Han Yu is considered as one of the famous literary figures and thinkers in the Tang Dynasty, but in his early years, he failed to pass the civil service exams several times.

This was not because his works were not outstanding, but because his writing style did not fit the trend at that time. The popular trend at that time was to focus on rhyme and parallelism while ignoring content, which conflicted with the prose tradition of the Pre-Qin and Han Dynasties that Han Yu advocated. His creative style, which was "frank and outspoken, fearless and unavoidable," was also difficult to gain the recognition of general examiners. Therefore, it was not surprising that he failed to pass the exams.

When he took the fourth civil service exam, Han Yu almost gave up because of repeated persuasion from his relatives and friends. He opened the test paper and found that the topic was "controlling one's life and maintaining a broad mind," which was almost the same as the previous exam. So he made a few modifications to his previous work and submitted it hurriedly. However, his luck changed, and the chief examiner this time was Lu Zhi, a great litterateur who appreciated ancient literary compositions. After reading Han Yu's test paper, Lu Zhi was very surprised and admired it, so he admitted Han Yu.

In the Tang Dynasty, passing the civil service exam was only a qualification for becoming an official, and to take up a real position, one needed to pass another exam organized by the Ministry of Personnel. Han Yu failed three times in these exams before succeeding on the fourth attempt and was appointed to serve in the National University. Later, he also served as a supervisory censor. However, Han Yu's way of dealing with people and things doomed him to have a bumpy ride in the officialdom. Just like his participation in the exams, if he had changed his writing style to cater to the trend, he would not have failed so many times. But he always adhered to his life ideals and creative style, which made him easy to encounter obstacles in the officialdom.

It was precisely because of Han Yu's ups and downs in life that his poetry and prose creations had a deeper foundation. He put forward writing theories such as "the unity of literature and morality," "eliminating cliches," and "smooth writing from words to meaning," which have great guiding significance for later generations. Su Shi called him "the one who revived literature in eight generations," and he was known as one of the "Four Great Literary Figures of All Ages" along with Liu Zongyuan, Ouyang Xiu, and Su Shi.

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