Those who apply for the official school are all high-ranking officials and nobles. They come from official families. Their families are either rich or powerful. In addition, most of them hold official positions and have a lot of money.
Fan Xiren was naturally not a man short of money. Due to Fan Wencheng's relationship, the Fan family's status in the Qing Dynasty was not low. Moreover, Fan Xiren was also a disciple of Zhang Zhidong. After Li Hongzhang's death, Zhang Zhidong's status in the late Qing Dynasty was self-evident.
Fan Xiren quickly understood what Lin Binghua had just done. He was a young man after all, so naturally he would not be offended by the arrangement of the score. He pointed to Lin Binghua's table and said to the waiter: "Give me the same dish to my table."
Lin Binghua sneered after hearing this, thinking that was nothing more than that.
But Fan Xiren added: "I want shark fin, and the recipe requires three shreds of shark fin, and the sea cucumber needs Dalian Liao ginseng. Let your chef cook it yourself, and you tell An Lingdong, and say it was me, Fan Xiren, who said it."
After all, the Fan family is a family that has existed for thousands of years, and its ancestors have produced a lot of high-ranking officials such as ministers.
Lin Binghua was just a local official in Hebei, and his official position was obtained through donations. In terms of cultural background, he was still far behind Fan Xiren.
Li Yu smiled and said, "Brother Fan, it's not necessary."
Fan Xiren waved his hand: "Brother Li, don't worry about it. It's my treat today."
Ouyang Mouyuan kept smiling and said nothing. The Ouyang family was not an ordinary family. Lin Binghua glanced at them and knew that he had lost today's round. He would eventually pursue an official career in the future, and he didn't want to offend the two of them, so he just ate the shark's fin and sea cucumber with rice.
From the conversation, Li Yu felt that several people should be able to pass the exam, and he heard from Fan Xiren that the scoring standards for the official examination must be significantly lowered.
Li Yu picked up the wine glass: "I'll raise a glass to wish you all the best wishes on the gold list!"
Everyone raised their glasses and drank together.
The dishes on the table in front of me are also quite interesting. The nine-turn large intestine is paired with sea cucumber and shark fin, which is so visually impactful! Everyone at the table ate quite deliciously.
There will still be exams the day after tomorrow, so drinking is just a taste. Anyway, there will be plenty of opportunities to meet in the university hall in the future.
The first test on the third day was six questions on arithmetic, proportions, square roots, and algebra.
Li Yu felt it was too simple at first glance:
(1) What is the number obtained by multiplying three thousand nine hundred and sixteen by seven hundred and sixty?
(2) Ask about five-sixths, eight-ninths and seven-fifteenths, and find the common points.
These two arithmetic problems are just like elementary school mathematics, okay!
There are algebra questions later:
(3) Question: There are two algebraic formulas such as: trimethyla⊥diethylt-condensate and dimethylmethacrylate-ethyl-triethoxyethyl⊥five-ethylmethane. Find their sum.
This is based on the mathematical expression of the Qing Dynasty. If translated into modern words, it would be: 3a+2b-c and 2a-b+5c. Find their sum.
Um, elementary school mathematics too?
Another algebra question is that the expression is a little more troublesome:
(4) If you use three T eight to make an appointment of T eight days and T three days, what will you get?
Well, at first glance it looks messy, but actually translated into modern mathematical language it is: (x3-8x-3)/(3-x).
x3 there is x cubed.
It should be counted as first grade mathematics.
There is also an application question:
(5) Today there are two kinds of gold and silver mixtures. One contains 850 gold in a thousand parts, and the other contains 925 gold in a thousand parts. Today, these two kinds of mixtures are mixed to make ten gold coins. Five taels, one thousand points contains nine hundred percent gold. How much should be extracted from each?
It’s also quite simple, elementary school word problems.
Finally, there is a geometry question:
(6) Question: How can we prove that the sum of the triangles inside a triangle is equal to two right angles?
In short, looking at it this way, it is really very simple, and it basically does not exceed the first grade mathematics.
Li Yu finished it in less than 5 minutes.
I thought it would be at least as deep as high school mathematics, but unexpectedly, this is it?
Although it is very simple to do, when I think about it carefully, I still feel sad that the entrance mathematics test for the prestigious Capital University is so simple!
No wonder Ding Weiliang said at that time that Chinese scholar-officials were adults in terms of literature, but they were still children in terms of science. This was clearly a question for children!
The following physical chemistry exam is also very simple:
Question: Among physicists, there are three kinds of metamorphosis in the so-called changes of matter. Let's try to discuss its three kinds of metamorphosis.
Question: Today someone throws a stone far away. Instead of seeing the stone falling straight, he sees the stone falling in a curve. What's the rationale?
Question: A person is walking on a train. He doesn’t know where the train is going, but sees the houses and trees on the road receding. What's the rationale?
Basically, it is the most basic common sense of physics.
Question: What is the difference between chemical changes and so-called changes in physics?
Question: What is the reason for the burning of objects?
Question: Someone asked that the sun’s rays are made up of seven colors. How can we prove it?
Chemistry is also very simple.
Except for the difficult questions on history and self-cultivation on the first day, today's Western subjects felt like a joke.
Geography is also very simple:
Question: The most famous person in Europe and the United States is known as the capital city and the commercial port.
Question: England and Japan are both called powerful countries on the earth, but there are no long rivers or rivers in their countries. Why?
Anyway, that's generally the level of difficulty.
The foreign language question was to choose between English or Japanese. Li Yu happened to have learned Japanese recently and wrote an English article and a Japanese article.
It’s just that today’s exams are too easy and too boring...
But Japan's entrance examination at the same time was not that simple, which explains why the outstanding students sent out by the Imperial Academy still had to attend middle school for a period of time before going to Japan and other countries to take the entrance exams for Japanese universities.
In the final analysis, in the Imperial Academy, they only learned elementary and middle school content.
This is the status quo.
How can we not fall behind?
Li Yu actually hoped that the difficulty would be as difficult as the history and literature questions on the first day.
What a shame!
After taking the exam, I discovered that even a student who had just completed nine years of compulsory time traveled back in time to 1902 to apply for the Capital University. As long as he could read traditional Chinese characters and understand the special mathematical expressions of the Qing Dynasty, he could be admitted to the Capital University.
Of course, everything is difficult at the beginning.
In a few years, this situation will be greatly improved, and the level of domestic universities will improve rapidly. Although it cannot reach the level of Cambridge and Oxford, it can at least reach the normal level.
[To be honest, I have been reading books recently to catch up on updates, switch sources, read aloud with many sounds, and it can be used on both Android and Apple. 】
Just like learning a ball game, progress will be rapid at first because there is so much room for improvement.
After the exam, Ding Haoliang, Wu Rulun and others gathered together to start grading by subject.
The test paper is very similar to the scientific examination. The examinee's name cannot be seen by the marking teacher, which is fair.
As for the result announcement time, it is similar to that of the scientific examination. The results are usually released three days after the end of the examination.
Fortunately, there are not many test papers. After calculation, the Shixue Hall received a total of 165 test papers, and the Normal School received a total of 652 test papers.
Ding Haoliang was the fastest in grading papers. After all, in mathematics, if you know it, you know it, and if you don't, you know it. The paper contains very little content, so he finished reading all the papers in half a day. The following physics and chemistry papers were also finished in less than half a day.
On the contrary, the grading of self-cultivation, education, etc. was particularly troublesome. Wu Rulun and Gu Hongming were reading long papers one after another.
When Wu Rulun saw an article on education, he was suddenly shocked and said: "There are actually candidates who use Western pens to answer their papers!"
Gu Hongming said: "I also saw it when I read the article on self-cultivation and righteousness just now, but the article was really average, so I only gave it a passing score of 60."
Fortunately, Gu Hongming saw Li Yu's test paper. Otherwise, given Wu Rulun's level, he would definitely have failed after seeing what Li Yu had written. After all, Wu Rulun, an old Confucian scholar, is still very serious about classics and meanings.
Gu Hongming was educated in the West, and his research on Chinese studies was not very deep, and he was too familiar with pencil calligraphy.
It would be okay if it just passed like this, but when Wu Rulun heard it, he said: "Let me see!"
Done!
He took Li Yu's "Cultivation of the Righteousness" and could tell at a glance that it was written by the same person.
If it were a scientific examination, it would be possible to avoid recognizing the handwriting by having someone transcribe it, but the Capital University obviously did not have that much time and manpower.
Wu Rulun looked at it for a while and said dissatisfied: "No, how can it be sixty points? For this calligraphy and this article, I can only get sixteen points at most!"
Gu Hongming was ashamed, it was too bad. But Wu Rulun is the head teacher of the middle school, so he has the final say.
Wu Rulun turned to look at the education paper in his hand, "It's just that this education article is really well written. If I were to give it a score, I'd probably give it full marks."
Yan Fu and Lin Shu next to them became interested, "Full score?"
The two of them came together one after another. It was extremely difficult to get full marks in education, just like mathematics and physics in later generations often saw perfect marks, but basically they had never seen anyone get full marks in Chinese.
However, after reading it, the two of them felt that the writing was very insightful: "It deserves full marks!"
As the Minister of Management and Education, Zhang Baixi was very concerned about the content of the education examination. After hearing this, he came over and after just a few glances, he exclaimed "Excellent" and picked it up carefully in person.
The more Zhang Baixi read, the more frightened he became. In fact, he was currently studying the reform of the academic system, and what he was studying was almost exactly what Li Yu wrote.
At that time, Zhang Baixi once submitted a memorial to the "Regulations of the Imperial School", which was the Renyin school system, hoping to carry out educational reforms, but it was not implemented and not many people knew about it.
Because Zhang Baixi is not good at officialdom and is obsessed with education. Although the Renyin academic system he drafted was very close to the modern Western education concept, it was not adopted because there were not many people in the DPRK and China who supported him.
It would not be until next year, 1903, that Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Baixi and Rongqing would jointly petition for the reform of the academic system, that is, the Guimao academic system.
This academic system advocates a Western-style education modeled on Japan. However, the proportion of subjects has been modified based on Zhang Baixi's work, greatly reducing the proportion of Western studies. Students mainly study a subset of classics and history. It can only be regarded as a transitional reform.
Moreover, if Zhang Zhidong had not submitted the memorial in person, it would have been difficult to implement the Guimao academic system.
Now that Zhang Baixi saw Li Yu's article, he really admired it very much. Every word was written in his heart: "I also think it can be given full marks!"
The Minister of Management and Education has already spoken, so naturally there is no problem.
But the chapter on self-cultivation and righteousness really only has a pitiful sixteen points.
Although Lin Shu translated many famous works, he actually did not understand foreign languages. He basically relied on others to translate them and then polish them into Chinese.
Therefore, Yan Fu was mainly responsible for grading foreign languages. Soon he also found an article written in pencil.
In fact, Yan Fu marked the papers very quickly, because there were too many blank papers in foreign languages, especially those from the Shixueguan, where there were not many foreign language topics.
If using a pencil to write articles about moral cultivation and righteousness is seeking death, then using it to write in English is perfect.
At that time, people's writing habits with brushes were difficult to adapt to the horizontal left-to-right writing in English. Even if they were forced to write, many of them would be crooked and difficult to read.
On the contrary, Li Yu's English handwriting is as beautiful as fireflies in the dark night, which is so eye-catching.
Coupled with many years of learning English under modern education, Li Yu's English level is not low. Yan Fu has nothing to say, just full marks!
As for the Japanese article, there are a few people who can write better with brushes. After all, the Japanese writing habits are the same as those in China.
But Li Yu was not bad either, and still got a high score of 90.
Seeing that some of them were excited when they saw the pencil writing, Ding Haoliang was unmoved. He had already seen Li Yu's answer sheet, but in fact he didn't want to read it at all, because these questions were as simple as breathing to him.
On the last day of grading, several people presented their summary results. The first batch of enrollment targets for the Capital University School were originally 100 students for the Official School and 100 students for the Normal School.
But in the end, only 55 people from the official school passed and 76 people from the normal school passed.
Wu Rulun asked tentatively: "Sir, do you want to lower the standard and admit everyone?"
Zhang Baixi seemed very determined: "No! Just recruit so many!"
Yes, the admission requirements have been lowered to such a low level and cannot be lowered any lower!
When the final results were released, it turned out that Li Yu ranked first. Although he failed in one subject, his scores in other subjects were so dazzling that his overall score undoubtedly ranked first.
Of course, the only one who failed in the chapter on self-cultivation and righteousness was Li Yu, who was also very dazzling.
Li Yu felt strange when he saw the list. It would be difficult to become the top pick of Peking University in a hundred years, but now it is easy.
Looking further, Feng Zuxun, He Yujie, Wu Jinglian, Fan Xiren, Zhu Xianwen, and Ouyang Mouyuan were all in high school.
A few people gathered at Dongxing Tower again in the evening, and had a feast of good wine and good food.
Li Yu asked: "Why did I only see the announcement of the results but not mention when to enroll?"
Fan Xiren is well-informed: "Of course it will take some time to enroll, but it will definitely start this year."
Li Yu nodded. Zhang Baixi and the others should be working intensively on various specific matters such as student accommodation, schooling, and teacher recruitment.
It was not easy to open a university in the late Qing Dynasty. Starting from scratch was the most difficult thing.
I have to say that Zhang Baixi’s contribution is indeed great. Without the saplings he planted, Cai Yuanpei and other presidents of Peking University would have faced even greater hardships in the future.
Li Yu said: "From now on, you will all be alumni, take care of each other and support each other. I wish you all a bright future and work together to revitalize China!"
Feng Zuxun said: "That's good. From now on, we must be like Mr. Li Yu and let foreigners see what we Chinese are like!"
Everyone is very happy. After all, they are in high school. Although they are not high school Jinshi, their future in college is not necessarily worse than Jinshi, because their cognitive level has begun to slowly awaken, and this is the real killer.
