Chapter 173 3/3

“Where’s your mother?” Li Qingzhi asked.

The girl named Ah Yue kept her mouth shut and didn’t say a word.

There was definitely something going on here, most likely something difficult.

Li Qingzhi didn’t ask further and let her stay.

The other few people Li Qingzhi asked also stayed.

It was at this moment that the other teachers hurried over.

At first, these teachers were a bit worried, afraid that Li Qingzhi wouldn’t be able to recruit students, but soon they found out they were worrying for nothing.

Some children came by themselves, and some were brought by their parents… The entrance of the school was crowded with people.

They helped Li Qingzhi with registration, distributing identity cards to these students… After a busy morning, almost four hundred students had been recruited.

Among them, there were probably more than two hundred boys and over one hundred girls.

“We won’t enroll more than two hundred and fifty male students or female students,” Li Qingzhi said.

He planned to recruit five hundred students first, and then… he would eliminate some.

If there were students stealing, bullying classmates, or completely disregarding discipline… he would definitely expel them.

Keeping such students would be unfair to the good students.

Li Qingzhi planned to let these recruited students stay in the school for ten days first to adapt.

After ten days, they could go home for the New Year, and then come back to the school on the tenth day of the first lunar month to officially start classes.

Some of the students were orphans with nowhere to go, so they could also stay in the school during the New Year.

Therefore, at noon, the school naturally had to provide meals for the recruited students.

Li Qingzhi had the cooks in the cafeteria make a large pot of rough rice and vegetable porridge for these children to eat.

The method of making rough rice and vegetable porridge was the same as the rough rice and bean porridge made by Jin Xiaoye when he first arrived in this world.

It was filling, but don’t expect much in terms of taste.

Li Qingzhi knew that children of this age needed nutrition, and they should eat something good. He had even made up his mind to prepare some meat and fish for them every day in the future to supplement their nutrition.

But for these ten days, he planned to have them eat rough rice and vegetable porridge every day.

If anyone couldn’t stand it… they should go home early.

There was plenty of rough rice and vegetable porridge, enough to go around.

Most of these students ate happily, with no complaints about such food. However, there were a few people who frowned while eating.

These few were all boys. They probably lived well at home, so they looked down on such food.

After eating, they continued to recruit students.

Two hundred and fifty boys were recruited soon, but as for female students… it wasn’t until the evening that they recruited one hundred and ninety, still lacking sixty.

Li Qingzhi wasn’t in a hurry either and arranged for these people to stay.

The accommodation conditions in the school were not very good. Twenty or thirty people lived in one room, sleeping on bunk beds, and the distributed quilts were not thick, but they wouldn’t freeze to death for sure.

Li Qingzhi looked around and found that some people were very happy to receive the quilts, but the few who had previously despised the food were very dissatisfied.

The next day, Li Qingzhi continued to recruit students. Of course, this time only female students were recruited. At the same time, he asked these students to go to their respective classes and let the teachers take them to recite the Three-Character Classic while doing work.

Li Qingzhi found some work for them to do, whether it was making lanterns or shoe pads, anyway, they couldn’t sit idly by.

For these ten days, he planned to continue like this. Those who could adapt would be the students in his school, and those who couldn’t… could go home.

They could leave the opportunity to those who needed it more.

This was ancient times, and there were too many children in this era who didn’t live well!

Before Li Qingzhi recruited students, although the people of Chongcheng County knew that Li Qingzhi had opened a school, they didn’t understand much about this school.

After Li Qingzhi recruited students… Some people came to take a look and found that Li Qingzhi had been letting those female students make shoes and paste lanterns, but didn’t let them do anything inappropriate… Gradually, more people sent some girls over.

It was good for the girls at home to learn some skills.

Of course, there were also some male students who couldn’t stand the life in the school and left.

Li Qingzhi found that those female students adapted very well to eating rough rice and vegetable porridge. This was probably because families with good conditions wouldn’t send their daughters to study here.

It was different for the boys. Most of the male students looked thin, indicating that their families were not well-off. However, there were some who were probably spoiled. Their parents sent them over, hoping that they could study and learn characters without spending money.

When the parents of these people came to see their sons and heard their complaints, they immediately took their sons away. Some even shouted at Li Qingzhi, saying how smart their sons were, and if Li Qingzhi accepted their sons as students, they would definitely be able to produce a top scholar…

Li Qingzhi directly said, “I established this school to find some people to work for me.”

The parents of this teenager immediately fell silent and took their son away without saying a word.

This statement from Li Qingzhi was also spread out… And inexplicably, those who had said that Li Qingzhi “was disgracing scholarship” didn’t say anything anymore.

After all, he was just looking for apprentices to work for him… What was there to say?

Ten days passed in the blink of an eye.

Although a few boys left, a few more came, and there were still two hundred and fifty people.

The girls weren’t filled up at first, but later they gradually reached two hundred and fifty as well.

For Li Qingzhi, this could be considered as achieving the goal. But… with five hundred people, even if he fed them rough rice and vegetable porridge every day, it would be a huge expense!

The key was that this expense would continue. By next year, he planned to feed them eggs or meat every day…

Juewei Restaurant and Jin Ye Embroidery Workshop couldn’t afford so many people!

At first, Li Qingzhi didn’t plan to recruit so many students, only intending to recruit around a hundred

to cultivate some managers.

Later, the royalties from “Escape from the Famine” were particularly high, so he recruited so many people.

But now he could see that he was running out of money… Should he write another book?

The generous head of the Shen family… Has he returned?