A Study Of The Preparing For The Imperial Examination Of The Ming Dynasty

Shizi will be the senior bureaucrats, and their learning, living conditions during the period of preparing for the Imperial Examination will directly affect the quality of bureaucrats who become officials via the Imperial Examination. This dissertation focuses on the participants of the Imperial Examination, namely Shizi, and studies what kind of way for them to prepare to the Imperial Examination and tries to show their learning and living conditions which focus on preparing to the Imperial Examination from start learning Juye to become Jinshi or abandoning it. The references of the dissertation which amounts to approximately two hundred thousand words and is divided into five chapters arrive to more than three hundred historical records of the Ming Dynasty.The Imperial Examination of the Ming dynasty has a history of over 200 years. With the environment of the examination becoming deteriorated, Shizi show various changes for the examination. Firstly, as the examination gets more subjects, more standardized, more competitive, more stylized and more complicated, Shizi hold a utilitarian, frivolous tendency and turn from focusing the academic study and the practice to upholding the literature and art, being speculators and wishing instant successes. Secondly, during the beginning of the Ming Dynasty the education is dominated by government and Shizi studied in the places which are provided by the government. As the number of Shizi is increasing and the schools dominated by the government are deteriorating, the education provided by the government cannot satisfy Shizi anymore in the later period, the mainly ways of studying change to study by themselves, learn in the private schools, in the Shuyuan and in the associations organized by Shizi, and so the schools dominated by government are playing a limited role in the education and Shizi turn to study in the folk circumstances. Therefore, learning environment of Shizi gets deteriorated. On the one hand, due to the increasing competition, Shizi have to learn for a longer period and it is more difficult for Shizi to become Jinshi; on the other hand, the majority of Shizi cannot enjoy formal education, scatter at the countryside, and study by themselves. And what they can read is only the contemporary political articles and it makes the examination deteriorated. Meanwhile, many aspects of the Shizi preparing the examination included such as the schedules of the curriculums, reading of the papers written in the contemporary time, acknowledging the masters, organizing the associations, family, geography, livelihood, taking the examination, participating in the spot of the examination, the failed and the abandoned and so on, are all affected and has a deep mark of the period. This dissertation attempts to study all aspects of the Shizi preparing the examination and tries to recover the survival circumstances and the psychological situations of the Shizi, and so we can insight into the pros and cons of the implementation of the Ming Dynasty and its profound impact in the society, institution, culture and the citizens'mind and other aspects of the Ming Dynasty.