The East held that life had four great joys: timely rain after a long drought, meeting an old friend in a foreign land, the wedding night, and earning a place on the honor roll.
In the thirty-third year of Qianlong's reign, He Shen could be said to have received two blessings at once. First, at eighteen, He Shen graduated from Xian'an Palace Academy with outstanding marks. Xian'an Palace was a school for the sons of Manchu officials during the Qing dynasty. Unlike the Imperial Academy, admission could not simply be bought through "donations." Students had to be handsome sons of the Eight Banners or children of the Imperial Household Department, and their academic performance was subject to rigorous selection. In the end, only around eighty were chosen. Their studies included not only the classics and histories, but also horsemanship, archery, and firearms training. Graduating from such a school with excellent results practically guaranteed a position in the capital or at the emperor's side. Moreover, He Shen was innately intelligent. He soon stood out among the students and became Feng Yinglian's grandson-in-law.
Though He Shen's family had fallen on hard times, he was still a Manchu, and the path he followed differed from that of provincial graduates. Perhaps his successive good fortunes had filled him with confidence, for he entered the metropolitan examination in the thirty-fourth year of Qianlong's reign. As expected, he failed miserably. Fortunately, he could still inherit the rank of third-class light carriage commandant as a civil student. Before long, he was selected as a guard of the Sticky Pole Office, and soon afterward became one of Qianlong's ceremonial attendants.
The Embodied Guards had initially been the emperor's honor guard as well. In any event, the provincial graduate had not become a presented scholar, nor had he become