However, because the preliminary round of the imperial examinations had a direct impact on one’s path to officialdom, attempts at cheating continued without end. Among the candidates, a joke about ‘pigeon messenger’ was passed around. It was said that, in the last dynasty, there was a student whose family had trained a pigeon. Every night, that pigeon would fly into the student’s exam stall and the student would write all of the questions from the exam in tiny handwriting and have the pigeon bring the tied up note on its leg back. The family had hired an expert at answering questions and had him write all of the answers to the questions before having the bird bring it back. Because the pigeon couldn’t bring back anything too heavy, both sides of the paper had been used to write the answer. Since the hired scholar was afraid that the candidate might miss the back side, he had written ‘there is more on the back’ on the front side of the paper. Unfortunately, that candidate had copied that phrase without realizing it and had gotten caught by one of the graders...

Although no one was able to verify the authenticity of this story, it caused many of the candidates to begin to raise pigeons at home. It truly made the lives of the soldiers guarding the exam hall hard. At night, they needed to increase their precautions and they even added on some archers to their ranks. When birds flew over the area, they shot them down. It was rumored that one of them had even shot down the messenger pigeon...