A few days after a fire destroyed two wooden buildings on Shuihuo Street in Shiligou, an "uninvited guest" came to Feihuang Lingyun Academy of Wangxintai Church.
At that time, the academy was conducting a mock mathematics exam. The students were busy writing on the ink papers. Everyone was holding pencils and triangle rulers, and their hands were stained with ink. Teacher Bai Yuanqing and Xiaobai were invigilating the exam on the podium. , grasp the time, and of course do the questions together, and bite my lips in thought from time to time.
At this moment, someone knocked on the door outside the classroom. Bai Yuanqing looked up and saw Wang Xintai standing at the door with a young man.
Half an hour later, when everyone finished handing in the papers and discussed the difficulty of the test paper, Bai Yuanqing asked everyone to be quiet, pointed to the young man next to him and introduced with a smile:
"Today, we have a new classmate here. Some of you may know him: Fu Renyong, the former boss of Qian Jinyi in the bookstore here. Everyone applauds and welcomes him."
Seeing that Fu Renyong is older, has a mature look, is strong and has calluses on his hands, he doesn¡¯t look like a scholar, and the imperial examination is just around the corner, so he just came to join the class now? So someone asked: "Brother, what are you doing here? Selling teaching materials?"
The classroom burst into laughter.
Fu Renyong snorted coldly, laughed, and said: "I don't want to come, but the boss, my master, has to let me go to the examination room to take the test. After all, it's not good for our industry if we don't understand the imperial examination textbooks As for selling teaching materials, no problem, I have brought here a list of imperial examination sprint books, you can register with me and get a 10% discount."
Xiaobai immediately stopped everyone from laughing. As a Christian, I explained that it is not good to laugh at my new classmates. As a Confucian, I explained that ambition does not depend on the age. Let alone twenty years old, it is possible to pass the exam at ninety. Finally, as an academy teacher, I yelled: Don¡¯t bully The academy is new, or a miracle has occurred.
The time when Fu Ren came was right after the mock exam and everyone was studying hard and boringly. When they saw the newcomers coming, they were all very curious and gathered around to ask questions.
Question: "Old Fu, you are so old. Are you still here to take the exam?"
Answer: "Aspirations don't depend on your age. Besides, textbooks and related books have always been the bulk of our profits. Can I not understand the imperial examination?"
Question: "Why don't you go to the academy on the other side of the Qili River? It's close to your store."
Answer: "Master is considering opening a shop here. I will stay in Shiligou recently. Besides, the tuition here is cheap and they are willing to accept an older young man like me."
Question: "Didn't you just come to Song Dynasty? Do you have a high school qualification certificate?"
Answer: "Of course not. I bought a set."
"Huh? If found out, you will be blacklisted and banned from taking exams for life!"
"It's okay. I don't think I can pass the exam." Fu Renyong laughed without any shame. Everyone shook their heads and sighed, feeling that this person was too unambitious.
As long as there is an imperial examination system. There is generally a black market for student status, needless to say in the Qing Dynasty: it is said that there was a young man from Hunan, Zuo Zongyue, who bought the license of an old supervisor in Wenzhouwei on the west bank of the Xiangjiang River for three shi of millet, and then he was admitted to the Juren Examination. Of course, he From now on, I will always be called Zuo Zongtang;
The secondary school qualification certificates of Haisong are also sold, but they are not very common, because if you fail the secondary school qualification examination, you will definitely not be able to pass the imperial examination, and those who pass the examination will be investigated to the end. Forgery is against Christian ethics. , Never allow such a lying guy to sneak into the court.
This kind of academic certificate is usually tied to the household registration certificate and sold to illegal immigrants. It is an add-on to the match, or it is used to enter a Catholic school that recruits students based on the parish household registration.
People like Fu Renyong who only bought certificates and certificates of good citizenship to take the imperial examinations can only say that they want to get lucky. They naively thought that they would be able to do square root, find angles in triangles, and calculate acceleration due to gravity just because they had a high school education. Yes, but there are such people.
Of course Fu Renyong is not such a naive person. He was ordered to take the imperial examination because of work needs.
Frankly speaking, their intelligence organization, the Republic of China, is not illegal, because their job is to collect and analyze religious, cultural, and economic intelligence. It is impossible for the Mission Department to arrest a guy who regularly mails legal books and newspapers to Shanghai or Hong Kong. Then It's not called espionage. However, this job requires very high cultural quality of agents. You have to understand what is going on.
However, the Song Dynasty progressed very quickly because of Western learning, and the emperor was a thief like a fox. He really couldn't understand many things. Even if you read them on paper, you wouldn't know why. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty Spies were eager for local talents in the Song Dynasty, and their requirements for the quality of agents were also increasing day by day.
Qian Jinyi expressed that he was not very satisfied with Fu Renyong¡¯s cultural quality, but it was okay and he was still young, so he could sneak into the imperial examination room of the Song Dynasty for fun.Put your fist on your chin and silently say thanks.
When giving thanks, Xiaobai added a prayer to his silent prayer: "Lord, please keep the order in the classroom very good, and don't let any bad apples affect this year's exam. Lord, please help me pass! Amen!"
He finished reading hurriedly, secretly opened his eyes to look at the two candidates in the back row, and found that they were also closing their eyes obediently to thank them. They didn't look like lawless people. Xiaobai finally breathed a sigh of relief.
"Eat more, I have to run in the afternoon." Xiaobai opened his eyes wide on the podium and shouted to the half-grown children.
In the last row, Fu Renyong pricked up his ears to hear the boy in front of him envying Zhou Tianen. This guy brought rice with a fish in it. Others, including Fang Bowen, ate cabbage and pickled radish: his father was in a church primary school. He works as a coachman, his eldest brother is a temporary worker in the Health Bureau, and Zhou Tianen is now the richest in his class.
¡°Looking next to you, the fat young master was eating rice and pickled radish strips, holding a comic book in one hand while reading.
"Brother Li, are you going to eat this?" Fu Renyong asked with a smile.
"What's wrong?" Li Mingjian asked in confusion.
"Why don't you bring some delicious food from home?" Fu Renyong said.
"You don't have time to care about that! This food is good!" Li Mingjian said, chewing another mouthful of salty beans, making a crunching sound.
"Brother Jian is a bookworm. Haha." The two boys in the front row turned around and teased Li Mingjian, but the latter was obsessed with reading and ignored him.
Looking at the food in the bowl, Fu Renyong frowned and used chopsticks to pick out the beans from the radish strips one by one and put them on the back of the roll.
"What do you mean?" Li Mingjian turned around and saw this scene and asked in confusion.
"I never like eating beans in my life." Fu Renyong said helplessly.
¡°Don¡¯t waste food, give it to me!¡± Li Mingjian shouted.
Fu Renyong laughed as if he was relieved, and poured all the beans in the bowl into Li Mingjian's bowl.
"The beans are so delicious, old master, why don't you eat them?" Deng Ming in the front row was puzzled.
"Don't carry beans for me while eating." Fu Renyong frowned and took a hard bite of the pickled radish. (To be continued)