Zhou Jin Weeps in the Examination Hall

There was one road up, and only one: a chain of government examinations. Pass the lowest of them and you were a licensed student — people bowed, doors opened, your family stopped worrying. Fail, and you were nobody, however many books you had read and however old you were. Men sat that examination at twenty, at forty, at sixty. Some sat it until they died.

Zhou Jin (Zhōu Jìn) is past sixty and has never passed anything. He teaches small boys their characters in a village schoolroom for twelve taels a year and his meals, and he is glad to have the work. Around him move men who did pass: Mei Jiu (Méi Jiǔ), a young man from the same village who took the lowest degree last year and enjoys saying so, and Wang Hui (Wáng Huì), who took a higher one and arrives out of the rain expecting the best seat and the best food.

The examination itself is held in a walled compound in the provincial capital, thousands of narrow brick cells with two boards in each — one to sit on, one to write on. Zhou Jin has never been inside. He is not permitted to be: a man must already hold a certificate before he is even allowed through the gate.