Chapter 173 1/3

On the twenty-first day of November, Li Qingzhi got up early as usual.

Instead of cooking at home today, he went out to collect the buns he had ordered from the bun shop yesterday and bought a bucket of hot soy milk from the soy milk shop.

In Chongcheng County, people usually drink plain or salty soy milk. Adding sugar to soy milk was something only the wealthy could afford. Sugar was too precious.

The people at Jin Ye Embroidery Workshop didn’t like plain soy milk; they preferred salty soy milk. Outside, salty soy milk was prepared by adding soy sauce, chopped scallions, pickled vegetables, and fried dough sticks to the soy milk. But by the time Li Qingzhi returned home with the soy milk, it wasn’t as hot, so he didn’t bother with the extras and just added a little soy sauce.

Li Damao and the others didn’t mind. The four children ate their buns with one hand and drank soy milk with a spoon in the other, feeling very satisfied.

The female workers from Jin Ye Embroidery Workshop, who were rewarded with buns for doing well in their tasks yesterday, were even more content!

After eating, Li Qingzhi first took Li Damao and the others to the school, then went to his own school.

He named his school “Chongcheng Elementary School”. The name seemed a bit modern, but it was his school, and he could name it whatever he wanted.

In the future… this might become the first elementary school in history?

Chongcheng Elementary School had two rows of teaching buildings, with twenty rooms in each row. Ten rooms facing south were used as classrooms, and ten rooms facing north served as dormitories.

This meant they could enroll ten classes of girls and ten classes of boys. But they only had fifteen teachers at the moment, which wasn’t quite enough. So, for now, Li Qingzhi planned to enroll seven classes of boys and seven classes of girls, with thirty students per class… approximately two hundred boys and two hundred girls.

In modern terms, this was quite a small number of students, but in this era, it was definitely a large-scale enrollment!

Of course, before enrolling students, he had to train the teachers first and give them classes.

When Li Qingzhi arrived at the school, some teachers who lived far away hadn’t arrived yet. He waited for a while until everyone was present, then took them to print textbooks.

They typeset the front part of the textbooks first, printed them on paper, and then Li Qingzhi took these papers to teach the teachers in the school: “In the future, you can teach your students like I do. I’ll demonstrate a few lessons first, and then you can try teaching later.”

He planned to start with two days of teaching the teachers himself, and then let the teachers take turns teaching. This way, he could also assess the teachers’ abilities.

Li Qingzhi was quite busy. While training these teachers, he also arranged for four cooks to handle the cooking for his school and hired a gatekeeper.

As for the gatekeeper, Li Qingzhi hired Zhao Laosan. As for the four cooks, they were Jin Xiaogu, Zhao Laosan’s wife, Jin Sangshu’s wife, and the lady who had stayed in the capital with Fang Jinniang for a while.

This lady was the wife of the steward of the Zhu family. Li Qingzhi got to know her when he went to the capital, and later found out that her house was quite close to Jin Ye Embroidery Workshop, so they kept in touch.

The cooks for the school didn’t need to be highly skilled, so Li Qingzhi found some relatives to fill these positions.

But the school canteen couldn’t rely solely on relatives. Moreover, someone like Jin Xiaogu… if no one was supervising her, she would probably do something outrageous, like stealing food from the school.

So, Li Qingzhi planned to find someone who could take charge, manage the staff, and be responsible for purchasing and planning the menu.

He didn’t know anyone like that, so he asked the lady to recommend someone. Unexpectedly, she volunteered herself, and Li Qingzhi accepted her offer.

Although she couldn’t read, she had worked for the Zhu family before and managed many servants. Later, she left the Zhu family because of a dispute over her children’s marriage… managing a kitchen was a small matter for her.

Li Qingzhi made preparations little by little and also tidied up his new home.

This time, the house was newly built and had more rooms. Li Laogen and Zhao Xiaodou didn’t need to live together anymore; they could live separately. Chang Zhan and Chang Cui also had their own rooms now.

As for Li Damao and Li Ermao, they didn’t want to live apart, so they continued to live together.

Li Qingzhi planned to move in around the twelfth lunar month, so they could celebrate the New Year in their new home. At the same time, recruitment at Jin Ye Embroidery Workshop and enrollment at his school would also be completed in the twelfth lunar month.

He had a lot to do.

Li Qingzhi was very busy, and in Chongcheng County, countless people were paying attention to his school.

Among the scholars in Chongcheng County, there were actually some who had been dissatisfied with Li Qingzhi for quite some time.

These people included friends of Hong Hui and students or relatives of Sun Juren.

Although they had disliked Li Qingzhi before, they couldn’t do anything about him. Now that Li Qingzhi had opened a so-called “elementary school” and was planning to admit female students…

These people heavily criticized Li Qingzhi’s “Chongcheng Elementary School” as worthless.

The people of Chongcheng County were inevitably affected, and some who had originally planned to send their children to Li Qingzhi’s school changed their minds.

Regarding this, Magistrate Wang specifically found Li Qingzhi to inquire about the matter.

In Magistrate Wang’s view, there was no need for Li Qingzhi to admit female students to his school.

Doing so not only had no benefit for Li Qingzhi but also tarnished the school’s reputation, and even affected Li Qingzhi’s reputation.

Even if Jin Ye Embroidery Workshop needed some literate female workers or managers… couldn’t they hire a female teacher to teach them at the workshop? There was no need to teach them in the school.

Li Qingzhi didn’t care at all about the rumors.

Those rumors dissuading some people from sending their children to his school… were a good thing.

He wanted to recruit children from poor families, even orphans. His school could provide them with a way out.

Those children who were pampered by their families didn’t need to come to his school.

As for his reputation… from the very beginning, he had said that his school wasn’t in the traditional sense. He would indeed teach the students to read, but those students would work for him in the future!

So his school was more like an apprenticeship.

As for admitting female students… wealthy families all had maids. Did admitting female students mean those families were not respectable?

For those families in poverty, sending their daughters to his school was better than sending them to wealthy households as maids.

In fact, ordinary people thought so too.

In the eastern part of the county seat, there was a family.

This family didn’t own any land. Usually, the man went to work as a day laborer at wealthy households or at the docks to earn money, while the

 woman washed clothes for others to make a living. Their lives were particularly difficult.

At the moment, they were discussing Li Qingzhi’s school.

The woman said, “I heard that the school admits students aged ten to fifteen. I want to send our eldest and second child there so that our lives can improve a bit.”

The man replied, “It’s not that the school is bad, but men and women attending classes together? It’s fine for our eldest, but our second child…”

Their eldest was a boy, but the second child was a girl. If she went to study there, would she not be able to marry in the future?

“Have you seen those well-dressed girls from Jin Ye Embroidery Workshop? As long as our second child goes to study, she can work at Jin Ye Embroidery Workshop in the future. If you don’t let her study, what do you want her to do? Don’t think I don’t know your mother has always wanted her to go to Wang’s house as a maid! Li Qingzhi’s school is more respectable than going to Wang’s house!” the woman said.