CH 59

After County Magistrate Qi returned, the yamen posted a notice that the county examination would be held on February 14th and requested for students to sign up at the county government office.

From the tenth day of the 1st lunar month to the 20th lunar month was the Lantern Festival. Those days, Teacher Lin had put the academy on holiday. He planned to properly urge the students in their studies after the festival. But, after seeing the notice, he suddenly felt a sense of urgency regarding the examinations so he asked his son to summon Cui Xie over. For an entire day, he explained and told Cui Xie, one-by-one, the important points regarding essays on current affairs.

Policy essays were nothing more than a matter of knowing current affairs. Or it was just bluntly discussing the current trends, or borrowing analogies from history to describe the present. Ultimately, it all came down to being “pragmatic”. For the past one or two years, the major event in the Imperial court was when Young Khan made incursions into the border cities and the major event that happened in Qian’an was the earthquake. Otherwise, other current affairs included grain taxes. One could never get away from such scope and topics. For these small child scholars, it was not required that they were able to write any policy essays that could stand tall and see far[1]. It was good as long as it followed after the format current Imperial memorials were written in, as well as adding some extensive analysis, that would suffice.

Cui Xie was an individual who had made a lot of blackboard bulletins and disseminated posters in his younger days. As such, he fully understood Teacher Lin’s meaning——It did not matter if the article was well written, as long as one properly kept to their standpoint and concealed any private opinions that were too out of the box, it would be good. If one was not careful and accidentally wrote anything that was contrary to the Imperial court’s stance, even if County Magistrate da-ren favored him, he would not dare to pass Cui Xie.

He lowered his head and solemnly ensured, “Teacher need not worry, this disciple understands what to write and what not to write.”

Teacher Lin took a few sips of tea to moisten his throat, smiled and said: “It is good that you understand. I have prepared a few prompts. When you return home later, you can write one or two essays every day. Upon returning from the vacation to celebrate the Lantern Festival, I will examine your work.”

……Fine, wasn’t it just winter vacation homework?

These were but just a few small essays. Compared to the homework he received in high school for each subject over winter vacation, in addition to a pile of test papers and exercise booklets, one could fundamentally not compare between the two! This was nothing.

Cui Xie carried his homework back home to get started on it. Once he was finished, it was already one week before the exam. Based on his previous experiences with reviewing before an important exam, he could not read any more books during this time. Rather, one needed to ponder over the concepts more and integrate and fuse together all the things he had learned.

Consequently, he partitioned out a small room in the East Wing, treating the homework assigned by Teacher Lin as exam questions, and did four hours of mock exams everyday after returning home from school. 

In the countdown to the examinations, there were only about ten days left, and he became more and more nervous as he reviewed. Even when the County Magistrate’s travel logs had been published, he didn’t even have time to spare to arrange any publicity efforts.

As for the Peace of Mind Study, he just asked Shopkeeper Ji to find someone to take the side profile portrait of the County Magistrate on the book’s envelope cover and turn it into a big portrait, stick it on a wooden board and prop it up outside the store; In each of the reading rooms in the library, three copies of the book was added and promotional posters were posted along the corridor walls; as for the branch opened by Clerk Ji in Tongzhou, similar to the branch, they also copied down a large portrait to hand up and asked for Assistant Liu’s help to promote the product among the great families and scholars.

To be honest, if Cui Xie wasn’t the “Cui Beauty”, he would have really wanted to use the largest font possible to write “Shocking news! Cui Beauty’s high-definition portrait of her private home is exposed!” One didn’t even need to actually match up the portraits in the book, there were bound to be sales.

However, even with such subtle and low-key publicity,  Cui Xie’s《Qi’s Travel Anthology》quickly set off a wave of sales.

The Qian’an County library was the best form of advertisement, any reader with a couple of taels on hand were all willing to fork them out and buy a copy to support the County Magistrate.

At the beginning, the Shopkeeper in Tongzhou was afraid that the subtotal of sales would not be good, so it was sold in bundles with the autumn examination’s weimo essays, the model Imperial examination essays from that year’s examinations. Later, as they continued to sell the book, readers simply bought the book just from looking at the cover and once bought, it was only used as a travel guide or landscape book to marvel at, regardless of the text inside. As such, they simply separated the book from the weimo essays, and promoted it as a colored portrait book with text.

This book was printed truly delicately and exquisitely, just a few days after it came out, merchants who had been eyeing the market for Qian’an colored printed books immediately bought it with them to the capital. Naturally such a book was chased after by literati and elegant scholars alike.

There were no portraits of heroes or beauties in the book, just a clear and wise County Magistrate. But, almost the entire book was printed in color, the paper was thick and snow-white in color, and just by touch, it felt of superior quality. Moreover the articles in this book were fresh, clean and lovely, and the accompanying portraits were all scenes of distant mountains and beautiful waters. When taking it out, the owner would appear to have elegant taste, different from those common people who only read books just to catch a glimpse of  heroes or beauties!

Just after the huishi or metropolitan examinations ended, this book was sold by others in the capital and hence, it became popular. The huishi list of examinees that had passed had not been released yet, and all the juren[2] that participated were not allowed to return to their respective hometowns. With nothing to do in the capital, those from the south or the three provinces along the northern border[3], who rarely had the chance to buy official color-printed books, purchased such books without restraint, with the intention to bring them back to their hometowns.

Qian’an’s four newly admitted juren who took the provincial examinations last fall once again felt the horror of being surrounded on all sides with people fighting over them to the point that they had no other choice but to flee to the Jushan Buddhist Temple.

They promptly made their decision and after greeting their juren seniors from the same county, they fled to a peaceful and tranquil temple located on the outskirts of the capital. The remaining few juren really did not know anything and when they had been grabbed over by others, they had nothing to say. They could only praise the virtuous governance of their County Magistrate who built a county library that allowed people to read books free of charge.

Well-favored, clear, and wise all in addition to a long beard that fluttered in the breeze, the County Magistrate, who concerned oneself with the nation and its people, soon became the representative of good officials in the eyes of the common people in the capital.

The Ministry of Appointments was currently nominating officials below the fifth rank for promotion and with all the limelight on Qi Sheng, even the people in the Bureau of Appointments inevitably mentioned him. The Left Vice Minister of Appointments, Geng Yu, had personally evaluated him and had quite a good impression of him, so he asked the secretary, “What book did he publish? Does it decipher the scripture’s meanings or record the county’s governmental affairs?”

It was neither, but a travel log, and it was even a…..travel log with mediocre vigor of strokes for the calligraphy. But the way the book was printed warmed the heart and delighted the eye. The descriptions of the scenery were comprehensive, and the person was also quite good looking. It was a pity that he had not followed the regular path[4], otherwise, at the pinnacle of his career, he could have become a Prefectural Magistrate or the Chief Minister of the Pasturage Office of the Court of the Imperial Stables.

The Right Vice Minister of Appointments, Li Chun, asked with a chuckle: “Another person from Qian’an? Ever since a Cui Beauty who could print books appeared in Qian’an, how is everyone able to print books now?”

The secretary who had recommended him, Xu Chuan, replied: “Not just publishing books, in Qi Sheng’s articles, there were also mentions of that Qian’an child prodigy who had previously published a book. He wrote an article recording the construction of the Qian’an library and in the first chapter of that article, it was written that the library was a residence bequeathed to child prodigy Cui by his later mother. It used to be a bookstore and had been rented to outsiders. Just last year, he reclaimed it and the residence as well as the book collection were donated to Qian’an county to build a library.”

Geng Yu thoughtfully mentioned: “That day, when Li da-ren and I were questioning him, he didn’t seem to be able to remember the name of the person who donated the residence. Is it possible that someone can forget their own articles that they wrote? Or maybe it was added later on?”

They didn’t know that the the person behind these published books was actually all the same individual, and after discussing for a little bit, they could not guess the truth of the matter. As they talked, one of the Vice-Directors mentioned: “The colored books from Qian’an are indeed better. It is the source of genuine color printing after all. I heard that the Peace of Mind Study who published this book bought the Cui Beauty’s complete set of engraved printing blocks and rough sketches. Their paintings are much better than other stores.”

“Isn’t that the study that also published the 《The Proofread Version of the Six Talents and their Commentaries on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms》? That was printed using the authentic handed-down technique from the Cui Beauty ah! I personally think that the Cui Beauty is living incognito and switched over to become a painter at that study instead.”

“Why would one need to conceal one’s identity? Besides, that store only released up to the tenth volume for the Three Kingdoms and the portraits inside it are all the old ones that were merely just printed a bit more vividly. When the time comes that their volumes surpass the original editions, then let’s talk about whether or not we should buy that store’s edition!”

…

After all was said and done, they still hadn’t decided where to place Qian’an’s County Magistrate. In the end, Geng Yu held onto his name and said: “First, leave this matter to me to handle and nominate a few more people. By the way, just where can one buy a copy of his anthology?”

Secretary Xu Chuan replied, “This bookstore only has branches in Qian’an and Tongzhou. It is not easy to buy it outside, this lower official will bring the copy from my home and bring it over for the da-ren to read.”

By the time they retired from court, Secretary Xu’s book was sent over. The Right Vice Minister of Appointments, Li Chun, held two jobs simultaneously and was also a Reader-in-Waiting for the Household of the Heir Apparent. After court, he still needed to head over to the East Palace. Since the other was not present, Geng Yu could no longer hold a meeting to elect officials so he closed the door and peacefully read the book for a while.

The vigor of County Magistrate Qi’s calligraphy strokes was not particularly strong, but because he had written with authentic scenery from mountains and rivers in mind, the writing style could be considered as fresh and graceful. Paired with the lightly colored portraits littered throughout the volume, both aspects brought out the best in each other and complemented each other well. Occasionally, there was a big double-paged portrait and the characters were extremely elegant and scholarly, glowing with health and vigor. This kind of mature male was precisely most in line with the aesthetic tastes of these scholar officials.

After Vice Minister Geng Yu finished reading the book, the impression he had of Qi Sheng slightly wavered——On that day, he had merely remembered that the other was a meager, minor official without any distinguishing feature or quality and not this kind of beautiful man who was as bright and brilliant as willow in spring.

He shut the book with a complicated expression and felt a strong urge to find Li Yu, the Right Imperial Censor-in-Chief, just to ask what the magistrate had looked like. However, before this thought was put into action, he was summoned by Senior Grand Secretary, Wan An. Wan An personally handed over a file and warmly explained: “This is a disciple of mine, and I ask that you help him arrange him for a position with one term outside the capital. It is best if it is not a destitute area.”

if it is not a destitute area.”

Geng Yu had always looked down on this individual known as one of the three “Long Lived Cabinet Elder[5]”and lightly replied with a “understood”. After accepting the file and taking a look, he could not help but suck in a breath——Just what was with his affinity with Qian’an today? The Ministry of Appointments had just nominated a County Magistrate from Qian’an for promotion consideration, and then he had just read a book printed in Qian’an. Now, as for that young righteous citizen who had donated his residence to the county that had been mentioned in the book, just how did he now have his hands on that youth’s father’s file?

Wan An observed that his expression was off and asked him, “What, do you know this Cui Que? Is it possible that there is something wrong with how he usually executes matters?”

Regarding his disciples, he was indeed somewhat knowing of their limitations as well as their strengths and weaknesses. But on account of their sensibility and because they always acted with filial piety, he turned a blind eye. But Geng Yu lived up to his clan name, he was someone who dared to keep an eye on higher-ranked officials and if Wan An let him dig up a problem on the spot, it would be rather embarrassing.

Cui Que would show filial piety left and right and the number of instances he did so was not small, so Senior Grand Secretary Wan An said in a magnamious manner, “If he is truly unacceptable, then you can simply dismiss him from office, no need to take into account my face as his teacher!”

Geng Yu lowered his head and clarified: “Senior Grand Secretary is overthinking. This lower official had just heard of his son before and was a little surprised upon seeing the name on the file.”

Wan An laughed and said: “No wonder. This Cui Que did give birth to a good son, what was his name again? Is he any good at composing poetry?”

Geng Yu replied: “His son should be called Cui Xie. He did not compose any poems, but donated a courtyard to the county to construct a library and the County Magistrate wrote down such a matter in his anthology.”

Wan An could not help sigh, it seemed that this son was better than his father. His father hadn’t even given him a residence on account that he was the other’s teacher——he hadn’t even seen a single room before! After such a comparison, his favorable impressions of this disciple of his became increasingly weaker and upon recalling how Cui Que was always clashing against his immediate superior, Liu Xu, he thus started doing things in a strictly businesslike manner and said: “Although this Cui Que is my disciple, he is a minor official working under Liu Xu’s Secondary Grand Secretary, I will have to request you to make the arrangements.”

This month, Geng Yue did not plan to make any such arrangements and clutching the file in hand, he headed to the Bureau of Appointments. Calling over a secretary, he instructed: “Insert this file into the batch that is to be promoted next month. This was sent over by Wan da-ren. Find someone to head over to the Ministry of Revenue to make some inquiries.”

Official Cui’s future prospects became a dilemma as his file neither advanced or retreated among the Bureau of Appointments. He only saw that someone came to investigate him but there was no sign of transfer which made him anxious to the point that he hated that he couldn’t just personally go to the Ministry of Appointment and ask just what arrangements Senior Grand Secretary Wan had made for him. Leaving aside the fact that Senior Grand Secretary Wan was not a figure he could hold accountable however he wished, just based on the other’s nicknames like “Long Lived Cabinet Elder” and “Aphrodisiac Master[6]”, he did not dare to even approach the Wan Residence in broad daylight for fear of polluting his own pure reputation. 

With great difficulty, he finally went to pay a visit to his Teacher when no one was in the area, but Senior Grand Secretary Wan purposely stretched the other’s patience thin, not even meeting him. Only a housekeeper came out to wait upon the guests, and he did not see any of that profound affection Cui Que had last time when he had come to pay his respects, with his hands full of presents. The housekeeper gave him a cold and sharp gaze, saying: “Cui da-ren gave birth to a good son, but unfortunately, the son does not resemble the father.”

Cui Que suffered ferociously from this humiliation and narrowly smashed the outer study to pieces when he returned home. Fortunately, he had cultivated a profound foundation of vital energy and was able to resist such inclinations. The next day, he headed over to the yamen and Ministry of Appointments to carefully make some inquiries, and only then did he hear what had happened in Qian’an County.

He originally that that Cui Xie was not good at operating business operations and had sold the bookstore, but he did not expect that at such a young age, Cui Xie unexpectedly had given birth to a stomachful of ideas to climb up higher on the ladder and had given the bookstore to the County Magistrate instead. Relying on the book collections donated from Cui Xie’s bookstore, that Qian’an county had produced three jinshi[7] this year ——two of them were Guo Yong and Wang Pu who had been newly admitted as juren last fall and they had been admitted while the County Magistrate had still been in office. There were rumors that Left Vice Minister Geng da-ren had taken a fancy to the other’s ability to educate and enlighten the people. One did not know whether they planned to transfer him to the capital or deploy him to the south as a Prefectural School Inspector.

Afterwards, the Qian’an County Magistrate wrote an article, printed a book and even lauded that degenerate son of his!

When Cui Que finally figured this  matter out, he was so angry that his entire body trembled and he bitterly wished he could go back to more than a year ago when the aged Old furen had given Cui Xie the title deed to the bookstore. If at that time, he had made the decision to chase after the deed, if the bookstore or even the old residence had been donated to the Qian’an County to build a library in his name, wouldn’t all these accolades be his then?

What kind of son donated a courtyard to the county to build a library and didn’t record the glorious achievement in their father’s name? Instead, that County Magistrate who occupied his family’s property received all the benefits! What kind of reversed principle was this?

Yet, he was not the type of person who would throw his face out to make a ruckus so he headed outside to a restaurant to drink some alcohol to drown his sorrows and think of a way to call his son back to the capital for punishment. In the evening, he drunkenly returned to the residence and called the newly married concubine to serve him and after enduring his fury, he fell asleep. But, his anger and intoxicated state had injured his liver and in the early morning of the next day, he was burning hot until he became muddle-headed and fell ill, unable to get out of bed.

That concubine had not experienced such things before and was so frightened that she went to request an audience with the furen and repeated every drunken confession Cui Que had said last night, including the part where the son had donated the bookstore and that the County Magistrate was being promoted as a result. The concubine then knelt and begged the furen for forgiveness.

How could the furen even bother to care about her at this point? The furen didn’t even want to look after Laoye anymore!

Her entire mind was consumed by the thought that the bookstore should have been the Cui household’s legendary tree that shed coins when shaked[8] or it could have served as a stepping stone for Cui Que’s promotion. She fundamentally did not pay attention to this ignorant concubine in front of her. She reached out her hand and pushed the person away, staggering back to her chambers. Gritting her teeth, she yelled for the servants: “Go, go drag down this dog who dares to deceive the head of the household and beat them with a plank a hundred times! Then send a letter to my parents’ residence——The Master was bullied to the point that he doesn’t even dare to speak, and even servants treat me, the furen, as a fool that they can just play with, I can’t endure such days anymore!”

Footnotes:

TN: New chapter in a really long time! As you may or may not know, I went on hiatus due to family vacation, but after we came back, my entire family got Covid (except for me), so I had to take care of them and coupled with my move to my new apartment, its been quite a busy few weeks for me. I finally had the chance to sit down and translate a bit. I start my internship tomorrow, wish me luck!