Monday, July 05, 2004
Examining Confucius – Revered Master Teacher
See photos about this week's posting in the Yahoo photo album. (Will open in a new browser window.)
The time was ripe to visit Confucius. The national exams were written on June 7 and 8. Seven million Chinese students have now received their final marks and are planning their next move, some to a university of their choice, some to return to middle school to get better marks next year, others to go to second, third or no choice educational institutions. Our own students at Huairou Yi Zhong received an examination at the end of the Oral English classes. This was at our insistence and in spite of scheduling hitches and marking arrangements for over 1400 year 1 and 2 students, we made it happen.
It was the end of classes, the end of June and we were in Beijing. It was an appropriate time to pay due obeisance to the sage of ancient China, one of humanity’s earliest educators. We figured that since we were both educators of many years we’d have a lot in common with the likes of Confucius (551-479 BCE). His temple (Kong Miao) on Guozijian Jie is just a street over from the Lama Temple and north and east of the Imperial City. So there on a hot and very muggy Beijing afternoon we strolled its precincts.
The name “Confucius”, well known in the West, brought a quizzical look to the faces of our Chinese friends, who call this sage Kong Fuzi. Jesuit priests were responsible for Latinizing his name in the sixteenth century. You can’t understand much of Chinese philosophy, values and history without acknowledging Confucius. He set forward an ordered society which in many ways echoes the Golden Chain of Being which we in the West understand as the basis of feudalism. A place for everything and everything in its place under Heaven will seem familiar to many Western scholars of medieval history and Natural Law. The key idea of a hierarchical society reflecting a natural moral order, the patriarch as head of the family and the prince as head of the state, is familiar to anyone who has studied Western thought. So we have two parallel systems well worth cross-referencing in an academic paper perhaps...but not now.
Above all Confucius valued learning and education as a way of obtaining merit in society. This idea transferred to the study of the Confucian classics as the basics of the examination system for positions in the civil service. The Chinese model is thought to have led to the introduction of civil service exams in
Britain in the nineteenth century, where senior civil servants are still labelled “Mandarins.” At its best, The Chinese examination system allowed candidates a level playing field so that those from poor families and without guanxi (connections or influence) could compete fairly with the powerful. Given the years and even decades of study necessary, families had to have enough resources (or a patron) to support the scholar in his quest for employment as an official, assuming his success.
By the Ming and Qing dynasties, the requirements of the examinations were the driving engine for the entire educational system in China. Papers involved writing commentaries on the Confucian classics, literary compositions and writing memorials in favour of a particular policy, all of which were expected to be fully annotated with references to the classics. In other words, there was a lot to memorize! Still today, the national university entrance exams are given on a countrywide basis, and still involve a great degree of memorization.
In the past candidates were put in special locked examination halls, for up to three days at a time. The stress was sometimes too much. Some became mad. Others would be found hanging in their cells. Another down side to exams, both then and now, is the temptation to cheat.
This year, recognizing this temptation and past experience with cheating, the Department of Education put in place some new rules. Each student had to obtain a registration identity card, complete with photo, so that someone else couldn’t write the exam in your place. Students were required to write in a school other than their own, and be supervised by teachers other than their own. Students had to sign a pledge not to engage in cheating. While in ancient times it is known that “slips were passed” among the candidates, in our technological age, students have been able to use cell phones to send messages to their classmates. All in all, it is a test of the ingenuity of the students who want/need to cheat and the authority’s attempt to thwart this practice. [See the article from The Straits Times below]
As with the imperial exams of ancient times, the university entrance exams written in early June are an all important watershed in the lives of the students who write them. Students will vie for positions at the various universities based on an accumulation of a possible 700 marks. The marks are divided among 4 subjects: Chinese (150 marks); Math (150 marks); English (150 marks); and a combination exam of either History, Geography and Politics, or Chemistry, Physics and Biology, each worth 300 marks.
All of this came to mind as we stepped through the gateway into the first courtyard. Arrayed on either side of a central walkway were 198 stelae (rectangular slabs of stone 4 metres high) bearing 51, 624 names, place of origin and position numbers of successful examination candidates going back to the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. The equivalent of a top scholar’s list at a high school or the Dean’s List at a college or university. These stelae were funded by the emperor. However, the last graduates in 1905 had to pay for the stelae themselves. Sadly, the immortality suggested by such stone monuments has suffered from weathering and other damage - most names can no longer be read. As well, during the Cultural Revolution, anti-intellectualism abounded. Confucius became anathema, and this temple fell into disrepair. Even today it has a dusty and somewhat bedraggled and forlorn aspect.
The contemporary Chinese still seem to have an ambivalent relationship with Confucius. The precinct of his temple houses two exhibitions which have nothing to do with his teachings or his life. An exhibition hall called the Capital Museum houses an historical display of the history of Beijing; another hall presently displays Olympic memorabilia from many of the previous host cities of the summer Olympic games.
Despite all of these distractions, we had come to honour Confucius. And we were not alone. We turned at the familiar sound of Canadian English to find a professor from UWO and his wife, making the same rounds. We mutually agreed to take each others’ photos in this special precinct. So seldom do we have pictures with the two of us! Our photos incorporate the tiled rooflines of the many special pavilions - only one was open - which house yet more stelae, more names, more scholars. We took note that the ubiquitous restorer of the Qing dynasty, Emperor Qianlong, had replaced the roofs with yellow tiles in 1737, thus conferring imperial favour and acknowledgment on Confucius.
We quietly smiled to ourselves at the representation of a man riding a chicken, as the final figure on the spines of the rooflines, which includes a water dragon and several real and mythical animals. ...A small digression is in order here. We have quizzed our Chinese friends about this peculiar final tile many times, because we have seen it so often on imperial buildings. They were as bereft of knowledge as we were! Our subsequent research has led to the following explanation. The guy on the chicken is in limbo! He is neither able to move up the spine of the eave in fear of the dragon above him, and the other animals who terrorize him. He’s unable to reach the ground because at last count, chickens don’t fly. According to legend, this figure represents a tyrannical prince of ancient times who was forcibly removed by the neighboring warlords. In order to escape capture, he hanged himself from the roof of his palace. A fate worse than death -- to spend centuries riding a chicken, no more than an ornament on a tiled roof. Needless to say, as we left the precinct, we were moved to buy one of these tiles at 150 yuan, and hope to give the prince a place in our garden - alas, still a soul with no resting place.
Back to the temple precinct ...As with all temples here, the buildings are arranged along a central axis, a broad paved avenue, shaded by ancient cypresses, one acknowledged to be 700 years old. We passed the green ceramic furnace used for burning sacrificial messages and thought it would be an ideal place to get rid of old copies of examinations, which were presently cluttering our desks at HRYZ! We think Confucius might find this gesture appropriate. We took special note of the inspiration offered in an ancient well on the site. The caption on the sign said: “This is an ancient well. It is said that scholars could write articles after they drank from this well. Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty named the well Lake of Ink Slab Water.” No doubt anyone suffering from writer’s block, should immediately send for a dram or two. Although, there has been no commercial exploitation of this particular water source, that we know of.
At the end of the second courtyard, up stairs with marble balustrades, across an open terrace, we entered the Da Cheng Dian (The Great Hall of Perfection, aka The Hall of Great Achievements) which is the central shrine to Confucius. It is a dark and dusty room with an equally dark and dusty sales desk on the right hand side of the main doors. When our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, we were attracted to the 60 statues of scholars, arranged on either side of the central altar, a crowd of expectant disciples. Of course, central to the room is the altar on which are placed incense burners and a place to kneel to reverence the very abstract ideas of knowledge, education, wisdom, morality, order and truth. Tablets to “Four Notables of Secondary Importance” and “12 Talented Persons” reminded us how precise the Chinese are in constructing a hierarchy. Of particular note in the room were the ancient musical instruments: a skein of bronze bells and a group of chevron-shaped cut stone tiles awaiting someone skilled to play them, in the manner we saw them played in Wuhan. We know of no one who plays pieces of stone in Canada. Music was central to Confucian thought, used to incite the imagination, foster observation, honour one’s father and prince and widen one’s acquaintance with nature. And from our experiences here, the Chinese have taken this to heart.
We returned to the precinct’s entrance, enjoying the shade of the tree lined street. Here stand three pailou, some of the few still remaining in Beijing. These arches honour individuals who demonstrated Confucian values -- children who sacrificed themselves for their parents, or widows who refused to remarry, for example. These colourful arches span the original street, now just wide enough for two taxis to pass each other. There are fewer and fewer places in this bustling city under construction where the old Beijing still shimmers. We were pleased that we had found this one.
June 9, 2004
College exam students sign honesty pledge
The Straits Times, Singapore
BEIJING - Millions of young Chinese sitting for the college entrance examination are being tested not only on their academic skills but also their honesty, as part of tough measures to prevent cheating.
This year, all 7.23 million would-be college students have signed letters pledging to abide by rules set by the national education authority.
Figuring that some might be tempted to cheat anyway, many test organisers have arranged for video cameras to be set up to ensure full compliance. In Beijing, the authorities have spent three million yuan on anti-cheating measures.
Anyone caught cheating will have his results annulled, and his name will be put in a record open to the public.
Students who signed the anti-cheating pledge could learn an ‘important lesson in credibility’, an asset in China’s market-oriented economy, said a Communist Party official yesterday.
Cheating in examinations is a growing problem in China as pressure mounts to secure a good education and technology makes it easier to evade the rules.
Last week, a Beijing university official and two employees of a private school were sentenced to up to three years in prison for leaking questions on a national English test to students.
And last year, two teachers in northwest China’s Shaanxi province were fired after they took money from their students to call their cellphones during the examinations and give them the answers.
In other scandals, educators have been accused of leaking test questions or altering results in response to bribery or pressure to favour the children of influential people. -- AFP, China Daily/Asia News Network
See photos about this week's posting in the Yahoo photo album. (Will open in a new browser window.)
The time was ripe to visit Confucius. The national exams were written on June 7 and 8. Seven million Chinese students have now received their final marks and are planning their next move, some to a university of their choice, some to return to middle school to get better marks next year, others to go to second, third or no choice educational institutions. Our own students at Huairou Yi Zhong received an examination at the end of the Oral English classes. This was at our insistence and in spite of scheduling hitches and marking arrangements for over 1400 year 1 and 2 students, we made it happen.
It was the end of classes, the end of June and we were in Beijing. It was an appropriate time to pay due obeisance to the sage of ancient China, one of humanity’s earliest educators. We figured that since we were both educators of many years we’d have a lot in common with the likes of Confucius (551-479 BCE). His temple (Kong Miao) on Guozijian Jie is just a street over from the Lama Temple and north and east of the Imperial City. So there on a hot and very muggy Beijing afternoon we strolled its precincts.
The name “Confucius”, well known in the West, brought a quizzical look to the faces of our Chinese friends, who call this sage Kong Fuzi. Jesuit priests were responsible for Latinizing his name in the sixteenth century. You can’t understand much of Chinese philosophy, values and history without acknowledging Confucius. He set forward an ordered society which in many ways echoes the Golden Chain of Being which we in the West understand as the basis of feudalism. A place for everything and everything in its place under Heaven will seem familiar to many Western scholars of medieval history and Natural Law. The key idea of a hierarchical society reflecting a natural moral order, the patriarch as head of the family and the prince as head of the state, is familiar to anyone who has studied Western thought. So we have two parallel systems well worth cross-referencing in an academic paper perhaps...but not now.
Above all Confucius valued learning and education as a way of obtaining merit in society. This idea transferred to the study of the Confucian classics as the basics of the examination system for positions in the civil service. The Chinese model is thought to have led to the introduction of civil service exams in
Britain in the nineteenth century, where senior civil servants are still labelled “Mandarins.” At its best, The Chinese examination system allowed candidates a level playing field so that those from poor families and without guanxi (connections or influence) could compete fairly with the powerful. Given the years and even decades of study necessary, families had to have enough resources (or a patron) to support the scholar in his quest for employment as an official, assuming his success.
By the Ming and Qing dynasties, the requirements of the examinations were the driving engine for the entire educational system in China. Papers involved writing commentaries on the Confucian classics, literary compositions and writing memorials in favour of a particular policy, all of which were expected to be fully annotated with references to the classics. In other words, there was a lot to memorize! Still today, the national university entrance exams are given on a countrywide basis, and still involve a great degree of memorization.
In the past candidates were put in special locked examination halls, for up to three days at a time. The stress was sometimes too much. Some became mad. Others would be found hanging in their cells. Another down side to exams, both then and now, is the temptation to cheat.
This year, recognizing this temptation and past experience with cheating, the Department of Education put in place some new rules. Each student had to obtain a registration identity card, complete with photo, so that someone else couldn’t write the exam in your place. Students were required to write in a school other than their own, and be supervised by teachers other than their own. Students had to sign a pledge not to engage in cheating. While in ancient times it is known that “slips were passed” among the candidates, in our technological age, students have been able to use cell phones to send messages to their classmates. All in all, it is a test of the ingenuity of the students who want/need to cheat and the authority’s attempt to thwart this practice. [See the article from The Straits Times below]
As with the imperial exams of ancient times, the university entrance exams written in early June are an all important watershed in the lives of the students who write them. Students will vie for positions at the various universities based on an accumulation of a possible 700 marks. The marks are divided among 4 subjects: Chinese (150 marks); Math (150 marks); English (150 marks); and a combination exam of either History, Geography and Politics, or Chemistry, Physics and Biology, each worth 300 marks.
All of this came to mind as we stepped through the gateway into the first courtyard. Arrayed on either side of a central walkway were 198 stelae (rectangular slabs of stone 4 metres high) bearing 51, 624 names, place of origin and position numbers of successful examination candidates going back to the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. The equivalent of a top scholar’s list at a high school or the Dean’s List at a college or university. These stelae were funded by the emperor. However, the last graduates in 1905 had to pay for the stelae themselves. Sadly, the immortality suggested by such stone monuments has suffered from weathering and other damage - most names can no longer be read. As well, during the Cultural Revolution, anti-intellectualism abounded. Confucius became anathema, and this temple fell into disrepair. Even today it has a dusty and somewhat bedraggled and forlorn aspect.
The contemporary Chinese still seem to have an ambivalent relationship with Confucius. The precinct of his temple houses two exhibitions which have nothing to do with his teachings or his life. An exhibition hall called the Capital Museum houses an historical display of the history of Beijing; another hall presently displays Olympic memorabilia from many of the previous host cities of the summer Olympic games.
Despite all of these distractions, we had come to honour Confucius. And we were not alone. We turned at the familiar sound of Canadian English to find a professor from UWO and his wife, making the same rounds. We mutually agreed to take each others’ photos in this special precinct. So seldom do we have pictures with the two of us! Our photos incorporate the tiled rooflines of the many special pavilions - only one was open - which house yet more stelae, more names, more scholars. We took note that the ubiquitous restorer of the Qing dynasty, Emperor Qianlong, had replaced the roofs with yellow tiles in 1737, thus conferring imperial favour and acknowledgment on Confucius.
We quietly smiled to ourselves at the representation of a man riding a chicken, as the final figure on the spines of the rooflines, which includes a water dragon and several real and mythical animals. ...A small digression is in order here. We have quizzed our Chinese friends about this peculiar final tile many times, because we have seen it so often on imperial buildings. They were as bereft of knowledge as we were! Our subsequent research has led to the following explanation. The guy on the chicken is in limbo! He is neither able to move up the spine of the eave in fear of the dragon above him, and the other animals who terrorize him. He’s unable to reach the ground because at last count, chickens don’t fly. According to legend, this figure represents a tyrannical prince of ancient times who was forcibly removed by the neighboring warlords. In order to escape capture, he hanged himself from the roof of his palace. A fate worse than death -- to spend centuries riding a chicken, no more than an ornament on a tiled roof. Needless to say, as we left the precinct, we were moved to buy one of these tiles at 150 yuan, and hope to give the prince a place in our garden - alas, still a soul with no resting place.
Back to the temple precinct ...As with all temples here, the buildings are arranged along a central axis, a broad paved avenue, shaded by ancient cypresses, one acknowledged to be 700 years old. We passed the green ceramic furnace used for burning sacrificial messages and thought it would be an ideal place to get rid of old copies of examinations, which were presently cluttering our desks at HRYZ! We think Confucius might find this gesture appropriate. We took special note of the inspiration offered in an ancient well on the site. The caption on the sign said: “This is an ancient well. It is said that scholars could write articles after they drank from this well. Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty named the well Lake of Ink Slab Water.” No doubt anyone suffering from writer’s block, should immediately send for a dram or two. Although, there has been no commercial exploitation of this particular water source, that we know of.
At the end of the second courtyard, up stairs with marble balustrades, across an open terrace, we entered the Da Cheng Dian (The Great Hall of Perfection, aka The Hall of Great Achievements) which is the central shrine to Confucius. It is a dark and dusty room with an equally dark and dusty sales desk on the right hand side of the main doors. When our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, we were attracted to the 60 statues of scholars, arranged on either side of the central altar, a crowd of expectant disciples. Of course, central to the room is the altar on which are placed incense burners and a place to kneel to reverence the very abstract ideas of knowledge, education, wisdom, morality, order and truth. Tablets to “Four Notables of Secondary Importance” and “12 Talented Persons” reminded us how precise the Chinese are in constructing a hierarchy. Of particular note in the room were the ancient musical instruments: a skein of bronze bells and a group of chevron-shaped cut stone tiles awaiting someone skilled to play them, in the manner we saw them played in Wuhan. We know of no one who plays pieces of stone in Canada. Music was central to Confucian thought, used to incite the imagination, foster observation, honour one’s father and prince and widen one’s acquaintance with nature. And from our experiences here, the Chinese have taken this to heart.
We returned to the precinct’s entrance, enjoying the shade of the tree lined street. Here stand three pailou, some of the few still remaining in Beijing. These arches honour individuals who demonstrated Confucian values -- children who sacrificed themselves for their parents, or widows who refused to remarry, for example. These colourful arches span the original street, now just wide enough for two taxis to pass each other. There are fewer and fewer places in this bustling city under construction where the old Beijing still shimmers. We were pleased that we had found this one.
June 9, 2004
College exam students sign honesty pledge
The Straits Times, Singapore
BEIJING - Millions of young Chinese sitting for the college entrance examination are being tested not only on their academic skills but also their honesty, as part of tough measures to prevent cheating.
This year, all 7.23 million would-be college students have signed letters pledging to abide by rules set by the national education authority.
Figuring that some might be tempted to cheat anyway, many test organisers have arranged for video cameras to be set up to ensure full compliance. In Beijing, the authorities have spent three million yuan on anti-cheating measures.
Anyone caught cheating will have his results annulled, and his name will be put in a record open to the public.
Students who signed the anti-cheating pledge could learn an ‘important lesson in credibility’, an asset in China’s market-oriented economy, said a Communist Party official yesterday.
Cheating in examinations is a growing problem in China as pressure mounts to secure a good education and technology makes it easier to evade the rules.
Last week, a Beijing university official and two employees of a private school were sentenced to up to three years in prison for leaking questions on a national English test to students.
And last year, two teachers in northwest China’s Shaanxi province were fired after they took money from their students to call their cellphones during the examinations and give them the answers.
In other scandals, educators have been accused of leaking test questions or altering results in response to bribery or pressure to favour the children of influential people. -- AFP, China Daily/Asia News Network
All text and photography © copyright Harkaway, 2003 - 2004
