A Study On Maoji In The Imperial Examination In Ming And Qing Dynasty

Maoji was a behavior describing examinees with false registered native places or fake census registers, which was one of the most common ways to cheat in imperial examination. There were many common types of fake census registers including fake Shuntian register, fake vague register, fake outlying district register, fake commercial register, fake official offspring register, and so on. Fake census register frequently happened in Ming and Qing Dynasty, although the attempts would cause very severe punishment. The classic case of fake census register took place at Shuntian province in Wanli 13, Ming Dynasty, which had shocked the whole the country, and brought the most serious punishment. But as a Number One Scholar at the end of the Qing Dynasty, Zhang Jian's experience of Maoji had a strong dramatic color.After Song Dynasty, as economic focus and cultural focus went southward, and the economic and cultural levels in the south flourishing areas commonly preceded that of the north outlying districts, especially in Ming and Qing Dynasty. In order to guarantee the stabilization of the outlying districts and spirit up the motivations of examinees in the outlying districts, the government carried out the rules that every area had fixed enrollment account and made sure that admission rate in the outlying diatricts was higher than that of the flourishing areas. Therefore, if the examinees took part in the exams with fake census registers, they would get more opportunities to win in the imperial examination, which was the direct reason of Maoji. The innovation of registered residence system in Ming and Qing Dynasty allowed free migration from different areas, which exacerbated phenomenon in some extent.The governors of Ming and Qing Dynasty drew up many policies against false census register, mainly including restricting the census registers of examinees, strict enrolling procedure before the exam, checking the pronunciations of exanminees during the reign of emperor Qianlong, and setting strict punishiment measures for the examinees with false registered residences and the officials referred in some cases after examination. The system against cheating was getting better and more perfect.The appearance of Maoji had negative influences on the culture, education and public security of the outlying areas in China, and it also caused the unfair imperial examination between different regions. Till the 1980s, the immigrant phenomenon in nowadays'NCEE (National College Entrance Examination) migrant is becoming popular, which is similar to Maoji in essence. They were both caused by the imbalance development of economic and cultural difference among different areas. The author hopes that the study results in this paper will be helpful to solve the NCEE migrant in nowadays.