Chapter 167 2/3

But seeing how much his wife liked the calligraphy of the hermit, Master Shen couldn’t help muttering to himself, “He cares quite a bit about silver and gold items.”

He initially thought the hermit was Zhang, the governor, so he paid a high price of a thousand words for ten taels of silver, only to find out that this person wrote eight thousand words for him every day.

And now, his wife had bought two pieces of calligraphy for a hundred taels of silver.

The hermit wasn’t as aloof as he imagined.

Madam Shen said, “Don’t you care about silver and gold items? If you didn’t care, why would you still be in business? The hermit understands the suffering of the world; perhaps he wants silver not just for himself but for the common people.”

Master Shen snorted twice, feeling somewhat displeased.

Meanwhile, Li Qingzhi had prepared something for Chang Zhan and sent it to Wu Baichuan’s ship.

It included chili peppers and some miscellaneous items.

He didn’t send much, mostly what Chang Zhan had prepared, including some of Chang Cui’s doodles.

After delivering the items, Li Qingzhi went to the new school.

His school was almost built.

Initially, he didn’t plan to build a wall for the school, but now that he had money… Li Qingzhi had someone build a wall.

Their residence had a wall, and now the school had one too, reducing unnecessary disturbances.

After the construction of the houses, they were generally not decorated. They could start classes with tables and chairs. After inspecting around, Li Qingzhi returned to the Jin Xiaoye Embroidery Workshop in the evening, where Chang Zhan had already prepared dinner.

It was getting colder, so Chang Zhan made a warm soup every day. Today, he made pork rib soup.

The pork ribs were stewed, and green vegetables, tofu, dried bamboo shoots, and fungus were added. A large pot of steaming soup was served, immediately whetting one’s appetite.

Several children scooped the soup to mix with rice and gnawed on the ribs, while Li Qingzhi had a plate of chili oil in front of him. He dipped the tofu and other items into the chili oil before eating.

Of course, he also drank several bowls of the hot soup.

“These days are too good.” Li Laogen ate with gusto, his manners extremely unrefined.

Fortunately, the children didn’t emulate him.

Li Qingzhi and the female workers had a similar soup made from pork ribs.

They boiled the pork meat and fat to make pork oil, then cooked it with the pork residue, lean meat, tofu, and green vegetables. Everyone could have a big spoonful of soup, warming them up after finishing.

The female workers from the Miaoqian Village ate happily.

“My mother came to see me a few days ago and said I look completely like a city person now.”

“My cousins envy me, but unfortunately, they’re not from the Miaoqian Village and don’t have the chance to come here.”

“Eating meat every day, I’ve grown taller this year!”

…

As they chatted, they inevitably discussed the upcoming lessons with Jin Xiaoye.

“I never thought I’d have a day to learn to read. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to learn.”

“I’m also worried that I won’t learn. I heard learning to read is really difficult.”

“Even if it’s difficult, we have to learn. I want to be the shopkeeper in the future!”

…

Some of the girls from the Miaoqian Village were already of marriageable age.

If they were still at home, they would have started talking about getting married by now, or maybe they were already married.

But they came to work at the Jin Xiaoye Embroidery Workshop.

Initially, their parents just wanted to have one less mouth to feed and hoped they would learn a trade.

But seeing them change so much from head to toe and even bringing home some money…

Their parents changed their minds and weren’t in a hurry to marry them off anymore.

Some parents even asked them to bring back the clothes made by Jin Xiaoye for their sisters-in-law, or the daily necessities prepared by Jin Xiaoye for their brothers to use.

Fortunately, Jin Xiaoye said they couldn’t take the things from the workshop home for others to use. Plus, they rarely went back to the village… Before, at most, they would take the pocket money Jin Xiaoye gave them to subsidize their families.

On this matter, Jin Xiaoye didn’t stop them. Setting aside other things, just talking about Jin Mao’er… Jin Mao’er’s family often didn’t have enough to eat. Could she stop Jin Mao’er from giving the few hundred wen he saved to his parents?

The only thing Jin Xiaoye could do was to set more rules to prevent these girls from being exploited by their families. After dinner, it was time for the girls to learn to read and count, as Jin Xiaoye had told them before.

After discussing with Jin Xiaoye, Li Qingzhi decided to let Jin Xiaoye teach these girls, while he watched on the side.

For the primer, Li Qingzhi wrote some simple ones himself. If they proved to be effective, he would use the printing tools from Juewei Studio to print more for the students in the school.

Jin Xiaoye taught the girls from the Miaoqian Village directly in the courtyard.

The sky wasn’t completely dark yet, but it was getting dim inside. Teaching in the courtyard was the most suitable option.

Jin Xiaoye had quite a bit of prestige among the female workers from the village, and they sat upright when they saw her take out a wooden board with white paper attached, a brush, and a bamboo stick. As for Jin Xiaoye, she wrote “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten” on the white paper, along with the corresponding Arabic numerals, teaching these girls numbers and calculations first.

Daqi didn’t have Arabic numerals, but since they weren’t taking the imperial examination, they could just learn them casually.

Jin Xiaoye was a bit worried before teaching the female workers, afraid that she wouldn’t teach well, but she got used to it after a while.

What if she didn’t teach well? So what? She would teach however she wanted to teach!

Standing on the platform, Jin Xiaoye looked radiant, as if she were glowing.

Watching her, Li Qingzhi couldn’t help but smile.

In the time to come, Jin Xiaoye would teach the female workers from the village every day, while Li Qingzhi spread the news that his school would recruit several literate teachers.

Li Qingzhi didn’t require these teachers to be highly knowledgeable; average would do. After all, they would be teaching people with no foundation.

But he required these teachers to be flexible and open-minded. They must be people who could accept new things.

As he always said, he wanted to cultivate not candidates for the imperial examination, but talents. According to his plan, the average students from his school would become managers of Juewei Studio, the Jin Xiaoye Embroidery Workshop, or other industries he established.

And those with talent could become his right-hand men, helping

 him expand his influence.

He planned to gradually bring out the things from his memory, subtly changing the lives and thoughts of the people in Daqi. In a few decades or even centuries, perhaps a revolution would overturn Daqi. His power would protect his family during this process.

Thinking like this, Li Qingzhi started writing textbooks.

He always felt that the traditional words of Daqi were troublesome and wanted to introduce simplified words.

But the timing wasn’t right yet; if his students learned simplified words and couldn’t understand traditional words, it would be troublesome. So Li Qingzhi used traditional words, but he added punctuation in his textbooks. Children nowadays were exposed to various texts from a young age, so learning to read should be much simpler. But people in this era were different.

The people of Daqi grew up in a world with little writing; suddenly teaching them to read was a bit difficult.

If they were given a book full of densely packed words at this time… They would definitely feel dizzy and unable to learn. Adding punctuation and leaving more space during typesetting should make it much easier.

He might even add some illustrations… When he was printing “Record of Unjust Cases” before, Li Qingzhi learned about printing techniques at this time. He thought he could carve some appropriately sized illustrations and insert them during typesetting.