After a short while, everyone's poems were collected.
At ordinary poetry gatherings, to avoid any suspicion of bias, the organizers would usually have all the entries copied out in another hand before letting judges select the top pieces. While this still left room for intentional favoritism or cheating, it was the most reasonable and common practice at poetry gatherings, a convention tacitly accepted by all scholars.
Of course, there were exceptions to every rule, and poetry gatherings were no different. For instance, at small-scale gatherings or those held under special circumstances, copying out the poems was completely unnecessary.
Chapter 398