The crowd erupted.
It was as loud and chaotic as a battlefield. Every face flushed red, every mouth shouting at whoever stood nearby, no one able to hear anyone else — yet everyone kept talking anyway, as though seized by some collective madness.
Old Master Zhao never lied. If he said there would be schooling, then there would be schooling.
In this age, if you were to divide people by the single greatest distinction, there was only one dividing line.
The educated, and everyone else.
Every person had dreamed the same dream: *How wonderful it would be if I were a scholar.*
The second dream: *How wonderful if my son could become a scholar.*
The third: *How wonderful if my grandchildren could study.*
But for the vast majority — the farmers — this truly was nothing more than a dream. They only dared think it in their sleep, and even when drunk and rambling they steered clear of the subject, afraid of being laughed at for reaching above their station. Supporting one scholar cost at minimum twenty or thirty taels of silver a year, a burden only a small fraction of families could bear. A typical family in Taoyuan Village earned a few taels in a good year — and after expenses, what was left? A scholar remained a dream.
Yet today, the dream seemed as though it might come true.
Lin Xuejin had been smiling along with everyone else at first, caught up in the shared joy — but gradually he sensed something was wrong. If expectations climbed too high, there would be trouble. He needed to douse the fire before it spread further.
Recognizing the gravity of the situation, Lin Xuejin shouted at the top of his lungs. "Everyone stop! Stop! Listen to me first!"
No one paid him any attention. They had all lost their minds.
"The school is cancelled!"
It hit like a thunderclap on a clear day. Every head seemed to take a lightning strike at once. No one moved.
The roar of the crowd vanished. Every pair of eyes fixed on him, wide and stricken.
He knew he had just handed these people hope. If he snatched it away immediately, he was fairly certain they would tear him apart with their bare hands.
He pressed on quickly. "If you won't let me finish what I have to say, then there's no point opening a school at all."
"Village Head Lin, please — speak! We're listening!"
"Yes, go ahead, please!"
Lin Xuejin gathered his thoughts. "Don't come here thinking your children will study, become scholars, and rise to become officials."
"I'm telling you plainly: that is not going to happen. Even if you send your children to us, they will not become officials."
Some faces fell, but most people were sensible enough. "That's all right, Village Head Lin," someone called out. "Never mind officials — if they can read and write, that's enough."
"Then let me tell you what makes our school different from anywhere else."
"Students will learn to read, write, and do arithmetic."
"Upon graduation, we will issue a certificate."
"First: a daily stipend of two copper coins — for life, as long as you draw breath!"
"Bluntly put — even if you're bedridden one day, too broken to work, two coins a day can still buy half a jin of coarse grain. You'll survive!"
The first point guaranteed survival.
Many eyes lit up again.
"Furthermore, with reading, writing, and arithmetic, a whole range of work becomes available — easier work than what you do now, and likely better paid."
"Your children will not live as hard as you have. They will live well."
Eyes grew even brighter.
"We can't promise the world, but with these two things — isn't that already enough?"
"More than enough! More than enough!"
"The Master is a living Guanyin, a bodhisattva sent to save the suffering — ah, and you too, Village Head Lin! You're a bodhisattva as well, you are!"
"Village Head Lin, we heard that xiucai also receive payments — does that mean our children will count as xiucai after graduating?"
"Not quite as generously as a xiucai, but better than a tongsheng. Tongsheng get nothing, and the examination to become one is grueling besides."
"So — if they graduate successfully, it's roughly equivalent to half a xiucai."
A xiucai's privileges were considerable: a stipend, tax exemptions, the right to remain standing before a magistrate, and more. But there was no need to explain all of that to the villagers.
"I'm enrolling my eldest, my second, and my third — all three! I'd work myself to death on the construction site before I'd let them miss a single class!"
"One more thing," Lin Xuejin added. "Anyone — anyone at all — who is a resident of Taoyuan Village may register!"
"It doesn't matter if you're an elder of seventy or eighty, or a woman still in her postpartum rest. Anyone may sign up!"
"Graduate, and the two-coin daily stipend is yours!"
"Truly, Village Head Lin? You're not joking? Do you think someone like me could manage it?" A broad-shouldered man in his thirties, built like an ox, asked with an embarrassed grin.
Those around him burst out laughing. People who knew him teased that he must have gone mad with greed. Scholars were the earthly incarnations of Wenqu Star, the Star of Literature — had anyone ever seen Wenqu Star look like *that*?
The man's face went red. He began to shrink back into the crowd.
But Lin Xuejin looked straight at him and said, with quiet conviction, "I think you can do it. It's never too late to learn, as long as you have the will."
The man's face went redder still — but this time from excitement.
"Village Head Lin, I want to register!"
"Registration is at the security office. Bring your identity papers."
The crowd scattered at once, people rushing home to fetch their children and drag them back to register — and, more than a few of them, to put their own names down as well. They moved with the urgency of people afraid the spots would be gone before they arrived.
And in truth, the spots really could run out.
The villagers' enthusiasm ran high. Within a single day, nearly every child in the village had registered, along with a great many adults. The numbers far exceeded anyone's expectations — so many that the school could not contain them all.
The five village heads conferred, and Jinyi made the final call.
"This is how it has to be. Too many people — we'll open three Level One classes and three Level Two classes to start. Fifty students per class. The first three hundred to have registered will begin."
Zhao Baihui's curriculum had been designed by the system: streamlined and focused. The mathematics content was light — students only needed to learn addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The language content was more substantial, as there were over two thousand common characters to master.
The curriculum was divided into nine levels. Level One covered arithmetic. Level Two covered pinyin. Levels Three through Eight were devoted to character recognition. Level Nine was general knowledge.
With literacy and numeracy, even in this era, one could handle the overwhelming majority of available work.
The general knowledge class mattered greatly. Many people spent years in study and still lacked the most basic practical understanding of the world — to call them merely out of touch would almost be a compliment.
Each of the nine levels was compact; one month was allocated per course. At that pace, a diligent student could graduate in nine months.
If a student struggled with a particular subject, there was no need to spend a whole year re-learning a small amount of material. Remediation took just one month.
For the language classes, the writing system used was not the labyrinthine traditional characters of the age, but a streamlined simplified script optimized by the system. With the fewest strokes necessary to convey meaning clearly, the simplified characters made the burden of written work several times lighter.
Everything was designed for efficiency.
And so it was that our Lin Xuejin had to sit down and learn the simplified characters all over again from scratch — an experience he found equal parts painful and exhilarating.