The northern Song dynasty was the beginning of China’s modern society. The most important factor was the imperial examination system. The perfect and mature imperial examination system meant that civilian scholars entered the political arena. Different from the elite families in Wei and Jin dynasties, the scholars from the imperial examination had no family to rely on, so they had to seek for the same family and ideal as the political foundation, which was a conscious construction of the community of scholars, which was also a prominent phenomenon in the politics of the Northern Song Dynasty: alliance and cronies. The way for scholars to enter the official career was the imperial examination, which examined the culture. Therefore, most of the scholars in the Northern Song dynasty were knowledgeable and famous for their “culture”. Their main way of constructing political community is also “culture”, which is embodied in the form of meeting, reward, letter and so on.“Culture” contains aesthetics, which means that they are constructing an aesthetic community as well as a political community. Aesthetic community is larger than political community in scope, because politically they are divided into different factions due to different political views, but they show common taste in aesthetics. At the turning point of the transformation of the Tang and Song dynasties, the scholars of the northern Song Dynasty constructed a broad and farreaching aesthetic paradigm with their excellent cultural accomplishment and strong aesthetic ability.

imperial examination; scholars in northern Song Dynasty; aesthetic community; aesthetic paradigm