(1) The examination for selecting officials in the Tang Dynasty was mainly based on poetry, so there were many poets who were officials.
Tang poetry, Song ci and Yuanqu have always stood side by side in the feudal history and culture of China. Tang Dynasty is one of the peak periods of literature in the history of China, and Tang poetry plays a decisive role. There were also many poets in the Tang Dynasty, which left precious spiritual wealth for future generations. In the long history, the Tang Dynasty undoubtedly occupied a dominant position in poetry and ci-fu.
So why are there so many poets in the Tang Dynasty? That's because under the imperial examination system in the Tang Dynasty, most of the examination questions were poems, so you must become a poet if you want to be an official.
In order to be successfully admitted to Jinshi, many students devote themselves to studying poetry and fu, and have been studying and writing poetry all their lives. In Du Like's Fu, there are always a few people who are obsessed with writing poems, but they are often frustrated and difficult to enter the official career. Under such circumstances, the number of poets in the Tang Dynasty will naturally increase greatly, and more poems and fu will be handed down.
(2) The name is not hidden in the test paper, and candidates can introduce themselves in advance.
Meng Jiao, a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty, once used the famous phrase "Horseshoe disease in spring breeze, flowers in Chang 'an will see you one day" to describe his joy after winning the top prize. Behind the joy, it also reflects how difficult it was to enter the official career through the imperial examination in the Tang Dynasty.
Compared with later generations, the imperial examination system in Tang Dynasty was not perfect. If you want to be the first, you must have knowledge and get good grades, but you also need the recommendation of celebrities. This also makes nepotism exist in the process of selecting officials, and it is difficult to guarantee fairness.
In addition, in the imperial examination in the Tang Dynasty, the examination papers need not be pasted, and the examiner can see the names of the candidates on each examination paper. Therefore, candidates can also recommend themselves to the examiner in advance, so that the examiner will take care of the candidates he knows and make it easier to choose.
According to records, Han Yu, one of the eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties, recommended himself to the prime minister of the dynasty many times during the imperial examination. Even so, it can be seen how common it is for poets to recommend themselves. As a result, people who can succeed in being an official are basically recommended by senior officials, and it is too difficult to be an official on their own.
To sum up, the Sui Dynasty died short-lived, and the Tang Dynasty was actually the first dynasty to formally implement the imperial examination system. As a real forerunner, the imperial examination system in the Tang Dynasty is naturally imperfect, and there are still some shadows of the imperial examination system in people's thoughts of selecting officials.
So most officials can still be appointed through the recommendation of others. Because the theme of the imperial examination in the Tang Dynasty was mainly poetry and Fu, poets naturally got the most recommended opportunities.