General Bu’s temple at Yufeng had the busiest incense in the district. At nine I sat the boys’ examination; at fourteen I still had not taken first place among the students. On my late father’s orders I prayed beneath the cliff, and drew a slip:
Many griefs with no one to complain to, / everything at odds and unexamined; / wait until mid-autumn and you see the bright moon, / then your old universe is restored to you.
Beneath, on the question of success, was a line: If the examiner’s name is a mouth-and-wood name, you will be drawn up and climb the ladder for life.
My father said, “Judging by this slip, you have failed again.”
The education commissioner at the time was Liu Shiyan, who took my leading paper for an obscure line from the Li Sao — and then dropped it. “This is the fulfilment of ‘everything at odds,’” said my father. “If you want to enter the county school, you must wait for the autumn session.”
Later Commissioner Li Yinpei supervised education in Jiangsu, with the examination in the middle of the third month, and my father was anxious. But the question set in the hall ran from “He who has seen the sea finds other waters hard” to “of all things, flowing water” — and it happened to contain the two characters bright moon. So I was recognised and promoted, and my place on entry to the school matched my father’s own exactly. So this was what “see the bright moon and your old universe is restored” meant.
In the wuzi provincial examination the examiners were Wang Jihua and Guo Guozhu. My paper was fixed for fifth place, but because my essay on administration used violent language, Wang feared it would cause trouble at re-examination; Guo argued hard for me, and I was placed thirty-first and passed. “The mouth-and-wood theory is now fully proved,” said my father — for Commissioner Li had the surname Mu and the given name Kou, while Duke Guo had the surname Kou and the given name Mu.
After that I sat the metropolitan examinations repeatedly, and was recommended but never passed. The chief examiners never had a mouth-and-wood name. But the examiners who recommended my papers — Ke Jin, Guan Bao, Li Zhongjian — are all firmly verifiable.
Now I am past forty and no longer carry my papers to the capital. Even if the chief examiner were to match the slip exactly, I would have no hope of climbing the dragon gate. This was not a case of my writing failing me; it was that I failed General Bu. An oath made on the bank cannot be forgotten; a man’s ambition is easily broken. A mediocre talent at the end of his road — that is all. How sad.
