Li Datong is a very vulgar name. His illiterate father asked an equally ignorant scholar from the village to give it to him.
Thirty-six years old, neither above nor below, a very embarrassing age... an age when there are older ones and younger ones, and there are still several outside wives to support.
Working as a technical consultant for a Guinean agricultural company is not Li Datong's ideal job...even though he studied agricultural planting technology in college.
But the school he most wanted to apply for when he was a boy was not a university, but the three major military schools: Army Officer School, Naval Officer School, Royal Guards School... He has always had a dream of becoming an official!
As for why you want to become an official and apply for the military academy...this involves the special national conditions of the Chu Empire. Officers who retire and are transferred to civilian positions are given preferential treatment, which makes them climb faster than simply being a Jinshi.
Of course, this situation has also led to many young students with ideals and ambitions wanting to apply for the three major military academies... Unfortunately, the military academies of the Great Chu Empire have always been one of the most difficult schools to get into. The difficulty of applying is second only to the Royal Institute of Technology.
Although Li Datong's grades were pretty good when he was in school, and he was regarded as a top student in the eyes of those around him, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to get into college and get a scholarship... But there was still a long way to go before he could apply for a military academy...
In the annual college entrance examination, the admission scores of the three major military academies are higher than those of the best comprehensive university and the Imperial College, which is also known as the cradle of civil servants.
The extremely high social status and bright future of the soldiers in the Da Chu Empire have led to the fact that for the majority of college students, no matter whether you are doing it for family honor, to achieve a class jump, to pursue glory and wealth, or to become an official in politics , or is it about the pursuit of protecting the homeland and the country.
Not to mention protecting the family and the country, let alone things like glory and wealth, that's because the officers of the Chu Empire were given very generous professional treatment after retirement.
According to a fixed age, the performance is average, and it is purely based on seniority as a comparison standard.
A student applies to the Imperial College and then takes the highest-level imperial examination to become an official. Unless you can get a top ranking like First Class or Second Class, you will then be assigned to work in the Hanlin Academy as a starting point for becoming an official.
Otherwise, it would not be as high as a civil servant who had passed the exam and entered school, then served in a regular manner until he retired in his thirties and then changed careers.
As for becoming an official through the provincial provincial examination and imperial examination, let alone it. The starting point for becoming an official at the Juren level is too low and it is difficult to climb up.
In addition, there were previous academic examinations in the imperial examination... The previous academic examinations originally existed as a supplementary system for talent recruitment. They only admitted low-educated personnel and were used as the most basic personnel such as clerks. It was basically difficult to obtain What a chance to move up.
Now, although the college examination still exists, it is no longer an examination for admission to officialdom, but a preparatory examination for officialdom. The reason for this change is because the government that organized the college examination and recruited people in the early days was the local government. Prefecture-level units.
The level is too low, the local influence factors are too heavy, and there are too many cases of fraud in examination rooms. At the same time, with the popularization of trains and ships, transportation is more convenient, and it is more convenient for students to take exams. In the 33rd year of Chengshun At that time, the college examination was regarded as a preparatory examination for people with low academic qualifications such as high school and technical secondary school. After passing the college examination, they could take the provincial examination that only graduates of higher education institutions could directly apply for. In other words, college examination candidates had to take another Only by taking the provincial examination can you truly become an official... The college examination is just to give low-educated people a chance to apply.
Otherwise, people with lower education levels, such as high school and technical secondary school, would not even be qualified to apply for the imperial examination.
After all, since the reform of the imperial examination, only graduates from colleges and universities, that is, college and undergraduate graduates, can directly apply for the township or higher level examination.
Nowadays, in the Great Chu Empire, if you want to take the civil service route to become an official, you can only enter the official position after passing the provincial examination, and then be assigned according to the situation.
In order to prevent local examination fraud, the provincial-level rural examination does not actually mean that the local province organizes the examination, but the Ministry of Rites and Education and the Ministry of Civil Affairs select academic directors... The overall situation is actually a bit like the imperial examination system of the pre-Ming Dynasty that has gone the old way and restored it. Only those who have reached the level of juren can become officials.
It's just that the Great Chu Empire admits a lot of 'juren' every year, and these so-called juren are not appointed as formal officials in any traditional dynasty, but as ordinary clerks, equivalent to the officials in the traditional dynasty.
Not only are the candidates who have just entered the official position as civil servants, but even the Jinshi in the examination, in addition to the preferential treatment for the first and second grades, the ordinary admission personnel are only from the ninth grade when they are first assigned, but they are promoted from Jinshi It's just very fast. It doesn't take a few years for people to climb up to the seventh rank and become an official in the true sense.
In the Great Chu Empire, only those with grades seven can hold leadership and management positions, while those with grades eight and nine cannot hold relevant leadership positions.
Jinshi promotion is faster if you are born as a Jinshi. This is not an unspoken rule, but a clear regulation for official appointment. Officials with a good examination background will be promoted to one level at least one year from before the seventh grade... Even if you have not achieved anything, I will give you a guaranteed seventh grade within four years.
If you have strong abilities or a deep background, or both, it won't take you four years at all, but maybe one or two years to reach the seventh level.
From the seventh rank, one can serve as the second-in-command of the town government office ("tongzhen") at the local level, or as the deputy section chief of each department in the county-level government office).
The rapid promotion of those below the seventh rank is a special preferential treatment given by the empire to Jinshi students.
Because the examination itself is the cradle for the empire to train middle- and high-level officials, if you limit the early upgrade time too much, then these academic masters will still be working among middle and low-level officials in middle age. It doesn't make any sense anymore.
After all, there are a total of nine and eighteen levels of officials in the Da Chu Empire, and promotion after reaching the seventh level will be very difficult. The promotion interval must be more than two years. This two years is only the most ideal situation. In fact, for For 99% of officials, it often takes four to five years or more to advance to a higher level.
Even those officials who are promoted very quickly, as long as they are stuck at a checkpoint in the middle and are a little slow, they will basically miss out on being a senior official in the ministry.
The Gyeonggi Ministry of Personnel Affairs and the Provincial Personnel Affairs Department select qualified young officials to be included in the training list every year, but there are still only a few who can truly become senior officials.
However, even if only a very small number of people can eventually become senior officials in the ministry, whether they can enter the training list, especially the training list directly under the Ministry of Personnel Affairs, is still a shortcut to the official career for middle and young officials...
After all, it is great to be a second-rank official, but it is also very good to be a third-rank official... No matter how bad it is, fourth-rank officials such as the chief and deputy division chiefs of various ministries or local magistrates in the Gyeonggi Province, Tongzhi, directors and deputy directors of provincial departments, etc. That's great too... at least I can wear the crimson official robe.
Once you enter the training list, it means a smooth career, but if you want to enter the training list, you must first be qualified to enter the scope of being selected and trained... At least there must be someone from the seventh grade.
And he must be young enough to develop value.
This also means that whether you can quickly pass through the two stages of eighth and ninth grades and grow into a seventh-grade management position will be of great benefit to your future career development.
People with a Jinshi background have a unique advantage in this regard...
But... there is another kind of person who has an advantage over Jinshi, and that is retired officers!
First of all, an officer is considered a formal official when he enters the military academy...and he becomes a warrant officer as soon as he enters the military academy. His salary is directly comparable to that of an eighth-grade civilian officer. After graduating from the four-year military academy, the lowest is a second lieutenant. Those who are outstanding can obtain the rank of lieutenant.
After graduating and officially serving in the army, as long as you don't make a big mistake, you will be able to obtain the rank of lieutenant in three years. However, it is not easy to move up from lieutenant to captain. This is a hurdle... In the field army, there are many positions for lieutenants. , platoon commander, deputy company commander, various staff officers, adjutants and many more.
But the captain speaks less. The most typical one is the company commander, followed by a deputy battalion commander, and then some staff officers.
This means that many lieutenants compete for one position, and the competition is quite fierce.
People who have not been doing well in life often can accept professional retirement arrangements when they are around thirty and see no further hope... Before retiring, as long as you have not made a mistake and been ordered to retire, you will be given You advance one level to the rank of captain, and then retire after being promoted... A higher military rank means better career transition arrangements.
In this way, it means that as long as you are admitted to the military academy, even if you don't do well in the future, you can survive the seniority and become a lieutenant. Then you can take the initiative to apply for a job transfer, and you will be given the benefits of retirement with the rank of captain.
As for the arrangements for career change after retirement with the rank of captain, the rank of seventh-grade officer is usually given to him... It may not seem like a good idea to get a grade-7 officer when he is around thirty years old, but you have to know that this is the lower limit...the kind of guarantee.
If you can survive until you retire as a school officer, then you may be able to get a sixth-grade or even fifth-grade job if you transfer to a local area in your thirties.
As for why military officers are treated so well after retiring?
Because every year, the freshmen who are admitted to the three major military academies are the best elites in the empire. It would be a waste if they are not put to death.
To put it bluntly, excluding scientific research capabilities, the quality of the students in the three major military academies is the highest, bringing together a group of the best students in the Chu Empire... In the Chu Empire, the military is where the top academics gather. !
Some people describe the recruitment of the three major military academies as recruiting students from the top... Even the Imperial College, Yingtian University, and Jinling Institute of Technology, which are already considered the top universities, can only recruit the remaining students from the military academies.
No matter what your reasons are, applying for military academy is the best choice...
Of course, all the above statements are still not the Royal Institute of Technology. In the eyes of the majority of students, only perverts would go to that shabby place. Who would be a normal person? Well, it’s definitely not that we are jealous, but that place is really There are not many normal people.
In turn, the good treatment of military officers has also led to more elite students reporting to military academies, which has further improved the quality of military academies and their subsequent treatment.
Based on this situation, it was impossible for Li Datong, an ordinary academic master, to be admitted to the military academy. After graduating from college, he also tried to take the general examination, but it was not easy to pass...
In the end, he planned to take the next step and take the rural examination. It happened that the South African Development Company was recruiting professional agricultural technicians, and the remuneration was very generous... He planned to work in South Africa for two years to save some money, and then return to his hometown to take the rural examination. .
After all, he was born into a poor family, and when he joined the officialdom, although his initial salary was better than that of ordinary people, it was actually very limited. In the first few years after joining, he only received a few hundred yuan a year.
He wanted to let his parents, who had worked hard all their lives, enjoy happiness, so he went to South Africa to earn a sum of money. After saving a few thousand yuan, he could take part in the imperial examination and become a junior clerk...
But what he didn't expect was that once he went to Africa, he would never be able to go back...
reason?
In fact, there are not many reasons. On the one hand, the South African Development Company gave too much, and on the other hand, after he arrived in Africa, he fully realized what it means to be a master...
Even ordinary Chu people who go overseas, especially in the administrative territory of Africa, can instantly transform into masters.
High-level technical talents like him with a bachelor's degree are extremely rare in Africa, and their social status is also extremely high.
There are not even any college students in many colonies... After he ran over as a college student, he became an extremely dazzling presence no matter which colony he was in. The local Chu colonial officials and the guests of major enterprises were all out of reach in the past. The so-called upper class society directly opened the door to him.
To be honest, this difference in treatment made him a little intoxicated!
Later, he married his legitimate daughter who was the governor of South Africa at that time, and brought his parents to South Africa, completely settling down in South Africa.
In his hometown, he is just an ordinary college student. Even if he can join an official, he will probably be a seventh- or eighth-grade student until he has worked hard to death. In terms of life, he is probably considered a standard middle-class person.
But in Africa... He has a manor covering an area of dozens of acres in South Africa. He has more than a dozen Fuso maids and high-caste Indian maids. His daily contacts are all local upper-class people in South Africa.
This contrast in living standards is worlds apart.
So he has stayed in South Africa. Last year, he accepted the invitation to join the Guinea Development Company, serving as the Agricultural Council Office, coordinating and responsible for the company's agricultural business on the Gold Coast. His legal income is several thousand dollars a year... It's not legal. Earn more.
But even so, Li Datong has never forgotten his dream when he was young: to be an official!
However, because he is now over the age limit, he cannot apply for the imperial examination and become an official... It is not reliable to work in these development companies, and then become a businessman and then become an official... There is no businessman in the Dachu Empire An official's statement.
Although many senior managers in government-run enterprises are officials, they do not obtain official status because they become senior managers of government-run enterprises, but because they are officials themselves, they can serve as senior managers of these government-run enterprises. .
Therefore, Li Datong has no hope of becoming a senior manager in these government-run overseas development companies and then obtaining an official status...
Originally, Li Datong thought that his life would be like this, hanging out in Africa, raising a few extra wives, having a few beauties, eating more delicacies, and living in a bigger manor... This life would just go by like this.
But when he learned not long ago that a group of people like Chen Jingyun were playing the game of founding a country, he smiled contemptuously like everyone else on the surface.
But to be honest, he was actually quite envious in his heart... This small country he built is also a country.
So when the company planned to send people to the Kara area to inspect whether the area under Chen Jingyun's control was suitable for a cotton plantation, it could have sent an ordinary business manager over, but out of fear of Chen Jingyun and the others, Out of curiosity about the miniature country, he simply led the team and ran over.
What they also thought about was that when they came to inspect this time, not only did the inspection results turn out to be very bad... Chen Jingyun and the others wanted to collect taxes, so what's the point...
But for him personally, he has gained something new. This Chen Jingyun actually plans to invite him to work in Kara... Well, work for Chen Jingyun, for the nondescript country of the Kingdom of West Africa!
When Li Datong first heard this, he actually wanted to ask: Who gave you the courage to invite a senior manager of an overseas development company who is officially a major shareholder to work for you?
But Li Datong didn't ask...because he was really moved!
(End of chapter)
