Axe Zheng: The original name of the victim in this incident in the "History of Ming" should be Chen Anyan (fǔ), which is replaced by Chen An for the need of reading experience.
In the twenty-sixth year of Hongwu, after experiencing the "Four Great Cases of the Early Ming Dynasty" for 13 years, Taizu relied on the privileges held by the True Dragon Heavenly Son, and finally eradicated all potential threats to the imperial power and firmly consolidated the Power of the Zhu Family. Four years later, in the 30th year of Hongwu, the Ming Dynasty followed the old system and held a triennial examination to try to inject a wave of fresh blood into the Ming officials. However, what everyone did not expect was that in this imperial examination, Zhu Yuanzhang, who was "mad and mad", struck again, and even extended the "claws of the devil" directly to a group of readers who tried to pass the imperial examination to get ahead and serve the imperial court.
As a candidate for the examination that year, Chen Anyan won the title of Champion in one fell swoop with his outstanding ability. Just as the so-called ''' the filth of the past is not enough to boast, and the debauchery of the present dynasty is endless. The spring wind was proud of the horseshoe disease, and he saw all the Chang'an flowers in one day, but before Chen Anlan had time to properly experience the joy of this Zhongzhuangyuan, a flying disaster directly wiped him out of this world. Why was a ruler hand-picked by Taizu be tortured by a car split in only 20 days? What is the hidden purpose of this imperial examination that has been criticized by countless posterity? Today, the author will reveal for you one by one - the "North and South List Case" involved behind Chen An's car crack!
The Lesson of Blood - The Background of the Birth of the Ming Dynasty Examination System
Zhu Yuanzhang, who was born as a cowherd, did not read much books, probably thinking that everyone had such good luck as him, so after sitting on the dragon chair of his dreams, he did not choose to immediately restore the examination system and give those cold children the opportunity to enter the army. Instead, he turned his head and focused his work on "cleaning up" the founding heroes who fought with him, and in just a decade or so, he caused one appalling case after another.
Since it is an unjust case, naturally many honest officials have been innocently implicated and have died unjustly on the charge of "false accusations". Under the pressure of this kind of destruction, the Ming Dynasty officials died and fled, and there was even a shortage of officials up and down the imperial court. Forced by this helpless form, Zhu Yuanzhang finally remembered the examination system, Hongwu seventeen years assigned Liu Sanwu, one of the "three elders", to participate in the formulation of the science test regulations, after several years of continuous promotion and development, the examination became increasingly normalized, providing a shortcut for ordinary people to enter the army.
Thirty years after Ming Hongwu, the triennial examination for the imperial examination came again, and Zhu Yuanzhang, after repeated deliberations, finally entrusted this heavy responsibility to Liu Sanwu, a 78-year-old Hanlin scholar, and appointed him as the chief examiner, with full authority to preside over this extraordinary examination.
Strange list - the emergence of the South List case
The four great joys of life: long drought and Ganlin, his hometown is known; the night of the cave flower candle, the title of the gold list.
Since the Song Dynasty, after the concept of "everything is inferior, only reading is high", more and more people have achieved class leapfrogging through the imperial examination. Even if it is only a person in the township examination, Wu Jingzi's Fan Jin can be extremely happy and crazy, not to mention the meeting test in February of Hongwu's 30th year.
In this examination, elites from the north and south of the great river gathered in the capital to compete for the final place in the palace examination. Under the auspices of Liu Sanwu, a Hanlin scholar, the candidates competed in three courses and four subjects (four books, five words and eight rhymes, five scriptures, and questions) in nine days. As soon as the meeting was over, Liu Sanwu quickly presided over the reading of the papers. In order not to disappoint Taizu's trust, Liu Sanwu strictly followed the criteria for reading the papers, deliberated word by word, and re-read all the papers that were admitted, and after repeated verification, the list was released: This examination took a total of fifty-one candidates who stood out, such as Chen Anquan and Song Chun.
Logically, in the context of this competition of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it is also normal to be named Sun Shan. However, on the day of the release of the list, a candidate with a very sharp observation angle suddenly had a shocking discovery, and it was this discovery that completely changed the examination - all 51 people on the list were southerners! None of the north have ascended to the throne. The history is called ''Nam Bang''.'
As soon as this news came out, how could the candidates in the north sit still? My own decades of cold window reading can be so inexplicably wasted. As a result, the candidates who fell behind in the north questioned whether there was unknown collusion between Liu Sanwu, the chief examiner of the southerners, and the southern candidates who were on the list. The more he thought about it for a while, the more angry he became, the more he lost when he took a step back, and the northern students who had already been attacked by anger could stop here. They marched in droves to the ministry to protest and demand an explanation from the examiner. What's more, he directly wrote a royal petition and reported to Zhu Yuanzhang that the chief examiner Liu Sanwu had committed favoritism and fraud and deliberately promoted his townspeople.
The power of public opinion - Zhu Yuanzhang's halfway intervention
The three became tigers, and the incident of the "Nanbang case" quickly reached Zhu Yuanzhang's ears, as an official of food and clothing, how could he sit idly by, and after Long Yan was furious, he directly invited Liu Sanwu to the palace to drink tea and inquire about the causes and consequences of the Nanbang case. Geng's straight Liu Sanwu also did not hide anything, and told Zhu Yuanzhang about the test with his heart and lungs. Zhu Yuanzhang was still sinister in the end, and on the surface he did believe in Liu Sanwu's words, but behind his back, a group of people led by Zhang Xin, an attendant of the Hanlin Academy, were placed to re-investigate the case.
Unlike Liu Sanwu, Zhang Xin was not a darling in Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes, and letting him take over the Nanbang case seemed to be the beginning of a conspiracy. The unsuspecting Zhang Xin investigation team re-examined the examination papers in the same strict way as Liu Sanwu, and in this methodical re-approval, Zhang Xin and others could indeed feel the gap in the shadows. However, at this moment, his colleagues suggested to him that it was better to take the initiative to cater to Zhu Yuanzhang, deliberately releasing water to the northern list students and balancing the number of people on the list in the north and south. In this way, Zhu Yuanzhang was definitely happy, the resentment of the northern examinees was eliminated, and their work could also be made. (In fact, if Zhang Xin at that time accepted the proposal of his colleagues and closed the South List case, there would be no subsequent North List case)
However, Zhang Xin was still too straight, and after repeated approvals, one examination paper after another was placed in front of him, which was exactly the same as Liu Sanwu's previous identification. So he came to a conclusion: Liu Sanwu's approval was fair, and there was no favoritism. In this way, Zhang Xin told Zhu Yuanzhang the results of the re-approval, and submitted a test paper with poor literary reasoning and taboo words as evidence to support Liu Sanwu's previous judgment. Zhu Yuanzhang saw that Zhang Xin did not appreciate his own meaning at all, and the expression on his face turned to thunderstorm again.
Justice is blasphemed – the North List that came into being
Just when Zhu Yuanzhang was worried that he could not step down, someone made a small report to him, saying that Zhang Xin and others had secretly colluded with Liu Sanwu to secretly manipulate the re-examination papers, and deliberately took out the test papers with forbidden words as evidence. Hearing this, Zhu Yuanzhang probably already knew how to do it, so the time had come to repeat the trick.
For this group of stubborn and lack of political acumen, it is also in vain to raise them, it is better to take this opportunity to kill them, to be beheaded, and by the way, to inject a wave of fresh blood into the Daming royal family. Therefore, in the process of fairness and justice and the consolidation of imperial power, Zhu Yuanzhang did not hesitate to choose the latter, and a major unjust case of imperial examination was about to be born.
Under severe torture, Zhu Yuanzhang finally obtained a list of 600 people involved in the case, from the chief examiner to the examiner, from the examinee at that time to the current champion. Fast forward to May, two months have passed since the Nanbang case, and in order to quell the people's grievances as soon as possible, Zhu Yuanzhang issued an edict condemning the crimes of all the people involved in the case: the chief examiner Liu Sanwu was exempted from capital crimes because of his old age and frailty, and was sent to the northwest; the deputy examiner Bai Yuxin Che Split was executed (Zhu Yuanzhang identified him and Liu Sanwu as the same 'Blue Jade Yu Party''); the re-approval officer Zhang Xinling was executed; Chen An'an was stripped of his meritorious name and executed by Car Split; the rest of those implicated should be imprisoned, and those who should be exiled should be exiled... Among the more than 600 people on the list, only Dai Yi and Yin Changlong were acquitted, because when they re-approved the examination papers, they listed northern candidates on the list.
In may, the bloody Nanbang case came to an end, and in order to return the northern examinees a "fair justice", the following month, Zhu Yuanzhang personally asked and admitted Ren Bo'an and sixty-one other candidates, and after another round of palace examinations, sixty-one people represented by Han Kezhong, Wang Shu of The List Eye, and Jiao Sheng of Tanhua were all favored by the imperial examination, and stepped on the corpses of Chen An'an and others. Therefore, the sixty-one people recorded in the second temple examination are all northerners, so they are also called the northern list.
Since then, the sensational North-South List case in the early Ming Dynasty has finally come to an end.
After many years, when we look at this confusing case with the eyes of the trial and the situation, we may also have new feelings. In nature, the North-South List case was not a pure case of examination fraud caused by unexpected examination results, but a case of intentional homicide mixed with the strong personal factors of the ruler. In order to consolidate its rule, win over the hearts and minds of the people in the north, and disregard fairness and justice, the ruling class with Zhu Yuanzhang as the main conspirator became victims of imperial power politics.
However, it is also after experiencing major changes in the North-South List case, the Ming Dynasty's subsequent examination admissions are no longer ''national unified line'', but are divided into ''North-South List'', that is, students from the north and south are ranked according to their regions, and after the tribute students are admitted, they will participate in the temple style in a unified manner. This system has not only been used throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties since then, but also has the same meaning as the "division line" in the current college entrance examination.