魏徵奏開選場 Wei Zheng Proposes the Examinations
忽一日，太宗登位，聚集文武眾官，朝拜禮畢，有魏徵丞相出班奏道：「方今天下太平，八方寧靜，應依古法，開立選場，招取賢士，擢用人材，以資化理。」太宗道：「賢卿所奏有理。」就傳招賢文榜，頒布天下：各府州縣，不拘軍民人等，但有讀書儒流，文義明暢，三場精通者，前赴長安應試。忽一日，太宗登位，聚集文武众官，朝拜礼毕，有魏征丞相出班奏道：「方今天下太平，八方宁静，应依古法，开立选场，招取贤士，擢用人材，以资化理。」太宗道：「贤卿所奏有理。」就传招贤文榜，颁布天下：各府州县，不拘军民人等，但有读书儒流，文义明畅，三场精通者，前赴长安应试。
逐句解 Line by line
One day, when Taizong had taken his seat and the civil and military officials were assembled, the audience and its ceremonies concluded,
朝拜禮畢 — the audience held, the bowing done — is the standing cue in a Chinese novel for somebody to raise business. 朝 here is cháo, court, not the zhāo that means morning; the chapter uses both.
the Chancellor Wei Zheng stepped forth from the ranks and memorialized:
Wei Zheng 魏徵 (580–643) was the minister famous for telling Taizong things he did not want to hear — the standing example of the honest official who says so and survives it. 出班 is the physical move that goes with speaking up: stepping out of the rank of assembled officials. 丞相, chancellor, reads chéng xiàng.
'Now that the empire is at peace and the eight quarters are tranquil, we should follow the ancient statutes: open the examination halls, recruit men of worth, and advance men of talent, so as to aid the work of civilizing rule.'
The proposal is a recruitment drive. 選場 are the examination halls; 擢用人材 is to pull talent up and put it to work; 化理 is government understood as the labour of civilizing. In 應依古法, follow the old statutes, 應 is yīng, ought — the same character turns up three lines on as yìng, to answer.
Taizong replied, 'What my worthy minister proposes is sound.'
賢卿, worthy minister, is how an emperor is courteous to a subordinate: warm, and never an equal.
He thereupon issued a proclamation summoning the worthy, to be promulgated throughout the realm:
The 文榜, also called the 黃榜, is the imperial notice posted up on yellow paper. It is the government gazette of its day, and the way news of this kind actually reached a county town.
In every prefecture, department, and county, without distinction of soldier or commoner, any man of the scholarly sort, lucid in letters and accomplished in the three sessions, was to come up to Cháng'ān and sit the examination.
The notice is deliberately wide open: 不拘軍民人等 draws no line between soldier and commoner, and any man 三場精通, on top of all three examination sessions, may come. 應試, to sit an examination, is literally to answer it, and takes 應 as yìng — not Wei Zheng's yīng a few lines back. 長安 again keeps 長 as cháng.
Wei Zheng 魏徵 (580–643) is one of the few people in this chapter who existed. He was Taizong's most celebrated scold, proverbial for saying the unwelcome thing to an emperor who put up with it because the state came out better. Readers who know the Shidetang chapter this one displaced will recognize him in a far larger role there: it is Wei Zheng who executes the Jing River Dragon King in a dream, and that killing is what opens the road to the underworld. Here he gets one item of committee business.
The business is the 科舉, the civil examinations — the machinery by which a man from nowhere could become somebody, and the engine the plot is about to start. What the chapter sketches (選場 opened, a 招賢 notice posted through the provinces, three sessions, policy questions before the throne) is an idealized version rather than Tang practice as it actually ran. It is how the examinations looked in the popular imagination, which is the right register for a story that will use them to put a young man on a horse under one particular tower.