short series

Daily Struggles of a Butcher's Son in the Imperial Examination

share time: 2025-11-15 06:02:23

Li Xiaoman, son of a butcher, clutches the brush and ink his father bought with money from selling pig intestines, reciting the Four Books while squatting beside the meat counter. Born into poverty, he’s determined to shatter the prejudice that “butchers’ sons don’t deserve to study.” On the county exam day, the examiner scoffs at his calloused hands—“staining the scholar’s tools”—but his essay, vividly depicting street life, astounds everyone. A neighboring scholar hides his admission ticket, but his father, holding a blood-stained butcher’s knife, blocks the exam hall entrance: “My son’s brush is sharper than my knife!” When the “meat shop boy” faces the “narrow bridge of the imperial exam,” every stroke carries the stubbornness of the poor, every step crushes worldly disdain—he wants to prove that hands that kill pigs can also hold the Jinshi (scholar-official) notification.

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