The Preliminary Investigation Of The Imperial Examination Of The Cui Family In Tang Dynasty

In the Tang Dynasty, there were three ways to be an official, such as Military exploit,Menyin and imperial examinations. To common people, the imperial examination was their only way to become an official. And to the noble, they could use the three ways mentioned above.However, some visionary nobles had noticed the importance of the imperial examinations to their offspring and the development of their family. So, they paid much attention to education and encouraged the members of the family to be an official through the imperial examination.Because the nobles were rich in economy and education, their family members had more opportunities to pass the imperial examinations whose acceptance rate was very low. As a result,these nobles’ families gradually became imperial families. These imperial families lasted for several generations, they preserved their family strength through the the imperial examinations to occupy a place in politics and culture. The Cui family were famous in the Tang Dynasty. They were representative nobles, too. So, this paper will regard the Cui family as the research object to discuss the influence of the imperial examination to the nobles.This paper has three parts which include introduction, main body and conclusion.In the first part, it includes some related concepts, recalls the academic history, and puts forward the meaning and the measures of researching the imperical family.In the second part, there are four chapters. In the first chapter, it mainly discusses the formation of the Cui family, the origin of the Cui family and the students who passed the imperial examination. And in according to the concept of the imperial family, it ascertains the branch of Cui family which meets the requirements of the concept. The second chapter discusses the distribution of the Cui family in times and branches. The third chapter compares the different branches of Cui family in the number of students who passed the imperial examinations of different times, the number of Jinshi and the number of famous people. The fourth chapter discusses the enlightenment of the research of the Cui family in individual effort, family education, family influence, teachers and students’ influence and the effect of social orientation.In the third part, it sums up the reason why the nobles paid much attention to the imperial examination, the effect of class flow caused by the rise of the imperial examination and the reason why the Cui family were superior to common family in imperial examinations.