Ming Dynasty: Domination of the World from the Imperial Examination

Chapter 205 Liu Sanwu!
Sunset.

Xia Zhibai went to the Hanlin Academy.

He also submitted the memorial he had written.

When Xia Zhibai appeared in the Hanlin Academy, the originally busy Hanlin Academy suddenly became quiet.

Everyone's eyes turned to Xia Zhibai.

Xia Zhibai smiled slightly and nodded to everyone.

He actually doesn't recognize many people.

However, after a rough glance, he barely realized that most of these people were Jinshi graduates from last year.

The Hanlin Academy is a place for "reserving talents for the country". It is a place where the imperial court consciously trains officials and allows these officials to access top-level information, talents, and affairs. However, it is not easy to rush up the fast lane of the Hanlin Academy. It requires real achievements.

Without the emperor's approval, he had no choice but to stay there.

It is actually very difficult for a scholar of the Hanlin Academy to calm down in the midst of complicated affairs, think, learn, and communicate independently, avoid losing sight of the overall situation due to being immersed in trivial affairs, and always maintain a strategic vision.

The Hanlin Academy receives too much and too diverse information.

In a world where materialism is rampant, it is very difficult to always maintain a impartial spirit.

But this is a test for Jinshi.

Xia Zhibai bowed to everyone and then strode in.

Looking at Xia Zhibai's figure coming and going like the wind, Yang Jing, Zhao Mian and others looked at each other with surprise. Although they were only second-class, they had been in the Hanlin Academy for more than half a year and were greatly favored by the emperor. When the court was short of people, they were entrusted with important tasks. Their official positions were not lower than Xia Zhibai's.

But towards Xia Zhibai, their expressions were very complicated.

Firstly, I failed the imperial examination.

Secondly, Xia Zhibai is too famous.

Even though he had disappeared for a while, Xia Zhibai was the only one in the entire Hanlin Academy who could cause such a big reaction when he came back.

Yang Jing turned around and frowned, "Why did he come back?"

Zhao Mian shook his head and said, "Who knows? But if I come back now, I might miss it."

"Due to the Guo Huan case, many positions in the court were vacant. If he had come back at that time, I'm afraid his position would be much higher than ours. But for some reason, he was delayed in the north for more than half a year. Now most of the positions have been filled, and he is now only left with the empty title of Grand Secretary."

"But considering his personality, I'm afraid he doesn't care."

Zhao Mian chuckled and looked relaxed.

They have now opened up a considerable distance between themselves and Xia Zhibai.

He is now the Left Counsellor of the Criminal Division of the Ministry of Works, and Shen Xi is the Vice Minister of the Ministry of War. As for Yang Jing, he is even more extraordinary, having been appointed Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue. Of course, not only them, many officials in various departments are Jinshi and Taixue students.

And this is all thanks to Xia Zhibai.

If Xia Zhibai had not provided Hua Lun with a way to unify the accounts.

I'm afraid that the case will not be traced back to Guo Huan, and so many senior officials will not be involved. In a sense, they all benefited from Xia Zhibai.

Zhang Heng looked at Xia Zhibai's departing figure with a hint of doubt in his eyes, and said, "I heard that during the time Xia Zhibai was away, the Jingdu Salt Shop he ran encountered a lot of problems, which also involved several provincial governments in the south. I'm afraid Xia Zhibai felt that he couldn't handle it alone."

"The power of one person is too weak after all."

"How can it be so easy to fight against the world by yourself?"

"If the court officials exerted any force, he would be overwhelmed."

"There is always a gap between ideal and reality."

Zhang Heng shook his head in disappointment.

In his opinion, Xia Zhibai's return to the Hanlin Academy was a compromise.

It is already very difficult to stand firm in the torrent of the secular world. How easy is it to stay out of it or even go against the current?

After a few words of chatting and laughing, they turned around and left.

They came back to pack up their things. Now they have been given important tasks by the court, and they will rarely come back in the future. But when they saw Xia Zhibai, they couldn't help but feel a sense of emotion. The strange emotions they had during the imperial examination last year had gradually faded away with their promotion now.

Just like Xia Zhibai said.

The imperial examination is the end of being a scholar and the beginning of being an official.

It is true that they were not as good as Xia Zhibai at the beginning, but they have not stopped these days. Now they have already surpassed Xia Zhibai, and even surpassed any one in the top one.

Xia Zhibai naturally did not notice the strange mood of Yang Jing and others.

He went to the Hanlin Academy not to reminisce about the past.

As the saying goes, if you want to employ people, you must first nurture them. If you don’t nurture them first, then your use of them will be in vain.

If he wanted to employ people, he had to train them first. He could not train the people he wanted to employ relying solely on the Four Books and Five Classics. An important job of the Hanlin Academy in the Ming Dynasty was to compile books and teach classes. These literacy courses were what Xia Zhibai wanted to read.

Xia Zhibai's appearance did cause a stir in the Hanlin Academy.

But the discussion soon died down.

Because the era belonging to Xia Zhibai has passed.

A whole year.

Xia Zhibai hardly moved an inch.

The rest of the Jinshi had already completed the tasks of "compiling books, reserving talents, and nurturing reputation". After the Guo Huan case, they were all given official positions by the court. Nowadays, there are basically no Jinshi in the Hanlin Academy except for some students from the Imperial College and some students who were recently recommended.

The personnel turnover in the early Ming Dynasty was too fast.

of course.

This is mainly because Zhu Yuanzhang killed people quickly.

The Ming Dynasty could not fill the positions in a short time, so the new Jinshi were naturally plug-and-play. Just as Xia Zhibai was sorting out the "literacy course" compiled by the Hanlin Academy, a figure quietly appeared behind Xia Zhibai.

Xia Zhibai was completely unaware.

He was still immersed in organizing.

He occasionally put down his pen and took some notes, seeming very satisfied.

It was already completely dark when Xia Zhibai raised his head with a lingering feeling. However, as soon as he raised his head, he saw an old man in a red robe beside him.

Very old.

Seeing an old man of such an old age, Xia Zhibai was also stunned for a moment.

Then he stood up and said apologetically, "I'm sorry, I was too focused on reading and didn't notice you, sir. Did I delay your lessons?"

The old man shook his head.

His eyes were not on Xia Zhibai, but on the paper under Xia Zhibai. He frowned and said, "Why do you want to record these simplified characters? This is just a trick in the literacy course."

Xia Zhibai smiled and said, "Taking advantage?"

"I don't think so."

“I think this is the main direction going forward.”

"simplify!"

Liu Sanwu suddenly became interested, picked up the densely written paper, and asked, "Why do you think so?"

Xia Zhibai smiled and said, "Since the beginning of the world's writing system, it has been evolving, from the earliest oracle bone script, to the later large seal script, small seal script, to Han Li script, and then regular script. In the Song Dynasty, with the emergence of movable type printing, Song style was born."

"There are also some cursive and running scripts interspersed in it."

"But from the past to the present, we can clearly see that the trend of the evolution of characters is to become simpler and more eye-catching and easier to read. Nowadays, many characters in the world are complicated, but if we really look at ancient books, many ancient people made good use of simplified characters."

"First, it's convenient, and second, it's fast to write."

“Of course, it’s also about not being easily misunderstood.”

“Simplifying the text is inevitable.”

"I have heard that when the Minister of Revenue Ru Taisu submitted a long memorial to Your Majesty, it was more than 10,000 words long. If he had written it all according to the rules, wouldn't it be tiring?"

"However, if simplified characters are used, the speed can be greatly improved."

"and"

"I just sorted it out and found that many literacy courses have a general description, which is to recognize half of the characters. Since some characters can be simplified, it is not a bad idea to use simplified characters to determine half of the characters. If the writing of Chinese characters can be greatly simplified, it will be of great benefit to popular education."

"Why not?"

Liu Sanwu seemed to be thinking about something.

Xia Zhibai’s story did not end there.

He continued, "In addition, people who first learned to read basically relied on rote memorization, which also led to great differences in pronunciation among people from different regions. If this continues, wouldn't there still be obvious regional differences? And this regional difference is extremely obvious."

“Therefore, it is necessary to unify pronunciation.”

"I looked through the literacy courses of the Hanlin Academy, but there is no relevant section. I mentioned to Hua Lun before that we should borrow the characters of the Hu people to simplify rote memorization. The symbols of the Hu people are very simple, not as complicated as Chinese characters, and are easier to remember."

"If we can sort it out and promote it throughout the country, wouldn't it benefit the country and the people?"

Listening to Xia Zhibai's talk, Liu Sanwu stood there in a daze.

This was the first time he heard of such a novel idea.

It’s also a bright spot.

He said happily: "According to what you said, can we unify the accents of the world?"

Xia Zhibai said: "Of course you can. When I came to the Hanlin Academy just now, I heard a lot of people talking at once. If you don't listen carefully, you can't understand what some of them are saying. And they themselves probably don't think there is anything wrong with their pronunciation."

“But that’s also why.”

“It’s hard for Jinshi between the north and south to get close.”

"Even if it is the same sentence, what the southerners say can only be understood by the southerners, and what the northerners say can only be understood by the northerners. This problem of pronunciation is naturally daunting. In this case, how can they understand each other?"

“This external limitation must be broken.”

Liu Sanwu nodded repeatedly.

He is now seventy-four and his hearing is a little poor.

I feel deeply about this.

He said in a deep voice: "According to what you said, what should we do?"

Xia Zhibai said: "Of course, we use mutually recognized pronunciation to unify them. We select symbols that are easier to remember and memorize from the symbols of the Hu people, and then use Chinese characters to pronounce them. Then the rest of the Chinese characters are arranged and combined from these Hu people's symbols."

"Just read it in succession."

"The most important thing is to reduce the number of words."

"Find a few 'roots'."

"There are tens of thousands of characters in the world today, but most of them are like leaves on a tree, they are just derivatives. Only by finding the most original characters can we continue the subtraction process."

“I have some direction now.”

"Really?" Liu Sanwu's eyes lit up and his body began to tremble with excitement.

Xia Zhibai smiled and said, "I, Xia Zhibai, never tell lies."

"I came to the Imperial Academy to accomplish this. I want everyone in the world to be able to afford to read, or at least have a certain level of literacy."

(End of this chapter)