Lin Qizong was one of the first dozen candidates to arrive in Beihai Town. You must know that those who can rush to take the imperial examination in Beihai Town are the ones who have been in the exam for many years and have no hope of becoming a scholar, and whose family life is in embarrassment.
After two months in Beihai Town, he ate three meals a day of white noodles with plenty of water and fresh fish and fat pigs. Lin Tongsheng's figure was as if he had blown up a balloon. He gained more than ten pounds and his originally thin face became rounder. Quite a few.
Beihai Town has given a lot of care to these candidates who are actively moving closer to the new regime. In addition to the ten silver dollar allowance originally mentioned, their food and accommodation in Beihai Town were free of charge, and each of them was given two sets of new clothes and shoes and socks, and a living allowance of thirty yuan.
During the half month of waiting for other candidates to arrive, the examination committee also organized Lin Tongsheng and others to go to the demonstration farm in Xingkaihu Village No. 2, and to Khabarovsk to visit the steel plant and train station, and to tour the commodities in Khabarovsk. market place.
Before the tour started, Yu Deli made a request to all candidates, asking them to write an "essay" on the things they are most interested in based on what they saw and heard during the tour, regardless of the subject. He planned to get to know these people first so that he could arrange subsequent training sessions in a targeted manner.
People who took the civil service examination in another time and space are naturally familiar with the "Speech". Its function is to test a person's analytical ability to deal with problems and whether the problem is discussed clearly. The source is not "Confucius said", but from Qianlong's words - "The gentleman advances and the villain retreats. They need each other and complement each other. Cai Chuan cited it but did not publish it, so he commented on it."
During the ten-day tour, what shocked everyone the most was the steel plant still under construction and the train in operation. Of course, whether it’s a tractor, a motorboat racing across Heilongjiang, or the tens of thousands of acres of wheat fields on the shores of Xingkai Lake, people’s jaws will drop and their eyes will drop.
The construction period of the Khabarovsk Steel Plant is four years. Although it is planned to be officially put into operation in 1795, the 3,200 cubic volume iron-making blast furnace has already been erected, and trial production has also begun.
As the taphole was slowly opened, the fiery red molten iron spurted out, creating a dazzling stream of light, which shocked everyone who came to visit. When they learned that the annual output of this steel plant would be as high as six billion kilograms after it was fully completed, Lin Qizong and other children's eyes suddenly dropped to the floor.
Not to mention them, Yuan Mei and Zhao Yi looked no better when they came to visit; the more than seventy-meter-high blast furnace alone made them feel dizzy.
It is said that since the blast furnace was erected, the Hezhe and Oroqen fishermen who go boating in the middle reaches of Heilongjiang River will pay homage to the iron-making blast furnace before the start of the fishing season to pray for a good harvest.
In fact, Lin Qizong felt that Beihai Town was not like the human world from the moment the ship arrived at Whale Port. He felt that the books he had read could not explain everything in front of him. Many things in Beihai Town are different from Jiaodong. However, when he heard various accents from the south to the north, he understood that this was indeed a real world.
After the tour, all candidates began racking their brains to "write homework." Unlike other people who wrote about trains, steamships, tractors, and wheat fields, Lin Qizong decided to take a different approach after repeated consideration, and took the big market in Khabarovsk as his theme.
The main reason for choosing this direction is that this guy is a glutton, and the various delicacies and game sold in the big market in Khabarovsk are delicious and cheap. Furthermore, his father-in-law opened a grocery store in Muping City, specializing in goods from the north and south.
Khabarovsk's big market originated from the "Gong Mink Shopping Festival" in the Manchu Dynasty. It was originally an annual festival and has evolved into a regular market three years ago. Except for the six months in winter and early spring, the rest of the year is very lively here.
Every year after the spring fishing season, the Hezhen, Feyaka and Xibo people who had harvested a lot of things would either drive their own fast-horse boats or take the passenger and cargo flat-bottomed boats in Beihai Town with their large and small bags. Let’s trade.
After they arrive, they must first go to the market management department to register with their ID cards, and then get a receipt, and then they can go in and set up stalls to sell goods.
There was once a clerk who wanted to make a fortune from the registration process and took advantage of the opportunity to get the card. In order not to be discovered, the man even found an honest man who couldn't be beaten to blackmail him, and the other party reluctantly gave him a mink skin.
But that job
What the clerk didn't know was that surveillance had been installed inside and outside the market management department. After he collected his things, people from the Public Security Police Department came to find him. They were given back what they had collected before and were fined two months' salary. The loudspeakers installed inside and outside the market announced the entire incident in Mandarin and Manchu.
The border residents have since said that King Zhao placed a three-eyed Ma Wangye in the market to detect good and evil. Anyone who dares to do bad things will be arrested by the security police. Zhao Xin just smiled when he learned about it. He didn't want to explain it. It was just right to keep it a little mysterious, so that those who tried to take advantage of the fire would be more afraid.
Lin Qizong noticed that the border residents who traded in the big market were very trustworthy and friendly in dealing with others, which wiped away the "barbarian" impression in his mind. Not only is there a dazzling array of rare goods in the market, every stall owner will take the initiative to go to the tax office to pay the tax after selling their goods, and some even pay more. This made him confused.
However, when he inquired with a stall owner from Hezhe who was fluent in Mandarin, he learned that this tax was insignificant compared to what he had to pay tribute to when he participated in the "Wulin Appreciation".
During the Manchu and Qing Dynasties, it was said that one household was required to pay tribute to one mink skin, but in addition to mink skins, each village and family also had to pay tribute to sea greens, salmon, alexandrite, etc., which had to be divided among the heads of each border resident. Furthermore, apart from grain, cloth, needles, thread and brains, among the things rewarded by the imperial court in the past, there were very few ironware. If anyone has a small iron pot, it will definitely make everyone around him envious.
Lin Qizong asked Nahe Zhe at that time: "What about now?"
The stall owner smiled and said: "You can buy whatever you want now, a big silver dollar a piece. Not to mention my family, every household in our village has a big iron pot weighing eight kilograms."
Lin Qizong was shocked when he heard this. A person like him, who has been immersed in fame all year round, should have no idea about commodity prices; but because of the business his father-in-law is engaged in, this guy often comes to visit Qiufeng. He comes and goes and knows a little about the sales price of ironware.
The private smelting and casting industry during the Qianlong era was mainly concentrated in the south of the Yangtze River, especially in Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi. Taking Xingguo, Jiangxi Province as an example, the wholesale price in the source area is one cent of silver per catty of wrought iron, and when shipped to the north, it is at least 3 to 4 cents per catty. The cost alone for an eight-pound iron pot is 3 cents of silver. If the blacksmith shop and grocery store make a little more money, it will cost five or six taels of silver in the hands of the people. When converted into money, it is about 550 to 700 taels of silver. It is really not cheap.
The "essays" of more than a dozen candidates were sent to Yu Deli's desk three days later, and Lin Qizong's article quickly attracted his attention.
When this guy was at home, he made a living by writing letters for others. First of all, his handwriting was very good, and his handwriting was very pleasing to the eye. Furthermore, the fact that he was investigated for extortion through the personnel of the market management department explained what it means: "If he is upright, he will not be able to obey orders; if he is not upright, he will not obey orders." Then he pointed out the theme and praised Zhao Xin. .
Lin Qizong thought that his writing was very innovative, but in Wang Zhong's opinion, all the candidates' articles, including his, were nonsense, and the flattery was not even close to the point.
Well, by this time, there were already forty candidates who had arrived in Beihai Town, so the training class that the examination committee had been preparing for a long time started.
The training course lasts for ten days and is located at the Beihai Town Administrative College. From 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, in addition to Wang Zhong, Duan Yucai, and Jiao Xun's four-part prose and essay courses, the administrative school also sent several teachers to teach various departments in Beihai Town. The corresponding disciplines, as well as administration, industry and commerce, justice, military, industry and mining, science and technology, finance and taxation, and trade were explained respectively.
Lin Qizong was confused and received a thick tutorial textbook. After listening to the first introductory class, he realized that Beihai Town not only used eight-legged essays to discuss heroes, but even if he passed the imperial examination, he had to go to the administrative school for a period of One year of study to master one or several professional knowledge. Then you start from the lowest level of officials and work for at least three years before becoming an official. To become a parent official in a county, it is impossible to even think about it without more than five years of experience as a low-level official and multiple trainings.
The courses in the training class were very intensive, with one class after another from morning to night, which made Lin Qizong's eyes wide open when he ate every day. Fortunately, the food for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the training class was pretty good. The dishes for lunch and dinner included either fish, shrimp or pork and mutton, which finally saved him from the trouble of "brain supplements".
In fact, the imperial examinations in the Qing Dynasty
There are also pre-examination training and tutoring institutions for exams. In other dynasties since ancient times, academies of various levels, including government-run and private, were spread across rural and urban areas across the country, with the total number reaching more than 4,300. Among them are the earliest one in Chinese history, Lizheng Academy, which was opened during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, and the four world-famous academies. In addition, it also includes Zhengyin Academy, which was opened for scholars from Fujian and Guangdong.
These academies usually have four days of classes a month, two days of official classes and two days of teacher classes, and the rest of the time is for fun, bah, self-study.
In addition, well-known academies all give preferential treatment policies in the imperial examinations, and the Academic Affairs Council only gives a few admission quotas, otherwise no one will apply. At least four students will be admitted to each subject, and there will be a separate examination room.
In addition to tutoring, government and private colleges will also issue "tuition money" based on students' grades.
Anointing fire originally refers to lamp oil. Since the rise of academies in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, they have become synonymous with student subsidies. Studying naturally requires working day and night, so of course there is no time for side jobs to make a living. The ancients had a long road to study. Without the support of this scholarship fee, I don’t know how many students would have stopped, let alone those from poor families.
But tuition money is not that easy to get. Not only is it difficult to get into a good academy, but there is also the survival of the fittest after entering the academy, and rankings are done every month.
Taking Bailudong Academy in Jiangxi as an example, in addition to eight classes including poetry class, classical classics class, policy theory class, and career class, it also has "internal main courses" and "external main courses"; among the top twenty " Students in the "Inner Main Class" will receive one or two taels of tuition money per month, while those in the "outside main class" from twenty to forty will receive six taels of tuition money each month.
Lin Qizong had also gone to the academy in Ninghai Prefecture to attend classes and take tutoring lessons before, and at the best time he had received a subsidy of four yuan. However, when a boy tries something like this, it depends on both talent and luck. If you are not lucky enough, it will be useless even if you write nothing. What's more, the enrollment ratio of students in Dengzhou Prefecture was already low, and there were many people who could write eight-part essays better than him, so he simply didn't go there.
Returning to the pre-examination cram school in Beihai Town, the scholars and students who participated in the new imperial examination for the first time were undoubtedly lucky. Whether it was Wang Zhong, Duan Yucai or Jiao Xuna, they were all famous Confucian scholars in Jiangnan and even the world. , even Liu Taigong and Hong Liangji were invited back by Yu Deli to give two classes.
Therefore, in Lin Qizong's opinion, being able to get personal tutoring from these people would bring glory to his face even if he fails to pass the exam and tells his experience to others. But it is a pity that until the end of the training class, Wang Zhong's criticism of Lin Tongsheng's article was still "bullshit."
It is said that on the third day after Zhao Xin returned to Beihai Town, he arrived at the newly built examination institute early in the morning. When I got off the carriage and took a look, I saw that the open space of Nuo Da was surrounded by a two-meter-high gray-tiled white wall. On the north side, there were two lonely three-story buildings standing side by side. Although the exterior was painted white, , but the style is exactly the same as the Tongzilou teaching building that Zhao Xin saw when he was a child.
On the east side of the building, a red wall more than two meters high was built, covering an area of three or four acres by visual inspection. Looking from the outside, I can only see the gray tiles on the roof ridge in the yard, and I don’t know what they are used for. In addition, there is a white pine planted every five meters under the courtyard wall, which is still a little green.
"Old Chen, why did you turn the Examination Yuan into such a mess?"
Zhao Xin pursed his lips and looked back to the south unconsciously. Next door outside the white wall is the planned Beihai Town Institute of Technology. Because of the meticulous construction required to build it into the most beautiful and advanced university in East Asia, the foundation has just been dug there.
Different from the Tongzi Building of the Examination Yuan, all the buildings of the Polytechnic Institute were specially drawn by someone, and adopted the Chinese design of the top of Zanjiao Xieshan. The Ministry of Trade spent a huge amount of money on this, and even through its relationship with Shen Butler Liu Quan, A large amount of raw lacquer, tung oil, white marble and green glazed tiles were purchased from Guan Nei.
Perhaps sensing Zhao Xin's dissatisfaction, Chen Qingsong, who had rushed back from Fuldan City the day before, took advantage of Wang Zhong and others not paying attention and whispered to Zhao Xin: "You can be like this in six months, so be satisfied. Time is short, I specially mobilized three construction teams to come here and worked overtime to finish it. Besides, this building has radios, heaters, fans, and lights. Have the ancients seen it? Even though it is inconspicuous from the outside, we call it an internal show. Tomorrow The slogans are ready, hang them up when the time comes, put some colorful flags, and let’s get started!”
Zhao Xin said helplessly: "Have all the surveillance cameras been installed?"
"Of course! There are no blind spots in all directions."
Zhao Xin nodded, pointed to the separate courtyard and asked, "What is that courtyard used for?"
"The main examination room and the examination room! The control room is also inside."
"I'll wipe it! Go over and take a look."
After Zhao Xin said that, he raised his feet and walked over there.
