Fan Jin Passes the Provincial Examination

In old China there was one examination that mattered. Pass it and you were an official for life — respected, wealthy, untouchable, and your whole family with you. Fail it and you were nothing, however many books you had read.

Fan Jin (Fàn Jìn) has been sitting that examination since he was a boy. He is now fifty-four. He has never passed, he is desperately poor, and his father-in-law — a pork butcher with a loud voice and firm opinions — has never once let him forget any of it.

This year he is going to sit it again.