Research On Chinese Test Project Of Yanshan Tang Anthology

Chinese Test project is a part of Yanshan Mountain Tang anthology.which is written by Wang Shizhen,a famous historian in Ming Dynasty. It consists of four chapters, recording the imperial examination from the 3rd year of Hong Wu (1370)to the 17th year of Wanli(1589) of Ming dynasty.It's of high historical value to the modern study of the imperial examination system in Ming Dynasty, but so far no one has done a special and systematical research on it. This paper is aiming at a preliminary study of the four pieces of Chinese Test project from a historical perspective on the basis of Yanshan Tang anthology which was published by Zhonghua Book Company in 1985.In the middle and late period of Ming Dynasty, the atmosphere of the imperial examination corrupted gradually, which caught Wang Shizhen's attention who was born in a Jinshi Family. To provide reality with meaningful lessons, he would like to reveal both sides of positive and negative historical facts by combing the process of the development of the imperial examination in the Ming Dynasty. That became his main motivation to write the Chinese Test project. Wang Shizhen was born in a Jinshi Family and served as the examiner of provincial examination many times, so he was familiar with the drawbacks of the imperial examination. Besides he was a literary leader at that time, who had a large collection of books. He also had mutual intercourse with many bibliophiles. All of those provided him with favorable conditions on writing the Chinese Test project. The historical materials of the Chinese Test project were mainly taken from reliable sources the memoir of Ming Dynasty, Xiangshi Record, Huishi Record and Dengke Record. He excerpted the original historical materials, then combined and simplified them. He also made up for deficiencies and corrected the mistakes. Therefore the Chinese Test project had its own unique value. However there was some disadvantages that would mislead people nowadays as well, like omissions and even recording the important historical events, time, names and other issues improperly.