Timeline of the Imperial Examination
China's civil service examinations, from Han dynasty precursors in 134 BCE and the Sui founding around 605 to their abolition in 1905, including their adoption in Korea and Vietnam and their influence on Western civil services.
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- 23 events 134 BCE – 1905
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134 BCE: Emperor Wu of Han orders yearly recommendations
Emperor Wu of Han ordered each commandery to recommend men known as "filial and incorrupt" (xiaolian) for office every year; quotas were later tied to population. Recommendation by local officials, not open competition, remained the main route into Han government, and from 132 CE recommended candidates also had to pass an examination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaolian124 BCE: Han founds the Imperial Academy
Emperor Wu of Han, who had created chairs for erudites of the Five Classics in 136 BCE, gave them 50 students on the proposal of his chancellor Gongsun Hong. Students of this Imperial Academy (Taixue) were examined on the Confucian classics, the best becoming court gentlemen and the next grade taking local posts, and the academy reportedly had some 30,000 students by the 2nd century CE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taixue220: Cao Wei adopts the nine-rank system
After the fall of the Han, the Cao Wei official Chen Qun proposed a system in which officials called impartial judges (zhongzheng) graded candidates from their home regions into nine ranks by character and ability. Family standing soon dominated the grading, giving rise to the saying that there were no humble families in the upper grades and no powerful clans in the lower, and great families dominated high office until the Sui abolished this way of selecting officials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-rank_system~605: Sui creates the jinshi examination
Emperor Yang of Sui added an examination for "presented scholars" (jinshi) to existing tests for classicists and "cultivated talents" during his Daye era (605 – 618). Sources give no firm year: 605 is the conventional date and some historians prefer 607, while others date the system from 587, when Emperor Wen of Sui ordered each prefecture to send three candidates a year. The jinshi remained the highest degree until 1905.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinshi690: Wu Zetian examines candidates in the palace
Wu Zetian, who that year proclaimed herself emperor of a new Zhou dynasty, set policy questions for candidates in a hall of the Luoyang palace over several days, a session later treated as the origin of the palace examination; a military examination followed in 702. She expanded recruitment through the examinations, though historians debate how far she opened office to men outside the old northwestern aristocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Zetian#Reform_of_the_imperial_examination_system958: Goryeo adopts Chinese-style civil service examinations
King Gwangjong of Goryeo held Korea's first Chinese-style civil service examination (gwageo) on the advice of Shuang Ji (Ssang Gi), a scholar-official from Later Zhou China who had stayed on at his court, to recruit officials loyal to the throne rather than to powerful families; a Silla reading examination from 788 had been open only to aristocrats. Korea kept the gwageo until 1894, and under the Joseon dynasty the yangban aristocracy came to dominate it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangjong_of_Goryeo973: Song emperor makes the palace examination regular
Emperor Taizu of Song personally re-examined the graduates of the metropolitan examination and set their final ranking, and the palace examination became the regular last stage of a three-tier ladder of prefectural, metropolitan and palace examinations. Graduates now owed their degrees to the emperor rather than to an examiner, weakening the bond between examiner and graduate that had bred factions under the Tang.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination#Song_dynasty_(960–1279)992: Song examiners begin grading papers anonymously
Emperor Taizong of Song accepted a proposal to seal candidates' names on palace examination papers, and the practice was extended to the metropolitan examination in 1007 and to prefectural examinations in the 1030s. Clerks also came to recopy every answer before grading so that examiners could not recognize a candidate's handwriting; sealing and recopying remained standard through the Ming and Qing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination#Song_dynasty_(960–1279)1071: Wang Anshi's reforms remake the examinations
Under the New Policies of the chief councilor Wang Anshi, Emperor Shenzong of Song abolished the classicist degree and most other specialist degrees, leaving the jinshi as the main gateway to office, and replaced poetry with essays on the meaning of the Classics and on policy. Poetry later returned as an alternative track, but the classics-exposition essay developed into the eight-legged essay of the Ming and Qing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Policies_(Song_dynasty)#Imperial_Examination_restructuring1075: Đại Việt holds its first Confucian examination
Emperor Lý Nhân Tông held Vietnam's first court examination in Confucian learning, a year before founding the Imperial Academy (Quốc Tử Giám) at the Temple of Literature in Thăng Long, now Hanoi. The Lý dynasty held only a handful of examinations, but later dynasties held them far more regularly; the last, a metropolitan examination under Emperor Khải Định and French supervision, took place in 1919.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucian_court_examination_system_in_Vietnam1313: Yuan restores the examinations with Zhu Xi's commentaries
Ayurbarwada Buyantu Khan revived the examinations, which had lapsed under Mongol rule; provincial examinations followed in 1314 and the first metropolitan examination in 1315. Equal quotas for Mongols, Semu (non-Han allies, many from Central and West Asia), northern Chinese and southern Chinese favored the conquerors, and Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian commentaries became the standard curriculum, as they remained until the examinations ended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurbarwada_Buyantu_Khan1384: Hongwu Emperor fixes the Ming examination system
The Hongwu Emperor, founder of the Ming dynasty, had decreed empire-wide examinations in 1370 but suspended them within a few years in favor of recommendation. Restored, they received their lasting form in 1384: provincial and metropolitan examinations every three years, each in three sessions covering the Four Books and Classics, official documents and policy, followed by palace examinations to rank successful candidates. From 1458 only jinshi graduates could serve in the Hanlin Academy and Grand Secretariat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongwu_Emperor1425: Ming reserves metropolitan degrees for northerners
Because candidates from the more populous and better-schooled south won most degrees, the Hongxi Emperor reserved 40 percent of metropolitan passes for northerners, and a central quota was added soon after; in 1397 a list made up entirely of southerners had led the Hongwu Emperor to punish its examiners. The Qing kept regional quotas, which spread degree holders across the empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongxi_Emperor1470s – 1480s: Eight-legged essay becomes the required form
Examination answers on the Four Books and Five Classics came to follow the eight-legged essay (bagu wen), an essay in eight prescribed sections, written largely in paired, parallel sentences and within a set length; the term is first recorded in the Chenghua reign (1464 – 1487). The rigid form made grading more uniform, but the scholar Gu Yanwu (1613 – 1682) judged it more harmful than the First Emperor of Qin's burning of the books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-legged_essay1484: Lê Thánh Tông honors top graduates on stone stelae
Emperor Lê Thánh Tông of Đại Việt began setting up stone stelae on carved stone turtles at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, inscribed with the names and birthplaces of graduates of the highest examination (tiến sĩ). The 82 surviving stelae, erected between 1484 and 1780, commemorate examinations held from 1442 to 1779 and were inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Literature,_Hanoi1615: Ricci's account of China reaches European readers
Nicolas Trigault's Latin edition of the journals of the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, published in Augsburg as "De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas", described China's examinations and the scholar-officials they produced; French, German, Spanish and Italian translations followed within six years. Later European writers, among them Voltaire and François Quesnay, held up China's examination-selected officials as a model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Christiana_Expeditione_apud_Sinas1646: Qing holds its first palace examination
Two years after the Manchu Qing took Beijing, the government of the regent Dorgon held its first metropolitan and palace examinations, keeping the Ming system and its three-year cycle; the palace question asked how Manchus and Han Chinese could be brought to work together. The Qing awarded nearly 27,000 jinshi degrees in 112 metropolitan examinations before 1905, and by one study's count over 90 percent of its senior officials held the degree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunzhi_Emperor1803: "The Scholars" appears in its earliest surviving edition
The earliest surviving printed edition of Wu Jingzi's "The Scholars" ("Rulin waishi") appeared decades after his death in 1754. Written around the middle of the 18th century and circulated in manuscript, the novel satirized scholars obsessed with examination success and official status. Earlier printed editions were reported but have not survived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scholars_(novel)1843: Failed candidate Hong Xiuquan turns to religion
After failing for the fourth time to win the lowest degree, the licentiate (shengyuan), at examinations in Guangzhou, Hong Xiuquan read Christian tracts by Liang Fa and concluded that visions he had had after an earlier failure in 1837 revealed him as the younger brother of Jesus. He went on to lead the Taiping Rebellion (1850 – 1864), whose Heavenly Kingdom held its own examinations on Hong's edition of the Bible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan1854: Northcote–Trevelyan Report urges open competition
Stafford Northcote and Charles Trevelyan urged that entry to the British civil service be by competitive examination rather than patronage; a Civil Service Commission followed in 1855, the year the Indian Civil Service first held open examinations required by the Charter Act of 1853. Advocates such as Thomas Taylor Meadows cited China and speakers in Parliament called open competition a Chinese principle, though historians debate how directly China shaped the reform. The United States adopted competitive examinations for some federal posts in 1883.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northcote%E2%80%93Trevelyan_Report1894: Kabo Reform abolishes Korea's examinations
Korea's Deliberative Council, a reform body formed under a government that Japan had installed at the start of the First Sino-Japanese War, abolished the gwageo as part of the Kabo Reform and moved toward a Japanese-style bureaucracy. The decision ended a system that had recruited Korean officials since 958; historians debate how far Japan shaped the reforms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabo_Reform1901: Qing drops the eight-legged essay
An edict issued during the New Policies that followed the Boxer Uprising ordered that from the next round the provincial and metropolitan examinations test essays on Chinese political history, then on foreign governments and affairs, and only then the Classics, ending the eight-legged essay; another edict abolished the military examinations. The Guangxu Emperor had ordered a similar change during the Hundred Days' Reform of 1898, reversed after Empress Dowager Cixi's coup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Policies1905: Qing abolishes the imperial examinations
On September 2, the Qing court endorsed a memorial by Yuan Shikai, Zhang Zhidong and other senior officials and abolished the examinations at every level, abandoning a 1904 plan to phase them out over about a decade in favor of modern schools. The last metropolitan and palace examinations had been held in 1904. Sun Yat-sen later drew on the tradition for the Examination Yuan of the Republic of China, which still operates in Taiwan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination#Decline_and_abolition