Chapter 239: Waiting for the Empress to Cause Trouble
After the three examinations concluded, Jinsui felt both disappointed and that it was only natural, as ninety percent of the recruited female officials were unable to immediately assume their duties and required training at the Women’s Academy under Chen Yunniang.
Some female official positions were filled by candidates from the academy. Chen Yunniang comforted Jinsui, saying that even the top scholar had to spend three years in the Hanlin Academy before taking office, so they should just consider their Women’s Academy as the Hanlin Academy for female officials!
The remaining ten percent who could be immediately appointed as female officials were daughters of the gentry from Yandi. Two of them were related to Yan Jiu: one was his paternal aunt’s cousin, and the other was his maternal aunt’s cousin.
According to these two young ladies, not only did Yan Shiyi support their pursuit of becoming female officials, but Twelve Niang had also written many letters encouraging them. Jinsui chuckled; it seemed the Yan Clan was the most supportive of the Empress’s work among the gentry.
She cautioned herself not to rush. One cannot get fat with a single bite. The female official system had gained the court’s recognition, and she had plenty of time to perfect it slowly. It was better to be slow than to take too big a step and fall.
After the female official examinations ended, the academy immediately began its enrollment examinations. This attracted even more people, as half of the recruits came from the Artisan Registry, which greatly excited artisans across the land.
They had been considered inferior members of the Artisan Registry for generations. Suddenly, they learned that the Empress had established an academy that recruited students from the Artisan Registry, provided food and lodging, had extremely low tuition fees, and even allowed enrollment without upfront payment if they passed the exam, with tuition to be paid after graduation and employment.
It was known that in this era, no matter what craft you wanted to learn, you had to at least serve as an assistant to a master for two to three years, enduring all sorts of abuse and hard labor, before you could learn the true skills.
It would take several more years before you could become a master and earn money. There was no income at all during that period, and ordinary commoners without a family fortune couldn’t even afford to send their children to learn a trade.
Now, the Empress’s academy provided food, lodging, and education. Regardless of identity or social class, everyone was assessed and admitted equally. How could the common people not be tempted?
Last year, the Women’s Academy began enrolling students. The first batch of female students had only studied for over half a year, and some had already joined textile workshops, not only paying off their tuition but also earning money for their families.
Those who were still observing last year regretted it immensely and immediately sent their eligible daughters to register this year. The number of boys was even greater, as parents worried about the safety of sending daughters but had no such concerns for their sons.
Suddenly, the number of applicants for the Technical Academy surpassed that of the Imperial Examination and the Imperial College enrollment.
However, this did not garner the attention of officials and powerful people. Instead, they would dismiss it with disdain, secretly despising the Empress’s actions, thinking, “She truly comes from a humble background. Even as Empress, she still bothers with these lowly commoners.”
It’s a wonder the Emperor doesn’t object. If you want to establish a girls’ school, you should only recruit daughters of officials and nobles; how can you recruit from the Artisan Registry and even the Slave Status? If this continues, even noble families who want to send their daughters to the academy won’t do so.
Furthermore, they heard that the Technical Academy provided food and lodging, issued two sets of school uniforms, had lower tuition fees than private schools, and even allowed impoverished families who couldn’t afford tuition to study first and pay later.
Looking at the vastness of the academy, capable of accommodating tens of thousands of students, the officials watched coldly, waiting to see when this academy would collapse! If we oppose it, we will only displease His Majesty.
Let His Majesty witness firsthand how the Empress squanders silver and manpower to run a mediocre academy. Perhaps eventually, when it collapses and the students are expelled, it will incite public opposition, ruin the Empress’s reputation, and alienate the Emperor and Empress.
Jinsui naturally knew that many people in the Imperial Court wished her ill. The reason was simple: Gu Changxiao’s refusal to take concubines had dashed the dreams of many to become imperial relatives.
Naturally, they hoped Jinsui would fall from grace, preferably causing trouble that would displease the Emperor, thus leading the Emperor to take concubines.
These pieces of news reached Jinsui through various channels. Among the gentry, Yan Shiyi informed her. Among officials, Cheng Yu asked Chen Yunniang to tell her. The news from the powerful people was rather amusing, as it was obtained by Grandpa Ling.
Recently, Grandpa Ling had been very close with the Imperial Observatory. Armed with some astronomical knowledge and a telescope provided by Jinsui, coupled with his emotional intelligence, Grandpa Ling immediately became a distinguished guest of the Imperial Observatory and was recognized as a Celestial Master and Taoist priest.
It was effortless for him to gather insider information about the powerful. The attitude of the powerful towards the Empress made Grandpa Ling indignant yet helpless. At the same time, it ignited his ambition: “This old Taoist must achieve something to bring honor to my granddaughter!”
Jinsui, in turn, comforted Grandpa Ling, saying he didn’t need to care about others’ opinions. “I don’t need to please these powerful people; they are the ones who need to please me. Just wait and see. It might take one or two years for the Technical Academy to show results.”
But give me three to five years, and a batch of technical talents will flood the Six Ministries. By then, everyone in the world will be proud to attend the Technical Academy! Our Technical Academy will become an even more formidable institution than the Imperial College!
Grandpa Ling particularly liked Jinsui’s positive and upward-looking personality, as if any difficulty before her was merely a minor setback. He couldn’t help but recall what his granddaughter had once told Yan Shiyi:
“Before a fierce tiger, there are no ravines; before a coward, there are only obstacles.”
This saying was perfectly suited to his granddaughter’s approach to work. If the road was uneven, she would flatten it; wind and frost were merely different scenery on the path forward.
However, there was a very practical question: “But this way, the academy will require a large amount of funds to operate. Does Sui Sui lack money?”
Money is always in short supply because when you have a hundred taels of silver, you want to do things that cost a hundred taels; when you have a thousand taels, you want to do things that cost a thousand taels.
But Jinsui confidently told Grandpa: “Don’t worry! Your granddaughter isn’t short of money! The businesses I cooperate with the Yan Clan on yield dividends every year.”
No one knew about the sea merchant business she partnered with Yan Jiu, except Gu Changxiao. She provided navigation charts and some high-end goods, and the dividends she received from the Yan Clan’s sea merchants were entirely sufficient to operate the academy.
Therefore, it would be impossible for the officials and powerful people to see Empress Niang Niang defeated, because they had no idea how many people were actually supporting the Empress.
After the Imperial Examination, the Emperor also added a special examination, an unprecedented examination for officials, which was essentially for civil servants. This special examination only required a Licentiate degree to participate.
Official positions were announced in advance, and candidates could apply voluntarily. Initially, Jinsui and Gu Changxiao both thought that positions in the Northwest Borderlands, the coastal areas of Minzhou, or those involving governing water conservancy and surveying mountains and mines across the land, which were arduous and minor posts, would not attract many applicants.
Previously, these positions were where disgraced officials were demoted. Due to their mindset, very few officials could achieve results in these roles. Unexpectedly, this time the Emperor was recruiting officials for these positions through a formal special examination.
Surprisingly, many scholars applied, especially those who had repeatedly failed to pass. They treated it like a lifeline, and regardless of how remote the position was, as long as it was an official position recognized by the court, they were willing to try.
Jinsui lamented to Gu Changxiao: “Every three years, three hundred Jinshi are selected, and two hundred spots are taken by the gentry and aristocratic clans. It’s too difficult for ordinary scholars from humble families to enter officialdom. Now that His Majesty has added this special examination for officials, they naturally will go all out.”
Every scholar wants to become an official. Although the positions are minor, they are still legitimate officials of the court, and one can still achieve prominence.
In short, the excitement in the Capital City this spring was all about examinations, from the special examination to the female official examination, the Technical Academy and Imperial College enrollment, and the civil servant examination, along with troop recruitment and merchant exchanges.
The influx of candidates and their relatives and friends into the Capital City numbered over a hundred thousand. Even officials in Chang’an privately sighed, remarking that they hadn’t seen such a grand occasion in the Capital City for many years.
The former Chang’an had also experienced such grandeur, but that was many years ago. In recent decades, Chang’an had been heavily guarded. Due to increased commercial taxes, fewer merchants from other regions traveled there, and the expressions of the city’s residents were timid.
In contrast, in the New Capital, the people stood tall, unafraid of power, and everyone was full of spirit. In fact, for the common people, a prosperous era meant not starving to death.
But the people of Yandi today stated that the prosperous era created by the Emperor and Empress was no longer just about having enough to eat and wear, but about eating well, dressing well, living well, their children having prospects, and their lives having hope.
It was common to see elderly people in their seventies sitting by their doorsteps, watching the carriages and pedestrians on the main road, doing nothing but smiling contentedly.
Then, they would occasionally sigh to their families: “If life were like this in previous years, it would have been unimaginable even in dreams!”
During meals, their daughters-in-law would bring dishes with meat and eggs, and their young grandsons and granddaughters would affectionately call out “Grandpa” and “Grandma.” The elders would understand and happily transfer the meat and eggs from their bowls to the children.
Then the children would be reprimanded by their parents, told not to take their grandparents’ food, as the elders needed to nourish themselves.
Listen, we old folks like us used to have to find sons to help with labor and sons to save on food rations for the family. Now, we can eat meals that nourish our bodies.
After their reflections, the elders would then educate their children and grandchildren, urging them to always speak well of the Emperor and Empress, for their current good life was all thanks to their wise rule!
The common people in other regions might only be grateful to the Emperor, but the people of Yandi would undoubtedly be grateful to both the Emperor and Empress, as they had all received care from Miss Ling.
No matter what people from Chang’an said about the Empress – that she was of humble origin, that her actions were arrogant – if the people of Yandi heard it, they would certainly defend the Empress, and even get into physical altercations.
If our Empress wasn’t bold, could she have defended the border? Could she have deterred the Tartars? You haven’t seen the desolate border cities of the past. If it weren’t for the Empress, could they be like this today…
Jinsui did not witness such scenes, but Grandpa Ling did. He was happy for his granddaughter and understood what his granddaughter had said: there was no need to care about the opinions of the powerful, because what she cared about were the common people at the bottom.
After the various examinations in March concluded, Yanzhou’s first public elementary school was completed. Without a doubt, it was supported by Yan Jiu, with almost all the funding provided by the Yan Clan, but it was named after the Empress.
Equally without a doubt, it was met with ridicule from the powerful and opposition from some officials. Their reason for opposition was amusing: ink, brushes, and paper were expensive, wasting the national treasury’s funds.
Then they argued that since the Empress was funding it herself and not using the national treasury, it silenced some people. But new objections arose: allowing children from the bottom level to study was of no benefit to the country.
If they all came to study, who would plow the fields and who would farm? This question had been discussed many times; they were simply choosing to ignore it.
Then came the spectacle for some, as the public school also charged tuition, albeit less than private schools, and provided one meal. This was a significant expense, and they waited to see how long the Empress’s private fortune could sustain her endeavors.
Then came the most expensive item: books! Some powerful individuals openly declared that they had moved from Chang’an and left their books in Chang’an, so they had no books to donate to the Empress.
Indeed, in the past, if the royal family wanted to establish an academy, they had to seek donations of books from the gentry and powerful families. Books were extremely precious heirlooms in those days.
They expected the Empress to use her authority to have some scholars copy books. What they didn’t expect was that Grandpa Ling’s Taoist temple donated ten thousand volumes of introductory books to the academy.
Upon closer inspection, everyone saw that the books were exquisitely printed and the paper quality was excellent. Unlike previous books, this batch of introductory books had punctuation marks and a phonetic system for learning characters.
This phonetic system was not an alphabetic one; instead, Jinsui had found scholars in the Hanlin Academy to create a phonetic system based on radicals combined with oracle bone script.
This caused a great shock in academic circles, and they began to oppose the Empress’s reckless actions, questioning how ancient texts could be arbitrarily altered. However, upon seeing that the phonetic system was devised by scholars from the Hanlin Academy and had received the Emperor’s approval, their opposition waned.
The use of the phonetic system and punctuation indeed made learning much simpler. Simultaneously, they were intrigued by how a Taoist temple could possess such advanced printing technology without anyone knowing.
Of course, no one knew because movable type printing was done by Gu Changxiao in the military zone, and the books were then secretly delivered to the Taoist temple.
The appearance of these books dealt the greatest blow to the gentry, as their monopoly on education, which they prided themselves on, was completely shattered. Their esteemed private schools would henceforth fade into obscurity, and the situation where half of the Hanlin scholars came from gentry private schools would never reappear.
The swallows that once flew in the halls of the Wang and Xie families now flew into the homes of ordinary people. And the Wang and Xie families of this dynasty, though not having experienced war, became ordinary people in another way.
They could sense an unstoppable trend but were powerless to resist. The wheels of history rolled forward. If the gentry had united, they might have offered some resistance.
However, the capital relocation had almost wiped out the gentry of Chang’an, and land reform had severely weakened them. The Yan Clan, the foremost among the Yandi gentry, followed the Empress’s lead. This resulted in the gentry’s attempts at resistance being like a mantis trying to stop a chariot.
They could only watch as the Empress, with one new regulation after another, gradually stripped away the halo of prestige from their heads.
The establishment of the first public academy had shaken the educational foundation of the gentry.
The Emperor’s support for the public academy came in the form of recruiting teachers through the civil servant examination. These were different from the teachers in private schools; they were ‘teachers’ who had received official recognition from the court and obtained teaching certificates.
Some people also tried to inquire about the printing methods of these books, but unfortunately, Taoist Master Ling remained tight-lipped.
Cheng Yu told Jinsui that printing only textbooks was too wasteful, and the printing workshop was still using military funds. If there were no revenue, the military might voice their opinions over time.
Jinsui chuckled: “What’s so difficult about that? We’ll print whatever books sell best on the market. If we sell them cheaper than Yang Diao, it will be a huge profit.”
Cheng Yu said sheepishly: “The best-selling books on the market are storybooks, miscellaneous studies, travelogues, and novels. Would it be inappropriate for Niang Niang’s printing workshop to publish these kinds of readings?”
Jinsui scoffed: “What’s inappropriate about it? As long as we don’t publish lewd or forbidden books! Lord Cheng is worrying unnecessarily. Novels also have the function of moral education.”
