Benjamin A. Elman,

Princeton University
Professor of East Asian Studies and History

For presentation at the Colloquium Celebrating the Opening of the National Institute for Humanistic Studies at Fudan University

ABSTRACT

Literati regularly turned to religion and the mantic arts in their efforts to understand and rationalize their emotional responses to the competitive local, provincial, and metropolitan ex-aminations. By comparing and contrasting, literati writings, popular accounts in novels and sto-ries, and folklore traditions associated with the personal trials and tribulations of the examinees and examiners collected in several Ming and Qing compendia, we understand more clearly why the civil examinations were central events in China's cultural history after 1400.

For example, Ming-Qing examination dreams and popular lore spawned a remarkable lit- erature about the temples they visited, the dreams that they or members of their family had, and the magical events in their early lives that were premonitions of their later success. These stories are treated as encoded cultural glosses given by late imperial literati whose unconscious ties to a common culture and religion, which encompassed both elites and popular culture, tempered their own understanding of what they considered the mantic forces of "fate" that operated in the ex- amination marketplace.

Civil examinations mediated between elite intellectual discourse and the everyday lives of literati. Emotional tensions, which brought a few fame and fortune, but left most dealing with despair or disappointment, were the catalysts in their lives.

Recorded dreams and auspicious events were manifest, non-official accounts of the underlying, collective mental tensions of the examination candidates, which publicly explained their individual success or failure.

Hence, the anxiety produced by examinations was a historical phenomenon, which was experienced most personally and deeply by boys and men. Fathers and mothers, sisters and extended relatives, were not immune to this anxiety. They shared in the experience and offered comfort, solace, and encouragement, but the direct, personal experience of examination success or failure belonged to the millions of male examination candidates who competed with each other against increasingly difficult odds.