1300 years of education

The Confucius Temple in Beijing houses stones with names of the thousands of scholars who succeeded in the Imperial Examination through the ages.

This is really a great monument! Great if the personal histories of all those people could be tracked down.


Confucius. Temple under renovation.


The names of the successful examinees, hundreds carved on each stone.


Messieurs Han, Lu and Yang.

Many of the stones have a smaller added slab beside them, with personal histories of the people.

This tells of Mr. Liu Zizhuang, born in Huangzhou (present day Hubei Province) at the end of the Ming Dynasty. He took the exam many times, up till the downfall of the Ming at the hands of Manchu people from Northeast China. The Manchus established the Qing Dynasty in 1644. Liu was lucky: the Qing decided to keep the Imperial Exam intact and he passed at the first try. Afterwards he held various Qing government posts and became famous with his writings before becoming ill and returning to Huangzhou. He passed away at home.


The last batch of examinees and the last stone. They had to scrape up the money for the stone by themselves. Some of them held offices under the later governments of China.