In 2010, 22-year-old Fan Jin took the provincial examination naked, thinking it was just one of many options in life. I never imagined that this "next time" would last for seventeen years, from the youthful youth to the middle age when policies were relaxed. He witnessed the epidemic era when 30 people were scrambling for the three unlimited positions to 3,000 people fighting for it. He witnessed the shadow cast by a 20-point gap between pure test-taking geniuses. He also brushed the application papers into muscle memory in the gaps between the village committee duty room and the night shift of the auxiliary police.
This is not an inspirational drama about coming back from a humble family. Under the absolutely transparent examination rules, Fan Jin's enemy has never been his connections, but the crushing force of probability, time and talent. At the age of 35, he passed away in the physical examination room as a "youth" for the last time; at the age of 38, in the aftermath of the policy of relaxing the recruitment age, he squeezed into the establishment of a remote township as a veteran.
The moment we landed, there was no Fan Jin-style ecstasy, only deep absurdity. Seventeen years of preparing for the exam exhausted his imagination of life, and the five years of service as a grassroots civil servant was just the beginning of another swamp. This is a modern version of "Fan Jin Passed the Civil Service Examination": when the imperial examination turns into a civil service examination, when madness turns into peaceful nothingness, how does an ordinary person grow old while waiting, and how at the end of "success" finds that he has become a prisoner of the examination itself.
