Zhang Jian, the number one scholar in the late Qing Dynasty, experienced several years of “fake native place case” in his early years, which almost changed his life direction and continued to affect his future. Although Zhang Jian’s “fake native place case” ended with the huge economic cost paid by the Zhang family, Zhang Jian’s return from it far exceeded his economic cost, both in the present and for the future. By analyzing Zhang Jian’s own saying that people from the families without a single official or scholar in three generations can hardly be admitted in the imperial examination, and the later generations’ saying that people from the families without a single official or scholar in three generations are not qualified to take the imperial examination and they have to fake the native place and identity, we can find that Zhang Jian’s fake identity is actually an individual profit-seeking behavior caused by the unreasonable enrollment quota allocation system. Re-exploring the historical case of Zhang Jian’s case is of great significance to how to achieve the balance between procedural justice and substantive justice in China’s current education.