golden scales

On the eighth day of the first lunar month in the 18th year of Chongzhen, Zhu Cihong took a carriage to the general campus of Laizhou Prefecture Technical College. .After continuously annexing the surrounding houses, this college has already occupied two full neighborhoods, accounting for almost a quarter of the city.Not only that, but the various workshops affiliated to the Technical College gradually joined together and gathered in Nanchengxiang.

This expansion is also in line with Zhu Cihong's explanation: to expand the scale.

If you want to promote productivity, you can't do it in a day or two.On the contrary, it is not difficult to expand the scale of production, it is nothing more than sufficient money and manpower.In today's troubled times, food is a more important currency than gold and silver. Fortunately, Zhu Cihong is not short of food.

Furthermore, Zhu Cihong's "Artisan Exemption Law" promulgated by the imperial decree has also spread to various prefectures and counties, legally ending the Ming Dynasty's inheritance of the Mengyuan system of craftsman registration.

This decree made the craftsmen's recognition of the imperial court soar.Although he still has to accept government appointments, he can get wages through this instead of serving in the military before, and his life has fundamentally improved.When they found that the pay of being employed by a technical college was far better than picking up casual jobs, they were naturally willing to attach themselves—they had no land to attach to.

With sufficient workshops and skilled workers, many innovative designs of technical colleges can be developed into practical tools at the fastest speed.

Supported by Laizhou Prefecture and Ye County Magistrate, Zhu Cihong's carriage entered the city from the south side of the city, and saw the neatly planned new city with his own eyes.It can also be seen from the banners and signboards that they have paid attention to the division of labor in the planning area.These details were all figured out by the local officials themselves, and it can be considered that they did not eat their salaries in vain.

At the entrance of a large archway, Zhu Cihong got out of the car, and when he looked up, he saw the words "Emperor Ming Institute of Technology".Jijiu Wang Zheng led a group of professors, stewards, and deacons to line up at the door to welcome Zhu Cihong's arrival.

Zhu Cihong quickly stepped forward to support Wang Zheng, and said with a smile, "I've been waiting for you for a long time."

After a winter, Wang Zheng became much older. Hearing Zhu Cihong's words, he burst into tears and said, "Your Highness has broken the old minister."

Zhu Cilang gestured to Song Yingxing, Tang Ruowang, and Fang Yizhi, and finally set his eyes on the sixty-year-old man in the second-grade court uniform.

"My subject, Xiong Mingyu, pay my respects to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince." Xiong Mingyu came forward to salute and reported his family name.

Zhu Cihong took a step forward and supported Xiong Mingyu: "Tan Shi Gong, in the academy, only discusses the principles of heaven and earth, and all the complicated etiquette can be reduced."

It is a family tradition that the emperor of the Ming Dynasty gave preferential treatment to veterans of the government, and civil servants have long been accustomed to it.Xiong Mingyu felt that he had made little achievements after coming to the technical college, so he stepped aside after saluting.

Unexpectedly, Zhu Cihong had his eyes on him.

"Tan Shi Gong," Zhu Cihong asked, "I saw that Mr. has listed many formulas in mathematics, physics and chemistry books, and I am about to ask for advice."

Xiong Mingyu explained before meeting: "His Royal Highness Rong Bing. Although His Highness's works are simple and easy to understand, the written descriptions are complicated after all. It is easier to memorize and popularize than using Western methods to list them as formulas."

"That's what I'd like to see." Zhu Cihong's book only explained the principles, without listing the formulas.One of the biggest reasons is that he doesn't know what kind of words to use and how to determine the unit symbol.

"Why not use Latin characters? Instead, use...that, that kind of strange characters?" Zhu Cihong asked.

As recorded by the Western missionaries, the scholar-bureaucrats of the Ming Dynasty had full tolerance and curiosity to accept the Western civilization, and they were able to frankly admit the lack of skills in their own civilization.However, China's pride and ingenuity are not inferior to others, so these scholar-officials did not simply learn Western civilization when they accepted it, but absorbed Western civilization into Chinese civilization with the attitude of teaching and learning.

Now Taixi has only just been recognized as a civilized world by Ming Dynasty, so naturally it will not be like 300 years later, when the foreign masters say everything is supreme.

"Your Highness, that's not a weird character." Xiong Mingyu said with a wry smile, "It's a minus character."

The words are concise but the meaning is exhaustive, and the text is compact but the sound is comprehensive.This kind of "writing" that intercepts the radicals, radicals, and even a few strokes of Chinese characters is the Guqin notation created by Cao Rou, a pianist at the end of Tang Dynasty, extracted from seal script, and used to record Guqin fingering.

As a scholar-bureaucrat of the Ming Dynasty who was familiar with piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, he was influenced by this and created a set of phonetic symbols to replace the "Fanqie method" phonetic notation that is still in use today.

Chinese phonetic notation is originally a direct reading method, and "read a certain word" is written next to a rare word.When Fu Qian in the Eastern Han Dynasty annotated "Han Shu", he used irony, which is the Fanqie method that was used later.The Fanqie method uses two common characters to mark a sound, such as "啊", which is marked as "Zhang Ruifan" according to the Fanqie method.

If you use the phonetic method to explain, it is to take the initial consonant of the above character, cut off the final consonant of the character, and spell out the pronunciation of the character.

In the Tang Dynasty, the monk Shou Wen took Chinese characters as thirty initial consonants, and the people of Song Dynasty used the final consonants in the rhyme book as 36 final consonants.As a result, the Fanqie method is more precise and has become the most popular phonetic method.

"I originally wanted to use Thai and Western letters directly for phonetic notation," Fang Yizhi stepped forward and said, "It would be better to use Thai and Western characters to replace the current Chinese characters."

As soon as Fang Yizhi said this, other professors showed displeasure on their faces, and even Xiong Mingyu was a little embarrassed.

Zhu Cihong knew that some people in later generations would use the banner of Fang Yizhi to advocate a complete Westernization and demand the elimination of Chinese characters, so it is not surprising to hear him say it now.

"Since all the gentlemen object, I have no choice but to give up." Fang Yizhi said embarrassingly: "However, it is inconvenient to annotate the phonetic characters, so I imitated the handwriting and took the strokes from the golden seal cursive. They are divided into sounds and rhymes. It is used to annotate characters. Now the new "Book of Characters" using this rune to represent characters is nearing completion."

"I just took this set of phonetic symbols as the basis, and used Taixi method to list the formulas, which is easy to remember." Xiong Mingyu said.

Zhu Cihong felt a little dazed, and it was difficult to comment after listening to the story.The last time he came to the Institute of Science and Technology, he wanted a hot air balloon for crossing, but Song Yingxing drew a magical flying fortress on the spot... He was almost scared to death by him.However, as a Ming Dynasty person who could think of using gunpowder rockets to go to the sky, the flying fortress is indeed nothing.

——The key is how you somehow remembered to use pinyin!Even if you use pinyin, why not use English letters?Even if the status of English is too low, German, Italian, and Latin are also acceptable!Now I have become an illiterate who doesn't even know pinyin...

Zhu Cihong walked forward slowly with her head down, and unknowingly walked under a big locust tree.He asked someone to move a chair, sat in a circle under the shade of the tree, and asked, "I'm ashamed to say, I still don't know why this phonetic symbol is so important, it must be created first."

"Your Highness, this thing is indeed a great weapon." Wang Zheng cupped his hands and said, "Not only can various formulas be written in a concise manner, which is easy to remember, but more importantly, it is convenient to determine the unit of measurement. For example, '°' is used as a degree, and ' '' is the minute, and '"' is the second, which is convenient for writing and reading, and there is no corruption of writing and hyphenation. "

——Well, you even figured out the pinyin, but you didn't fix the punctuation marks?Forget it, let me come, lest I don’t know you when I get there...

Zhu Cihong thought to himself.

"Your Highness," Fang Yizhi said again, "with the phonetic symbols, craftsmen can learn characters much faster. After the book is compiled, they can use the phonetic symbols to find characters, and they can learn by themselves even if there is no one to teach them. Think of the Western countries. With more than twenty characters, the so-called letters can spell all characters, as long as anyone who can speak can learn to spell, so everyone in the country can read..." Maybe seeing the disbelief on Zhu Cihong's face, Fang Yi Zhiji said: "Your Highness can ask Tang Siye."

The monopoly of knowledge in Taixi was even stronger than that in the Ming Dynasty. Tang Ruowang was a little embarrassed and said, "My Thai and Western characters are indeed easy to learn, but Chinese characters are also extensive and profound."

"The speed of literacy is not a problem. You can't be eager for quick success." Zhu Cihong said: "Many words in my Huaxia have different pronunciations, which may not be solved in Thai and Western languages."

Wang Zheng and Xiong Mingyu nodded in agreement.No matter how good and convenient the pinyin writing is, we can't even discard the ancient books and documents left by our ancestors in the future.

Fang Yizhi had obviously been criticized by everyone, seeing that the crown prince did not support it, he had no choice but to shut up.

"However, the phonetic symbols can be directly used in Thai and Western characters." Zhu Cihong couldn't help but said: "This is also convenient for Thai and Western people to learn Chinese characters."

"Your Highness, I don't think so." Wang Zheng objected: "I'm looking at Thai and Western characters, and each letter has its origin. Therefore, if our country's phonetic symbols are copied, their meanings will be different first. Secondly, because our official language is far from Thai and Western languages. , Many training sounds are not enough to be selected from the Thai and Western alphabets. Now this set of symbols is intercepted from ancient characters, and the sound and meaning symbols are justified in this way. Therefore, I think that it is better to find a new way than to learn to walk in Handan."

Zhu Cihong nodded slightly, thinking to himself: Hong Kong and Taiwan in later generations also use phonetic symbols, not Latinized pinyin, and their students also learn Chinese characters and use dictionaries.Since these professors are so persistent, let's use it first.

When you think about it carefully, it is only natural that this happens.

A blank piece of paper is easy to draw on. If it was the end of the Qing Dynasty, Westernization could be an option.Because the cultural system has been separated for 300 years, and the Chinese civilization has been strangled to the brink of death, a group of ignorant literati firmly believe that everything in China must be corrupt and backward...

However, the current Ming Dynasty is a magnificent masterpiece of civilization that lasted for 5000 years. Even after the troubled times of the Mongol and Yuan Dynasties, the Mongols did not shave their hair, change clothes, burn books and eunuchs.Emperor Taizu Gao reopened the foundation. Although he also absorbed some relics of the Mongolian and Yuan cultures, the mainstream is still "the sun and the moon reopen the Great Song Dynasty".

It was as if Zhu Cihong had reclaimed a new piece of land and planted the seeds, but the fruits it produced were completely different from what he had imagined.If it is said that this set of "Ming-style pinyin" has greatly shocked Zhu Cihong, then when he saw the latest achievements of the Institute of Technology, Zhu Cihong could only be dumbfounded. (To be continued.)