Qing dai zhu juan ji cheng(清代科举硃卷集成)

The name of Zhu Juan comes from “Teng Lu” originated in early Bei Song. In order to prevent examiner from cheating in the Ke Ju examination by recognizing candidate’s handwriting, the answer in each examination paper was copied to another paper (known as Teng Lu) first before examined by the examiners. Till Ming and Qing, based on the imperial examination system requirement, some special staff will copy the candidates’ papers in red ink and then handed the copied ones to the examiner to avoid cheat through handwriting. Those copied paper with answers in red ink is called Zhu Juan. To Qing dynasty, the successful candidates at provincial level (called as Ju Ren) or in the highest examination (called as Jin Shi) liked printing their examination papers and showing them to relatives and friends. And gradually, the printing extends to the re-examination and the highest examination at palace in which Teng Lu was not required though. A kind of collection of those papers took shape and was called as Zhu Juan. The information of candidates’ personal background details, families and generations is more accurate and more in-detail in Zhu Juan than in genealogical collections to some degree. All the successful candidates in the family were included in Zhu Juan and this obvious feature makes it a first-hand resource on history research of family and the imperial examination. Zhu Juan is of great documentary value. The candidate’s information is a great addition to genealogy, local records (called as Fang Zhi) and inscriptions. Therefore it is a biographical material that cannot be neglected.

The original script we chose is from Shanghai He Zhong Library in late 1930s. In Min Guo, Zhang Yuanji and Ye Jingkui etc. found the unique documentary value of Zhu Juan when searching for and hiding cultural classical works. The library bought over 2000 Zhu Juan from Shou Xin Zhai owned by the Zhu’s (Zhe Jiang’s salt merchant) and later obtained over a thousand from donation by Zhu Yan Lou owned by the Pan’s (Jiang Su, County Wu) and laid its foundation of Zhu Juan’s collection. 8235 Zhu Juan collections from Qian Long and Guang Xu including Xiang Shi, Hui Shi and Wu Gong etc. were contained, in which 1635 copies are from Hui Shi, 12000 Jin Shi are involved, 4 examination copies of Wu Hui, 5186 copies of Xiang Shi, 34 of Wu Xiang, 1576 Wu Gong. Unihan based on these, put them in new order, and added genealogical documents, and finally digitized it into the full-text Qing dai zhu juan hui bian.