MARTIN PUCHNER: This puts an interesting spin on the New Youth.

A, that is a youth movement, perhaps particularly

provocative at this time in China, which placed traditionally so much emphasis
on the older generation, honoring your parents, honoring your older siblings.
So youth really shakes that up in a very profound way.
DAVID DAMROSCH: And you see this, then, demonstrated
in the story of Ah-Q, which is all about the way the eldest sons of the richest
families make it in the village.
And anybody else, like our antihero Ah-Q, is on the margins.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Right.
And it's interesting how they make it, because the way
they make it is the way people have made it for around 1,000 years in China,
and that is through the imperial examination system.
DAVID DAMROSCH: So how does that work?
MARTIN PUCHNER: It started in the first decades of the Common Era.
And it's an examination system that starts on the local level.
If you pass the exam on the local level, you can move on to the regional level,
to the level of the province, and finally to the federal level,
as we would call it-- the imperial, in the Imperial Academy.
And it is the way to get into government service.
So if you want to get any kind of government jobs--
and these are often the most lucrative, the cushiest kind of jobs to get-- you
have to pass through this examination system.
DAVID DAMROSCH: What does the exam involve?
MARTIN PUCHNER: What's interesting and fascinating to me about it
is that the exam essentially involves literature.
So not just literature in the narrow sense--
there are also old texts that have to do with conduct and ritual,
with divination, with historical records, what
is called the Confucian Classics.
So these are ancient texts that Confucius presumably
edited-- he didn't author them, but he presumably edited them--
at the center of which is, in some way, a poetry collection,
the Classic of Poetry.
So for almost 1,000 years, anyone who wanted to enter government service
had to pass this incredibly grueling and rigorous exam in literature writ large.
DAVID DAMROSCH: You had to be able to write eight-line poetry--
MARTIN PUCHNER: Exactly.
DAVID DAMROSCH: --an [? acceptably ?] complicated, regulated verse.
You had to know all those rules and be able to do it.
Now why would that be a way to train for government service?
MARTIN PUCHNER: Well, I think on the one hand,
of course, a high level of literacy, interpretation,
writing skills are important, even today, one might say.
But I think it was also-- the fact that such an exam was
instituted at all was an attempt to create some form of meritocracy.
It was an attempt to instill cultural values that
were different from that of the warrior class
where just the power of the strongest somehow dominated.
So it was an attempt to institute a genuine bureaucracy
based on a meritocratic system.
DAVID DAMROSCH: So 2,000 years ago, they're
inventing what in the United States will be the SAT--
MARTIN PUCHNER: That's right.
DAVID DAMROSCH: --the GRE, the LSATs, the MCATs,
all of these exams rolled into one.
And based on literature and history, primarily.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Right.
Exactly.
You could say that for those 1,000 years that this exam system was in place,
China was ruled by a kind of highly literate elite--
I think the most literary focused kind of society imaginable, perhaps.
DAVID DAMROSCH: And I think we also have to understand
as you're saying literature in a broad sense, the idea of wen encompasses
all kinds of serious writing, but also order.
The order of the universe is reflected in this. [? Recall, ?]
there's a saying from the Classical period
that if the emperor wants to cross a river,
he finds a man who knows bridges, but if he wants to rule a province,
he finds a man who knows men.
And poetry and history were really the privileged access
to understanding human behavior and nature.
MARTIN PUCHNER: And I think poetry was also crucial for operating at court.
Communicating through poetry was important.
And of course we've encountered something
like this in The Tale of Genji, where writing waka poetry
was the most important form of communication.
And I think something similar exists in China.
So it was actually an important skill for that cultural contexts.
DAVID DAMROSCH: And this carries on in these New Youth intellectuals-- Lu
Xun, Hu Shih, their friend Lin Yutang.
They never think of literature as some separate realm of pure aesthetic play.
They're writing also polemical tracts, philosophical works.
They're interested in history.
It's a very broad conception of the literary.
MARTIN PUCHNER: And at the same time, though, this exam system
is the background for the story of Ah-Q, which
is a biting critique, because even though the original idea may have been
meritocratic, it all of course degenerated into one more
bastion for the privileged.
So in the village in which the story of Ah-Q takes place,
it's the sons of the two richest families that can afford to send them
to give them the kind of training--
DAVID DAMROSCH: The SAT prep.
MARTIN PUCHNER: The SAT prep.
DAVID DAMROSCH: Years' worth of.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Exactly.
DAVID DAMROSCH: And it's the eldest son of the most important families, right?
Not the second son, not the eldest daughter.
It's going to be always that.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Exactly.
DAVID DAMROSCH: And of course, in Chinese families,
traditionally, you would actually be known not necessarily
by your proper name, but you are first son, second son, third daughter.
That's how you're called.
So the hierarchy is totally inscribed just
in how you call each other in the family.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Exactly.
So it isn't quite as meritocratic as it was perhaps meant to be,
though it's still a grueling exercise.
In Nanjing I think is the largest exam setup that still
exists-- Nanjing, the southern capital.
And you have these rows of open air booths, very small booths,
in which the students would have to spend many days.
They wouldn't be allowed to leave.
They would curl up under these very cold conditions,
subsist on very little food, and subject themselves
to this extremely grueling experience, and then
hoping to make it to the next level.
DAVID DAMROSCH: Of course, that itself is clearly
viewed as a test of character, right?
MARTIN PUCHNER: Yes.
DAVID DAMROSCH: It is a rite de passage.
If you can do that, then you have a kind of moral fiber as-- not just
you can write well, which you could show in an hour any time,
but that you've actually been through this.
You have the staying power.
You have the strength of character that you need.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Right.
It's a rite of passage.
DAVID DAMROSCH: Not unlike the kind of severe boot
camp in a military situation or medical school residencies.
Can you survive incredible hours, a lack of sleep, all those things?
A kind of ideology of that.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Right.
DAVID DAMROSCH: So it's interesting, then,
that in these revolutionary times that Lu Xun is talking about,
the story begins with the examination system being abolished.
And what happens to these elder sons when the ground is pulled out
from underneath them?
MARTIN PUCHNER: Well, from this perspective of Ah-Q,
who is the lowest of the low, in a sense,
we see first the ridiculous and undeserved privilege
that some of those few in the village who have passed
the exam system in the past enjoy.
It's seen as a kind of undeserved privilege
they get, but at the same time--
DAVID DAMROSCH: And they even start to get
called "Mr. Provincial Examination."
MARTIN PUCHNER: Mr. Provincial Examination.
And it's very clear that, no matter what some of the characters in the story
think about it, that Lu Xun thinks this is ridiculous pretense,
that the whole examination system needs to be abolished.
So I think it's very clear that Lu Xun and the other members of the New Youth
Movement were very much in favor in a sense of abolishing
this old system that oriented this society perhaps
too much towards the classics, too much towards the past,
and which they are now hoping to open to new influences.
DAVID DAMROSCH: How does this work out in the story?
What about the son who gets with the new program
and goes abroad for Western education in Japan, as Lu Xun had done?
MARTIN PUCHNER: The whole story in a way provides a very interesting perspective
on revolution.
This is the time of revolution when the Communist Party first
starts to establish itself, when the traditional order is
no longer just a given.
And there is hope, perhaps, that a genuine revolution will
abolish this ruling elite that has a grip on society,
in parts through the exam system.
But that's not quite what happens.
DAVID DAMROSCH: These privileged eldest sons of the rich families
join the revolution as fast as they can.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Exactly.
DAVID DAMROSCH: They try to co-opt it.
Particularly funny is the one who goes abroad to study.
He returns and is known locally as "Mr. Fake Foreign Devil."
MARTIN PUCHNER: Exactly.
DAVID DAMROSCH: So he's not even a genuine foreign devil.
He's a fake foreign devil.
And there's no indication ever that this foreign education
has any use whatsoever in the village.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Right.
At the same time, Lu Xun had to deal with the prejudice.
So as a nationalist movement develops in China,
Lu Xun was sometimes accused of being a "fake foreign devil" himself
since he had gone to Japan--
DAVID DAMROSCH: Exactly.
MARTIN PUCHNER: --who is more and more seen as really the enemy,
and is tainted by that.
So it's kind of seen as a ridiculous thing in the story,
but it's also a real thing.
Having gone to study in Japan becomes a kind of dangerous things and a suspect.
DAVID DAMROSCH: As his brother was even more suspect,
in fact, for having, perhaps, collaborated
with the Japanese government later on.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Exactly.
DAVID DAMROSCH: Even before that, he was still exploring these tensions
and being very skeptical towards the possibility of just instantly changing.
And he has a wonderful kind of literary sensibility portrayed here.
So particularly telling details, like the queue and how it's used,
the long pigtail that the men are supposed to wear,
which had been imposed by the foreign Manchus when
they took over China some centuries earlier, made to wear these.
Now people are cutting them off.
MARTIN PUCHNER: So you could recognize them on the street.
DAVID DAMROSCH: That's right.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Right?
So it's a humiliating kind of marker that foreign ruling elite
imposes onto the Chinese.
DAVID DAMROSCH: That's right.
So then it's a certain sense of pride to cut it off.
But then people start to compromise.
And they don't quite want to cut it off.
So they sort of just tie it up on the head a little bit earlier.
They would do that in the summer anyway, and now they tie it up earlier.
And the perfect image of this kind of revolution
that isn't quite a change if it's really just you tie up your
queue a little bit sooner.
MARTIN PUCHNER: Right.
Those who pass the exam are now the loudest revolutionaries.
DAVID DAMROSCH: That's right.
But then the revolution turns against them.
They think they're co-opting it, but then they're
getting bled by these essentially bandits who are using the revolution.
Possibly even the magistrates are in on the take, refusing.
So the rich people in the village are getting robbed.
And rather than deal with this, the magistrates look for someone to blame.
And they fix on Ah-Q, the drifter, the minor criminal.
They accuse him completely falsely and force him to sign a false confession.