Ping Province, Lelang Commandery.
Gu Rong climbed into a carriage with a great many gifts and traveled along a narrow road.
After being relocated from Jiangdong to Ping Province, Gu Rong had been the first to submit. He had set aside his resistance to Cao Wei and seized the opportunity presented by the severe shortage of local officials to take the local assessment.
In fact, ancient China had always had an examination system for petty clerks.
Back in the pre-Qin era, before the Qin State had unified the land, it already held examinations for petty clerks. Anyone who understood writing, laws, and mathematics could take the examination and, upon passing, serve as a clerk at the very bottom.
Sometimes people were also promoted directly from the local population.
These petty clerks did not count as officials. Their salaries came from the local administration and were usually paid by their immediate superiors. They were like the private slaves of those local officials; calling them colleagues would make people laugh their teeth out. They had no official grade and were "unranked officials."
Under Cao Mao's current dual examination system, local assessments no longer recruited only the most basic clerks, but clerks who actually held established posts.
Gu Rong had passed the assessment and formally become a County Dian.
A dian official handled matters such as litigation within the county. Though his rank was very low, at least he was an official with an established post.
Within the county town, he could even be considered one of the higher-ups.
Yet for a son of the great clans, holding such an office in a county was downright shameful.
After all, during the Two Jins, the distinction between "pure" and "impure" offices was widespread. Any office below the seventh rank was considered unbearably sullied; scions