In the imperial examination in the second year of Jiayou's reign (1057), the examiner was Ouyang Xiu. This list included Su Shi, Su Che, Zeng Gong, Cheng Hao, Zhang Zai, Zhang Heng and other top talents who influenced the literary, political and intellectual history of the Northern Song Dynasty. They were praised by future generations as "the first list in the imperial examination for a thousand years". There are not only stories about talented scholars (such as Ouyang Xiu mistakenly judging Su Shi's paper as second), but also complex teacher-student relationships, fierce disputes over literary styles (Ouyang Xiu suppressed the "Tai Xue style"), and the ups and downs of life after the exam.
