What to Do When Exam Pressure Is High? Fu Sheng in the Early Han Dynasty Comprehended the True Meaning of the Second Yang Line (Jiu'er) of the Qian Hexagram While Studying the *I Ching*

In the seventh year of Emperor Gaozu of Han, in Jinan Commandery, the frosty wind rustled the bamboo slips in Fu Sheng's home. The twenty-something Fu Sheng stared at the fragmented slips of the *Book of Documents* on his desk, scratching his hair into a messy bird's nest — the commandery's imperial scholar selection exam was only three months away, yet the more he read, the more his mind felt like a tangled ball of hemp; he could even mix up the punctuation of the *Canon of Yao*.

It was strangely uncanny. Just a couple of years prior, he had been a top student at the commandery school, but lately he had hit one wall after another: last time he failed the commandery exam because he miswrote an ancient character, and the month before, he had been left speechless in a scriptural debate with his teacher. He stared blankly at the yarrow stalks in the corner, his mind full of "how to adjust when you feel unlucky." The more he thought about it, the tighter his chest felt, until he could not even eat.

His father, Old Fu, was a veteran who had fought in the wars at the end of the Qin Dynasty. Seeing his son in such a state, he kicked open the door and said, "A scholar turned into a sorry mess like you? You might as well come dig sweet potatoes in the fields with me!" As he spoke, he tossed a roll of bamboo slips to him. "This *Book of Changes* was hidden by your grandfather. Stop moping about luck all the time — see what the ancient sages had to say."

Glumly, Fu Sheng unrolled the scroll and happened upon the second line (Nine in the Second Place) of the Qian hexagram. Written in Qin clerical script on the bamboo slips were the words: "The dragon appears in the fields; it is favorable to see the great man." He stared at these eight characters for half the night, then suddenly slapped his thigh — all these days he had been holed up in his study obsessing over individual words and phrases, wasn't that just trapping a dragon in a shallow pit, flailing about uselessly? A dragon has to rise from the depths and stretch its limbs in the fields before it can meet a true master.

The next day, he packed his bedding and headed for Zichuan. He had heard there was a retired elderly imperial scholar there who had once served as a reader at the Qin court. Everyone tried to dissuade him: "The exam is in three months, what are you running around for?" But Fu Sheng smiled and said, "Instead of cooping up at home fretting over how to make the right decision, I'd rather go out and meet someone who truly understands."

When he arrived in Zichuan, the old scholar refused to see him at first. So he sat on the ridge of the old man's field for three days, clutching his hand-copied *Book of Documents* to his chest, nibbling on dry rations when he was hungry. Early on the fourth morning, the old scholar came out to the fields with a hoe on his shoulder. Seeing Fu Sheng still there, muttering over his bamboo slips, with the dew on his trouser legs almost turning to frost, he could not help but chuckle: "You lad — are you here to study, or to steal vegetables?"

As they talked, Fu Sheng learned that the old scholar had been among the last group of scholars to compile the *Book of Documents* before the Qin burning of the books. Seeing that Fu Sheng had a solid foundation but had warped his learning by rote memorization, the old scholar pointed to the wheat sprouts just pushing through the soil in the field ridge and said: "Look at this wheat. When it's buried in the soil, who knows if it's a dragon or a worm? But as long as it's willing to push through the earth, see the sun, and meet someone who knows how to farm to give it a little guidance, it will naturally grow strong."

Over the next two months, under the old scholar's guidance, Fu Sheng sorted out the entire framework of the *Book of Documents* clearly. Even the chapters he had once memorized by rote suddenly came alive. On the day he returned to the commandery for the exam, he walked along the field ridge, and as the wind blew, he felt light and lively all over — he used to worry constantly about how to deal with exam pressure, but now he understood that most of that pressure was self-inflicted from being cooped up in the study. When you truly ground your learning in reality, where would all that anxiety come from?

On the day the results were posted, Fu Sheng's name was at the very top of the list. Standing beneath the notice board, he thought of the line from the Qian hexagram and could not help but smile. It turned out that "the dragon appears in the fields" never meant waiting for a noble patron to fall from the sky and hit you. It meant you have to first climb out of your own little muddy pit, step into the sunlight, and go where the wise people are — if you are willing to stretch your limbs and be that dragon rising from the depths, the wind in the fields will naturally blow the people you are meant to meet right to you.