Zhang Hao, courtesy name Guozhong, was a native of the Southern Sea.
To Great Xia, the Northlands and the Southern Sea both lay beyond the Nine Provinces. Students from either place had to travel into the Nine Provinces to sit the imperial examinations.
They could still take the examinations and enter official service through them, but in literary circles and at court alike, an ugly prejudice against these "people from beyond civilization" persisted.
Of the two regions, the Northlands were vast and sparsely populated, producing fierce warriors. Few Northerners followed Pan Long's father, Pan Lei, in taking the imperial examinations and achieving anything there. Nor did Northerners care. To them, mastering martial arts, going to the Golden City Defense Line, fighting the Wilderness People and Fierce Beasts, and winning fame through merit—that was what a man ought to do.
Study? Take the imperial examinations?
Oh, my dear mother, you had to be joking!
Hadn't those years of memorizing texts at the Official Academy been enough?
The Southern Sea, by contrast, had a large population and a relatively prosperous economy, so literary pursuits flourished there. Plenty of its people took the examinations each year, and plenty did well.
But because of that prejudice, people from the Southern Sea could become lower-level scholars and provincial graduates without too much difficulty, while becoming metropolitan graduates was markedly harder. As for taking first place... In the centuries since the Imperial Court had expanded into the Southern Sea, one hand was enough to count every first-place scholar it had produced.
That hand could even be missing a little something—say, a pinkie its owner had chopped off after drink led him astray—and still have fingers to spare.
Under those circumstances, for Zhang Hao, a man from the Southern Sea, to outshine every candidate in Great Xia's