A woman, a pen, a journey that defies fate and changes life
In the 17th year of Emperor Yonghe's reign, the imperial examination was based on merit, with no restrictions on family status - only men and women were selected.
Shen Yuan didn't believe it.
She came from a poor family in Jiangzhou, and her father was a poor scholar who had been in trouble all his life. All the inheritance he left to her before his death was a box of old books and a sentence hidden in the cracks of the law: "The edict did not say that women cannot take the exam."
When she was fifteen years old, she put on a patchwork green cloth robe, tied up her hair in a bun, and walked into the county government office alone. County magistrate Zhou Mingyuan asked her: "Did you know that in the more than 100 years since the founding of Dayong, no woman had ever participated in the imperial examination?"
She replied: "Since the edict does not explicitly prohibit it, it just allows it."
From Yongxiu County to Jiangzhou Gongyuan, from sixth place in the provincial examination to twenty-third place in the general examination, from being ridiculed by scholars in the street to becoming a female Jinshi at the Qionglin Banquet - Shen Yuan used a pen to knock on the iron door of Dayong Imperial Examination that had not been opened for a century.
Regardless, it just looks good.