China's examination system is quite long-standing, from the Sui and Tang Dynasties began to the examination system has profoundly affected the mode of selection of talents in China and even the world, revolutionary leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen believes that the examination system is the fifth major invention of ancient China, in his political design there is also independent of the administrative, legislative and other powers of examination power. Even today, college entrance examinations, study examinations, civil service examinations, etc. still affect the lives of Chinese to a considerable extent. For a long time, the college entrance examination in most provinces in China is the only proposition and examination of the examination papers by each province, and even if most of the regions have reopened the national examination in recent years, it is still the provinces that delineate the undergraduate lines of each batch and recruit talents separately. This is not a pioneering achievement that only occurred after the founding of the People's Republic of China, many years ago, China's scientific expeditions have already selected talents according to region.
The idea of separation of powers
The story takes place in the thirty years of Hongwu, only about a year after the death of Zhu Yuanzhang, who killed people without blinking. This year was the year of the imperial examination, and after the February examination and the March temple examination, a total of fifty-one jinshi were admitted. This number is indeed very small, but it is not surprising, because the number of people admitted to each exam is probably this number. However, a closer look at the household registration shows that all of these fifty-one proud sons of heaven are southerners, and all the northern scholars have not been able to be named in this list.
North-South List Case
Zhu Yuanzhang, who was already a southerner, could not but express his opinion on this incident, and he immediately ordered the establishment of a joint investigation team to re-examine the examination papers for this examination. An even more shocking thing appeared, after the joint investigation team reviewed the examination papers of the candidates of this year, it was believed that there was no problem with the level of the admitted candidates, but on the contrary, some words in the examination papers of the candidates who fell off the list were taboo, and there was no problem in dropping them off the list.
It is reasonable to say that the case should be closed by this point, but after the results of the investigation were announced, public opinion not only did not calm down, but was even more shaken. The officials in the north were even more angry, believing that not only was the chief examiner cheating, but even the people in the investigation team were helping to make a ghost, which was obviously bullying the northerners! For a time, the north and south were almost opposed, and the court was full of mutual attacks between officials from the north and the south.
"North-South List Case" cartoon
How did supreme leader Zhu Yuanzhang deal with it? He suddenly issued an edict, saying that Liu Sanwu and other examiners were the remnants of the "Blue Jade Case", that Liu Sanwu had been exiled because of his old age, and that other examiners had even been sentenced to Ling Chi's punishment. Then, Zhu Yuanzhang personally proposed and took the main examination, and re-admitted sixty-one juzi, all of whom were northerners. This incident was also called the "North-South List Case" by later generations.
Although Zhu Yuanzhang relied on his personal iron fist to calm this dispute, he still did not fundamentally change the fact that the gap between the north and the south was too large. Decades later, during the reign of Emperor Mingrenzong, Zhu Yuanzhang's grandson, divided the country into north and south districts, stipulating that the number of scholars in the north district must account for 40 percent of the admission ratio. A few years later, during the Xuanzong period, in order to take care of the old and the young border and poor areas and Zhu Yuanzhang's hometown, five percent were deducted from the northern and southern districts, and the central Anhui areas such as Yunguichuan, Hefei, Chuzhou, Hexian, Fengyang, and Chuzhou were divided into central districts, accounting for ten percent. This formed a separate admission system in the north and south, which existed until the abolition of the examination system.
In the "North-South List Case", the character and conduct of Liu Sanwu and others are well-known, and the only thing that attacked them is that they engaged in regional discrimination, and did not say that they accepted bribes to deliberately release water, which shows from the side that the examiners did not intend to make it difficult for northerners. In fact, the examiner could not see the candidate's name at all, and it was not clear whether he was a southerner or a northerner. In other words, the torture of Liu Sanwu and others is a real unjust case. Zhu Yuanzhang could not have known that these officials were innocent, otherwise he would have invalidated those scholars who had already been admitted, but he still punished the examiners with his own hands. Why?
Ancient imperial examinations
To understand this question, we must first answer a question, why is the level of the north and south so different? We know that the early years of the Ming Dynasty were a rare period in Chinese history when the capital of the Great Unification Dynasty was set in the south, on the one hand, because Nanjing was the first big city that Zhu Yuanzhang attacked, which was his old nest; on the other hand, because compared with the war-torn north, the environment in the south was more stable and more suitable for development. However, this was relatively abnormal for the Chinese Empire, whose political center had long been in the north, especially at this time, whether it was the echelon of officials in the imperial court or the talent reserve, the south was absolutely dominant. Even Fengyang, Zhu Yuanzhang's own hometown, belongs to the south according to geographical point of view (Fengyang is south of the Huai River).
The south's lead over the north is not only reflected in the economy and personnel occupation, but also in education, which is also conceivable. The north has not been ruled by the central government of the Han nationality since the shame of Jingkang, and the Mongols have played a major role in destroying the country's cultural construction, and the level of education and culture in the north can naturally be imagined. However, the culture of the south in the Southern Song Dynasty has developed even more, even in the Yuan Dynasty period, it has not been so seriously damaged, and most of the heroes and generals in the early Ming Dynasty are from the south, and the cultural and educational support for their hometown is naturally greater. Over time, it is not surprising that the level of education in the South surpasses that of the North.
Map of administrative divisions in the Ming Dynasty
It is a fact that there is a gap between the north and the south, and in fact this gap is still being further widened, and by the end of the Ming Dynasty, the gap between the economic and cultural level between the north and the south has reached the level of almost two countries. As a national leader and a southerner, Zhu Yuanzhang will definitely see this and must try his best to smooth out this gap. If the South is allowed to occupy the gold list, and the Northerners have no right to speak in the official arena for a long time, then the contradiction between the North and the South will only become larger and larger in this development. For two hundred years, neither the north nor the south have lived together under a Han dynasty, and there is already a gap between them, and if the southerners still occupy a dominant position in the official field, then this gap may develop into centrifugal force and eventually form a separatist force. Let the northerners in the DPRK not only have some checks and balances in the region, but also rely on these officials to drive local development in china, so that the gap between the north and the south can be narrowed, at least not too much.
So why do Liu Sanwu have to serve their sentences? For in this case, no one did anything wrong: the candidates were not wrong, the officials who defended them were not wrong, the people who discussed them were not wrong, and the emperor was not wrong. Well, the only one who does it wrong is the examiner. Disputes have emerged and someone must be held accountable. Candidates cannot be held responsible, officials and people are not responsible, and the emperor is even less likely to be responsible, so it can only be the examiner responsible. After all, purely from the perspective of probability, the probability that more than fifty people are all southerners is almost zero, and the occurrence of this extremely small probability event cannot help but feel that someone is tricking the ghost from it. Moreover, according to Zhu Yuanzhang's thinking, if he didn't kill a few people, how could he convince the public?
Although the "North-South List Case" ends with the blood of several examiners, it has objectively played a great role in promoting the improvement of the entire national examination system. The principle of zonal admission is well in line with the characteristics of China's vast land area, uneven distribution of population density, and uneven educational levels in various places, ensuring that outstanding students in various places have obtained better education student associations and qualifications, and making no small contribution to the balanced development of the country. From this point of view, compared with the four major Hongwu cases, the number of deaths in the North and South Lists is not only much smaller, but also its impact is much more positive.