and are good as long as the text and meaning exist simultaneously and are harmoniously contrasted. In between these eight comparative legs, there were transitional prose sentences and finally, the full essay was ended with a prose text where concluding remarks are made. In the end, the subject under discussion, was composed entirely of the Scriptures’ teachings.”

This time, Teacher Lin did not show Cui Xie the Collection of the Cheng Brothers and instead wrote a short model essay, pointing out for him, “The article must be able to convey and carry the subject matter, and needs discussion borrowing the Ancients’ voices to show your own voice, all in these eight comparative legs. Among them, one or two sentences must be ‘amplification’ or chengti [11]. This is what the Ancients so-called, ‘elucidation of the theme’ that transitioned into the central part. One must write on abstract or theoretical principles, not on realism. One must also buckle down on the prompt to let out one’s own discussion to revisit the entire essay’s potential.”

Teacher Lin’s essay theme came from 《The Analects·Ba Yi》and the prompt was “The Master said of the 《Shao》 that it was perfectly beautiful and also perfectly good”. The second, minor comparison of the amplification chengti was to lead into the qijiang or preliminary exposition, to demonstrate the meaning of how the《Shao》music displays the great Shun’s flourishing achievements [12] and magnificent virtue. There was no mention of any word such as ‘beautiful’, but rather , by using the imagery of reed pipes and bamboo flutes playing in perfect harmony in addition to dancers wielding great battle axes and feather plumes, these dual aspects were respectively used to the greatest extent to commemorate Shao music’s[13] cheer and happiness. This firmly addressed the prompt’s top half by mentioning and explaining how the ‘《Shao》was perfectly beautiful’

Prior to transmigrating over, for many years Cui Xie had believed that Shun music was just a guqin song. Upon reading the line ‘When the Master was in Qi, he heard the Shao, and for three months did not know the taste of meat’, he had never felt a sense of that same emotion. It was only after reading a lot of books that he realized, the other party had witnessed a large-scale dance drama at zero distance from the stage. In the Eastern Zhou dynasty where there was no Internet, no movies, and not many books to read, Cui Xie supposed that after watching it, one could reminisce about it for three months.

Of course, as for forgetting the taste of the meat, that could be thrown out the window.

Cui Xie used his fingertips to rap a beat onto the table, rhythmically reciting these few sentences over and over again. He then exclaimed in admiration, “Upon reading these two phrases from Teacher, it is like my heart has melted and merged in harmony among these characters, a sense of tireless reading.”

Teacher Lin smiled indifferently and the corners of his lips tilted up slightly. He pointed to those two couplet pairs and said, “These two phrases use the technique of splitting one into two, the beauty of Shao music is divided into the beauty of sound and the beauty of performance. If you exchange the meaning of a prompt with a singular meaning, just supplement it with some outside thoughts beyond the topic. Either one is positive and one is negative, or one is bright and one is dark. They must mutually echo and expound with each other to interpret the topic, but one cannot just explain the topic in one step.”

With a flick of his fingertips, Teacher Lin passed over the following prose sentences and explained, “After mentioning one or two comparative sentences, one can use three or four prose sentences to mention the prompt again, as to ensure that the essay sticks to the topic in all respects. In this way, the upper and lower parts will be integrated, and it will be unlikely that it is unorganized or roundabout. If the preceding ruti has already pointed out the entire subject for discussion, then you can also skip this step.”

After the prose  section, there was a pair of parallel sentence pairs that had similar content to that of the previous comparison pair–nowadays, this was simply and honestly called the three-to-four ratio.

In these two comparisons, Shao music was compared to the song of phoenixes and the performance was compared to the multitudes of beasts rising in dance. [14]Crudely speaking, the three-to-four ratio was just a one-to-two comparison and the 《Shao》in the topic was said to be perfectly beautiful. However, the song of phoenixes and multitudes of beasts rising in dance originated from the Confucian Scriptures, having different meanings. Naturally, it is referring to the Sage ruler’s world of principles.

Therefore, these two sentences not only describe the music and the dancer’s posture and movement as they dance, but it is also a bridge between the past and present. One step forward, it secured the topic and wrote out the 《Shao》music’s well-disposed and virtuous nature.

Teacher Lin lightly rolled his neck back and forth, silently reciting those two sentences in a manner that clearly indicated he was very pleased with himself. He then advised, “The three-to-four ratio is the backbone of the entire composition. To follow the past and herald the future[15], switching from the topic’s first half to the second half, one must revolve to the next in an agile and stable manner. Or use two or three sentences, or five to six sentences, no need to be lengthy. After that, use a few prose sentences to answer the second half of the prompt. Five or six sentences is considered to be a supplement to the three-to-four ratio in the first half and the meaning of the second half of the question will be written.”

“These two sentences are the ‘elucidation’ part of the ‘elucidation of the theme’. It is able to carry on the content mentioned in the three-to-four ratio and it can also be taken one step forward to further expound the meaning of the prompt. The beginning of the five-to-six ratio must start with an empty word[16] and to continue with the preceding part of the text, one must employ words such as ‘Building upon’, ‘but’, ‘as if’ or ‘the reason’; If it is unfavorable to break up the three-to-four ratio as such to derive a new meaning, so just use words like ‘and’, ‘moreover’ or ‘to predicate’.”

In the essay, he followed along the central two comparative pairs, beginning with the phrase ‘Building upon the beauty of the sound’.  It remained a comparative sentence involving the two aspects of voice and appearance. To go one level further, it was a thorough explanation that penetrated to the very core of Shao music in which it was not only beautiful due to its music and dance, but also in its virtue of honesty.

Out of the total eight comparative pairs, there were a total of six pairs that had been finished, and only the last two legs were left in addition to the prose ending. Seeing that there was hope in class being dismissed, Cui Xie roused his vigor to stretch out the notebook and lifted it so that his brush tip grazed on a new page of white paper as he waited for this last point to be written down.

By this time, Teacher Lin had become a bit more relaxed, pointing to the essay’s last comparative sentence pair to say, “After the five-to-six matching pair ratio, the meaning of the essay has been almost exhausted, so the seven-to-eight pair comparison will once again return to the topic, echoing the the entire text as a whole.”

The main point of the last two comparisons was to condense, converge unceasingly and to extract the uninterrupted essence that causes one to continue to reflect and ponder over. After all, there was still a conclusion that needed to be drawn below, so one could not really end on these two comparisons.

“In the past, there were regulations that made everyone give up on making these two last comparisons, however, last year in the huishi[17] examinations, a chengwen or model essay came out that consolidated the full topic with the last two comparisons, extracting out deeper thoughts. This type of examination essay is the newest composition style. When taking the examinations, one must follow the latest chengwen paradigm. When copying previous authors, focus on just cultivating one’s training of thought and calligraphy, not the outdated structure it is presented in.”

At this point, Teacher Lin’s expression had completely dissipated and loosened, and it felt like the end of a lecture. He stood up, stretched out his limbs and then said to Cui Xie, “ The conclusion will be left for you to finish. You can use a few concluding remarks here, or you can use more than a dozen sentences. Express your own opinions based on the topic and there is no need to imitate others.”

Cui Xie recorded this down on a piece of paper, straightened his waist and picked up Teacher Lin’s essay to study it seriously.

Teacher Lin paced twice around the inner room, rejuvenating his muscles and bones and then seeing that the sun was rising to about mid-sky level, and there was a slight rumbling in his belly, he instructed, “I will end the lecture here for today. When you return home, use this essay’s topic and imitate it to write another essay. I will not ask that you compose a good essay right away. As long as the structure and format is accurate and the sentences are rigorous and neat, that is good enough.”

Seeing Cui Xie happily promising to do so, Teacher Lin remembered one more matter. As he strided out, his foot that was about to step out halted and he pointed to the Collection of Chengwen on the table to direct CUi Xie, “Since you can memorize the《Compiled Transcriptions of the Six Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song》, from now on, you can memorize some famous contemporary chengwen or model essays to memorize, savor the rhetoric as well as the unity and coherence of the writings.” 

Although Cui Xie focused on the 《Four Books》these days, he had not lagged behind in terms of studying the essays of the Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song. Everyday before sleeping, he would review a dozen different articles according to the scientific tricks of memory. Once it became a habit, there would no longer be any need for any fear of memorizing the article. What’s more, the eight-legged essay had a particular style in this era and it was guaranteed to follow according to the order of poti, chengti, qijiang…all the way to the big conclusion in one orderly sequence. This kind of format cadence and scheme was better to memorize than comparative prose.

From the table, Cui Xie found a collection of essays he had not read before, directly asked to borrow it in front of Teacher Lin and then returned to the academy classroom for self-study.

At lunch, Pengyan delivered freshly steamed flying buns and stir-fried chicken, stir-fried shredded pork, red braised pork, and stewed tofu with yellow sprouts. Cui Xie was still staring at the paper with both of his eyes and his brain was full of antithesis couplets. Weighing every word of the comparative couplet of the top half and filling in the bottom comparative phrase, he merely pulled apart the steamed bun to dip it in the ordered dishes’ soups and just delivered it into his mouth without knowing what he was eating.

The Master heard 《Shao》and did not know the taste of meat for three months. As a primary school student, writing the essay of 《Shao》 could cause him to eat without tasting the food[18] for the whole day. 

It was quite easy to skimp and produce a half-hearted essay, and once Cui Xie stood up, he found out that his cervical vertebrae and lumbar vertebra all seemed as if they were about to snap in half, slightly creaking and crunching with just the smallest of movements.

Cui Xie blew on the paper until the ink was half-dried and rolled up the draft papers. He was extremely rejoiced that there was no need to learn these things in all of his previous 20 years of living. The fighting strength of Confucious and Mencius was comparable and even stronger than Lu Xun, Zhu Ziqing, and Lao She combined[19]. If he had started learning how to compose these eight-legged essays, it was estimated that before attending university, he would have already had a protruding lumbar disc, with no chance to even grow to 1.8 meters tall in height.

Footnotes:

TN: Hi everyone!! After a much longer break than anticipated, I have finally sorted out through some things and finally had the time to translate as well as edit. The footnotes alone took me more than an hour to format :’)), but I just did it on the train back home. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I will try to start posting regularly every week for TMD now. For those in my patreon, I am hoping to get a few more chapters translated over break for you guys!

Huge Announcement: We have set up a kofi and patreon account! If you would like to support us or get early access to advance chapters for Blood-Sucking Empress OR TMD, those options are available for you (in support us page)! I have just added a patreon tier for Transmigrating to the Ming Dynasty’s Imperial Examinations in which patreons can have access to a google document with ALL of my advanced translated chapters for the novel. Since I am a college student, there should usually be at least 10 advance chapters in the document at a time, but depending on my schedules, there may be fewer or more. I’m currently extremely busy, but once some holidays come up I will try to translate a few more advance chapters for y’all! But, I will still post each week with the same schedule. Thanks!