The following excerpt from Ngo Tat To's novel, The Tent and the Bamboo Bed, describes candidate Van Hac's experiences of a royal exam held in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century:
The wind blew again. The thunder rumbled, ầm ầm. Rainwater poured everywhere, seething and swirling. Even though Van Hac had tied his tent securely to the earth, the tent twisted and shook with each gust. From time to time, he had to grab the frame to secure it so the tent wouldn't burst open.
Near midday, the rain became formidable. The ditches in the walled examination quarter filled with churning white water. Bubbles bobbed on the water's surface. A moment later, the water overflowed the ditches into Van Hac's tent and spread, swirling around his narrow bamboo bed.
Van Hac sat on the bed, his head bowed over his wooden lap table, absorbed in writing his exam. He felt his bed gradually sink into the earth; muddy water rose between its bamboo slats.
What was happening?
A few months before, the examination area had been a rice field. The rice came ripe just as the exams were about to begin. After the farmers had harvested their crop, they brought in water buffaloes to plow the field and break the earth into large clods. Then the farmers divided the field into areas where the students could pitch their tents and sit for their exams.
The early days of the exam were sunny. The students walked about on the coarse earth, which was hard on their feet but fairly clean. But now, with the heavy rain, the area had flooded and turned to mud that couldn't support the weight of a bed with someone sitting on it. And so, the bamboo bed sank until its four legs disappeared like submerged stakes into earth that was as soft as pulpy rice.
Van Hac, like all the others, sat on a bed, but it was as if nothing was there. The water lapped around the bottom of his trousers and the flap of his gown and smeared them with mud. At times the northern wind drove splashing water into the tents. Van Hac had to turn his back to the gale so that his body became like a screen blocking the water and preventing the spray from striking his examination paper. The rainwater penetrated his clothes, soaking Van Hac to the skin. He felt a chill enter his bones as if he'd been shot by poisoned arrows. He blew out his breath. His hand trembled so much that he could no longer hold his brush to write down the poem he had composed.
"I'd better give this up and be free of it," Van Hac said to himself. "Taking an exam this way is more humiliating than a dog's life. Becoming a mandarin isn't worth this."
Van Hac seized his examination papers, intending to tear them to shreds. But then suddenly he remembered: Even if he wasn't going to continue with the exam, he must still turn in his empty pages before he could leave. If he did not turn over his examination book, then guards at the gate would think he'd snuck in to help another student; they would arrest Van Hac. And so Van Hac thought again: If I present an exam with only a few lines of poetry, I will be considered one of the 'due bach' class. They'll add my name and age to the wooden placard of mediocrity. I'll be humiliated for who knows how long.
There remained no other choice. He must press on despite his excruciating plight.