00:00A homeless beggar once designed the world's hardest job interview.
00:04His name was Zhu Yuan Zhang.
00:07He founded China's Ming dynasty.
00:09Then he built something extraordinary.
00:12China's imperial exam, the Keiju, was brutal.
00:16Candidates memorized over 400,000 characters.
00:20They mastered the entire Confucian canon.
00:23One failed attempt meant waiting three years.
00:26Most men spent their whole lives trying.
00:29Here's the twist.
00:30Zhu could barely read himself.
00:32Yet he redesigned the exam deliberately.
00:35He wanted to block powerful elite families.
00:39For the first time, any male citizen could compete.
00:42Birth didn't matter.
00:44Only your brain did.
00:46Now here's where it gets wild.
00:48British reformers in 1855 literally copied this system.
00:52That became the template for government hiring exams in over 100 countries.
00:59Your country's civil service traces back to a medieval Chinese beggar.
01:04Follow for more mind-blowing facts every day.
