I returned home from a week's vacation in Nanjing and Shanghai. I planned to stay longer but, as people had warned me before I went, it was too cold. Because they are technically in south China, the government doesn't allow any heating systems there and the houses are all cold. The temperature hovered around zero centigrade (32 F), and there was snow on the ground. I stayed in students' homes in both cities, and the apartments were small and poor and on the edge of town. To get anywhere I had to take long bus rides - just like Beijing.
Of the two cities, I had a much more interesting time in Nanjing. It has much history, and the student I was staying with loves history and was eager to show me everything. Since it was during the 15-day Spring Festival for the New Year, we went to the Temple Fair in and around the Confucian Temple. This temple had been a center for Confucian study for 1500 years. Like temples all over China, it was filled with lights for the spring festival. The gaudy, overwhelming, technicolor lights were everywhere - in the streets leading up to the temple and inside the temple itself. The Lonely Planet uses the words tacky and kitsch to describe this temple, but those words - any words - are inadequate. It is indescribable.
There are huge, internally lit, garish, plastic models of dragons and Chinese characters and flowers and lamps and characters from stories and legends everywhere. The colors are overwhelming. In Nanjing they sell colorful blown glass lanterns of different animals and gods and monsters that are internally lit and play music. I bought one of the Monkey King Sun Wukong from the Journey to the West riding on the Dragon King. They have paper lanterns that hold candles inside and many colorful toys. Stalls selling these things line the streets and add to the confusion. The large gates have dragons and huge flowers on top.
Entering the Confucian Temple left me speechless. Among the old, temple-style buildings was a mammoth statue of Confucius and rows of statues of his disciples surrounded by enormous, internally lit, plastic models of various stories, tales, and myths. There was a Santa Claus display and Aladdin and his lamp. Snow White and the seven dwarves were there, and numerous Chinese myths with fairies and dragons and other monsters. On one side was a plastic model of a typical Buddhist temple with the series of buildings and steps and Buddhas. The entire display was lit from the inside. We moved back through the many buildings in the complex where the actual historic, Confucian elements were overwhelmed by the models and displays and lights.
Deep in the temple was an ancient bell ensemble—three sets of bells played by five people. This is the only replica of an ancient bell ensemble that is now in a museum. The largest set had 35 metal bells ranging from big to small. There was a set of graduated stone slabs of a peculiar shape and a set of three big, deep bells. We Paid 40 Y for a concert, and the small number of people who had been sitting there waiting got a treat. It was so beautiful that the tears ran down my face.
Then we went through the shopping streets near the Temple to the ancient place where all the Chinese scholars from south of the Yangzi took their exams for 1500 years. There was a small museum left of what must have been a mammoth enterprise. A scale model showed a warren of thousands of little sheds surrounded by guard towers. The scholars were locked into the little sheds for three days at a time to take the exams. If they came out for any reason, they had given up and failed the exam. The museum showed the kits the students could take with them to hold food and water and writing supplies. The paper was supplied by the examiners. There was even an example of an actual crib sheet that had hundreds of tiny characters and fit in the palm of the hand.
We left the museum and went into the dark - no festival lights in this tiny museum -- and walked among the little booths, which had been set up with mannequins to show various states of exam-taking. The booths were too small to lie down in, so they had to sleep sitting up. I didn't see any chamber pots so who knows what the WC [watercloset/bathroom] arrangements were. Some of the models were trying to sleep; some were cooking on little charcoal stoves; some were confidently writing, while others were in agony. One scholar was receiving a homing pigeon; I saw that creative cheating is also an old tradition. One was confronting a snake, and Todd said that many students died while taking the exams. Since it was almost too dark to see, I turned on the glass lantern I had bought of the monkey king and the dragon king. It rotated and flashed its red eyes while playing a little tune. It somehow provided a fitting light to guide us through the dark booths.
Confucianism may be dead as a state religion, but exam-taking is alive and well in China. The students talk about them all the time. To go to university, everyone must pass a rigorous three-day exam (coincidentally the same?). There are also various levels of national exams to be passed to proceed through your degree --like having to take three-day SAT tests over and over again to move through life. Todd and the other English majors are preparing for the national test for English majors band 8. Todd was fully aware of how deep in his history this devotion to exams is rooted.
[Janet teaches at an agricultural university where many of her students are peasants.]