Students relive Vietnam’s imperial exams

Photos showing an old Vietnamese examination hall recreated at Son Tay Temple of Literature in Hanoi’s Duong Lam area have recently circulated on social media. 

Students dressed in traditional clothing took on the roles of examination officials, soldiers and exam candidates, bringing part of the old examination setting back to life.

The program was organized by Son Tay Temple of Literature in partnership with Vietnam Heritage Village Experiential Education JSC. It aims to give students a more hands-on way to learn about the historical site and better understand how people studied and took exams in the past.

For students today, terms such as examination halls, scholars’ tents, candidates and the imperial examination system can feel distant and unfamiliar. Taking part in a recreated examination setting makes these concepts easier to visualize.

Phung Minh Long, director of Vietnam Heritage Village Experiential Education JSC, said the program was designed to offer visitors, particularly students, a different way to engage with the historical site.

“Instead of simply touring the site and listening to an introduction, students can sit in examination tents, use calligraphy brushes and inkstones, and get a glimpse of what studying and taking exams was like for candidates in the past,” Long said.

Long said the experience helps students connect with concepts that may otherwise seem remote. By stepping into a recreated examination setting, they can gain a clearer picture of the educational traditions of the past.

The recreation also brings the story of Vietnam’s imperial examination system to life. Students in the past spent years studying and sat for a series of examinations in the hope of earning a place on the list of successful candidates.

“Activities like this give visitors and students another way to connect with the historical site. By experiencing it firsthand, they can better understand the stories associated with Son Tay Temple of Literature,” Long said.

The imperial examination system of Vietnam served as the cornerstone of civil service recruitment and social mobility for nearly a millennium, running from its inauguration under the Ly dynasty in 1075 until its final session under the Nguyễn dynasty in 1919. 

Anchored in Confucian classics, administrative law, poetry, and political treatises, the rigorous multi-tiered examinations - progressing from regional trials (thi hương) to the provincial (thi hội) and palace exams (thi đình) - curbed hereditary aristocracy in favor of a scholar-bureaucrat elite. 

Successful laureates earned prestigious doctoral degrees, had their names immortalized on stone stelae mounted on stone turtles at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, and staffed the imperial court, establishing an enduring cultural reverence for scholarship and meritocratic governance.