share time: 2025-10-07 02:30:32
Ah Niu, son of butcher Li Dadao, has loved loitering outside the village school to eavesdrop on lessons since childhood. But his pig blood scent earns him jeers of 'butcher's spawn' from classmates, and even his father chases him with a butchering knife, yelling: 'Can reading be sold as pork?' Unwilling to give up, Ah Niu saves money from selling pig offal to buy old books, reading *The Analects* by kerosene lamp in the pigsty at night—only to meet an exiled Hanlin scholar, once a third-place imperial exam finisher, hiding in the village. The scholar teaches him policy essays, but Ah Niu is disqualified from his first exam for 'low birth.' Just as he’s about to quit, his father sells their three-year-old sow and slams the silver on his palm: 'I’ve butchered pigs all my life—I want my son to make it to the top!' The second time he takes the exam, Ah Niu enters the hall with the smell of ink from the pigsty. When the examiner sees 'father: butcher' and tries to tear his paper, Ah Niu retorts, eyes red: 'A butcher’s knife cuts meat, but a scholar’s pen cuts through prejudice!' In the final exam, the emperor asks: 'Aren’t you afraid of ridicule for being a butcher’s son?' Ah Niu kowtows: 'My pen writes of a butcher’s life and the people’s suffering—that’s who the exam should choose!'
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