Chinese imperial dynasty whose top-ranking zhuanguan officials had to memorize classics and compose poetry in classical Chinese, representing extremely high literacy standards.
"feels like something is about to give on a societal level, can't explain why, feels like we're living during the collapse of the qing dynasty or something"
"Do you have any idea how fucking smart you had to be to be a top ranking, zhuanguan official in the Qing Dynasty? Ya I guess they didn't use the scientific method or whatever, but fucking christ they had to memorize all of the classics and be able to spontaneously compose poetry to express their pol"