If the day Fan Jin wins the national examination, will it be the beginning of the peak of his life?
This book was born out of "The Scholars", but it focuses on Fan Jin's "other side" after he passed the imperial examination. The 57-year-old Fan Jin finally passed the imperial examination. He thought he would be "a farmer in the morning and an emperor in the evening", but unexpectedly he stepped into the more dangerous officialdom of the late Ming Dynasty.
At that time, the Ming Dynasty was in turmoil, the factions were fiercely fighting, the eunuchs and Donglin were at war with each other, and Liaodong was at war. In this huge meat grinder, the old scholar Fan Jin is no longer the crazy laughing stock, but has been carried by the torrent of the times, from studying politics in Shandong to being a part-time job in Nanjing. Not only did he have to face the opposition of his colleagues and the greed of his superiors, but he also had to survive in the cracks between imperial power and eunuch power.
This is a dark humorous epic about "reincarnation". See how a pedantic old scholar shed his green shirt in the Game of Thrones and became stained with the blood of officialdom. Finally, in the torn between ideal and reality, he completed a lamentable "answer sheet".
Reader comments
This book "When Fan Jin Passed the Imperial Examination" is a profound elegy that I dedicated to "The Scholars".
I tried to tear away the absurd comedy surface of "The Successful Examination" and expose the bones of the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty. Fan Jin is no longer the funny lunatic described by Wu Jingzi. He has become a mirror - reflecting how the imperial examination scholars were transformed from naive and pedantic in the meat grinder of power to tactful, cowardly and even cold-blooded bureaucrats step by step.
From the quagmire of Shandong to the prison of the capital, every character is struggling in the torrent of the times. Yang Lian's staunchness and Fan Jin's perseverance constitute my most complex emotions towards the word "Confucianism": both respect for idealism and compassion for the cruelty of realism. This is not only the second half of Fan Jin's life, but also a slice of the spirit of an entire dynasty in its twilight years.
This book "When Fan Jin Passed the Imperial Examination" is a profound elegy that I dedicated to "The Scholars". I tried to tear away the absurd comedy surface of "The Successful Examination" and expose the bones of the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty. Fan Jin is no longer the funny lunatic described by Wu Jingzi. He has become a mirror - reflecting how the imperial examination scholars were transformed from naive and pedantic in the meat grinder of power to tactful, cowardly and even cold-blooded bureaucrats step by step. From the quagmire of Shandong to the prison of the capital, every character is struggling in the torrent of the times. Yang Lian's staunchness and Fan Jin's perseverance constitute my most complex emotions towards the word "Confucianism": both respect for idealism and compassion for the cruelty of realism. This is not only the second half of Fan Jin's life, but also a slice of the spirit of an entire dynasty in its twilight years.