In the late Qing Dynasty novel "Cold Eyes", there is a joke that is quite funny.
There are two protégés, both of whom are under the sect of Zaifu. The two of them took the main exam in the same province, so they made an appointment to go to the teacher to resign and ask the teacher if there was anything to instruct. Unexpectedly, the teacher is old, his ears are hard of hearing, and he has been unable to eat and drink for the past few days, and he has been farting constantly. When the protégé came to quit, it happened that the teacher let out a fart. He felt a little embarrassed, looked at the two protégés, his mouth kept moving, thinking that he was talking about farting, so he laughed with a false smile: "Without it, it will be heard!" When the protégé heard the teacher say this, he hurriedly took these six words as a holy decree and obeyed them, and after answering a few "yes" words, he withdrew. When he arrived at the examination room, he instructed the curtain officials of the eighteenth room to look for the scroll named "Xia Qitong" together. Not to mention, I really found it, but when I looked at the volume, I was dumbfounded, because this Xia Qitong's volume is bullshit. However, the teacher had his life in front of him and did not dare to disobey it, so he had to reluctantly order a fifth place.
After the exam, the two protégés returned to Beijing, and immediately went to the teacher to report their lives, informing the teacher that the "Xia Qitong" paper he explained had already complied with the Chinese style, but this Xia Qitong's text was really ridiculous, so he had to have Qu Dacai and won a fifth place. The teacher couldn't hear clearly, and the protégé said it several times in a row before the teacher figured out what was going on. He said that on the day of his resignation, he didn't say anything "Xia Qitong", but he let out a fart, and he didn't want to go, so he dragged a sentence, and unexpectedly achieved a branch of the surname Xia.
The author of "Cold Eyes" complained a few words, which is also very interesting: a half-dead prime minister, let out an empty fart, can make the cinnamon fragrant, the autumn wind proud; if he spit out a mouthful of tangible real phlegm, or sprinkle a soak of stool liquid in Zhibo's skull, wouldn't he become the eye of the Hanlin bachelor's list at that time?
Although the words were a little mean, the words were not rough, and they really pointed out the weight of the shady scenes in the officialdom and the examination room at that time.
2024, 1, 28, in Beijing.